Category Archives: Drug Policy

Drug Policy

Soros vs: Koch: Competing Models for Marijuana Legalization

Over the past 30 years, George Soros has spent about $100,000,000 of his own money to legalize marijuana.  Charles Koch, of Koch-brother fame, is also in the game.   Americans deserve to know how much megadonors control our daily lives. 

For parents fighting to save kids from drug addiction and pay for treatment, we’re perplexed at their callous indifference to our plight.

The pollsters offer a selling point for legalization, too, claiming that 70% of the country supports legalization.  However, both Pew and Gallop Polls come out inaccurate, because they don’t word the question properly.  They never ask whether people prefer decriminalization or legalization.

What is the difference between the Koch and Soros programs?  While Charles Koch supports the market-based model for legalization, Soros regularly supports the candidates who are part of the Progressive movement within the Democratic Party.  

Regardless of which roadmap a state follows to legalization, all roads lead to monopolies.   (We will show this conclusion in a two-part series. Subscribe to our blog to read Part II) Continue reading Soros vs: Koch: Competing Models for Marijuana Legalization →

Drug Policy, Politics

SAFEBanking ACT won’t make cannabis shops safer

If the SAFEBanking Act passes in the Senate, it won’t stop the violent break-ins at marijuana dispensaries. Senators have been led to believe that break-ins are primarily for cash. Break-ins in pot shops are primarily for the products, particularly high-potency THC!

“TACOMA — The method is the same each time: A stolen car slams through the entrance of a marijuana shop, shattering glass and scattering debris everywhere. A group of masked thieves rushes in, ransacks the place and flees in another stolen car.”   

The above describes recent break-ins between Olympia and Tacoma, Washington, 5 of which occurred during the last week of October.

It’s model across the country in 2022, and the SAFEBAnking Act won’t change it.  Please oppose the SAFEBanking Act by using the attached form and sending it to your Senator.

Continue reading SAFEBanking ACT won’t make cannabis shops safer →

Addiction, Drug Policy, Reviews

Raising Lazarus Describes Continuing Overdose Crisis

Beth Macy’s Raising Lazarus is the latest book on the overdose crisis.  Unfortunately, this insightful journalist who wrote Dopesick, made into a series on Hulu, is a harm reductionist who doesn’t put too much stock in primary drug prevention.    

Drug policy should have three prongs: Prevention, Recovery and Harm Reduction.

Instead of tirelessly stating “Let’s stop stigmatizing addiction,” why can’t we say, “Let’s celebrate recovery”?  

We need to incentivize recovery.  

The drug epidemic has been running for more than 20 years now, and today the primary driver is fentanyl, an opioid sold on the black market. An estimated 107,000 died of overdose last year.  Why is it only getting worse? Perhaps it’s because we’re addressing the problem with harm reduction only and not spending much money on drug prevention. In the case of fentanyl, youths are going right from marijuana use to buying pills that are laced with fentanyl and dying immediately.  In pot legalization states out west, it currently is happening to those as young as 13 and 14.

Macy’s view of marijuana is a blindspot

Macy scorns Nancy Reagan and her “cabal of marijuana-hating moms” on p. 77.  But does she realize that the parents movement of 1979-1992 brought down drugs use from 39% of all teens to 14%?   The parent movement, which included black activists, was an exceptional achievement.  We could do the same now, if only  harm reduction were not the primary leg of drug policy. Continue reading Raising Lazarus Describes Continuing Overdose Crisis →

California, Drug Policy, Uncategorized

So much homelessness is turning the tide of public opinion on drug policy

California Peace Coalition Forms

Concerned citizen groups rallied in Sacramento on August 16, 2021, They issued a press release as the California Peace Coalition, signaling a new alliance. A large and varied group of non-profits and individuals affected by the explosion of drugs united for this important cause.  They stand against drug dealers, bad policies and open drug markets, problems that fuel addiction, overdoses and California’s large homeless population.

Their objectives include ending the open drug markets. They wish to find workable solutions for the homelessness crisis and rehabilitation for addiction.  Many groups in the alliance were started by parents who lost children to addiction or drug poisoning deaths. Many of these families would prefer forced treatment for addiction over the policies that enable addiction.

Cities like San Francisco and Seattle make life easier for drug use, thus keeping people enslaved to their addictions.  Tom Wolf and many adults who survived and recovered from drug habits want to see a change.  That’s why they joined the coalition

Among the parents in the group are those whose children died of fentanyl, usually not knowing they were getting it.  Most of them object to letting drug dealers, who sell drugs and poison young people, off the hook.

A progressive changes his mind

On Substack a few weeks ago, Michael Shellenberger wrote his apology for progressive policies, “In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I worked with a group of friends and colleagues to advocate drug decriminalization, harm reduction, and criminal justice reform…. I fought for the treatment of drug addiction as a public health problem not a criminal justice one. And we demanded that housing be given to the homeless without regard for their own struggles with drugs.”

“Our intentions were good.” he said, but concluded, “Everything we thought about the drugs was wrong.”   https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-everything-we-thought-about-drugs

At the end of the article, he explained:

“Progressive advocates and policymakers alike blame the drug war, mass incarceration, and drug prohibition for the addiction and overdose crisis, even though the crisis resulted from liberalized attitudes and drug laws, first toward pharmaceutical opioids, and then toward all drugs”

In an article of August 26, Shellenberger proclaimed, “Finally the Media Are Starting to Tell the Truth About California, Drugs, & Homelessness[J1] ”  https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/finally-the-media-are-starting-to

He concludes that bad policy drives homelessness more than anything else. We may read more about this topic in his book coming out on October 12.

Homelessness is largely a matter of drug addiction and mental illness.  Since drug abuse often precedes mental illness, many people would not need mental health care if they hadn’t used drugs. Although poverty and the high price of housing contribute to California’s problems, the excessive homelessness did not appear until after marijuana became legal.  Many people don’t see homelessness as we do, but an upcoming recall election in California signals widespread dissatisfaction in the state.

Shellenberger wrote a book about San Francisco.  Harper Collins will release it next month.  Will the rest of the country wake up?