The New Yorker ran an article about the experiments with legalizing marijuana in Colorado and Washington state, quoting extensively from a man who has made a living as a "drug policy analyst," a professor at UCLA, Mark Kleiman.
The message the Phantom took from Professor Kleiman is that drug policy is very complex and is not for dilettantes and uninformed citizens, not to mention state or federal legislators to dabble in without consulting real experts like himself.
The Phantom emailed Professor Kleiman with the observation that in the 1960's as college students shifted from alcohol to marijuana, alcohol consumption clearly declined. To his great credit, the professor took time to respond to an unsolicited email from out of the blue and he noted this phenomenon may not apply today, especially in laboratories which are not limited to college campuses but to entire states.
He also remarked that "only" 20% of Americans in prisons are there for drug offenses, and these are usually not for possession but for selling drugs.
The Phantom questioned this number, noting it didn't sound right, didn't pass the smell test, and the professor, predictably, said this is because the Phantom didn't want to believe hard numbers which conflicted with his own biases and beliefs.
As the Phantom considered his own less than rigorous approach to this area over which Professor Kleiman claimed to have a firm grasp, he googled "drug possession arrests" and noted one American is arrested for marijuana possession every 42 seconds and there are over 700,000 arrests for marijuana possession alone ever year in this country. Those arrested are thrown in "jail." They may not go to "prison" but is being incarcerated in jail not being imprisoned?
The "data" over which Professor Kleiman claims mastery say that only one out of five prisoners in state or federal penitentiaries are there for "drug related" offenses, mostly selling drugs. That data is likely culled from the databases from courts, which may separate out what people are sentenced for effectively. But these data do not, presumably, include all those citizens who are arrested, jailed, released, summoned to court, otherwise detained. These detainees are also violated, if more briefly, and the damage done to the relationship of a citizenry and its government as personified in the police force is still significant.
Including in the data set all those arrested/ jailed would make legalization of marijuana seem more compelling.
Data is funny that way. You have to look afresh at numbers and think about what other numbers might be relevent sometimes to get a real feeling for what it means.
The psychology of the expert is often at play here, too. The Phantom could readily see in the professor's response his disdain and anger over the audacity of a layman to question his authority. When the Phantom told him the 80% figure was a red flag in medicine for a figure not backed by hard data he reacted in anger and said doctors may throw around numbers without adequate knowledge but that is not true in his field, populated by real scientists. He knows what he knows; it's the rest of the world which isn't listening to his erudition, which cannot see the complexities, which is wedded to rigid beliefs unsupported by the data which is the problem.
But, like doctors who finally had to respond to the questioning by laymen who had access to information on the internet, the professor may have to, eventually, concede his reading of the data may be as narrow minded as those he accuses of the same thing.
After all, as one can see immediately on the net, is the proposition that "only" one out of five prisoners across state and federal institutions is there on drug charges, for that 20% serving time, that is a very significant thing. Over 300,000 souls in prison for drug offenses. Some may be the Avon Barksdale's and some the lietenants, but some are the pawns in the game. If they weren't there for selling drugs, they might be there for brutalizing fellow citizens in whatever illegal activities remain after drugs are legalized, it's true, but at least we will have incarcerated people for something that should be a crime, not a public health problem.
The psychology of the expert is often at play here, too. The Phantom could readily see in the professor's response his disdain and anger over the audacity of a layman to question his authority. When the Phantom told him the 80% figure was a red flag in medicine for a figure not backed by hard data he reacted in anger and said doctors may throw around numbers without adequate knowledge but that is not true in his field, populated by real scientists. He knows what he knows; it's the rest of the world which isn't listening to his erudition, which cannot see the complexities, which is wedded to rigid beliefs unsupported by the data which is the problem.
But, like doctors who finally had to respond to the questioning by laymen who had access to information on the internet, the professor may have to, eventually, concede his reading of the data may be as narrow minded as those he accuses of the same thing.
After all, as one can see immediately on the net, is the proposition that "only" one out of five prisoners across state and federal institutions is there on drug charges, for that 20% serving time, that is a very significant thing. Over 300,000 souls in prison for drug offenses. Some may be the Avon Barksdale's and some the lietenants, but some are the pawns in the game. If they weren't there for selling drugs, they might be there for brutalizing fellow citizens in whatever illegal activities remain after drugs are legalized, it's true, but at least we will have incarcerated people for something that should be a crime, not a public health problem.
Phantom,
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I took away from the article was that the Professor was considered the go to expert because he's been "pondering" the problem longer than most--interesting qualification... Several of his assertions and hypotheses didn't seem data driven, but more off the cuff, as the title of his firm BOTEC (Back of the Envelope Calculations) would indicate. Licensing users and offering home delivery don't seem like potential policies he derived from hard data.. I did find it ironic that the major architect of Washington's legalization process favored liberalization of marijuana laws over legalization and in fact spoke out publicly against legalization as recently as 2010. Although I agree that marijuana use is much more benign than the toll alcohol takes, I do hope his reason for opposing it --that the state will need to, in Kleiman's words, "create potheads" in order to be financially successful is not born out. In any case, continuing to prosecute people for possessing and smoking pot is ludicrous and hopefully nearing an end. The legalization process is uncharted territory and the generation of ideas, radical or otherwise, would seem a good thing. The Professor taking issue with your comments because you were not privy to all the "data" seems more than a little hypocritical...
Maud
Maud,
ReplyDeleteYes, there are unresolved questions. How do you determined whether or not a driver on MJ is impaired?
The idea that "we" will create potheads implies what the government does or does not do has any real impact on the individual choices of people using MJ.
Politicians are running for the cover offered by experts.
The appeal of a man like Christie is he does not appear afraid to say, "Cut the B.S. Here is what I think I know and here is what we should do."
Prison for a public health problem. We'll one day look back on these days as we now look back on insane asylums with patients chained to the walls.
Phantom