>Sender: >To: >X-Original-Message-ID: <06e301bf0f96$2423f2f0$9acf69cf@pacbell.net> >From: "Peter McWilliams" >Subject: Forbes the Magazine is NOT the man -- thank heaven >Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 18:00:11 -0700 >X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 >X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 > > >Change in the Drug War is coming too fast to comprehend. First >Clinton--whose administration has failed to finance much-needed needle >exchange, has campaigned against medical marijuana, and has arrested me for >using medical marijuana--vetos a bill that would ban needle exchange and >medical marijuana in Washington D.C. The Republicans have appleplexy. > >Today, FORBES Magazine--yes, the FORBES Magazine owned and controlled by >THAT Forbes, little Stevie blunder, who personally paid for 90 percent of >the 1998 anti-medical marijuana campaign in Washington state, penned an >op-ed piece "Legalize Pot? Pernicious Rot," and has stiffer drug laws as a >campaign platform--has come out with a cover story on the futility of >prohibition. ALL prohibition. > >Can a Berlin Wall-type tumbling down be far behind? > >Enjoy, > >Peter > > >---------------- > >Forbes Magazine >October 10, 1999 >On the Cover > >Periodic waves of puritanism inspire politicians to ban alcohol or tobacco >or other drugs. But history shows that legislating sobriety achieves >nothing--and may aggravate the excesses it is aimed at. > >The Futile Crackdown > >By Philip E. Ross > >GOVERNMENTS, DECREEING zero tolerance of drugs, have 400,000 drug offenders >in this country in jail. Mothers Against Drunk Driving persuades legislators >to raise the drinking age and now wants to restrict advertising of alcohol. >The Justice Department concocts a convoluted theory about how tobacco >vendors deplete federal coffers and sends them a bill for $20 billion a >year. > >What you are witnessing is the New Prohibition. It is the Volstead Act all >over again, in different guises. It aims to enforce clean living by edict. >And it is almost certain to fail, as greatly as the last Prohibition failed >in the 1920s. > >These conclusions come from a small band of experts specializing in the >history of temperance crusades. The urge to legislate health and sobriety >comes in cycles spaced 60 or 80 years apart, they tell us, and the cycle is >peaking right now. And yet, perversely, the result may be more tobacco and >alcohol consumption a decade or two on. > >"Every 80 years or so we come out with all these laws against people's >personal, pleasurable pursuits: tobacco, alcohol, meat, sex," says Ruth C. >Engs, a professor of applied health science at Indiana University in >Bloomington, Ind. and author of Clean Living Movements: American Cycles of >Health Reform, due out this winter. "Consumption of drugs, tobacco and >alcohol peaked around 1980; the reform laws seem to be peaking now, and that >means clear backsliding should occur by 2010." > >The up-and-down cycle of addictions seems to have its own natural rhythm >related to people's memories of what those addictions did to an earlier >generation. But crackdown legislation, far from tempering these swings, >probably aggravates them. Look at the paradoxical increase in teenage >smoking of the past several years. There may be a certain forbidden-fruit >glamour to the cigarette habit. The antitobacco crusade, that is, may be >backfiring. > >Engs explains the temperance rhythm: In the first third of the cycle, >reformers agitate against the reviled behavior, which peaks and begins to >decline. Only then--when the horse has fled the barn--does the electorate >close the barn door with restrictive laws. In the middle third of the cycle, >people either lose interest in the laws or actively rebel against them; this >is when it becomes "cool" to flout the law. Engs says that the 4.6% rise in >smoking by teenage girls over the past five years suggests that this lax >phase is beginning with tobacco, whereas with alcohol the rebound in >consumption is still a few years away. > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >---- > > >In each temperance campaign, most of the decline in consumption came before >the laws took effect. > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >---- > > >In the last third of the cycle, the police barely enforce the laws still on >the books, the banned behavior comes out into the open, and consumption >continues to rise, but at a slower pace. Then it peaks, as another >generation comes to witness the devastation wrought by drug use. And the >cycle begins anew. > >The crack-cocaine epidemic followed a course like this, although it took >place in quintuple-time. This drug's addictive powers are so great--and its >ability to destroy lives so complete--that the up-and-down cycle covered a >span of only about a dozen years or so, trailing off in the late 1990s. >Urban police departments responded to the epidemic with a wave of arrests >that put millions of drug offenders in jail. But the enforcement action did >not make crack go away, crack made crack go away. > >The cycle is vicious, because most of the time we are overreacting to a >previous generation's experiences. The lurching from one extreme to another >is particularly exaggerated in America, where it dates back to the Puritan >fathers themselves, although versions of it--with respect to alcohol, at >least--can be seen in northern European countries, including Britain, >Scandinavia and Russia. These colder cultures experience feasts and famines >of ethanol, and they make quite a contrast with the southern European >countries, which have neither the binges nor the temperance crusades. >France, Italy and Greece have integrated wine into normal mealtime >consumption since Roman times. > >It is striking how pointless the laws against substance abuse generally are >by the time they are introduced, how harsh the punishments quickly become, >and how total is the switch to tolerance at the end. In each campaign, most >of the decline in consumption came before the laws took effect. > >You see the pattern again and again, for tobacco, for opium and for cocaine, >says David F. Musto, a physician and historian of medicine at the Yale >University School of Medicine. Reason: the time lag between a surge in >consumption and the emergence of a popular consensus for legislating against >it. "That's why it makes sense that laws would come in after the peak and >get more severe as demand goes down," he says. > >Musto has documented how cocaine first struck even the medical elite as a >wonder drug, promoted in prestigious medical journals with language >suggestive of what we hear now in support of Prozac. In the 1890s Sir Arthur >Conan Doyle could portray the protagonist of his whodunit novels injecting >cocaine as he went about hunting down criminals. Then the evils of cocaine >addiction became apparent, the drug became associated with lowlifes, >revulsion against it grew, consumption cratered and, oh yes--laws were >passed against it before World War I. By the 1930s it had fallen through the >memory hole. Forty years later it was back, with a vengeance. > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >---- > > >"In America, health issues easily become moral issues, and once you've >decided your opponent is morally bankrupt, why compromise?" > > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >---- > > >Musto notes that a third of Americans don't drink, a third drink only >occasionally, and the rest drink 90% of the alcohol. There is thus always a >simple majority of voters that lacks any stake in the free use of liquor, >beyond a commitment to the principle of live and let live. To enact >Prohibition, you don't have to convert the drinkers, you have only to >energize the nondrinkers. > >"You create a moral dynamic that makes compromise impossible," he says. "In >America, health issues easily become moral issues, and once you've decided >your opponent is morally bankrupt, and you get a political majority, why >should you compromise?" > >Look at the inordinate resources now devoted to suppressing drugs. "The >problem we have fallen into is a kind of a ratchet in these laws," says >Daniel D. Polsby, a professor of law at George Mason University. "They have >become very harsh, and they only get harsher." A typical cocaine offender >spends 10.5 years in federal prison--35% longer than a typical rapist. > >Can you argue that today's laws are based on a scientific understanding of >drugs and tobacco that our grandfathers lacked? You can't. The opposition to >smoking around the turn of the century employed many of the same arguments, >right down to the idea that passive smoke was a danger to nonsmokers, so the >cigar-smokers should be corralled into their own cars on trains. For that >matter, many other supposedly scientific precepts--eating oatmeal, avoiding >red meat, exercising regularly--were as integral to the clean-living >movements of yesteryear as they are to today's. Science plays a small role >in this swinging of the pendulum. Popular emotions play a large role. > >Musto thinks that with the victory of the antitobacco forces, the next >target for restrictive legislation will be alcohol. That might begin with >dissuading people from drinking, then progress to marginalizing those who >do, to demonizing them and finally to enacting laws against them. > >That such laws generally fail to improve matters, and in many cases have >made them worse, has been argued long and hard by libertarians, notably >Milton Friedman. He has pointed out that banning, like rationing, produces >economically perverse outcomes, among them a thriving business in the banned >substance, fueled by jacked-up prices and swollen profit margins. Another >perverse result comes from the substitution effect: If you make it hard (or >expensive) for kids to get beer, they will get marijuana instead. > >An unfortunate effect of temperance laws is that they glamorize the banned >product. Engs sees this glamorization in the small statistical edge in >drunkenness in underage kids compared with those of drinking age. >Apparently, once you can legally belly up to the bar, you don't want to. >Unfortunately, lifelong habits often form at around that stage in life, and >those who rebelled by drinking at 19 sometimes find that they cannot stop at >21. That is, raising the drinking age may have boosted alcoholism in the >long run. > >Listen carefully to what Engs and Musto and Polsby are saying. Their >argument is not that substance abuse is harmless, but that it is inevitable, >and that we should lay the whip on lightly. That doesn't come naturally to >someone sitting on a high horse. > >Make no mistake: Alcohol, tobacco and narcotics cause much human misery, and >people would be well advised to use them little or not at all. Advised--but >not commanded--for coercion doesn't work in the long run. Problem is, we >live in the short run, particularly when it comes to what are commonly >deemed the guilty pleasures. With the waning of the generation that >witnessed Prohibition, the last, and greatest, failure of legislated >morality, apple-cheeked reformers arise to repeat the same old mistakes. > > > > > > > > > >================================================================ > >This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to > the mailing list . >To unsubscribe, E-mail to: