Posted on 08/25/2006 6:26:19 AM PDT by cryptical
The reporters made their way through the dim lights and small huts of Virginia City's Chinatown. In the huts, one of the reporters later wrote, "A lamp sits on the bed, the length of the long pipe-stem from the smoker's mouth; he puts a pellet of opium on the end of a wire, sets it on fire, and plasters it into the pipe much as a Christian would fill a hole with putty; then he applies the bowl to the lamp and proceeds to smoke--and the stewing and frying of the drug and the gurgling of the juices in the stem would well nigh turn the stomach of a statue. John likes it, though; it soothes him, he takes about two dozen whiffs, and then rolls over to dream."
The reporter, Mark Twain, whose Victorian sensibilities made him uncomfortable when faced with the scenes in Chinatown, nevertheless was one reporter who did not use his coverage of opium use to demonize the Chinese. Others were less principled. They set the pattern of much of the news coverage of drug use that followed in the next century and a half.
The Comstock journalists produced racist and inaccurate news coverage that relied on uninformed sources (law enforcement instead of physicians), inflamed the people of the town, and produced the nation's first anti-drug law, an ordinance banning opium smoking within Virginia City, enacted on Sept. 12, 1876. The local politicians, discovering that fear of drugs and minorities sold, were just as irresponsible, blaming everything from poor sanitation to child molestation on Chinese drug "fiends." When the local prohibition ordinance failed, they pushed for a statewide law which failed (and, of course, would be followed by national laws that failed).
The entire ineffectual template of the drug war with which we live today was established there in Virginia City--journalists who gave short shrift to science and health-care professionals in favor of treating politicians and law enforcers as drug experts in lurid and exploitive news coverage; politicians who exploited legitimate concern to promote race hatred and reelection; law enforcers who confused cause with effect and exploited public anxiety to promote punitive laws; and all three who treated prohibition as a solution: "Let severe measures be adopted and the sale of the drug will soon be suppressed!" observed a Nye County newspaper. The nation has been chasing that siren's song ever since.
A century later, Reno physician Wesley Hall was the president-elect of the American Medical Association. On April 2, 1970, he used the forum provided by his new stature to announce that in June, the AMA would release a study showing that marijuana deadened the sex drive and caused birth defects. The statement caused a flap, but no such study was ever released. A few weeks later, Hall claimed he had been misquoted but also claimed that he had not bothered to correct the record because "it does some good." By then, correcting the record did no good--Hall's comments kept getting cited and quoted until experience and the passing years showed their falsity.
Over the course of the war on drugs that began in Virginia City and accelerated decade by decade, such lying became an indispensable weapon of that war. The lies sometimes took the form of outright falsehoods. At other times, they took the form of letting errors stand uncorrected or leaving out essential information. Drug warriors--whether journalists, politicians, police or public employees--need lies because the drug war can't be sustained without them. Lies are the foundation of the drug war, and the five listed here are the tip of the iceberg. There are many, many more, and they are relevant to a marijuana measure that will appear on this year's Nevada ballot.
1. Gateway drugs In the early 20th century, Dr. Charles Towns was a leading public figure and drug "expert," operator of the Towns Hospital in New York. He propounded a theory that would have a long life--that some drugs "lead" to harder drugs. "The tobacco user is in the wrong," he wrote. "It undermines his nervous strength. It blunts the edge of his mind. It gives him 'off-days,' when he doesn't feel up to his work. It always precedes alcoholism and drug addiction. I've never had a drug case or an alcoholic case (excepting a few women) that didn't have a history of excessive smoking. Inhaling tobacco is just as injurious as moderate opium smoking."
The gateway theory evolved until baby boomers raised in the 1950s on "marijuana leads to harder stuff" learned its falsity from personal experience in the 1960s. If that experience and the findings of science were not enough, there was practical evidence that some drugs actually functioned as barrier drugs, not gateway drugs. Whenever mild drugs were removed as a barrier, harder drugs came into use. In 1910, Congress received data showing that during a period of alcohol prohibition in New England, morphine use jumped by 150 percent. In 1968, a Johnson administration crackdown on marijuana in Vietnam reduced supply and provoked an upsurge in heroin use. In 1969 in California, a six-day Nixon administration crackdown on the Mexican border dried up marijuana supplies and filled heath-care facilities with a flood of heroin cases. California physician David Smith told Newsweek, "The government line is that the use of marijuana leads to more dangerous drugs. The fact is that the lack of marijuana leads to more dangerous drugs."
The gateway theory went into decline after such experiences but always made a comeback because drug war dogma requires it. Today it is back, alive and well.
And as it turned out, "Doctor" Towns was a quack--a failed insurance salesman who was not a physician and peddled a bogus "cure" for drug addiction.
2. Marijuana’s not medicine. Today, we're accustomed to medical experts like Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick denying that marijuana is medicine (Gammick: "I didn't support medical marijuana because it doesn't exist."), but in 1937, it was a novel argument, since marijuana was universally acknowledged as a beneficial medicine. It was listed in the American Medical Association's Pharmacopeia (list of approved medications) and remained there even after being made illegal until federal officials brought pressure on the AMA. (It is still in the British Pharmacopeia.)
What may have been the first time this lie was told was a key moment in the drug wars. Congress was considering legislation that year to outlaw non-medicinal marijuana at the behest of the lumber and liquor lobbies and fueled by newspaper hysteria over marijuana. By continuing to protect physicians' use of the drug, Congress recognized its medical value.
Though there was an exception in the bill for physicians, the medical community was still concerned about the restrictions. There was apparently an effort to slip the ban through Congress quietly, but AMA lobbyist William C. Woodward found out about a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the bill and showed up to demand actual evidence of the danger of the drug instead of the anecdotal newspaper horror stories to which the committee had been listening: "It has surprised me, however, that the facts on which these statements have been based have not been brought before this committee by competent primary evidence. We are referred to newspaper publications concerning the prevalence of marijuana addiction. We are told that the use of marijuana causes crime. But yet no one has been produced from the Bureau of Prisons to show the number of prisoners who have been found addicted to the marijuana habit. An informed inquiry shows that the Bureau of Prisons has no evidence on that point. You have been told that school children are great users of marijuana cigarettes. No one has been summoned from the Children's Bureau to show the nature and extent of the habit among children."
The committee members tore into Woodward spitefully, giving him the kind of grilling they did not give to drug warriors.
One member told Woodward, "We know that it is a habit that is spreading, particularly among youngsters. ... The number of victims is increasing each year." Woodward replied, "There is no evidence of that." He kept insisting on evidence instead of hearsay.
The committee ended Woodward's testimony without thanking him or even formally ending his testimony, brusquely calling the next witness.
One of those present at that hearing was U.S. Rep. Carl Vinson of Georgia. When the marijuana ban reached the House floor on June 10, 1937, he was the floor manager. To give some idea of the care with which the bill was enacted and the depth of knowledge from which lawmakers were working, there was this exchange:
U.S. Rep. Bertrand Snell of New York: "What is the bill?"
U.S. Rep. Sam Rayburn of Texas: "It has something to do with something that is called marijuana. I believe it is a narcotic of some kind."
Vinson: "Marijuana is the same as hashish."
Snell: "Mr. Speaker, I am not going to object, but I think it is wrong to consider legislation of this character at this time of night."
U.S. drug czar John Walters came to Nevada to campaign against a medical marijuana measure and told a lurid tale of highly potent marijuana. Photo By D. Brian Burghart
Then came a question that led to the lie whose consequences are still with us. Snell asked, "Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support this bill?"
The response fell to Vinson. A truthful answer might well derail the bill. Future chief justice of the United States Vinson stood and lied: "Their Doctor Wentworth [sic] came down here. They support this bill one hundred percent."
The bill was approved.
3. Crack babies. The report went on the air at 5:34:50 p.m. on Sept. 11, 1985, with an on-screen headline of "Cocaine and pregnant mothers." In 1 minute and 50 seconds, Susan Spencer of CBS ignited an inflammatory national myth--the crack baby. Footage of a screaming and trembling baby going through withdrawal after supposedly being born to a mother who used cocaine was backed by interviews with physicians Ira Chasnoff and Sidney Schnoll. Chasnoff had just published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that had caught Spencer's eye and prompted the report. Spencer ended the report with the lines, "The message is clear. If you are pregnant and using cocaine, stop."
University of Michigan scholars Richard Campbell and Jimmie Reeves have tracked the events which followed. As other reporters and media chased the story, it evolved. Spencer's report was a health warning. By the time her CBS colleague Terry Drinkwater and others recycled the story, it was an attack on the mothers (Washington Post: "The Worst Threat Is Mom Herself"). As the firestorm built, politicians and others got involved, and the babies themselves were demonized. A judge called them "tomorrow's delinquents," and Democratic U.S. Rep. George Miller of California said, "We are going to have these children, who are the most expensive babies ever born in America, are going to overwhelm every social service delivery system that they come in contact with throughout the rest of their lives." Boston University President John Silber suggested the babies were soulless--"crack babies who won't ever achieve the intellectual development to have consciousness of God."
The drumbeat against the children became so fierce that a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association asked, "Why is there today such an urgency to label prenatally cocaine-exposed children as irremediably damaged?" And Emory University's Dr. Claire Coles said of the "crack baby" label, "If a child comes to kindergarten with that label, they're dead. They are very likely to fulfill the worst prophecies."
Hospitals started threatening to turn mothers over to police; prosecutors started charging mothers with child abuse. (The Nevada Legislature rejected a statute permitting such prosecutions, and when the Washoe sheriff tried to charge a mother anyway, the Nevada Supreme Court slapped it down.) One case--Ferguson v. City of Charleston--made its way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that hospitals had to stop testing for drugs without patient consent. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that the drug habits of white women were more likely to be overlooked by physicians or hospitals, while African Americans were reported to police.
And it was all built on a pile of sand.
Spencer, like most reporters, did not know how to read a scientific study, and the Chasnoff study was flawed. The study involved just 23 women, and its author himself called it inadequate.
Worse, according to former Wall Street Journal reporter Dan Baum, who wrote an influential account of the drug war, physicians noticed something about video reports by Spencer and others that ordinary viewers--and the reporters themselves--missed. The trembling babies were exhibiting behavior that is not produced by cocaine. Being withdrawn from coke produces sleep, not the trembling and screaming shown in the sensational reports. Baum wrote, "It dawned on [Dr. Claire] Coles that the TV crews were either mixed up or lying. They were filming infants suffering heroin withdrawal and calling them 'cocaine babies.' "
Moreover, the physicians also felt that drugs were not the cause of the problems being attributed to the babies. Lack of nutrition and health care during pregnancy were. A Florida report noted, "In the end, it is safer for the baby to be born to a drug-using, anemic, or diabetic mother who visits the doctor throughout her pregnancy than to be born to a normal woman who does not."
The controversy arose at a time when both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and President Reagan had sliced apart the "safety net" that had long existed for poor families. By 1985, prenatal care and nutrition were less accessible. Federal deregulation of the insurance industry had cut low-income families loose from health insurance. Federally funded medical care had been slashed. While journalism had raced off after the mock cause of unhealthy babies, the real causes had received far less press scrutiny.
It was a case study of journalism taking a complex story and simplifying it into inflammatory and irresponsible coverage that made the problem worse. It is now pretty clear to experts and insiders what happened. But the damage is done. Today, there are 103,000 hits on Google for crack baby and 107,000 for crack babies.
4. Instant addiction. The March 17, 1986, issue of Newsweek hit the newsstands on March 10. Newsweek has long served as the unofficial house organ of the drug war. That alliance has often suspended the critical faculties of its staff members. Never was that failing more dangerous than in that 1986 issue with its "Kids and Cocaine" cover story. Inside was an interview with Arnold Washton, operator of a drug hotline who was known for hyperbole--he had once told NBC that crack was a form of Russian roulette. In the Newsweek article he said, "There is no such thing as recreational use of crack. It is almost instantaneous addiction."
Newsweek did not bother checking the accuracy of the incendiary claim before publishing it. Instead, acting as stenographers instead of journalists, the magazine's editors printed it without a competing viewpoint.
The assertion shot through newsrooms around the nation with the speed of sound, and those newsrooms passed it along like carriers of a disease. And it was untrue. Dr. Herbert Kleber, perhaps the leading cocaine expert in the United States has said, "No drug is instantly addictive."
The claim was as potent in its effect as crack. Laws, fueled by the frenzy created by "instantly addicting" crack, were enacted. One of them, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, imposed lower penalties on powder cocaine (used mostly by whites) than on crack cocaine (used mostly by African Americans). In practice, whites tended to be diverted into treatment more than blacks. All four members of Congress from Nevada voted for the bill.
There were those who tried to brake the inflammatory news coverage. The Washington Journalism Review eventually ran a cover story quoting Peter Jennings saying that using crack "even once can make a person crave cocaine as long as they live." Existing research, the Review said, disproves that statement. But the piece didn't appear until 1990. The Columbia Journalism Review did not directly challenge the claim but did urge greater skepticism toward drug war claims.
It did little good. The belief in the instantly addicting qualities of cocaine has entered popular culture. "The crack cocaine of ..." joined "If we can put a man on the moon ..." as an indispensable phrase. There are 47,800 Google hits for it--"the crack cocaine of junk food," "the crack cocaine of gambling addiction," "the crack cocaine of sexaholics," and so on.
5. Marijuana’s rising potency That distinguished medical expert, Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick, said on Sam Shad's television program, "This is not the marijuana that people used to roll and do a little doobie back at Haight-Ashbury and some of the other things that went on back 30, 40 years ago. This is 10 times stronger in THC [tetrahydrocannabinol] content."
This has become one of the most common new myths about marijuana. White House drug czar John Walters loves it and used it when he came to Reno and Las Vegas to campaign against a 2002 marijuana ballot measure. "What many people don't understand is that this is not your father's marijuana," he told the Washington Post in a story about the Nevada initiative. "What we're seeing now is much more potent." In fact, no reliable evidence substantiates Gammick's 10-times-stronger claim, much less Walters' 30-times-stronger claim.
What they leave out of their sales pitch are these little nuggets of information:
• The claims of higher potency are based on a 1960s study that used unusually low-potency marijuana for testing purposes.
• The Bush administration itself will not substantiate the Walters/Gammick-style claims about potency. The federal Potency Monitoring Project reports negligible fluctuations in potency over the years. The U.S. Department of Justice's "National Drug Threat Assessment" for 2005 said that higher potency marijuana is not marketable because it makes tokers sick--"more intense--and often unpleasant--effects of the drug leading them to seek medical intervention."
• Potency is a so-what issue--when marijuana is more potent, tokers smoke less.
Walters managed to combine two of the lies we listed here into a single sentence when, on one occasion, he talked about border smuggling of pot that he claimed was highly potent: "Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana." It's the kind of false statement that would have fit right into 1870s Virginia City.
The founding fathers were for independence and against the abuses of monarchy. They were especially interested in all citizens having rights, not just nobility. They weren't Libertarians or Anarchists. It did not take long for President Washington to command an army (larger than the one he commanded in the Revolutionary War) to put down then Whiskey Rebellion, which was the first major test of the strength and resolve of the young federal government.
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Well, the Whiskey Rebellion and the Shay's rebellion we more about taxes on, rather than use of I believe. President Washington did not then ban the consumption of whiskey did he?
For those of us with prescriptions it is a lifesaver. Cant keep anything down with out it.....and no Marinol dont work the same...... no ones bidness what I consume.....f'em....
Neighbor is an alkie....has bottles hidden everywhere....now that is sick....
I remember reading about the '37 AMA railroading in the '60s and I remember it clearly. I remember seeing the Marijuana Tax Stamp under the glass top of my doctor's desk.
It aroused my curiosity, so I tried to get more info and I don't know if it was Mass. or Fed, but a law was passed that outlawed everything to do with marijuana, including books & magazines (the ruling was overturn 10 or 20 years, a long time, later).
It's been over 40 years between tellings for me!
Myself, I enjoy an end of week bong hit or two. I just don't see the big deal compared to the hordes who are just now about to get in their cars and drive home after Happy Hour.
"Maybe the pro drug people would like to live in a pre-1937 world just like the jihadists would like to go back to the 8th century."
The Jihadists are those who blindly follow their oligarchic god/king doctors in their heresy of evil substance for they see glory in the resulting civil war for purification of the populace from the demonized herb. The real demons are the DEA men in black armor and black masks knocking down doors and destroying families (in primarily minority communities) for the possession, propagation or protection of a gift from God. These enforcers of heresy are the Taliban of America. We slave for this nation for nearly half of every year in order to finance freedom for other nations as we wage unconstitutional war upon our own people in order to deny freedom to a portion of them. Evil has no substance, but is merely the absence of the presence of God or willfull action adverse to the will of God. The morning after pill is now available over the counter so that males now have the same right to choose as women to murder by poison of their unborn children. Such a substance is not evil in the eyes of your god/kings even though the willfully designed action of this substance and the result of a willfull act of taking it is murder. Should one take the side of child sacrificing heretics masked in mystery waging a war of terror upon their people?
There is no denying that the WOD is an unconstitutional campaign of terror upon select portions of the people which attempts to force a heresy upon the people as the state mandated religion for it reifies evil in substance while claiming to make angels of DEAmen, masked in mystery, clad in black armor, charged with knocking down doors in the night and stealing homes and children from families. The right to privacy is a natural right and the power wielded by the feds is not enumerated in the Constitution. They have lost all sense of reason when any search, based on any unsubstantiated and anonymous accusation warrants a search, less yet the word of a paid informant or a bargaining detainee. Afterall, we are guaranteed by our Constitution to be free from such unreasonable searches. End the witch hunts masquerading as the war on drugs! Evil has no substance, it is nothing but the absence of the presence of God or willful acts adverse to the will of God.
GOD MADE HERB
GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD
GOD GAVE IT TO MAN
Genesis 1:11
Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so.
Genesis 1:12
And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:29
And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.
Those who seek the eradication of this gift from God are willfully acting adversely to the will of God.
Ro 14:2-4 For one believeth that he may eat all things: but he that is weak, let him eat herbs.
Let not him that eateth, despise him that eateth not: and he that eateth not, let him not judge him that eateth. For God hath taken him to him.
Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? To his own lord he standeth or falleth. And he shall stand: for God is able to make him stand.
Those who persecute the possessors or users of this herb
are willfully acting adversely to the will of God.
"...rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our own will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." - Thomas Jefferson
The unlawful use of or threatened use of force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives.--FBI definition of terrorism.
The lack of results in a generations long civil war(WOD) relegates all action taken by the government as significant only for the TERROR that it inflicts upon the citizenry in effort to control their appetites. (Not a Constitutionally mandated federal power!) The DEAmen are the Taliban of America.
bookmark
I hesitate to get involved in an FR drug thread, but since you asked a question that apparently hasn't been answered to your satisfaction yet, I'll point out that Switzerland has a significantly higher per capita GDP than we do.
Banning pot wasn't about drugs. "It was about power", -- as libertarians put it. -- And as you hypocritically put it about DDT.
Yeah, just think of the millions of lives that could have been saved if only pot wasn't banned.
Do you really think putting millions of people in prison for pot over the last 40 years hasn't ruined more than a few lives?
Wrong. I started smoking pot because I was tired of having other people tell me what was what and wanted to make my mind up for myself.
Human experience, its the stuff conservatism is based in.
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Nonsense. You tried drugs because you were hostile to authority and wanted to prove you could be an idiot all by youself.
The ability to learn from others is the stuff conservatism is made of.
So America was known for its widespread legal and recreational drug use until 1937?
Show me the successful societies that tolerate legal and widespread recreational drug use.
You've got the world turned upside down Moonman. -- historically, most successful societies have operated under a 'victorian compromise' system, -- wherein there are rarely enforced 'laws' [in our case unconstitutional laws], that are used only when major substance abuse problems occur, -- problems brought on [usually] because of other stress factors.
Maybe the pro drug people would like to live in a pre-1937 world
Many would; -- they date the rise of american socialism back to the 'New Deal'.
just like the jihadists would like to go back to the 8th century.
Yep, there are great similarities between prohibitionists & jihadists.
Some drug use may have been legal in earlier times simply because there were so few people doing it. That could have been because of low availability or cultural attitude.
Gin was much abused in the early days of the industrial revolution in Europe -- opium in China. People survived without prohibitions.
There is no successful society today that tolerates widespread recreational drug use, just as there are no successful Libertarian or Anarchist societies. There is a reason for that.
Yep, -- Its mostly because socialism has triumphed over constitutionalism. -- The USA is the last of the free republics, -- and is fading fast. -- Prohibitionists like you will have much to answer for if we go under.
The founding fathers were for independence and against the abuses of monarchy. They were especially interested in all citizens having rights, not just nobility. They weren't Libertarians or Anarchists.
The constitutional republic we still have on paper is very libertarian in principle. -- Perhaps this is why it scares you.
It did not take long for President Washington to command an army (larger than the one he commanded in the Revolutionary War) to put down then Whiskey Rebellion, which was the first major test of the strength and resolve of the young federal government.
The Whiskey Rebellion was all about taxes. It had nothing to do with prohibition.
You really should read a bit more history.
A liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been mugged.
That's what I would call human experience.
:-)
#151
Well done, spot on again.
Lol...
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance baffle 'em with bullshit!
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And I have thought that G. Washington thereby betrayed the Revolution.
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