No Bad Drugs

The arbitrary distinctions at the root of prohibition

Jacob Sullum from the April 2008 issue

High Society: How Substance Abuse Ravages America and What to Do About It, by Joseph A. Califano Jr., New York: Public Affairs, 270 pages, $26.95

The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World’s Most Troubled Drug Culture, by Richard DeGrandpre, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 294 pages, $24.95

On the opening page of High Society, which aims to explain “how substance abuse ravages America,” Joseph Califano declares that “chemistry is chasing Christianity as the nation’s largest religion.” Although it is not always easy to decipher Califano’s meaning in this overwrought, carelessly written, weakly documented, self-contradictory, and deeply misleading anti-drug screed, here he seems to be saying that opiates are the religion of the masses. Americans, he implies, are seeking from psychoactive substances the solace they used to obtain from faith in God, and better living through chemistry is nearly as popular as better living through Christ.

That claim, like many Califano makes, is unverifiable, and it does not seem very plausible. Americans may be less religious than they used to be, but large majorities still say they believe in God and identify with specific faiths, making the U.S. much more religious than other Western countries, which tend to have substantially lower drug use rates. Although Americans have a bewildering array of psychiatric medications to choose from nowadays (with permission from a doctor), they smoke a lot less than they did in the 1960s and drink less than they did a century ago, when they also could freely purchase patent medicines containing opium, cocaine, and cannabis. If the devout are less inclined than the doubters to use mood-altering drugs, how is it that mostly Mormon Utah leads the country in antidepressant prescriptions? And if chemistry and Christianity are locked in competition, what are we to make of Jesus’ water-into-wine miracle, or of the Native American Church, Uniao do Vegetal, and other groups that combine Christianity with psychedelic sacraments?

Already I have put more thought into the alleged connection between faithlessness and drug use than Califano did. And so it is with the rest of the book. A proper debunking would require more than the 186 pages of text that Califano, a domestic policy adviser to Lyndon Johnson and secretary of health, education, and welfare in the Carter administration, squeezes out of conversations with politicians and old reports from the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), the prohibitionist propaganda mill he founded and heads. Although CASA brags about its affiliation with Columbia University, the school has less cause to be proud of that relationship, given the center’s sloppy research and hyperbolic rhetoric. In a 2002 report that attracted wide publicity, CASA issued “a clarion call for national mobilization” against “America’s underage drinking epidemic,” claiming that “Children Drink 25 Percent of Alcohol Consumed in the U.S.” Not only did these “children” include 18-to-20-year-olds (a.k.a. “adults”), but it turned out CASA’s estimate was off by a factor of more than two.

Yet Califano is worth taking seriously. He is a leading exemplar of the moralistic pseudoscience that Richard DeGrandpre dissects in The Cult of Pharmacology, an insightful, historically informed critique of the ideas that guide the war on drugs. DeGrandpre, an independent scholar with a Ph.D. in psychopharmacology and a former fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, decries “the modern mythologizing of drugs as angels and demons” that underlies our “bewildering and often brutal differential system of prohibition.” Califano, by contrast, is committed to defending the arbitrary distinctions built into our drug laws.

Califano, who since his time in the Carter administration has railed against cigarettes with all the zeal you’d expect from a former three-pack-a-day smoker, is perceptive enough to recognize that legal drugs are not necessarily angels. When he talks about the promiscuous use of stimulants to control inattentive, unruly schoolchildren or the routine prescription of mood-altering drugs to smooth “the changing moods that mark human nature,” he sounds a bit like DeGrandpre, who wrote a book called Ritalin Nation and is unsparing in his criticism of the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical industry.

What Califano fails to understand is that every drug, regardless of its current legal status, is potentially an angel or a demon. DeGrandpre builds upon the insights of the alternative medicine guru Andrew Weil, who first made his name with books about drugs and altered states of consciousness. “Any drug can be used successfully, no matter how bad its reputation, and any drug can be abused, no matter how accepted it is,” Weil wrote in his 1983 book From Chocolate to Morphine (co-authored by Winifred Rosen). “There are no good or bad drugs; there are only good and bad relationships with drugs.” While Califano acknowledges the importance of context in determining what constitutes abuse of alcohol and prescription drugs, he insists that any use of currently illegal drugs is abuse by definition. “Drugs are not dangerous because they are illegal,” he says. “They are illegal because they are dangerous.”

This line, popular among drug warriors, misconstrues an argument against prohibition. The point is not that prohibition causes all the hazards associated with drug use but that it compounds those hazards by exposing users to the unreliable quality, unpredictable doses, and violence of the black market (not to mention the risk of arrest). Leaving aside the question of how prohibition makes matters worse, it is untenable to argue that illegal drugs are uniquely dangerous, since every potential problem they pose is also posed by alcohol, a substance that Califano says he does not want to ban.

The argument that drugs “are illegal because they are dangerous” is especially hard to make with respect to marijuana, which is by far the most popular illegal intoxicant, one that half of American adults born after World War II have tried. The worst risk that marijuana smokers face is getting arrested, a fact Califano tries to obscure through the time-honored prohibitionist tactics of focusing on children, conflating correlation with causation, and obscuring the distinction between short-term and long-term effects. In the 1980s, Califano says, “we seemed to discover” (an odd but appropriate way of putting it) “that marijuana might not be as benign as kids and permissive parents thought.” How could smoking pot be no big deal in the ’60s and ’70s, when the baby boomers were in high school and college, then suddenly become a big deal in the ’80s and ’90s, when their children were? Might this shift reflect the natural tendency of parents to be alarmed by their children’s rebellious behavior, even when it’s no worse than what they themselves did without regret as teenagers?

Of course not. Califano wants parents to know there’s a firm scientific basis for their hypocrisy. “Today’s teens’ pot is not their parents’ pot,” he explains. “It is far more potent.…The average levels of THC jumped from less than 1 percent in the mid-1970s to more than 7 percent in 2005.” Since the potency threshold for distinguishing cannabis from a placebo in experiments is roughly 1 percent, Califano is in effect asserting that people who smoked pot in the ’60s and ’70s generally did not get high as a result. If so, it’s hard to fathom how “pot was becoming the hottest high on college campuses” by the end of the ’60s, as Califano reports elsewhere in the book. In fact, as sociologist Lynn Zimmer and pharmacologist John P. Morgan show in their 1997 book Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts, claims that Mom and Dad’s pot was indistinguishable from ditchweed are based on low-quality, nonrepresentative samples that probably lost their THC content while in storage.

Even if average THC content has not risen seven-fold (or 30-fold, as drug czar John Walters claimed in 2002), it no doubt has increased significantly as marijuana growers, especially indoor growers in the U.S., have learned to produce a better product. The average THC concentration of seized cannabis tested by the University of Mississippi’s Potency Monitoring Project (which relies on “convenience” samples that are not necessarily representative of the national supply) more than doubled between 1983 and 2006, from a bit under 4 percent to 8.5 percent. But the stronger pot is, the less people tend to smoke. Since the possible respiratory effects of smoking are the most serious health risk associated with marijuana, higher THC content makes marijuana less dangerous, not more so.

But “today’s marijuana is addictive,” Califano says, warning that “10 percent of those who try it will get hooked at some point in their lives.” Even taking that number at face value, it is about one-third lower than the lifetime addiction rate for alcohol, based on data from the National Comorbidity Survey.

Implicitly conceding that cannabis itself is not very dangerous, Califano makes much of marijuana’s status as a “gateway drug,” a substance that people tend to try before they use other illegal intoxicants. According to a CASA analysis of survey data from the early 1990s, he reports, “twelve- to seventeen-year-old children who used marijuana were eighty-five times more likely…to use cocaine.”

That impressive-sounding “risk ratio” reflects the fact that people very rarely use cocaine without trying marijuana first. Although he repeatedly cites such numbers as a reason to prevent people from trying marijuana, Califano concedes that “gateway statistical relationships do not necessarily establish causality,” and he quotes the Institute of Medicine’s take on the issue, which does not suggest that marijuana pharmacologically causes people to seek “harder” drugs: “People who enjoy the effects of marijuana are, logically, more likely to be willing to try other mood-altering drugs than are people who are not willing to try marijuana or who dislike its effects. In other words, many of the factors associated with a willingness to use marijuana are, presumably, the same as those associated with a willingness to use other drugs.”

Perhaps sensing that the gateway argument is not generating enough alarm, Califano warns that marijuana “adversely affects short-term memory, the ability to concentrate, emotional development, and motor skills.” By throwing in “emotional development,” he falsely implies that the memory, concentration, and motor skill impairments, which are short-term effects of intoxication, are permanent disabilities caused by smoking one joint too many.

Comments

Episiarch|3.20.08 @ 9:28AM|#

What matters is the spell scrawled by a government-appointed medicine man who can transform demons into angels with the stroke of a pen.

This is the crux of it: state control.

I get a prescription for my pain for Vicodin from my state licensed doctor (and pay him) and then buy the Vicodin from a state-licensed pharmacy (and pay them), I'm a good person.

If I buy Vicodin from somebody on the street to alleviate my pain, I'm a criminal. And the doctor didn't get his cut, and the state didn't get their cut.

LarryA|3.20.08 @ 9:43AM|#

Although it is not always easy to decipher Califano's meaning in this overwrought, carelessly written, weakly documented, self-contradictory, and deeply misleading anti-drug screed

Aw, tell us what you really think. ;-)

|3.20.08 @ 10:19AM|#

"Today's teens' pot is not their parents' pot," he explains. "It is far more potent.…The average levels of THC jumped from less than 1 percent in the mid-1970s to more than 7 percent in 2005."

Every sigle fucking time I hear this monumemental pile of diarrheitc shit, I want to slap the mouth that is spewing it. My response to that overused and never documented claim is Bullshit, Bullshit, Lying Bullshit!

Now that that is out of my system, excellent article, Jacob. Can we make it required reading for drug warriors?

Didn't think so.

Sam Grove|3.20.08 @ 10:29AM|#

I managed to get high quite a few times while I was in prison on marijuana charges.

The only drug problem I saw there was when some guys managed to get hold of some grain alcohol and became violent.

|3.20.08 @ 10:32AM|#

There must be something wrong with me. Every time I read something like this, I think, "Well, that should convince somebody, somewhere, that the war on drugs is totally irrational and pointless."

But it just doesn't seem to work that way. People still run around in a panic and try to ban anything and everything. Instead of trying to think rationally about why the jails need to be full of essentially harmless drug users, they spend their time trying to raise (tax) money to build more jails.

People are morons.

Neu Mejican|3.20.08 @ 11:00AM|#

JsubD,

that overused and never documented claim is Bullshit

I don't know.
Shouldn't market forces lead to innovative improvements in the product.

My impression while I smoked pot (haven't touched the stuff in decades) was that the trend towards better weed was obvious and widespread.

I would be surprised if the trend didn't continue.

Mike Laursen|3.20.08 @ 11:00AM|#

People have an immediate negative emotional reaction to information they don't like. Some are listening, though, and will process the new information later, after they get over the initial reaction -- unless someone keeps pushing on them, keeping the initial reaction going.

Mike Laursen|3.20.08 @ 11:01AM|#

In other words, give them the info and walk away for a while. A lot of people will eventually come around on their own time scale.

Rhywun|3.20.08 @ 11:05AM|#

What an infuriating article. Infuriating because people actually think like this. Argggghhh! The damage done by evil frauds like Califano is incalculable. But it seems to be human nature to look down on drug (ab)users, so I'm not holding my breath waiting for any sanity on this issue from those in power.

|3.20.08 @ 11:08AM|#

The average levels of THC jumped from less than 1 percent in the mid-1970s to more than 7 percent in 2005

Number 1, I don't think this is true based on personal experience.

Number 2, since they are also telling us that marijuana smoke is full of carcinogens, wouldn't stronger pot, requiring fewer tokes, reduce the cancer risk and be a good thing?

Dave W.|3.20.08 @ 11:17AM|#

A lot of people will eventually come around on their own time scale.

A good message to the Mike Laursens Of The World!

|3.20.08 @ 11:20AM|#

My impression while I smoked pot (haven't touched the stuff in decades) was that the trend towards better weed was obvious and widespread.

I was thinking about that after I posted. The type of folks I smoked with, the kind of stuff we smoked, are hardly staistically valid samples.

Is it possiible in that from '74-'82, sailors had access to significantly better weed than, college students, white collar workers, et al? With extremely rare exceptions, we were not importers, but bought on the same market as everyone else. As a group, we may have been more discriminating due to travel experiences, but in the states we procured ounces, pounds, and kilos in town.

The potency of what I was smoking then was, at a minimum, as THC laden as what I can get in Detroit today. I am no longer as involved with the scene as I was then so that needs to be considered. That all said, I deny that you can find reefer that is even twice as potent as the good stuff from my youth, or seven times the average stuff.

BC|3.20.08 @ 11:35AM|#

"This under­taking demands the kind of attention we have committed to keeping chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons out of our nation. Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy, and other illegal drugs have demonstrated a far deadlier capability for mass destruction."

So this asshole is implying that drugs are worse than a nuclear attack. This has got to be the single biggest dumb fuck argument I've heard in my entire life. This man is utterly fucking batshit insane.

Angry Mike Laursens of the Wor|3.20.08 @ 11:38AM|#

A good message to the Mike Laursens Of The World!

Hey, what the @#&* do you mean by that?! (Oh, sorry. Overreacted. We've calmed down now.)

Neu Mejican|3.20.08 @ 11:53AM|#

JsubD,

Like I said, I haven't touched the stuff in decades...but in the spirit of discussion.

That all said, I deny that you can find reefer that is even twice as potent as the good stuff from my youth, or seven times the average stuff.

The average stuff from your youth could be more than half as potent as the average stuff today and that would not refute the claim (which when made should include a citation, if it is based on any reality).

7% THC may not be subjectively 7 times as potent as 1%.

The average can move up due to less bad shit without the quality of the good shit changing.

Also, pot smoking is one of those funny things.

Your body doesn't really develop tolerance for the intoxicating effects, but your mind does. Because dope has such a long half-life (days long instead of hours), people who smoke pot regularly are essentially a little bit high all the time. The more they smoke, the more their baseline high moves up, and the more they need to make it feel like they are getting high.

Whether or not the claim about more potent dope is true, of course, is beside the point.

Neu Mejican,
Professional Dope Smoker (retired).

Neu Mejican|3.20.08 @ 11:58AM|#

JsubD,

The point about the subjective tolerance wasn't clear.

Because the frequency of usage significantly changes your subjective experience of the dope's potency. It makes that subjective judgment very difficult to rely on for evaluating the potency of the dope.

|3.20.08 @ 12:04PM|#

If I buy have left over Vicodin from somebody on the street in my family to alleviate my pain, I'm a criminal. And the doctor didn't get his cut, and the state didn't get their cut.

There, fixed it to match my situation.

|3.20.08 @ 12:18PM|#

Meu Mejican,
Yeah, I admiited I'm not a statistically valid sample. I suspect there is NO statistically valid sample on reefer potency variations over time. I stand by my statement
I deny that you can find reefer that is even twice as potent as the good stuff from my youth, or seven times the average stuff*.

* Average stuff (for me) being "columbian". I didn't smoke "dirt weed".

Neu Mejican|3.20.08 @ 12:21PM|#

JsubD,

I suspect there is NO statistically valid sample on reefer potency variations over time.

Actually, I would be surprised if the DEA doesn't do regular testing on the dope that they seize. It should be a fairly representative sample of the market.

|7.1.11 @ 2:43PM|#

Something tells me that if the federal government had the stats to justify these types of assertions, that they would be posting them on ever street corner. It pretty hard to argue with Gas Chromatography reports. You can ignore it, but its hard to argue.

Neu Mejican|3.20.08 @ 12:24PM|#

* Average stuff (for me) being "columbian". I didn't smoke "dirt weed".

So JsubD is really just The Dope Commonsewer?

I suspect dirt weed is closer to the average than what you smoke. Who knows if dirt weed is substantially stronger than it used to be.

Not me.

Fred|3.20.08 @ 12:25PM|#

If I buy have left over Vicodin from somebody on the street in my family my own prescription after original condition is gone, to alleviate my pain, I'm a criminal. And the doctor didn't get his cut, and the state didn't get their cut.

You are required to dispose of it when no longer needed, if you take it years later you are a criminal. People should not be self medicating, an MD should evaluate your need for meds.

Misuse of drugs is imoral, freedom is drug free, let freedom ring!

Neu Mejican|3.20.08 @ 12:27PM|#

You are required to dispose of it when no longer needed, if you take it years later you are a criminal. People should not be self medicating, an MD should evaluate your need for meds.

That is a statement screaming for a citation.

I am gonna go out on a limb and call bullshit until I see a link or text of a specific statute.

|3.20.08 @ 12:33PM|#

Neu Mejican

I think Fred was trolling satirically or, maybe, satirically trolling.

TallDave|3.20.08 @ 3:23PM|#

overwrought, carelessly written, weakly documented, self-contradictory, and deeply misleading anti-drug screed,

LOL Don't hold back, dude. Tell us what you really think!

Not that I disagree.

Quixote|3.20.08 @ 11:02PM|#

Those who falter and those who fall must pay the price. I will not rest until they are all behind bars.....

Pablo Escobar|3.21.08 @ 5:41AM|#

Smackdown!

Good work Jacob.

|3.21.08 @ 3:12PM|#

Nice article.
Maybe Califano wants to explain how I got A+s on my last (university) exams, cause, you know, I went to class stoned, studied stoned, and even took the test stoned. Awwww my poor memory and concentration skills! I think it impaired my emotional development, too.

Haha....how can impaired "emotional development" be a short-term effect? Propaganda bullshit.

Douglas Gray|3.21.08 @ 8:50PM|#

The root of demonization is this:

I recently spoke with a man whose son started taking illegal substances when he was 14; the boy is now 21 and still struggling. This man can't admit that his son is messed up; it is all the drugs fault, the boy would be happy, successful and well adjusted if not for the drugs.

This reaction still persists in a lot of people.

There is only one serious accident for every 17 million miles of driving. It is that safe, but bad things do happen. Same with drugs. There are a multi-million drugs uses, legal and illegal, every day. In a few cases, bad things happen, but even then the drugs are not the sole cause.

People don't get it. Bad outcomes are often the result of multiple causes, but only one is often singled out.

Red Green|3.22.08 @ 9:39AM|#

The other war, the war on drugs, is taking too long to go away. Califano is one reason why. The old fraud keeps on writing books and getting fed funds. His CASA says it all. He is only about ABuse. There can be nothing else. Columbia U should erect a memorial fountain in his name. Shape it like a urinal and fill it with left over urinalysis samples. His phonyscience has left quite a legacy for us to laugh at in the future.

|3.22.08 @ 10:52PM|#

"If the devout are less inclined than the doubters to use mood-altering drugs, how is it that mostly Mormon Utah leads the country in antidepressant prescriptions?"

Jacob, next time don't mistake a headline for research.

Utah leads the country in per-capita use of prescriptions anti-depressants because Mormons generally don't SELF-medicate.

Most non-Mormons happily slug themselves up with booze, dope and just about every herb that they can chew, burn or boil. We don't. It's against our religion to do so. We don't even drink coffee or tea, much less use so-called "recreational" drugs as alcohol or tobacco.

Since we don't drown our sorrows like most people, prescriptions are our only option when some kind of medication is needed. The same studies that show Utah at the top of the Pharmacy Phrequent Phlyer list also show us at the BOTTOM of per-capita rates of ABUSING prescription drugs, and we tend to get off of anti-depressants faster than folks in other states.

I would also point out that only 60% of the people here are Mormons. A lot of the people on mood drugs are non-Mormons.

Al Francher|3.23.08 @ 9:39AM|#

Did somebody try to slander the Mormons again? You said "generally don't SELF- medicate", well then ,medicate,they still do. A doc"s script makes it different? Sounds ,to me, that you drank the kool-aid of self delusion. But then ,such is life in a theocrazy.

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