Is the ONDCP blog making stuff up about medical cannabis?

In the States medical cannabis is a massive issue (far more politically potent than its marginal status in the UK), being entwined with a raft of other political and cultural battles; the bigger recreational cannabis issue, tensions between federal and state power, various medical prescribing politics and more besides. It can all get quite rather confused and often real issues about the future of drug policy seem to get lost in the mix as emotions run high on both sides of the various debates. Personally I have mixed feelings about the issue, in particular a concern that conflating the medical and recreational debates potentially threatens to undermine progress on both. That said, I certainly don't want to see medical users criminalised*.

None of this, however, should get in the way straight reporting of facts and the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) , the most ferocious opponent of medical cannabis, or 'medical cannabis' as they like to mockingly call it, has made some bold and seemingly inaccurate claims about San Francisco dispensaries in its latest blog post. I say 'blog' despite it not really warranting the moniker, being one of those prohibitionist 'blogs' that does not publish comments, presumably afraid of the roasting they would get if they opened themselves up to that strange concept of democratic engagement and free debate (to my knowledge there are no official prohibitionist blogs that publish comments, and many, like Costas Corner, don't even let you make them) .

Anyway, the latest ONDCP blog claims that

"As we've noted previously, state "medical" marijuana laws breed confusion, abuse, and violence in neighborhoods and communities.

Here's our latest analysis of this phenomenon. In downtown San Francisco alone, there are 98 marijuana dispensaries, compared to 71 Starbucks Coffee shops"

And then there's a map of their analysis to prove it.

'over a hundred' Starbucks in downtown SF

One of 'less than 30' cannabis dispensaries in Down town San Franscisco

Various SF based medical cannabis practitioners and activists have been quick to point out the claims appear to be incorrect:

This response was posted on the ONDCP 'blog' by a representative of NORML (not that you will be able to read it because ...democracy...etc.) ;

This is total bunkum. The number of cannabis clubs in SF is limited by city ordinance and has never exceeded 40. A listing of currently active clubs may be found at our website http://www.canorml.org/prop/cbclist.html#sf. It shows 22 clubs and 5 delivery services. There is also one other unlisted club registered with the city. By contrast, there are 3,500 licensed liquor outlets in SF.

Dale Gieringer, Director, California NORML, Co-sponsor,
California Compassionate Use Act of 1996

Caren Woodson, from Americans for Safe Access, noted similarly that:

The information contained in the Czar's blog is not even close to resembling truth...in fact SF Gate (the e-version of the Chronicle) noted in a recent article (Aug 27) about the AG guidelines that SF only has about 26 MCDs currently in operation. Even at the height of 'unregulated' access in SF, there was no where near that many MCDs!

The local ASA chapter is tracking MCD permits in SF with painstaking attention to detail. At present, 28 collectives have submitted applications for permits. A few have been denied and there are 4 collectives that have permits to operate under local law. There are another 20 or so collectives in operation, and these collectives have until Jan 19, 2009 to acquire their permits (part of the grandfather provision we included in the legislation). Obviously not all collectives will survive the permit process, and a few of these collectives are in the process of sorting out some legal battles. But, with absolute confidence, I can tell you that there is no where near 100 collectives operating in SF.

And, finally, not to beat a dead horse, but some of the locations of the info provided on the Drug Czars so-called "map" includes places where dispensaries are absolutely prohibited by local land-use law from operating. The map below, is the current map that details "green-zones" or those places where MCDs may be permitted by the SF government to operate once they have obtained a permit http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/planning/Applications/MCD_Map.pdf

and a local medical cannabis group that:

As far as we know, there are now a little fewer than 30 dispensaries
or so, so this is more misinformation from the drug czar.

I'm happy to be corrected on this (comments welcome here - all published un-moderated), but if, as the above information would suggests the ONDCP's claim is substantially non-congruent with reality (less than a third does not constitute 'more than') and has been playing silly statistical propaganda games again, let's hope they are similarly willing to publish a correction.


*note: Transform have largely steered clear of the medical cannabis issue, but there it is briefly touched on it our latest report 'Tools for the Debate' in the 'talking about cannabis' section. Release are campaigning actively on medical cannabis issues.

The Ipswich murders and the drugs debate

The terrible murder of five street sex workers in Ipswich over the past fortnight has provoked a burst of media debate on the prohibitions of both drugs and sex work - and the potential impacts of our current criminal justice oriented policies that attempt to control the respective trades.

The media coverage has been fascinating and varied. There have been a number of opinion pieces that have argued directly for licensing of brothels and the prescribing of heroin.

Mary Ann Seighart in a Times article 'Drugs: why we should medicalise, not criminalise' writes that:



"Drug addiction is a medical condition; it should not be treated as a criminal offence. The crime that results from drug addiction is a direct result of the drugs’ illegality. The organised criminal gangs, with their violence, corruption and money laundering; the street gangs, with their gun crime, stabbings and intimidation; the muggers, burglars, car thieves and shoplifters, who steal to fund their habit; the dealers who try to create new addicts; and finally, the prostitutes who put their health and lives at risk; all this crime and suffering could be wiped out if the drugs were available, free, on prescription"

Transform, get a nod when she then goes on to say that

"In European cities, where heroin is available on prescription, property crimes by drug-users have dropped by as much as a half. And think of the effect that widespread prescribing would have on turf wars, gang violence, gun crime, street dealing and prostitution. An excellent report from the Transform drug policy foundation* also points out: “The largest single profit opportunity for organised crime would evaporate, and with it the largest single source of police corruption.”

Transform estimates that the prison population would fall by between a third and a half, ending overcrowding and the need to build more jails. Billions of pounds spent enforcing prohibition and coping with its consequences would be saved. Hundreds of thousands could be treated as patients rather than criminals. The number of drug-related deaths would fall dramatically. And desperate young women could be rescued from pimps, potential rapists and murderers."

A similar pro reform piece appeared by Deborah Orr in the Independent. She focuses on sex work, but has been a long time supporter of drug law reform. The Guardian, as mentioned in the previous blog entry has run online articles on both sides of the drugs debate, with Nick Davies, whose articles on heroin were so influential back in 2001, arguing for more heroin prescribing, and John Harris, who flags up the difficulties in making crack legally available. This week the Guardian printed a well argued piece by Simon Jenkins that focuses on the political cowardice getting in the way of reform.

Inevitably there has been a reaction to this talk of 'legalisation' from other opinion writers who see it very differently.

Will Self (who is Deborah Orr's husband) argued in the Evening Standard that the 'legalise' drugs and prostituion position was over-simplistic. This seems a bit harsh given that he appears to be basing this on other columnists without reading the detailed work done by people in the public health arena, academia and drug related NGOs. But there you go, journalists can be a bit lazy and opinionated. David Aaronavitch in the Times down a similar route but becomes a self appointed expert on the basis that he has read the Home Office consultation paper 'Paying the Price'.

Melanie Phillips has also inevitably stepped up to represent the reactionary moral-indignation position with a familiar sounding tirade against the evils of pragmatic drug law reform. As ever she studiously avoids the reality of widespread dug use and dodges well known facts (some pointed out in the online comments below her article) like; cannabis use has fallen since it was reclassified or; Holland has a far lower rate of cannabis and heroin than the UK. Her initial tack is to argue, strangely it must be said, that replacing criminal markets with legally regulated ones wouldn't reduce crime or get rid of illegal markets. Secondly she argues that legality would condone and encourage use - as if somehow prohibition has reduced/eliminated it. She assumes her self-appointed moral high ground by calling for the continuation and ramping up of policies that have, for decades, done the exact opposite of what she seeks. The reformers, we are told, would 'institutionalise harm and enslave millions in a post-moral degraded universe' - yet that is exactly what the criminal justice approach she advocates has already achieved.

There is something particularly troubling about those, like Phillips, who argue there is any moral justification for increasing harm to vulnerable individuals as a way of discouraging certain behaviours in others. Not only does the past 40 years provide no evidence that this is an effective strategy, but it is profoundly unethical.

Yet Phillips, for all her dodgey stats and intellectual wrongness, does at least make a good argument and attempt to see it through. This cannot be said for the utterly vile Richard Littlejohn who appears to deliberately court controversy by being as unpleasant as possible. In a recent Daily Mail piece Spare us the 'People's Prostitute' routine... his bile takes the familiar reactionary route of blaming the victims, but doesnt stop there. He then dances on their graves:

"the deaths of these five women is no great loss. They weren't going to discover a cure for cancer or embark on missionary work in Darfur. The only kind of missionary position they undertook was in the back seat of a car."

Despite a few grains of truth in the Littlejohn piece ('they did it for drugs'), he doesn't appear sophisticated enough to actually take his spleen venting to any sort of conclusion. He doesnt call for anything, or recommend any policy response - he just says vile things about some poor murdered women, and their families, and then levers in some unrelated insults at the Prime Minister.

So where does all this opinion lead us?

The media debate, despite emerging from tragedy and despite the efforts of some Mail columnists, has overall been a valuable and suprisingly mature one. It has provided a useful platform for those advocating pragmatic regulated alternatives to the illegal markets created by various prohibitions.

It would be wrong to suggest that a particular law or policy is directly 'to blame' for the murders. Clearly the killer could have targetted women in brothels who were legally recieveing drugs on prescribtion had he chosen to. However, these events have focused attention on the way the laws on drugs and prostitution drives these markets underground and far from eradicating the problems, makes them far worse, fuelling crime and maximising riskes for the people involved - in this case putting vulnerable women directly in harms way. So whilst not directly to blame, it is unarguable that wrongheaded prohibitions can create high risk environments that make violence more likely, and the reporting of this story has made this point very clear.

The Government has not emerged with any credit whatsoever, in particular regarding its shelving some of pragmatic recommendations made by a long and detailed Home Office consulation on prostitution that reported in 2004. The Observer front page headline concerned the fact that No 10 'blocked move to legalise prostitution' because of fears about the media reaction to such moves. Quite revealing, and one suspects, not disimilar to No.10s reaction the the drugs report produced by No.10's own Strategy Unit in 2003 (which they tried not to publish).

There is something going on here with this debate that suggest progress to me. The concept being promoted by the Government and the likes of Melanie Phillips is that drugs and sex work are morally unacceptable and on that basis alone their prohibitions are justified. On the other hand there appears to be a growing public and media awareness that policy needs to be pragmatic, accepting of reality, and be based on evidence of effectiveness rather than just moral indignation. The latter position appears to have come out on top this time round, and just for once, the Government are being portrayed as irresponsible for not legalising something.


Paying the Price - Home Office consultation document
Paying the price - final report