Former White House Drug Spokesman Bob Weiner Blasts John Stossel ABC 20-20 Report

U.S. Newswire ^ | July 31,2002

[Wolfie]

Boy, this is just chock full of BS. So many lies so little time. Ol' Bob sure has his panties in a twist, eh? Guess Stossel ruffled some feathers.

[Wolfie]

Apoplectic Drug Warrior ping...

[FreeTally]

Why would Bob say anything different?

I found this funny, too.

Former White House Drug Spokesman Bob Weiner Blasts John Stossel ABC 20-20 Report as 'Distorted, Inaccurate Excuse for Legalization'

Excuses for legalization? LOL!!! Bob, lets talk about excuses for the original criminalization.

[EBUCK]

Where to start? This thing is so full of holes that I'm not even sure it's worth it.

EBUCK

[Paid4This]

I remember reading in a late-80s edition of Rolling Stone that crack use would decline by the late 90s because most people who use it would be dead. My point is, that if that was true (and this article seems to support that figure) is that the vaunted war on drugs had nothing to do with it. Drug usage, up one year, down the next are the result of cultural changes and have nothing to do with the government's war.

[headsonpikes]

I can hardly wait for the drooling Repubbie socialists to show up supporting Clinton's Wiener-boy.

Some folks just LOVE being ordered around; 'Discipline and Bondage' might be a good Forum title for their topics of interest.

What blows me away is that they can still rationalize their obsequiousness to their socialist bosses in terms of 'American Heritage'.

It's enough to knock a buzzard off a gut-wagon. ;^)

[StriperSniper]

when he refused to use interview points by the Drug Czar

Waaaa! He wouldn't use our propaganda! Waaaaa!

[steve50]

Must have been an effective show, it's got the Drug Warriors upset. Got to get the nanny state propaganda in front of the faithful before they have a chance to think.

[Boner1]

White House Drug Spokesman Bob Weiner Blasts John Stossel ABC 20-20 Report as 'Distorted, Inaccurate Excuse for Legalization'

Hummm. Have a true hearing and release the FACTS ,Then lets let the AMERICAN PEOPLE vote on it!

[Hemingway's Ghost]

marijuana is the second leading cause of car crashes

First I've ever heard of this. Does he have the stats to back it up?

[Hemingway's Ghost]

Geraldo Rivera years ago when he refused to use interview points by the Drug Czar which disagreed with Geraldo's thesis

Is "Drug Czar" the official title now? If so, this is getting re-god-damn-diculous.

[Wolfie]

Never heard of it either. Probably total BS, or a statistical fabrication based on the fact that the metabolites of marijuana can be found in the body for as long as 30 days after its use. (Ya know "Hey, this guy has trace amounts of THC metabolites in his bloodstream, so Marijuana Caused The Car Crash!")

[Wolfie]

...drug seizures in Europe have doubled...

Uhh...why is that when drug seizures in the U.S. go up, its a sign of a successful drug policy, but if they go up in Europe, its a sign of failure? This guy is loonier than I thought.

[fporretto]

What occurs to me about this "drug use is down" -- "no, drug use is up" sort of argument is that neither side can really justify its sources or authorities.

You can't use surveys. If people were honest in answering surveys, we wouldn't be told that the average American brushes his teeth twice a day and relaxes by reading The Atlantic Monthly and watching educational programs on PBS.

Some years ago a surveying organization got questionnaire responses that indicated that literary magazines' circulations should be far higher than they actually were, while the circulations of gossip, celebrity, and lowbrow entertainment periodicals should be far lower. So they ran a second study, but this time, they did it right: They sent their people door-to-door, asking if they could buy any old magazines the household had lying around. The results from that second study were much closer to the audited circulation figures for the magazines in question.

So how do we estimate the direction in which drug use is trending? I suggest we watch the following phenomena:

• The inflation-adjusted street cost of drugs,
• The quantities of various drugs seized per year by DEA and police agencies,
• Hospital admissions for drug overdoses,
• Incarcerations for drug crimes.

The last time I checked the figures, all of these were fairly steady.

Now, it's possible to believe that there are shifts in drug usage taking place, but getting a wide enough and detailed enough picture to make firm statements can be a real challenge. For example, there appears to be a moderate downtrend in the consumption of "traditional hallucinogenics": LSD, mescaline, psilocybin. However, this might be related to the moderate uptrend in the consumption of Ecstacy; the new drug might be displacing the old ones.

Data with which to draw reliable, detailed conclusions will remain elusive. Most people will base their opinions on "feel," including the safety (or lack thereof) of their neighborhoods. When all is said and done, that's not a bad standard.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[sawsalimb]

My word...did he take off his shoe and pound on the podium while he was on this tirade? Heck,if the WOD warriors are going to be assigned titles like "Czar",then it wouldn't surprise me if they behaved exactly like some of the statist thugs that...

...oh,that's right. They do.

[EBUCK]

Drug siezures have doubled because cops aren't wastibg thier time with Pot users anymore.

EBUCK

[Jonathon Spectre]

What a bunch of lies.

I'm tired of arguing this. Anyone rational knows it's a failure, knows it should stop. Anyone irrational I don't care to bother with.

[WindMinstrel]

do the propagandists have any accurate stats to back up any of the drivel they spew?

[pupdog]

I agree: way too much to respond to here. But there's a few that I wanted to pick out:

He soft pedals marijuana use, with assertions by an archetypical long haired user that 'marijuana hasn't killed anyone,' but has no one pointing out that marijuana is the second leading cause of car crashes as well as the primary drug in teen drug treatment

Someone else already commented on the "car crash" unproven assertion. As for the second point, well let's see: if it's the most commonly used illegal drug, and treatment is prescribed for use simply because it's illegal and not because treatment has been proven to be needed, then let's take a guess about what happens next.

You wanna see therapy? Make coffee illegal, and watch how quickly that shoots up to the top of the "anti-drug treatment" chart.

To dismiss the point that under legalization more would use drugs ... is like asking Mrs. Lincoln on that fateful day, 'Aside from that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play?'"

Besides never proving that use would go up (and Stossel had plenty of evidence that legalization would make use go down)...

"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."
-Abraham Lincoln

Often used quote, but still one of the best I've ever seen.

I really think that last night's special might have been the turning point. My wife commented: "If even a quarter of the people watching this are as enraged as I am, the War is over."

[steve-b]

Does he have the stats to back it up?

Nope, just the usual junk statistics (if anybody in the car ever touched marijuana, it counts as "marijuana related"). It's the same scam used by gun-grabbers (25-year-old gang-bangers shooting each other count as "children killed by guns").