Posted on 07/31/2002 8:50:30 AM PDT by Wolfie
Former White House Drug Spokesman Bob Weiner Blasts John Stossel ABC 20-20 Report as 'Distorted, Inaccurate Excuse for Legalization'
Former White House drug policy spokesman Bob Weiner is blasting last night's ABC 20-20 drug piece by John Stossel: "It was a distorted and inaccurate excuse for drug legalization.
It blows off the successes and real reductions in use generated both by government drug policy and efforts by parents, teachers, coaches, businesses, community coalitions, religious leaders, and law enforcement."
Weiner, who was Director of Public Affairs for the White House Office of National Drug Policy May 1995-August 2001 under Drug Czars Lee Brown, Barry McCaffrey, and the Bush transition, pointed to what he calls "radical inconsistencies in Stossel's reporting. He repeatedly ignores or downplays each positive finding about drug policy."
"Stossel throws in the important data point that drug use is down by 50 percent but then says throughout the piece that use is the same and we are losing the war. He never says that crack cocaine -- the primary crime-causing drug in recent years -- is down by two-thirds. He finds one police chief who says it's all fruitless -- understandable in a particular high usage area -- but ignores and does not report the myriad of police who tell experts that crime and drugs are down because criminals and dealers are taken off the streets. He ignores the fact that the governments anti-drug media campaign the last four years has coincided with a 40 percent reduction of youth drug users and 25 percent improvement in parent anti-drug communication with youth -- huge success rates in precisely the intended target audiences.
"Stossel pushes his inaccurate points that the drug war 'creates crime' when it is precisely the opposite: drug use generates murders, domestic violence, and date rapes. 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
"He has no understanding of foreign efforts, either," Weiner asserted. He quotes disputed CIA Colombia cocaine increase numbers based on their flawed, cloud-covered data despite Colombia's surveys showing significant drops in cultivation and the success of the spraying of 30 percent of its cocaine acreage. He never mentions that Peru and Bolivia obtained over 60 percent reductions and Colombias five year plan envisions an equally obtainable 50 percent reduction," says Weiner, who has been on two recent Colombia missions with McCaffrey.
"He asserts that Europe is succeeding with a liberalized policy but does not mention that drug seizures in Europe have doubled the last three years and use has gone up, indicating that Europe may face our drug and crime problems of past decades that we have escaped from by the comprehensive education and law enforcement efforts we are now making. Stossel dismisses former Drug Czar McCaffrey's assertions of the 'disaster' of European legalization trends by saying 'not what we heard', hardly a scientific methodology.
"Finally, Stossel barely mentions the concession of his own legalization advocates that 'maybe more would use drugs'. He insists that 'The war on drugs is a war on ourselves.' To dismiss the point that under legalization more would use drugs -- and that hospital emergency rooms would be flooded, crime and dropouts would rise, families would be disrupted, and the toll would be immeasurable -- is like asking Mrs. Lincoln on that fateful day, 'Aside from that Mrs. Lincoln how was the play?'"
Weiner concluded by asserting, "I have never seen a worse piece of major journalism on drug policy other than perhaps a similar one done by Geraldo Rivera years ago when he refused to use interview points by the Drug Czar which disagreed with Geraldo's thesis."
Absolute bravo sierra.
Why can't you come up with a good defense of your arguments, instead of just bloviating that "the idea of legalizing drugs is stupid"? What's stupid is spending the lion's share of law enforcement resources chasing pot smokers, while the towel-headed terrorists are flying airplanes into buildings and killing thousands of our fellow citizens.
And in almost every state where there has been a ballot referendum regarding the loosening of drug laws (i.e. medical marijuana initiatives), the voters overwhelmingly approved. The Imperial Federal Government, however, saw fit to override the will of the voters in CA by shutting down the clinics and jailing the operators. State reps have been cowed by decades of hysterical "Reefer Madness"-type propaganda, so in states without ballot initiative processes even the slightest hint of departure from drug-war orthodoxy is used by political opponents to paint a potential reformer as "soft on crime".
Pull your head out of the sand, ostrich!
What was the #2 drug found in the bloodstream of victims of fatal crashes? Marijuana. Did it "cause" the accident? Who knows? The article stated a small adverse affect. But if you can say that alcohol is the leading cause in 52% of the crashes, doesn't it follow that marijuana is the second leading cause at 7%?
As I stated previously, saying that the presence of a chemical in the blood "caused" an accident is probably a poor choice of words. Perhaps he should have said that marijuana is the second leading drug after alcohol found in the blood of victims of fatal car crashes.
Hahahaha. What an idiot.
I'll bet that traces of oxygen were found in 100% of victims of fatal crashes and they could probably find a high percentage of these people drank milk. SO WHAT .... alcohol is removed from the body in 24 hours or so ... traces of MJ can stay in the body for up to 6 weeks. If they detect alcohol in the blood stream of someone who was involved in a crash ... chances are they were imbibbing fairly recently and were under the influence. NOT so with pot. Traces of MJ do NOT indicate that a person was under the influence at the time of the accident.
Did you miss all of the one-two lines replys on this thread?
Besides, 253 words is long-winded to you? Then you definitely won't like this one. Even if it is, it's because we have reasons to back up our assertions. If you don't want to hear them, don't read them.
...How many votes did Harry the Clowne Browne get?...Better yet, what percent did he get?
Apples and oranges. I'd never want to see Browne as president, and I'm completely in favor of ending the WoD. There were a lot of Libertarians who wanted nothing to do with him.
He got FEWER last time than the time before
Besides being irrelevant for the above listed reasons, this was also a general election trend: the entire third party vote was much lower, with a lot of the blame placed on the fact that the election was so close.
Even if I agreed with you guys about the WOD, and I do not, the idea of legalizing drugs is stupid, and has been judged so by the VOTING public
Such "judgment" is never final. So just like other issues that we've come around on (civil rights, giving women the vote), the public is coming around here. If the referendums that are popping up like bunnies around the US and European countries moving towards legalization didn't prove this, the fact that Stossel was even able to get this on the air, something unthinkable just 10 years ago, does.
and if you cannot get elected, all that preaching about abuses of power and the Constitution is just so much spit.
Besides being irrational (if power is being abused, and in this case it is, then you cannot logically look at the system that's being abused as what is going to fix things), it's disproven by the elected officials who are starting to come out in favor of this. People like Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico...A Republican.
Oops. Guess that was long-winded too.
Let's move on to this...
Stossel throws in the important data point that drug use is down by 50 percent but then says throughout the piece that use is the same and we are losing the war.
For anyone that watched the show this is an obvious attempt to create inconsistencies. Host conceded the 20 year 50% data. But countered with a 10 year stasis on use supply in the face of 50% increases in funding and encarceration.
EBUCK
Actually ... I'm expecting just that at any minute
Marijuana stays in the bloodstream for weeks and in the fatty tissue of the body for months and possibly longer.
There is your answer...traces of marijuana can be found in the system for up to 30 days, alcohol is eliminated in approximately one hour, maybe two, dependent on various factors such as food intake. So it is logical to assume that if a crash occurs, it is more likely related to alcohol found in the bloodstream than the marijuana found in the bloodstream. A person could have smoked two weeks ago and it would still show up even though it would not be the cause of his impairment.
Not to mention the added benefit of offsetting income tax revenues with excise tax revenues which would be realized under legalization and regulation.
congrats, we made it to 100 posts before someone mentioned Harry "The Clown" Brown, even though the name "Harry Browne" isn't mentioned ONE TIME in the article above or the TV show it is in responce to. Also, the words "libertarian" or "libertarian party" were not mentioned at all, either.
I want to see it here, in typeface, that you say there are no abuses of Constitutional authority, no abuses of police powers, there are no "bought and paid for" police, prosecuters or judges with the WOD
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.