420 Campaign Editorial – Doug McVay (Common Sense for Drug Policy):

By Doug McVay
Common Sense for Drug Policy
Drug War Facts

The debate over drug control policy can often be confusing. Drug warriors intentionally make it a confused debate, which is not surprising since public confusion helps perpetuate the status quo. The Bush administration uses that tactic quite a lot. That is probably why the American Dialect Society chose "truthiness," a word coined by Stephen Colbert, as its word of the year for 2005. Truthiness is defined as "The quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true."

There has never been a better word to describe the propaganda propping up prohibition.

The drug war is built on a foundation of lies. Yet they're not always outright lies. Facts in any debate are nuanced. Things are rarely simply black and white. One example of this: drug warriors frequently refer to the increasingly large numbers of marijuana users who get referred to treatment. They assert this is because marijuana is so much stronger and more dangerous than it was twenty or thirty years ago. However by looking at the data we see that the bulk of these referrals are due to legal troubles. People aren't going to treatment for marijuana because they need to; rather they're taking up valuable treatment slots in order to avoid more serious legal hassles. Meanwhile people who really need help don't seek it because they're afraid of admitting that they break the law, presuming they could even find affordable treatment.

My organization, Common Sense for Drug Policy, provides a number of resources to carry out this educational mission, many of them on the Web. Our flagship Web site, DrugWarFacts.org, is an archive of research and data on drug control policies. It is an essential resource for anyone debating drug control policy. Our most popular site is CSDP.org. Through it, we provide current news and information on many topics, with link to source articles, other organizations, etc. We go beyond the headlines to find the whole story.

One of our lesser-known sites is DrugWarDistortions.org. In Drug War Distortions we deconstruct, debunk, or at least explain some of the more nuanced arguments in the drug control policy debate. For example, one section of Drug War Distortions debunks the assertion that marijuana use contributes to violent behavior. In one of its ads the US Office of National Drug Control Policy claimed that "Research shows that kids who use marijuana weekly are nearly four times more likely than nonusers to report they engage in violent behavior."

To back up their assertion, the Czar's office quotes two studies. The first, from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or SAMHSA, does in fact show that young people who admit on federal surveys that they are frequent marijuana users also admit to engaging in other problem behaviors. The researcher, at least, was honest enough to admit that there was no evidence of causality in any direction. ONDCP of course left that part out.

The second study was published in the Journal of Addictive Diseases. That study did find some correlation between admitted marijuana use and some violent behaviors. The researchers noted however that the people studied were not representative of the population as a whole nor of a typical inner-city low socioeconomic status African-American community. The authors also noted that the marijuana use could have been an attempt to control violent tendencies -- that is, self-medication. But that doesn't fit into ONDCP's worldview so truthiness again reared its ugly head.

By peeling away the layers of distortion and wishful thinking we bring the truth to the light. Under that light the foundations of prohibition crumble into dust. Make no mistake: the facts alone are not enough to change policy. Yet the facts combined with a positive vision for the future and your passion, your commitment to change, will bring down prohibition and allow us to create informed, effective drug control policies.


From HIGH TIMES:
The 420 Campaign is an activist training resource, culminating in a letter writing campaign allowing concerned citizens from all around the country to voice their opinions regarding marijuana’s prohibition. It is our hope that these letters flood Congress on April 20th asking for a more sensible policy concerning marijuana.

If you’ve never written your representatives in government before, the letters within the HIGH TIMES 420 Campaign can help you get started with links to resources, guides to legislators and districts as well as advice for letter writing (i.e. DrugSense’s letters to the editor section).

So, get started today. Make your position heard. Ask the government to end the unjust persecution of marijuana smokers. If enough of us ask, we won’t be ignored. Tell your representatives how they can better represent you.