Pubdate: Sat, 19 Dec 2015
Source: Gazette, The (Colorado Springs, CO)
Copyright: 2015 The Gazette
Contact: http://www.gazette.com/sections/opinion/submitletter/
Website: http://www.gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/165
Authors: John P. Walters, David W. Murray and Brian Blake
Note: John P. Walters is the Hudson Institute's chief operating 
officer and former director of drug control policy for President 
George W. Bush. David W. Murray and Brian Blake are senior fellows in 
the Hudson Institute's Center for Substance Abuse Policy Research and 
served as chief scientist and deputy chief of staff, respectively, at 
the Office of National Drug Control Policy during the George W. Bush 
administration.

STATS SHOW CURRENT DRUG POLICY A FAILURE

President Barack Obama's National Drug Control Strategy in 2010 first 
proclaimed the major policy goals of the administration's approach to 
the drug problem and the goals were to be met by 2015. Not only have 
they not been met, in critical instances, the policies have been 
going in the wrong direction, rapidly.

We learned last week that, in the midst of the opiate overdose 
crisis, heroin overdose deaths rose an additional 28 percent between 
2013 and 2014. That's on top of the 340 percent rise in heroin deaths 
since 2007, such that beyond the 8,217 deaths of 2013, we now have 
another 10,574. That is, we now see a 440 percent increase from the Bush years.

Moreover, prescription opiate deaths surged an additional 16 percent, 
taking us to 18,893 dead, while heroin use and Mexican production of 
the drug continue their steep climb. Overall, all drug poisoning 
deaths hit 47,055 in 2014. That's up from the last years of the Bush 
administration, when they were 36,450; that is, the rise for all drug 
deaths is almost 30 percent.

But according to the Obama administration, that wasn't going to 
happen. Instead, it was supposed to drop by 15 percent between 2010 
and 2015, a target confidently set in their own strategic goals.

And then this week we discover that marijuana use by high school 
students, as measured by the largest, longest-running youth survey, 
Monitoring the Future (MTF), remains steadfastly high, unmoved from 
the steep rise since 2009; more than 1 in 5 high school seniors are 
"past-month" users of the drug. (Moreover, the foundation of 
prevention education, perceived "harmfulness" in using marijuana, has 
fallen to its lowest point ever among 12th-graders, 62 percent lower 
than in 2008.) The same sustained high rates are found for youth use 
of "any illicit drug," beyond marijuana.

Further, the lead researcher for MTF had issued a dire warning this 
year, that the "second relapse phase in America's youth epidemic of 
drug use may now be beginning," based on recent upturns in marijuana use.

Many experts suspect that the actual number of users is considerably 
higher, were MTF to properly capture the new, highly potent forms of 
the drug now spreading across the country, the candies, drinks and 
concentrates such as "shatter" consumed in vapor-pens, even in the 
classroom. The potency of such forms is unprecedented, reaching 70 to 
80 percent THC (compared with the 3 to 4 percent potency of the 
1980s), the intoxicating chemical linked to such effects as IQ loss, 
memory and cognitive impairment, psychosis and multiple social 
pathologies, including school drop-out.

Again, that wasn't supposed to happen. By the administration's goals, 
youth "past-month" use of drugs was to decline by 15 percent. 
Similarly for 18- to 25-year-olds, whose rates of "past-month" use 
were supposed to fall 10 percent; the National Survey on Drug Use and 
Health shows that since 2008, their "past-month" use has risen 12 
percent (strictly marijuana use by 18 percent).

Drugged driving was to drop; it's up. The "lifetime" use of drugs by 
eighth-graders was supposed to decline by 15 percent (surely a modest 
goal); MTF shows that in 2015 it's up 8 percent since 2007. And so forth.

These recent findings matter, as they show undeniably that the drug 
policies of the Obama administration have failed. Importantly, they 
have failed not according to editorializing critics, but according to 
the very metrics required of the White House Office of National Drug 
Control Policy by law, which the administration itself selected as 
the way to evaluate their performance. That is, this evidence 
represents a self-indictment.

For seven long years, the administration has insisted on a master 
narrative. It denounced the supposed policies of the past and 
proclaimed a new, enlightened approach, that "ended the drug war," 
promised treatment insurance that never arrived, dispensed clean 
needles and overdose antidotes and other inadequate "harm reduction" 
approaches, and in an overarching manner blamed "stigma" for the 
disease of addiction.

Never mind that the actual Bush policies had produced real results - 
treating drug addiction as a public health problem; insisting, for 
example, on drug courts over incarceration; and effectively reducing 
the availability and use of all drugs through a combined medical 
science, national security and law enforcement strategy that reduced 
drug supply as it strengthened prevention and treatment. But the 
Obama administration insisted on the distorted caricature.

The policies of the Obama administration's predecessors, we heard 
repeatedly, were the failed crackdowns of the past, trying to reduce 
the supply of drugs and fighting back against international cartels. 
All that was declared futile, notwithstanding that under Bush, the 
same MTF data showed a 25 percent reduction in "past-month" marijuana 
use for combined high school grades eighth through 12th, that cocaine 
production had fallen 75 percent in Colombia, and cocaine use on U.S. 
streets had plummeted 50 percent (by 2011).

So far was this administration from achieving their goals that even 
the Government Accountability Office issued a report warning that 
they were seriously off track, based largely on data from 2012; but 
they did not change course, and things have only worsened since then.

Sunday, on CBS' "60 Minutes," Obama Drug Czar Michael Botticelli, 
apparently trying to distance himself from the impact of Obama's 
policies, termed legalized marijuana "bad public health policy," and 
worried that youth receive the message that because the drug is 
legal, it's somehow safe, eroding the perceptions of risk essential 
to good prevention programs.

If he believes these things, why doesn't he just tell the president, 
the source of the policies that have led us into this debacle, when 
he disabled federal law and enabled commercial, legalized marijuana?

The real contrast between the last seven years and that of previous 
approaches lies in three things: 1. Failed leadership, turning away 
from the urgency of protecting Americans from this disease 
approaching epidemic proportions, and instead undermining federal 
law; 2. Weakening prevention by failing to defend social norms and 
allowing the normalization of drug use; and 3. Neglecting drug 
supply, thereby allowing the tide of drugs to now flood our streets.

The administration boasts that its drug policy is "evidence-based." 
Well, the evidence is in, and the verdict is: "You're doing it wrong."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom