The Daily Brief

I’ve just watched PBS’s Frontline: The Meth Epidemic. And, while I have to admit, I know far less about methamphetamine, its history, and the culture – both open and illicit, which surrounds it, than most of the other legally proscribed drugs I have studied, I likely know far more than the producers of this show.

And I intend to learn much more. As I have said many times before, I rely upon regular doses of pseudoephedrine (which I get on prescription) just to be functional. With a hat tip to Pastor Martin Niemöller: First they came for the meth-heads… then they came for me.

And in that is my first criticism of this program: They seem to think ALL methamphetamine requires ephedrine or pseudoephedrine as a precursor. And that is hardly true. By my current understanding, there are at least three different varieties of methamphetamine: d-meth, i-meth, and n-meth. Because of earlier crackdowns on the precursor agents, the variety most prevalent now is d-meth, which is “cooked” from ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. Other varieties, popular two decades or more ago, were formulated from other precursors, which illicit labs currently find difficult to obtain.

But, as might be expected, the pharmacological effects of each is not the same. While the deleterious effects of abuse of any drug can’t be denied, and those of any sort of methamphetamine are particularly severe, the effects of d-meth are far worse than even its chemical cousins.

But why is d-meth the most prevalent form on the street? Because of drug prohibition, and its crackdown on the precursors of earlier, less harmful, types. On prohibition, not the drug itself, you can also blame the environmental effects of clandestine drug labs, which is currently being berated on the tele. In a (reasonably regulated) free market, the drugs would be manufactured in environmentally safe professional labs.

And, of course, should they manage to eliminate all the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine – much to the suffering of myself, and others like me, the clandestine producers will just switch to a new formula.

Further, I would posit that, were it not for prohibition, “meth” would hardly be a concern, as most users would sooner use cocaine. In fact, it’s the evil war on cocaine that has made meth “a problem” in the first place.

More to come.

Apparently, he thinks we all think the same way:

Every one that I admire is wrong about the drug war. And I mean every one.

The Libertarians I hang around with try to pretend that drugs aren’t all that bad. The usual drug that is called not bad is Marijuana. Marijuana is not bad, it–and by inference other drugs–ought to be legalized.

The Rightists I know and admire tend to over-exaggerate the consequences of drug use. Drugs are not only not bad, they are really really bad.

The Leftists I know seem to be a mixed bag on this. Some of them mimmicking the Libertarian position, others of them mimmicking the Rightist position. Only, instead of spending my money on jail cells for stupid drug users they want to spend my money on rehab for stupid drug users. And on needles. And on publicly funded medical marijuana. And on rehab, again…..

The worst arguments I hear are the back and forth medical statistics. This drug is less risky than tobacco. Users of that drug may experience sudden heart failure. Blah blah blah.

Let me tell you where I stand. Drugs are bad, mmmkay. The biggest problem with drugs are not their long-term effects, but their near term effects. That is, people do things under the influence of drugs that they normally wouldn’t do. I have a problem with that.

But, just because drugs are bad does not mean that they should be illegal. Stupid things that harm others ought to be illegal, not stupid things that harm yourself. And if the worst bads associated with drugs are when you do stupid things to others, then, well, we already have laws to cover those.

No, Rusty: libertines think that drugs aren’t “that bad”. Real libertarians, those that have thought long and hard about it, as I have, realize (not “pretend”) that drugs are neither good or bad. As with guns, drugs are just tools. Powerful and hazardous tools, too be sure, but tools nonetheless. Drug abuse is bad. If drugs themselves where bad, why would we allow doctors to prescribe them?

This from the editors of TNR:

The 6-3 majority opinion in Gonzales v. Raich by Justice John Paul Stevens was an uncontroversial application of Supreme Court decisions that have been settled since the New Deal. In 1942, the Court upheld Congress’s power to regulate wheat grown for personal consumption, on the theory that locally consumed wheat might reduce demand for wheat that crossed state lines. By the same logic, Stevens held for the majority, Congress could prohibit the use of marijuana grown for personal medical use, since it, too, might have a substantial effect on the national market for recreational pot.

In a welcome development, the majority included Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, two leaders of the so-called federalism revolution on the Rehnquist Court. In other cases, which this magazine has criticized, Scalia and Kennedy have voted to strike down congressional regulation of guns in schools and violence against women. But Scalia reasoned that those cases could be distinguished from the regulation of marijuana because they did not involve economic activity. Scalia’s willingness to uphold Congress’s broad power to regulate the national economy shows him at his best: a traditional conservative defender of judicial restraint, who is willing to respect precedents with which he disagrees.

Unfortunately, three other champions of states’ rights–O’Connor, Rehnquist, and Thomas–endorsed a reckless judicial activism. In her dissenting opinion, O’Connor’s contempt for Congress converged with her devotion to states’ rights: She said that Congress could not regulate medical marijuana unless it made detailed findings that the regulation was essential to the enforcement of national drug laws. But, as Stevens pointed out, it’s not the job of the Court to flyspeck what are quintessentially policy judgments; instead, the Court should uphold Congress’s regulations as long as a reasonable person might conclude that they would affect interstate commerce.

But wait, Raich has NOTHING to do with Wickard, save perhaps that they are both bad decisions. I mean, in Raich, we are talking about an activity (the interstate commerce in marijuana) which is illegal, and should ideally be zero. Only by some wild flight of fantasy could any reasonable person claim that a user cultivating marijuana for their own use could do anything but DECREASE the interstate traffic.

I mean, by this precedent, it could be claimed that it is Unconstitutional for Amber Alerts to be put out by neighboring States after a child has been kidnapped, as it may effect the interstate trade in sex slaves.

Update: Marty Lederman at SCOTUSblog has this interesting take on Wickard:

— And then there’s Wickard itself, of course. One got the sense that the Lopez and Morrison courts were not too fond of Wickard, but were willing to nominally affirm it as long as it could be narrowly described and its precedential import contained. But at some point, the Court would have to overrule Wickard, or distinguish it away to nothing, if it were to place serious constraints on Congress — and today’s decision suggests that we’ll be waiting quite a while longer for that day to come. Indeed, the Court is unlikely to abandon Wickard-like attenuation analysis anytime soon, because such analysis comes in very handy when there’s a statute that the Court wishes to uphold. Just two years ago, for instance, the Court unanimously upheld a federal statute requiring states to make certain hazardous-road reports inadmissible as evidence in state-court proceedings. This statute fell within Congress’s Commerce Clause power to protect channels of commerce, reasoned the Court, because of the following possible causal chain: Requiring such an evidentiary rule would make it more difficult for would-be plaintiffs to obtain evidence to support negligence actions against state and local governments, which would in turn “result in more diligent [government] efforts to collect the relevant information, more candid discussions of hazardous locations, better informed decisionmaking, and, ultimately, greater safety on our Nation’s roads.” The writer of this opinion, which makes Wickard‘s causal chain look direct and obvious by comparison? None other than Justice Thomas.

Read the whole post. There is a definite lack of intellectual consistancy in the Court’s so-called Federalist Revolution.

This from Gina Holland at AP:

WASHINGTON Jun 6, 2005 — Federal authorities may prosecute sick people who smoke pot on doctors’ orders, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, concluding that state medical marijuana laws don’t protect users from a federal ban on the drug.

The decision is a stinging defeat for marijuana advocates who had successfully pushed 10 states to allow the drug’s use to treat various illnesses.

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the 6-3 decision, said that Congress could change the law to allow medical use of marijuana.

The closely watched case was an appeal by the Bush administration in a case that it lost in late 2003. At issue was whether the prosecution of medical marijuana users under the federal Controlled Substances Act was constitutional.

Under the Constitution, Congress may pass laws regulating a state’s economic activity so long as it involves “interstate commerce” that crosses state borders. The California marijuana in question was homegrown, distributed to patients without charge and without crossing state lines.

The most chilling point from the majority opinion, authored by Justice Stevens is here:

We have never required Congress to legislate with scientific exactitude.

And the fact that this decision was joined by the Supreme suposed most rigorous “original constructionist” gives lie to the entire “activist judge” argument. The fact of the matter is that “they will do what they do, and we will do what we do. Constitution be damned.” This opens the door to any sort of police-state legislation.

Hat Tip to InstaPundit, who has many more links. Of particular interest is Radley Balko:

Thomas was dead-on, and proves to be the only principled federalist with an orginalist view of the Commerce Clause.

[…]

Let it no longer be said that Thomas carries water for Scalia.

He’s easily the most principled and consistent defender of federalism on the court.

This from NYTimes’ Tina Rosenberg:

Federal prosecutors in Virginia want Dr. William Hurwitz, recently convicted on 50 counts of distributing narcotics, to go to prison for life without parole when he is sentenced in mid-April.

For the 50 million or so Americans who suffer from chronic pain, the fate of Dr. Hurwitz should be of some interest. He is a prominent doctor committed to aggressive treatment of pain. His behavior in some cases was inexcusable. Patients for whom he freely provided large prescriptions should, at the very minimum, have been given more close supervision. But malpractice should be cause for loss of license.

Instead, Dr. Hurwitz has been prosecuted as a drug kingpin because some patients sold their pills, although prosecutors never claimed he made a penny from it. That sends a chilling message to doctors who treat people with extreme pain.

[…]

Dozens of doctors have been charged with drug trafficking because the D.E.A. felt they were prescribing too many pills. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons warns doctors to think twice before treating pain. “Discuss the risks with your family,” it says.

One California doctor who prescribed opioids, Frank Fisher, was charged with five counts of murder – including that of a patient who died as a passenger in a car accident. All charges were dropped. A doctor in Florida, James Graves, is serving 63 years for four counts of manslaughter involving overdoses by people who either abused their prescriptions or mixed their prescribed medicines with other drugs.

Your doctor could be next.

Hat Tip: The Agitator, where you’ll also find this.

Talkleft blogs on the allarming practice of police attempting to get search warrants for people’s homes based upon samples taken from thier doorknobs:

Is it my imagination or are our Fourth Amendment protections shrinking? A U.S. District Court in Utah is considering a challenge to searches of the doorknobs to our homes. It’s a tactic being used around the country and it’s called the Ionscan test. Police swipe a doorknob with a drug-detecting cloth and if the cloth then tests postive for microscopic particles of a controlled substance, they tell a judge they have probable cause to get a search warrant. Do they? It’s up in the air right now.

I am reminded, in this case, of U.S. v. $30,060 (1994):

On November 8, 1994, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit again took the lead in asset forfeiture reform by putting dog alert evidence into its proper perspective.

For the past ten years, the lure of asset forfeiture revenue has prompted law enforcement officers to use dog sniffs as witch- hunting tools to seize cash — any amount of cash — without any other evidence of criminal behavior. So called “drug-sniffing dogs” are supposedly trained to alert to the smell of drugs on money, and their noses, police claim, are so sensitive that they can detect miniscule amounts of drugs. When dogs “alert” to cash, the officers claim that proves that the money has come into contact with drugs, therefore, the money is drug proceeds, and the person whose money was seized is a drug courier. FEAR has long pointed out the falacy of this argument — the dog’s alert may prove there is drug residue on some of the cash, but that proves nothing about the person from whom the money was seized.

In United States v. $30,060, the Ninth Circuit held that a drug dog alert has little probative value in showing that cash was connected to drug trafficking.

The court recognized the fact that “cocaine can be easily transferred simply by shaking hands with someone who has handled the drug: a pharmacist, toxicologist, police officer, or drug trafficker” (quoting Andrew Schneider & Mary Pat Flaherty’s Presumed Guilty series for the Pittsburgh Press, August 1991.) A dollar bill used to snort cocaine goes back into circulation, contaminating all the other bills it comes into contact with — in wallets and cash drawers, the court explained.

The court’s opinion cited reports showing that 75% to 90% of all circulated currency in Los Angeles (the city where the seizure occurred) is contaminated with cocaine residue.

Orin Kerr also has an interesting analysis of this case.

It now appears that marijuana is beneficial in the treatment of brain cancer:

Marijuana Ingredient Inhibits VEGF Pathway Required For Brain Tumor Blood Vessels
Cannabinoids, the active ingredients in marijuana, restrict the sprouting of blood vessels to brain tumors by inhibiting the expression of genes needed for the production of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF).

According to a new study published in the August 15, 2004 issue of the journal Cancer Research, administration of cannabinoids significantly lowered VEGF activity in laboratory mice and two patients with late-stage glioblastoma.

“Blockade of the VEGF pathway constitutes one of the most promising antitumoral approaches currently available,” said Manuel Guzmán, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, with the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, and the study’s principal investigator.

“The present findings provide a novel pharmacological target for cannabinoid-based therapies.”

Glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive form of glioma, strikes more than 7,000 Americans each year and is considered one of the most malignant and deadliest forms of cancer, generally resulting in death within one to two years following diagnosis.

The disease is usually treated with surgery, followed by conventional radiation alone or in combination with chemotherapy. However, the main tumor often evades total destruction, surviving and growing again, eventually killing the patient. For this reason, researchers are actively seeking other therapeutic strategies, some of which might be considered novel.

This, and other scientific evidence, gives lie to the federal government’s listing of marijuana as a “Schedule I” narcotic (those with no valid medical use). It’s time for the drug warriors to stand down on the marijuana front.