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."
Many of us have taken this position, but we get sucked right back in to "arguing" about it by such crap as the topic of this thread.
EBUCK
That's why see such responses as we have by Bob here. They will go kicking and screaming, never admitting they are wrong. They are now grasping at straws because they see their palace crumbling around them. Their only defense now appears to be, "This report is junk because it was not based upon our propaganda".
And the funny part is, many people didn't wake up until they saw those silly "drug use=support of terrorists" adds. They got the opposite response that they intended. The drug warrior idiots appear to have shot themselves in the foot.
Yep, and if we want to find out whether (for example) the Saudis are financing terrorists, we don't need to bother with any of that foreign intelligence stuff -- just ask the Saudis for a copy of their official statistics, which will prove once and for all that there is no basis for such accusations.
Exactly how stupid does this Weiner think we are?
"Marijuana is now the second-leading cause of car crashes among young people," McCaffrey wrote in USA Today a couple of years ago. This claim surprised Dale Gieringer, California coordinator of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, who called McCaffrey’s office for the source.
Gieringer was referred to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A NHTSA spokesman confirmed that marijuana is the second most common drug detected after fatal crashes but emphasized that it is not necessarily a cause of those accidents.
As Gieringer noted in his newsletter, a 1990-91 study by NHTSA found that 52 percent of drivers in fatal crashes had alcohol in their blood, compared to 7 percent with traces of marijuana. In analyzing the role that drugs played in the crashes, NHTSA found "no indication that marijuana by itself was a cause of fatal accidents."
A study commissioned by the NHTSA found:
Drivers under the influence of marijuana retain insight in their performance and will compensate where they can, for example, by slowing down or increasing effort. As a consequence, THC's adverse effects on driving performance appear relatively small.
Bill Hicks (not my favorite fellow but a valid quote nonetheless)
EBUCK
It felt good to be a part of the debunking of that one.
EBUCK
EBUCK
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