ProCon.org is a set of in-depth web sites presenting information and views from on current issues, several with relevance to drug policy. The Chronicle is currently running a series of info items from ProCon.org -- this  one from medicalmarijuana.procon.org -- and we encourage you to check it out. In Drug War Chronicle, here.

ProCon.org is a set of in-depth web sites presenting information and views from on current issues, several with relevance to drug policy. The Chronicle is currently running a series of info items from ProCon.org -- this one from sportsanddrugs.procon.org -- and we encourage you to check it out.

France's new president, François Hollande, has vowed to continue France's expensive addiction to repressive drug policies. Tom Blickman reports for the Transnational Institute:

Hollande's choice as Minister of the Interior, Manuel Valls, is a declared opponent to any reform on cannabis. During the election campaign, Hollande already opposed the proposal to convert the criminal offence of cannabis use into misdemeanour, put forward by his security adviser and mayor of Dijon, François Rebsamen. Hollande did not want to "give any signal foregoing a deterrent against the use of cannabis."

 

Hollande's comment begs the question, "what deterrent?" The president has presumably heard of something called "data." What do available data suggest about France's current marijuana policy?

The data suggest it is a failure. According to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), France's adults (age 15-64) in their most recent national survey had a 4.8% past-month cannabis use prevalence, compared with 3.3% under the Dutch "coffee shop" tolerance system and 2.4% under Portugal's far reaching decriminalization. Young adults in France (15-34) reported 9.8% past-month prevalence, compared with 5.6% and 4.5% in the Netherlands and Portugal. Among youth aged 15-24, France boasts a 12.7% past-month cannabis use rate, vs. 5.3% and 4.1% in the Netherlands and Portugal. These numbers go back to 2005 and 2007, but things are similar enough today to make the point. As the World Health Organization concluded in a 2008 global study, harsh drug laws do not correlate simply with drug use rates.

Hollande's opposition to drug policy reform comes at a time of deep economic crisis, with Hollande personally under significant pressure to scale back his opposition to the unpopular austerity measures he campaigned against, in order to be able to work with countries like Germany to save the Eurozone. But marijuana enforcement, while providing some jobs for French police officers, mostly forces more austerity on the rest of the country. According to Blickman, the unsuccessful candidate for Hollande's interior minister pick, François Rebsamen, pointed out, "There are 142,000 cannabis procedures per year, corresponding to hundreds of thousands of hours of work for the police producing only 24,000 prosecutions." Paris University economist Pierre Kopp has found that "The state could save about €300 million on spending arising out of [marijuana] arrests, or perhaps even more if you include the cost of custody, the running of courts and the enforcement of sentences. The state would also receive duty worth about €1 billion."

Hollande's sorry start on the issue provides a useful reminder that reformers need to exert pressure on politicians of all stripes to hold them to account. It's generally believed that left-leaning politicos are better on issues like drug policy than their opponents, and that's true more often than not. Factions within Hollande's Socialist Party have even done some work advocating liberalized approaches to marijuana and other drugs. Nevertheless, drugs and crime are often the "throwaway" issues of choice for leftist politicians looking for ways to woo some right-leaning voters their way, especially prominent politicians. It's important to note that Hollande has not just rejected a Netherlands-style coffee shop system, nor even just decriminalization for users. Hollande has even opposed changing marijuana possession to a misdemeanor. That is a fairly extremely position, in principle, current policies notwithstanding.

So instead of siding with science and data and common sense, nor even with needed budget relief for his countrymen, France's new president has instead picked the meanest and stupidest marijuana policy he realistically could have. He should be called out for it.

The latest data on stop and frisks in New York City is nothing short of horrifying. Kristen Gwynne at AlterNet reports.

For the NYPD's stats to add up, they'd have to have stopped every young, black man living in the city once--and then some. Both marijuana arrests and street stops are soaring under Bloomberg’s administration, but the data shows that rise in aggressive policing is only apparent in certain communities. Demonstrators stressed that pot arrests and stop-and-frisk have come to epitomize a city-wide problem requiring urgent redress.  

In 2011 alone, more than 50,000 New Yorkers -- 87 percent of whom are black or Latino -- were arrested for petty marijuana possession. Though often considered a trivial arrest, a pot conviction can have serious consequences. 

No kidding. But Mayor Bloomberg defends the policy, and its horrible consequences, by claiming it's all about getting guns off the street:

The number of guns that we've been finding has continued to go down, which says the program at this scale is doing a great job....The whole idea here, John, is not to catch people with guns; it's to prevent people from carrying guns. It's like a stop we have for driving while intoxicated. It would be great if everybody said, "Oh my goodness, I might get stopped so I'm not gonna drink and drive." That's great. That's what we want. That would be wonderful. And the fact that we're getting fewer guns says the program is working. And the program will really have succeeded when we don't get any guns.

Yet, as Jacob Sullum points out, searching people without evidence for the sole purpose of deterring crime is completely and utterly unconstitutional. Think about the actual words Bloomberg uses here: "The whole idea here…is not to catch people with guns; it's to prevent people from carrying guns." If you're not actually even trying to catch people with guns, what on earth is the legal justification for stopping these guys in the first place? It's illegal to stop someone on suspicion of carrying a firearm unless you have a reason to believe that they're carrying a firearm, and just to clear up any confusion, being black doesn't count as evidence that somebody's got a gun.

Moreover, if this is really all about protecting the public from gun violence, I'd like to know why it's necessary to arrest people who were unarmed but happened to have a little bit of marijuana in their pocket when police stopped them to look for guns. Concealed possession of small amounts of marijuana isn't supposed to be a crime in New York anyway, but particularly in the context of a public safety policy solely aimed at taking weapons off the streets, why are marijuana users being arrested at all? It looks horrible in the press and badly exacerbates the appearance (heck, let's just call it the reality) of racial bias underlying this whole hideous process. 

The bottom line is that if this program isn't all about stopping, searching, and arresting young black men for marijuana on a massive scale, then the procedures should be changed to produce some outcome other than a bunch of blatantly racist drug arrests. If anyone in NYPD needs advice on how not to racially profile people and arrest them for petty offenses, I have a few ideas, most of which revolve around the following theme: stop doing it.

There's an interesting article at The Week looking at some different theories regarding the reasons behind Obama's medical marijuana crackdown. You can choose from one of more of the following:

1. He's trying to look tough because he believes – rightly or wrongly – that he could be vulnerable to being labeled "soft on crime" during the election.

2. He doesn't think the "marijuana vote" is strong enough to have a meaningful impact on him politically.

3.  The medical marijuana industry got too big too fast, forcing the federal government to intervene.

Do we have our answer here somewhere? I wouldn't immediately dismiss any of this, although if the Obama Administration actually believes they're scoring political points with this madness, they are out of their minds. In any case, these ideas effectively sum up most of the speculation I've heard recently from serious observers.

But there's a larger point to made here: the reason we can only speculate as to the Obama Administration's motives is because they won't even admit that this crackdown is taking place, let alone explain the reasoning behind it. We shouldn't have to sit around guessing what this is about. The President, or the Attorney General, or someone with knowledge of the situation should tell us.

I'm serious. It sounds terribly naïve even to me as I write it, but there really is no logical reason why our government can’t simply tell us why they are doing these things that they've been doing. We can see them doing it. Just tell us what it's all about. Wouldn't it be easier that way?

Think about it. If state lawmakers, local law enforcement, medical marijuana providers, patients, advocates, and the media all understood what the Obama Administration's enforcement priorities and long-term goals regarding medical marijuana actually are, we could all make more informed decisions that make life a lot easier for everyone else. We've all become so accustomed to this being a big guessing game that nobody stops to point out how crazy that is.

The Obama Administration's continued insistence on discussing medical marijuana in the most brief and vague possible terms has created an enormous amount of confusion and wasted time on every side of this debate. Medical marijuana is a matter of public policy. Can we please just talk about it in public?

Follow Scott Morgan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drugblogger

In a bid to snuff out the federal medical marijuana crackdown, four US congressman have introduced an amendment that would bar the Justice Department from spending money to do so. It awaits a vote any day now. Chronicle story here.

The Dutch move to bar foreigners from cannabis cafes on the southern border has been met by coffee shop closures in protest, legal action, and police who seem to have better things to do. Meanwhile, the drug tourists are simply driving deeper into the country. Chronicle story here.

Flex Your Rights has been working for many years now to educate everyone we can about the importance of refusing police searches and otherwise knowing and asserting your constitutional rights when confronted by police. Unfortunately, even if you handle a police encounter perfectly, things can still get pretty ugly. This video discusses how to handle some of the challenges you can run into after asserting your rights:

ProCon.org is a set of in-depth web sites presenting information and views from on current issues, several with relevance to drug policy. The Chronicle is currently running a series of info items from ProCon.org -- this  one from drinkingage.procon.org -- and we encourage you to check it out. Chronicle story here.

A bill that would label drivers impaired if they have more than five nanograms of THC per milliliter in their blood even if they are not actually impaired has passed the Colorado Senate and a House committee. Foes are still seeking to kill or amend it. Chronicle story here.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has joined the chorus of critics condemning the Obama administration's crackdown on medical marijuana businesses. Will that catch the president's attention? Chronicle story here.