A Different World

Hendrick Hertzberg's latest "talk of the town" item opens with a hilarious meditation on the changing nature of presidential drug disclosures as witnesses by a New York Times article that appeared to have been accusing Obama of having done less drugs back in the day than his autobiography implied. Then, the pivot:

Voters, rightly, don’t much seem to care. But there is a glaring discontinuity between the lived experience of Americans and the drug policies of their governments. Nearly a hundred million of us—forty per cent of the adult population, including pillars of the nation’s political, financial, academic, and media élites—have smoked (and, therefore, possessed) marijuana at some point, thereby committing an offense that, with a bit of bad luck, could have resulted in humiliation, the loss of benefits such as college loans and scholarships, or worse. More than forty thousand people are in jail for marijuana offenses, and some seven hundred thousand are arrested annually merely for possession. Meanwhile, the percentage of high-school seniors who have used pot has remained steady, between forty and fifty per cent.

That's what always seems to me to go missing in these "politicians behaving badly" stories. Do I think that having smoked pot should disqualify a person from being a U.S. Senator? Of course not. But a minority of people who smoke pot in this country do wind up facing rather severe penalties for having done so. The question for formerly drug using politicians who (rightly) expect to be forgiven is how they can continue to support a legal regime that has these consequences.

[The official Yglesias line on the issue is that there's good reason to keep adequate legal restrictions on marijuana in place so as to prevent the emergence of large marijuana firms with lobbying arms and sophisticated marketing and advertising arms. This, obviously, would still leave the door open for substantial liberalization of policy from its current status quo.]

Comments

I think it is Obama's cocaine use that is the problem. A little bit of home grown weed never hurt no one. Cocaine use on the other hand should never be acceptable.

Posted by uncle anon | February 18, 2008 3:51 PM

AMEN!!!! More!

Posted by Allan | February 18, 2008 3:57 PM

Cocaine use on the other hand should never be acceptable.

Why the fuck not?

Posted by JH | February 18, 2008 3:58 PM

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/31/obama-decriminalize-pot_n_84277.html

Posted by Gary Sugar | February 18, 2008 4:00 PM

Cocaine use on the other hand should never be acceptable.

Why? There's an excellent book, The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Global History of Narcotics by Richard Davenport-Hines, which makes a decent case that criminalizing narcotics is about the worst possible method of minimizing a nation's drug use. The book's a fun read, too.

Posted by James Gary | February 18, 2008 4:02 PM

"...there's good reason to keep adequate legal restrictions on marijuana in place so as to prevent the emergence of large marijuana firms with lobbying arms and sophisticated marketing and advertising arms."

Why do you want to prevent the emergence of these things? Wouldn't they be a boon to the economy, creating (non-black-market) jobs and revenue and so forth?

Posted by PJ | February 18, 2008 4:06 PM

Come on Matt! The sight of corporate weed lobbyists would be worth whatever bad policy they convince congress to pass.

Posted by Robert | February 18, 2008 4:09 PM

Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez both chew coca leaves, from which cocaine is derived.

I'm just saying: http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/01/chavez-admits-c.html

Posted by Civilized Crank | February 18, 2008 4:10 PM

Speaking of the Obama fellow, isn't this what prematurely ended the presidential campaign of Mr. Joe Biden not so many years ago?

Posted by Linus | February 18, 2008 4:11 PM

What's actually wrong with big companies with large marketing and lobbying operations? They're certainly better than black markets, as PJ says. We have them in every other industry. They may not be everybody's favorite, but that's kinda the price of freedom, ain't it?

And I'll second the "why the fuck not?" for "cocaine should never be acceptable." There are many social occasions where cociane is not only acceptable, it's damn near required.

Posted by too many steves | February 18, 2008 4:11 PM

Linus: only in the sense that in its attempt to raid the historical treasury, the Clinton campaign can't accuse him of having an affair with Fawn Hall.

(I see that Nit Pickler's bylining this particular story, too.)

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | February 18, 2008 4:18 PM

I'd rather have above-board companies with marketing and lobbying arms than what we have now: black market dealers who don't card for age and all the other ill effects of prohibition.

Posted by Alison | February 18, 2008 4:18 PM

Umm, by extension to MY's anti-legalization policy, should he also be against the sale of alcohol? The theoretical problems he has with Marijuana firms are actually REAL 'problems' (if you see them as such) with regard to the alcohol and tobacco firms.

Posted by soullite | February 18, 2008 4:20 PM

The question is what menacing name would be given to this powerful lobby - Big Weed?

Posted by Jack | February 18, 2008 4:20 PM

"there's good reason to keep adequate legal restrictions on marijuana in place so as to prevent the emergence of large marijuana firms with lobbying arms and sophisticated marketing and advertising arms"

Wah? You're conflating two independent issues. Or to put it another way, this take is also an argument for putting heavier legal restrictions on both the tobacco and alcohol industries merely because you don't like the effect of their lobbying and marketing. The same would apply for the beef and dairy industries.

Rather than get distracted by your opinion on marketing/lobbying regulations, why don't you focus on the much more harmful effect of marijuana prohibition? This includes: disproportionate imprisonment for non-violent crimes, a large black market economy for a substance less harmful than alcohol, and massive government spending on the war against marijuana. You might also want to consider the benefits of putting marijuana in the legal spotlight, such as the submitting it to the same sort of regulations as the tobacco industry. (Even if that need work.)

Posted by crazymonk | February 18, 2008 4:23 PM

Doesn't it seem like Hertzberg is spinning - in his mild-mannerd way - for Hillary.

He's another one pushing the popular vote meme
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2008/02/more-and-murkie.html

I sort of hope the Clinton campaign wins the delegates and loses the popular vote, then we can witness their hypocrisy in all its glory.

Posted by Peter K. | February 18, 2008 4:23 PM

It's weird. Has any politician's career ended because of a speeding ticket? In New York state, possession of marijuana is a violation, just like speeding. So the mere fact of smoking pot doesn't actually tell us whether a major law has been violated, it also matters where and when.

Posted by Martin | February 18, 2008 4:23 PM

Again, Obama comes through well on this test, because, though Hertzberg conveniently omits the fact, Obama is on record as favoring decriminalization of marijuana.

Posted by RaymondA | February 18, 2008 4:31 PM

I, for one, would love to see "the emergence of large marijuana firms with lobbying arms and sophisticated marketing and advertising arms".

Wouldn't you love to be able to go down to the gas station and pick up a pack of Camel Greens for 20 bucks? That would be awesome.

Posted by oljb | February 18, 2008 4:35 PM

I don't believe that marijuana is necessarily a "gateway" drug, but if it were to be decriminalized, steps need to be taken to create "a firewall" of sorts between it and other drugs. In my experience, there are some drug dealers that are exclusive pot guys. But frequently and more often the same guy that gets you the pot can also get you the coke, MDMA and heroin. I really don't know what the proper solution is or the proper tools or guidance that law enforcement should have on this, but perhaps there could be a realy high penalty for those busted for intent to distribute when they have pot and a host of other more dangerous drugs with them. It could be a factor for an even higher sentence than the intent to distrubut the other drugs would warant. And perhaps the penalty if they are just caught with pot could be low, like a misdeamor ticket and seizure, unless they have over two pounds.

Posted by Bubba | February 18, 2008 4:36 PM

Pot can be grown at home. No big deal. It will never be successfully comercialized.

Cocaine however is a dangerous substance and Obama's use of cocaine will be agressively used against him in the general election. Heck, Obama could not even be elected to the school board where his kids go to school because of his admitted criminal use of cocaine.

The republicans will nail him on cocaine every chance they get. Obama will have some explaining to do.

Posted by uncle anon | February 18, 2008 4:43 PM

...so as to prevent the emergence of large marijuana firms with lobbying arms and sophisticated marketing and advertising arms

I'll just add my voice to the chorus: this is idiotic. You're basically stating that you want to remove the criminal penalties from marijuana use while somehow still keeping the cultivation, sale and distribution of it confined to the black market. This is, if anything, a worst-of-all-worlds solution: you're liberalizing the use of an intoxicant while deliberately cutting yourself off from the sources of taxation and income which can be used to ameliorate its externalities-- not to mention keeping the market firmly in the hands of organized crime. The emergency of a sophisticated marijuana industry with lobbying and marketing arms would be cause for celebration: a huge industry (that, you seem to have forgotten, already exists) would have been reclaimed for the tax base.

Posted by Doctor Memory | February 18, 2008 4:48 PM

(er, that would be "emergence", not "emergency")

Posted by Doctor Memory | February 18, 2008 4:51 PM

I think Matt may be joking at the end, given the terminology "The official Yglesias line", and "lobbying arms", sounds like a bit of satire, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, can someone clarify this:

"Again, Obama comes through well on this test, because, though Hertzberg conveniently omits the fact, Obama is on record as favoring decriminalization of marijuana.

Posted by RaymondA | February 18, 2008 4:31 PM "

This must be incorrect.

Posted by Andruw | February 18, 2008 5:00 PM

Uncle Anon, I really don't think so. George Bush was an alcoholic and a cocaine user and it really didn't seem to hurt him too much.

Posted by greg | February 18, 2008 5:00 PM

Among the many remarkable phenomena surrounding the drug discourse in this country is that non-users know basically nothing about drug use or culture.

But yes, clearly every second a law enforcement officer spends dealing with college kids getting high in a dorm room is time wasted that could have been spent catching thieves, rapists, murderers, terrorists. But the important thing is that we stop adults from pursuing harmless fun (to say nothing of cancer patients from using non-toxic medicine).

As long as big pharma call the shots, there is zero chance you'll be able to enjoy the non-toxic effective pain reliever that you can grow in your own home. Valium! OxyContin! Now these are drugs the government-pharmaceutical complex trusts you with, seeing as how they can count profits on their list of side-effects.

Posted by V. | February 18, 2008 5:03 PM

"Pot can be grown at home. No big deal. It will never be successfully comercialized."

Actually that's wrong as well. All sorts of plants can be grown at home, that doesn't mean people have the initiative to do it. People (esp. potheads) are lazy. If/when it's commerically available it'll be a huge success.

Posted by greg | February 18, 2008 5:05 PM

Pot will never be legalized in America, because pharmaceutical corps can't patent the formula.

Posted by Gary Sugar | February 18, 2008 5:21 PM

Seriously Matt, what do you have in mind in the way of substantial liberalization? That pot would stay illegal but penalties would be lessened? That it would be legalized but would only be available with a prescription? That it could only be sold in state-run stores? I suppose one of these options might be superior to the way we treat alcohol or cigarettes but I doubt it.

Anyway saying you're in favor of substantial liberalization without more is as a practical matter identical to advocating no change in the status quo.

Posted by Paul Campos | February 18, 2008 5:23 PM

Well, I think at least marijuana should be legalized (perhaps according to a novel sort of regime that could keep sales and cultivation a cottage- not corporate- industry) and I think promoting that p.o.v. is actually pretty important. I also think the criminalization of marijuana is a significant piece of a patchwork that hampers left-wingers in America politically.
Although I think this is important, I don't want to write a lot more write now, though.

I'm surprised to see so even a couple of out-in-the-open endorsements of cocaine in the comments on this blog. Cocaine is, of course, a very different beast from marijuana and I think even for people like me, who believe in legalization of marijuana and perhaps other drugs, the argument to be made against cocaine legalization is still pretty compelling.

Posted by Swan | February 18, 2008 5:24 PM

Please. If there's profit, the producers will follow. I agree with greg.

I have never touched the stuff, nor do I know a lot of people who have. (Then again, I DID grow up in Oregon.) That being said, I can't wait for Big Pot to show up in Washington. How will they lobby?

Posted by Klug | February 18, 2008 5:29 PM

I also think the criminalization of marijuana is a significant piece of a patchwork that hampers left-wingers in America politically.

I guess I should say a patchwork of regimes- kind of a modern Jim Crow that is less obviously racist, and works to keep blacks from the polls, and to harm or disempower blacks and whites who would be or are politically active liberals, economically or otherwise.

Posted by Swan | February 18, 2008 5:29 PM

Just because I think cocaine is legal doesn't mean I think it's a great idea to do a bunch of coke (although, as I said, in some situations it's almost mandatory). Cigarettes are also a bad idea, and they are, and should remain, legal. Even if you don't start from any presumption of liberty here with regard to how you want to pollute your own body, you have to ask yourself: is the harm from banning this substance greater than the harm that would result from legalizing it? Smoking crack is bad, the drug war is worse.

Posted by too many steves | February 18, 2008 5:36 PM

Re: Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez both chew coca leaves, from which cocaine is derived.

To be fair, coca leaves have little in common with the drug cocaine. It's as if you were to compare drinking coffee with injecting yourself with purified caffeine.

Coca leaves are fairly commonly chewed by Amerindian communities throughout the Andean region of South America. They don't have particularly strong physiological effects and probably wouldn't be illegal at all if it wasn't that you can make cocaine from them.

Posted by Hector | February 18, 2008 5:50 PM

Legalize marijuana. Ban advertising. Regulate and tax. Just like any other commodity.

Posted by GiantDuck | February 18, 2008 9:41 PM

Legalize marijuana. Ban advertising. Regulate and tax.

Posted by GiantDuck | February 18, 2008 9:42 PM

I'm not even sure banning advertising would be useful.

There isn't anybody over the age of ten who doesn't know what pot is, and what it does. You'd hardly need to advertise it - except to suggest that YOUR buds are better than Brand X's.

The notion that kids smoke cigarettes because of advertising or because their favorite movie star smoked in the last movie is pretty ridiculous. People smoke because they see people smoking.

A book I read long ago on the drug problem pointed out that you don't get any benefit from smoking until you smoke. So people who take up smoking already know what it's going to do for them. They aren't being "seduced" into it - they know and they deliberately choose to do it. And they're willing, by now, to ignore the considerable negatives to do so.

The same thing will happen with legal drugs. Despite any negatives, people will choose to consume them because they believe that the MEASURED AND PREDICTABLE PLEASURE they get from drugs will offset the negatives of the drugs and the rest of their lives.

This has been true throughout history and will remain so - until of course technologically can reproduce the pleasurable effects of drugs without the negative effects. Which will no doubt be within a couple more decades, whereupon the issue will be moot.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | February 19, 2008 12:14 AM

On the coca leaves thing, apparently various indigenous peoples (including, IIRC, the Incas and the Mayans) measured distance in how many coca leaves would give one the energy to walk from point A to point B.

What's wrong with pot lobbyists? The biggest problem would be that they would sleep through every meeting with someone on Congress. Besides, on the corruption side, that would just mean more money going to Democrats and Lincoln Chafee anyway. Besides, they would lower the reputation of lobbyists even more.

Ending the drug war would probably be one of the cheapest ways to help out inner cities and the South economically by either having gangs see their funds dry up or integrate urban drug markets with the wider American economy. In addition, in many Southern states pot is the biggest cash crop. Legalizing it could also help out states like Alabama.

Posted by Reality Man | February 19, 2008 2:24 AM

--There is no justification for making a distinction between various drugs. To the extent that abusing drugs of any kind is a self-destructive behavior, it's a self-limiting problem. A (probably tiny) minority of people will ruin their lives with drugs NO MATTER WHAT. Let them! The idea that we need a gigantic, militarized, international policy overloading our criminal justice system in order to save us from ourselves is preposterous.

--In terms of foreign policy, the War on Drugs is the most counter-productive program we have. Columbia is a great example. The US government sends more money to Columbia than any other state outside the Middle East, most of it for hardware and training for repressive forces of the Columbian government "fighting" drugs. The American public sends about an equal number of billions to the drug cartels, guaranteeing an endless civil war with the Columbian people caught in the crossfire. The WoD has a disastrous effect in Mexico, hyping the already serious immigration problem. The most dangerous opponents of allies like Hamid Karzai are financed with illegal drug money that would dry up with de-criminalization. Etc, etc...

--The idea that we should shift blame for drug abuse from recreational users in rich countries to dirt-poor farmers in the Third World is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 19, 2008 3:01 AM

"--The idea that we should shift blame for drug abuse from recreational users in rich countries to dirt-poor farmers in the Third World is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 19, 2008 3:01 AM"

This needs to be hammered home again and again. It is a lot more moral to allow some rich asshole at Northwestern ruin their lives with coke than aid and abet the destruction of much of Colombia's rural economy, especially considering some of the stuff used to destroy coca crops also kill other farmers' legal crops, livestock and children.

Posted by Reality Man | February 19, 2008 5:48 AM

I should make it clear that I am for the drug war, but I believe that it should stop at our borders. I certainly don't think that we should spray poison on Bolivian farmers or fund the Colombian military.

That said, I do _not_ think we should legalize drugs (_maybe_ weed but definitely not anything harder). Legalizing them would just encourage more people to consume them. And comparing cocaine to tobacco is just silly. When was the last time you heard of someone dying of an overdose their first time smoking tobacco, or turning into a criminal or prostitute in order to finance their tobacco habit.

If you wouldn't like to see your sibling or your kid on drugs, then you shouldn't want anyone else to have the opportunity either. And saying that the war on drugs is bad for black Americans is perilously close to implying that all Black people are involved in drugs.

Posted by Hector | February 19, 2008 10:30 AM

Cocaine use on the other hand should never be acceptable.

Except when you need to stay up all night partying and you've had a few drinks and you're starting to feel tired. Trust me.

Posted by W | February 19, 2008 11:53 AM

One thing you can do when you legalize is keep the price high (through taxes if nothing else). Expensive drugs get used carefully; new cheap drugs ($5 a rock crack) become big social problems -- gin in the 18th cent. Europe, whiskey in early 19th cent. America, eventually heroin in the 60's (though that was never wide spread in comparison), then crack.

So, since I agree that the cost of the drug war is higher than the cost of people actually taking the drugs, I am reluctantly pro legal heroin/coke/meth -- while keeping the price high, and some of the taxes paid can be spent pushing the idea that users are losers...

Posted by shereld | February 19, 2008 12:07 PM

"If you wouldn't want to see your sibling or your kid on druge, then you shouldn't want anyone else to have the opportunity either."

There are a whole list of things you wouldn't want your kid to do, starting with crossing the street alone, if he's young enough. There's a whole other list of things you wouldn't want your spouse to do, like dating, for example. That doesn't mean other people shouldn't be free to do those things.

Hector, it's bad enough to treat adults like children. Treating adults you don't even know the way you'd treat your own children is so fucked up we need a word that goes beyond "paternalism."

Posted by too many steves | February 19, 2008 12:07 PM

Too many steves,

I've always found that nanny-statist covers Hector and his ilk quite well.

Posted by heedless | February 19, 2008 1:31 PM

shereld--

General agreement, but look--the price of getting strung out is HIGH. By itself. We don't need some government agency to regulate the going rate for a kilo of what have you.

Social pressure in poor Black neighborhoods, not some "push the idea that users are losers" ad campaign by the authorities, was what moderated the crack epidemic. Users ARE losers, and this quickly becomes apparent to all and sundry. Most of the drugs we worry about today have been present in some form since at least the last ice age. Leave people alone to experience the consequences of their own decisions, and they'll generally make pretty good decisions.

Posted by Robert Powell | February 19, 2008 5:37 PM

Re: Most of the drugs we worry about today have been present in some form since at least the last ice age.

Not hardly. Most of today's drugs, even the ones that come from natural precursors, are the product of modern chemistry. Chewing coca leaves is entirely different from using refined cocaine, in much the same way as treating an infection with a penicillin-producing bread mold is not quite the same thing as treating it with the actual modern drug penicillin. Even hard liquor is no older than the early Industrial Revolution, and marijuana has been bred into something much more potent than it was even a few decades ago.

Modern drugs are something quite new and innovative, and therefore they call for new solutions. Something like cocaine is a very powerful subverter of human motivation, and can only be suppressed by equally powerful legal sanctions.

Posted by Hector | February 19, 2008 6:35 PM

I don't believe that marijuana is necessarily a "gateway" drug, but if it were to be decriminalized, steps need to be taken to create "a firewall" of sorts between it and other drugs. In my experience, there are some drug dealers that are exclusive pot guys. But frequently and more often the same guy that gets you the pot can also get you the coke, MDMA and heroin.

But that happens precisely because pot is illegal. You don't see that same guy also getting you liquor and cigarettes, do you? No, he doesn't, because you can get those at the store -- that's the firewall between the drugs of nicotine and alcohol and other drugs. Same with pot -- if you could pick it up at the corner store or pharmacy, why would you still go to the coke/heroin dealer? The firewall is created precisely by making it legal and available.

Posted by Stefan | February 19, 2008 8:58 PM

In my experience, there are some drug dealers that are exclusive pot guys. But frequently and more often the same guy that gets you the pot can also get you the coke, MDMA and heroin.

Also, if pot was legal and hence cheap(er) and readily available, why would street level dealers still sell it? The profit motive would be gone.

Posted by Stefan | February 19, 2008 9:10 PM