A Skeptical Approach to the War on Drugs

This meetup will cover illegal drugs & drug prohibition and the scientific disputes that surround these issues, as well as how the skeptic community has weighed in. I did a lot of internet research in preparation for this discussion to get a sense of how both the skeptic community and the broader scientific & scholarly community looks at drug-related issues.

INTRODUCTION - MY RESEARCH INTO THE DRUG DEBATE:

The first thing I noticed is that the skeptic community does not seem to have dealt with drug-related issues at length in a comprehensive way. Both the libertarian-minded skeptics like Michael Shermer and the liberal skeptics like PZ Myers & James Randi have mentioned the failure of the War on Drugs in articles & talks, but few seem to have dealt with it at length except for Sam Harris, who dealt in The End of Faith and a podcast called "Drugs and the Meaning of Life".

FYI - Here's an 11-minute clip of the portion of the audiobook version of The End of Faith that deals with the War on Drugs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN0_aJsPcHY

And here's the link to "Drugs and the Meaning of Life":

https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life

Much of Sam Harris's comments about drugs deals with his own use of psychedelics as part of his meditative practice & research into human consciousness when he was younger. Unfortunately, I just couldn't find room to address psychedelics in this discussion - maybe we'll have a future discussion on psychedelics & consciousness. I did find an excellent interview that Sam did with the British journalist Johann Hari, and I've included Hari's TED Talk below.

In terms of skeptic TV shows, Penn Jilette devoted an episode of "Bullshit!" to the War on Drugs (Season 2, Episode 17 - Apr. 2004), as has Adam Conover more recently with "Adam Ruins Everything" (Season 1, Episode 20 - Nov. 2016). There's a link to a clip of Adam Conover's episode below that we'll discuss.

The next thing I realized in my internet research is that there seems to be many pundits coming from both a liberal-progressive and libertarian perspective who've recently been making the case that many of our drug policies (and perhaps the entire "War on Drugs") is very misguided & counter-productive. There's also quite a few physicians & researchers who've criticized the War on Drugs from a more nonpartisan, scientific perspective. However, it's hard to find scientists & scholars who will make the opposite case at length. Even at conservative media outlets like National Review and The American Conservative, their writers mostly talk about the failure of the War on Drugs and this isn't new. In fact, the father of 20th-century American conservatism, William F. Buckley, wrote an editorial called "The War on Drugs Is Lost" back in 1996. Recently, former Education Secretary & Drug Czar Bill Bennett, as well as some of the neocon pundits like David Frum & David Brooks, seem to have focused their efforts on arguing against marijuana legalization rather than addressing the broader policy issues of the War on Drugs. (The American conservative journalist George Will and the British writer & retired psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple seem to be rare exceptions among conservative intellectuals, in that they have both regularly tackled the bigger issues.)

Aside from Will & Dalrymple, to find anti-legalization arguments that go beyond pot, it seems you have to turn to politicians or bureaucrats at agencies like the DEA or NIDA who state their case in op-eds & speeches. However, they don't engage much with their opponents, and often stonewall their interviewers when they get tough questions. You can also find some short TV news segments where pundits briefly argue the pros & cons of drug policies, but these tend to be rife with fallacious arguments and mundane talking points.

After quite a bit of hunting, I did find a few good full-length debates on the War on Drugs, which I've linked below. They're well worth watching, but they're too long for the purposes of this discussion.

Google Plus "Versus Debates" - "It's time to end the War on Drugs" (Mar. 2012)

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-drugs/

Intelligence Square Debate: "Legalize Drugs" (Nov. 2012)

http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/debates/legalize-drugs

Robert White vs. Jacob Sullum debate on Glenn Beck (May 2015)

http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/05/21/legalize-it-why-its-past-time-we-make-pot-legal/

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Drugs and Drug Prohibition is such a large topic that we can't deal with it comprehensively here, so I've picked a few interesting sub-topics that relate to commonly-held beliefs & myths about illegal drugs. I've divided our discussion into 4 sections, and I found some short videos that help quickly illustrate the main points. I'm hoping they are a bit more accessible than the long articles we've used in the past. I realize this is a lot of information, so if you're pressed for time please just try to view one video from each section. If you'd prefer to read/skim articles rather than watch videos, be aware that videos 3, 7 & 8 both have transcripts that you can click to open & read.

I don't expect our members to do the same amount of reading that I did in preparation for this discussion, but I've created a bibliography in our meetup's discussion tab in case you want to read more. I'll makes some notes beneath the videos in each section that includes information from the bibliography, and I'll note which article I'm referring to by putting a number in parentheses (#) after the comment. Here's the link:

https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Skeptics/messages/boards/thread/50631227

ORIGINS OF THE MARIJUANA BAN - RACIST MORAL PANIC, ANTI-HEMP CONSPIRACY, OR A CONTINUATION OF THE PROGRESSIVE-ERA LOGIC OF PROHIBITION?

1. Adam Conover, "The Sinister Reason Weed Is Illegal" (5:54 minutes)
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXPOw2unxy0

2. Abby Martin, "How Hemp Threatens the Corporatocracy" (5:26 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE1sUwY_q0k

3. Ken Burns & Nick Gillespie, "Prohibition, Drug Laws, & Unintended Consequences" (13:11 minutes)

http://reason.com/archives/2011/12/22/ken-burns-on-prohibition-pot-and-pbs

IS THERE ENOUGH SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA? AND THE CATCH-22 SITUATION - HOW CAN WE TELL IF WE CAN'T RESEARCH IT?

4. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, "I Was Wrong About Weed. CNN's Neurosurgeon Has a Change of Heart" (4:17 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ErzvWyjTf0

• See also this brief clip of Sanjay Gupta asking Dr. Vivek Murthy, Obama's Surgeon General, if he'd reschedule marijuana as a Schedule 2 substance to enable more medical research:

http://www.cnn.com/videos/health/2015/04/16/gupta-murthy-medical-marijuana.cnn

5. C0nc0rdance (skeptic Youtube blogger), "Cannabis and Cannabinoids" (8:23 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkNIRZXraY4

IF METH & ADHD DRUGS ARE COMPARABLE, WHY DO WE SEE SUCH A BIG DIFFERENCE IN THEIR USERS? ARE ADHD DRUGS OVER-PRESCRIBED?

6. Dr. Carl Hart, "Meth & Adderall are the same drug & other drug facts" (5:35 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhdqhIIm4cQ

7. Dr. Harold Koplewicz, "We Aren't Over-Diagnosing Our Kids" (2:20 minutes)

http://bigthink.com/videos/we-arent-over-diagnosing-our-kids

WHAT CAUSES OPIATE ADDICTION? WHICH TREATMENT PARADIGM WORKS BETTER - RECONNECTION & HARM REDUCTION OR TOUGH LOVE & ZERO TOLERANCE?

8. Johann Hari, "Everything You Know About Addiction Is Wrong" (14:42 minutes)
   https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong

9. Theodore Dalrymple, "Romancing Opiates (Part 2 of 6)" (9:27 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7HBONAJOY