the single dumbest rant on drugs

Updated September 6, 2007

It takes some doing, but Office of National Drug Policy Director John Walters has uncorked the most crazed tirade we can uncover to date. Unfortunately, the Marijuana Policy Project's Bruce Mirken's reply to ONDCP sunk to the same absurd, teen-obsessed level than make today's drug reform lobbies no alternative.

Speaking at a press conference on the September 6 release of the 2006 National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health, Walters launched a rant against teenagers, declaring "we (adults) are not going to put up with you showing up loaded" at home, on holidays, in schools... it went on and on. It's sheer lunacy punctuated why Walters may be America's cruelest, craziest, most incompetent major official ever.

Let's look at Walters' record first. He served as Deputy Director for Supply Reduction and as Chief of Staff for ONDCP from 1989 to 1993. During his worthless first term, illegal drug deaths soared from 10,929 in 1988 to 14,022 in 1994, drug-related hospital emergencies rose from 403,600 to 460,900, and drug-related homicides leaped from 1,234 to 1,449. If reducing drug abuse, drug-related health problems, and crime was the goal of his drug war, he lost and drugs won--in a route. 

But ONDCP and the drug war have never been remotely intended to reduce drug abuse; their role is to frame drug issues so they can be exploited by political and private interests. Thus, despite his earlier failings, Walters was appointed by President Bush as ONDCP director, approved by Congress (including many Democrats), and took office in December 2001.

Walters' latest stint as the nation's drug policy czar has been an utter catastrophe. In just four years, illicit-drug deaths soared as never before, from 21,812 in 2000 to 30,711 in 2004. Hospital emergencies related to drug abuse soared to a record 816,700 in 2005, clearly an increase even though survey redesign made comparison with previous years impossible. Homicides, which had been falling during the late 1990s, levelled off and rose again in 2005. After 20 years of drug war, led by Walters more than any other official, the United States now suffers its worst drug abuse crisis ever, many times worse than found in any other Western nation. In a nation at all concerned with reducing now epidemic drug abuse, removing Walters from office as quickly as possible would be an urgent imperative.

Walters' relentless exploitation of fear and hostility toward youth is a large part of his calamitous policy failure. In fact, he should be pointing out the vast epidemic of drug abuse today's teens are suffering at the hands of their middle-aged parents. Enraged adults should stop putting up with "loaded" teenagers, Walters fumes? Here are the latest deaths (2004) and emergency cases (2005) for illicit drugs:

Illegal drug abuse Emergency cases (illicit drug mentions)
Age Deaths All drugs Street w/alcohol Pharmaceuticals
<21 877 251,260 140,053 20,400 90,807
21-24 2,099 210,424 126,581 27,278 56,565
25-34 5,061 348,472 138,199 90,874 119,399
35-44 9,228 370,289 126,110 117,423 126,756
45-54 9,021 465,381 284,527 73,705 107,149
55-64 2,651 224,514 165,121 15,365 44,028
65+ 1,404 77,218 29,804 4,379 43,035
Note: street drugs include heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other stimulants, ecstasy and other club drugs, PCP, and hallucinogens. Drugs w/alcohol include illicit-drug/alcohol combinations. Pharmaceuticals include prescription drugs used illegally. "Drug mentions" exceed number of cases because one case can involve multiple drugs. See Drug Abuse Warning Network, 2005; Centers for Disease Control, WISQARS, 2004.

Walters' gutless, politically-warped, cruel non-leadership has brought great danger, suffering, and heartache to America's young people, their communities, and their families. The destruction to older generations, whose rampant drug abuse and crime packing America's prisons by the hundreds of thousands is politically inconvenient for Walters to address, is incalculable. As an act of basic decency, of compassion, and of social policy sanity, Walters must be removed from office immediately, ONDCP abolished, and drug policy turned over to scientific analysis and planning.

 

Unfortunately, drug-policy reform lobbies like Marijuana Policy Project ape Walters' disastrous denial and exploitation of fear of youth. MPP's communications director Bruce Mirken's reply to ONDCP countered that if you pick some other drug or some other set of years, teenage drug use actually increased. This moronic squabble recurs year after year, every time a major survey is released: Walters crows that the drug war is a success because some teen age group's use of this or that drug declined by half a percentage point. Mirken or some other drug-reform lobbyist responds that the drug war is a failure because some other teen age group's use of some other drug, when compared to some other year, actually increased a bit.

 

Because the National Household Survey and Monitoring the Future survey dozens of drugs for multiple teen and adult age groups every year, anyone can cherry-pick whatever drugs, age groups, and years they want to make whatever case they want, In this case, Mirken picks 1992 out of thin air to counter Walter's choice of 2002, also out of thin air, to which 2006's teen drug-use numbers are compared. Since teen drug-use numbers are completely meaningless (they don't connect to any real-world measure of teenage or societal well-being), changes in teen drug use numbers mean even less. Mirken and Walters are perpetuating an endless cycle of incompetent nitpicking while Americans are dying in skyrocketing numbers.

 

Here's what's important about drugs and the War on Drugs:

  • In 1992 (using Mirken's chosen year), 12,684 Americans died directly from drug abuse.

  • In 2002 (using Walter's chosen year), 25,607.

  • In 2004 (the most recent year), 30,711.

People DYING from drugs (and going to hospitals, disrupting families, getting shot because of drugs) IS IMPORTANT. Up or down fluctuations in pencil-and-paper-survey numbers of self-reported drug USE, especially by teens, ARE NOT IMPORTANT. Walter's whips up trivial emotionalisms like teenage drug use because the drug war is a disaster when it comes to preventing real crises, such as deaths. What's Marijuana Policy Project's excuse for participating in his scam?

 

Mike Males, YouthFacts.org