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."
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
Waaaa! He wouldn't use our propaganda! Waaaaa!
Hummm. Have a true hearing and release the FACTS ,Then lets let the AMERICAN PEOPLE vote on it!
First I've ever heard of this. Does he have the stats to back it up?
Is "Drug Czar" the official title now? If so, this is getting re-god-damn-diculous.
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.
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 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
...oh,that's right. They do.
EBUCK
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.
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."
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").
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