{"id":3418,"date":"2014-09-21T04:04:31","date_gmt":"2014-09-21T04:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=3418"},"modified":"2014-09-22T02:36:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-22T02:36:23","slug":"drug-warriors-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2014\/09\/drug-warriors-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug Warriors Claim Colorado Going to Pot – Article by Mark Thornton"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mark Thornton
\n<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
September 20, 2014<\/span>
\n<\/big><\/div>\n
******************************<\/div>\n
\n

As we moved into the second half of 2014, I was eager to learn if marijuana legalization in Colorado was succeeding. At first there was little being reported, but eventually reports started appearing in the news. Business Insider<\/em> reported<\/a> that \u201cLegalizing Weed in Colorado Is A Huge Success,\u201d although they did temper their report with a \u201cDown Side\u201d as well. Jacob Sullum reported<\/a> that such things as underage consumption and traffic fatalities have fallen, although the declines were statistically insignificant and part of already declining trends in the statistics.<\/p>\n

The important thing for me is that things did not get much worse according to these reports. When you open the door to a newly legal recreational drug via a very clunky regulatory circus, and where the government gives its seal of approval, there are bound to be growing pains and tragic cases. For example, one college student jumped to his death after ingesting six times the recommended number of pot-infused cookies.<\/p>\n

The third report I came across was an editorial from the venerable Heritage Foundation. Given the previous reports, I was astonished to learn that in Colorado marijuana use was associated with an increase in highway fatalities, DUI arrests, underage consumption, drug-related student expulsions, college student use, and marijuana-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations.<\/p>\n

The editorial concludes: \u201cDrug policy should be based on hard science and reliable data. And the data coming out of Colorado points to one and only one conclusion: the legalization of marijuana in the state is terrible public policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, I began to get suspicious when I found out that the \u201chard science and reliable data\u201d were not collected, produced, or analyzed by the Heritage Foundation, but by some outfit named the \u201cRocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area\u201d program. They produced the report entitled \u201cThe Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact,\u201d<\/a> which strongly calls into question the legalization of marijuana in Colorado.<\/p>\n

There was no information about the \u201cRocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area\u201d program (RMHIDRA) in the report other than it was produced by the \u201cInvestigative Support Center\u201d in Denver, Colorado. It turns out the program is actually controlled by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, otherwise known as the Drug Czar.<\/p>\n

Colorado has been in the process of legalizing marijuana since 2000. It initially started small with limited medical marijuana and as of January of 2014, it has legalized both medicinal and recreational marijuana with local option for commercial production and retail distribution. So we should expect, ceteris paribus, that the full price to consumers has fallen and that consumption for medical and recreational use has increased.<\/p>\n

One of the most distressing empirical results in the RMHIDRA report was that while overall traffic fatalities decreased 14.8 percent between 2007 and 2012 in Colorado, traffic fatalities involving drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists that tested positive for marijuana increased by 100 percent. This data is exploited over several pages of the report using a variety of tables and charts.<\/p>\n

If Coloradoans were consuming more marijuana and relatively less alcohol, we would expect the number of traffic fatalities to decrease because marijuana has been found to be relatively<\/em> much safer<\/a> than alcohol in terms of driving and motor skills. But the data indicating a 100 percent increase in fatalities involving marijuana is puzzling, disturbing, and at odds with \u201chard science.\u201d If this was indeed \u201creliable data\u201d it would indicate that marijuana consumption in Colorado had greatly increased beyond anyone\u2019s estimation.<\/p>\n

It turns out RMHIDRA\u2019s data was anything but \u201creliable\u201d and would be best characterized as misleading. If you examine the footnote section of the report you will find that the data from 2012 \u201crepresents 100 percent reporting\u201d due to the efforts of RMHIDA to scour several data sources. However, a footnote reveals that in the data from 2006 through 2012 a very slight majority of cases, 50.13 percent were not<\/em> tested! If 100 percent were tested in 2012, then the percent tested for 2006\u20132011 is far less than 50 percent.<\/p>\n

What this means is that if you increased blood testing to 100 percent in 2012 when you were testing less than 50 percent of cases in prior years that you should expect to find at least<\/em> a 100 percent increase involving traffic fatalities with some detection of marijuana. This result not only brings into question the reports \u201creliable data,\u201d it brings into serious question RMHIDRA\u2019s respect for \u201chard science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another basic problem with their data is the meaning of \u201ctesting positive for marijuana.\u201d Marijuana\u2019s active ingredient THC can remain detectable days and weeks after it has been consumed. In contrast, marijuana impairment only lasts for several hours and is somewhat offset by safer driving behaviors, such as driving at slower speeds and avoiding high traffic areas. Given that marijuana consumption has increased significantly since 2000 we should indeed expect many more positive blood tests, but without making the leap that marijuana consumption is causing more highway fatalities.<\/p>\n

The RMHIDRA report also offers up some dreary data on youth marijuana use. In particular, they conclude that marijuana use by young Coloradans is higher than the national average and increasing. Most importantly, they point out that between the 2008\u201309 and 2012\u2013\/13 school years there was a 32 percent increase in drug-related suspensions and expulsions in Colorado.<\/p>\n

Other experts using different data sources believe that there has actually been a secular trend of decreasing marijuana use by the young people of Colorado throughout the entire legalization process. However, with respect to suspensions and expulsions, there has indeed been a 32 percent increase in the number of drug-related suspensions and expulsions.<\/p>\n

However, weighted on a per pupil basis, there has been virtually no increase in the rate of drug-related suspensions and expulsions. The numerical increase in suspensions and expulsions is more than completely accounted for by the increased number of pupils and the relative increase of impoverished minority groups.<\/p>\n

In addition, \u201cdrug related\u201d suspensions and expulsions involves other drugs besides marijuana, such as cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. Marijuana-related suspensions and expulsions are overwhelmingly related to \u201cpossession\u201d and \u201cunder the influence,\u201d not things like violence, property destruction, and classroom disturbances.<\/p>\n

The RMHIDRA report spans over 150 pages, but everything I had time to examine was either clearly wrong, misleading, or intentionally sensational.<\/p>\n

Of course there are other sources of misinformation on the relative risks of cannabis. For example, there are academics who warn of the dangers of cannabis while they are receiving<\/a> money from the pharmaceutical pain drug companies. This again suggests a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.<\/p>\n

This is particularly disturbing and relevant information given recent reports which indicate that relatively fewer<\/a> overdose painkiller deaths are occurring in states with medical marijuana laws.<\/p>\n

There are clearly some things wrong with Colorado\u2019s approach to legalizing marijuana and there are clearly going to be some bad results at the individual and state level, but this report is not the right way of determining and correcting those problems. As the Heritage Foundation editorial concluded: \u201cDrug policy should be based on hard science and reliable data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Thornton is a senior resident fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and is the book review editor for the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics<\/i>. He is the author of The Economics of Prohibition<\/i><\/a>, coauthor of Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War<\/i><\/a>, and the editor of The Quotable Mises<\/i><\/a>, The Bastiat Collection<\/i><\/a>, and An Essay on Economic Theory<\/i><\/a>. Send him mail<\/a>. See Mark Thornton’s article archives<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article was published on Mises.org<\/a> and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License<\/a>, which requires that credit be given to the author.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Thornton September 20, 2014 ****************************** As we moved into the second half of 2014, I was eager to learn if marijuana legalization in Colorado was succeeding. At first there was little being reported, but eventually reports started appearing in the news. Business Insider reported that \u201cLegalizing Weed in Colorado Is A Huge Success,\u201d although they did temper their report with a \u201cDown Side\u201d as well. Jacob Sullum reported that such things as underage consumption and traffic fatalities have fallen,…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,5],"tags":[486,2212,3624,1545,1548,2198,1625,3625,3623,25,1447],"class_list":["post-3418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice","category-politics","tag-colorado","tag-data","tag-heritage-foundation","tag-legalization","tag-mark-thornton","tag-misinformation","tag-report","tag-rmhidra","tag-statistics","tag-united-states","tag-war-on-drugs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3419,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3418\/revisions\/3419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}