From the New York Times, a story on September 8, 2008, about the difficulties faced around developing drug policy for salvia divinorum, perhaps one of the safest compounds known to man.
"Though states are moving quickly, Bertha K. Madras, a deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said federal regulators remained in a quandary.
"'The risk of any drug that is intoxicating is high,' Dr. Madras said. 'You're one car ride away from an event that could be life-altering. But in terms of really good studies, there is just very little. So what do you do? How do you make policy in the absence of good hard cold information?'"
If history is any indicator, through hysteria, racism, or flat-out oppression. Cognitive liberty isn't big on the liberties that the U.S. public policy supports, despite being inferred by the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Need proof? Try "Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse," by David Nutt, Leslie A. King, William Saulsbury, and Colin Blakemore. The researchers assessed English law in how a chemical's danger for abuse and societal cost related to its legal status. Our laws are approximately in accord.
What did they find? Absolutely no correlation between harm and legality, since alcohol, being perfectly legal, ranks up there with heroin, cocaine, and street methadone. Down near the bottom of the harm scale was MDMA, LSD, and GHB - all of which are either schedule I or II in the United States. A color scale that should look like a red to blue (highly illegal to unregulated) slide going down instead looks like a rainbow slide going down.
Those compounds that got associated with elements of our society that were, at one time or another, deemed needing of oppression got the stiffest penalties.
Marijuana: Originally made illegal through the work of Henry Anslinger, and C.M. Goethe, who necessitated the use of a foreign word so that Congress didn't know they were also banning hemp. Mr. Anslinger used sensationalist stories of multiple murders committed by marijuana smokers, and Goethe blamed the sources to immigrant workers from Mexico, selling it to 'school children'(Lou Dobbs would be proud).
Opium: Hamilton Wright pressured Congress to adopt wide-sweeping antinarcotics laws. Opium smoking in America, Wright declared, had been introduced by the Chinese and "one of the most unfortunate phases of the habit ... was the large number of women who have become involved and were living as common-law wives and cohabiting with Chinese in the Chinatowns of our various cities."
Cocaine: Wright also incited latent racial fears about blacks to demonize cocaine. "It has been authoritatively stated," he said, "that cocaine is often the direct incentive to the crime of rape by the Negros of the South and other sections of the country." [all quoted in D.F. Musto, The American Disease]
Crack law anyone? Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose, he didn't smoke crack at all. Yet his death from what was originally billed as a crack overdose lead to some of the most "racially neutral" disparity in federal sentencing that was enforced in a racist fashion. The racial breakdown of federal prison was completely made-over by this one law. This continues, despite there being not one iota of proof that crack is any different than cocaine.
Dr. Madras, while your words make sense, I challenge you to look back at your office, and yell at them a little louder, because ONDCP has been the cheerleader of these policies for two decades now. These drug policies are insane, founded on fear, hysteria, with absolutely no basis in reality. They have never shown a single indication that they are working. Further, they have never shown to be based on any science whatsoever - except when the science is methodologically flawed (Dr. George Ricaurte's studies on MDMA being a prime example).
So, Dr. Madras, consider this an invitation: I welcome debate at any time, with any member of ONDCP, about the nature of our current prohibitionist drug policy. We can discuss: 1) whether the policies reflect the true dangers of the drugs in question, 2) whether the policies are effective at achieving increased public safety, 3) whether or not children actually are protected by our policies, 4) whether our policies actually create more harm than good, based upon drug use percentages, cross-culturally examined, as well as incarceration and overdose rates, and finally HIV/Bloodborne pathogen transmission rates. That's just to get started.
Just... don't expect to win, unless you use hysteria and fear mongering, and ignore science and the facts.
Posted by Malakkar Vohryzek