Is the Media Finally Getting it On Drug Policy?

I have been following drug policy for -- eek -- more than twenty years. While there have always been a few brave, high-profile journalists and pundits who dared to question the drug war, for the most part, the American press has been as gung-ho in cheering it on as our politicians.

Now -- with the Mexican drug war completely out of control, with Afghanistan supplying 90% of the world's opium and with an economy in collapse, the media has finally begun to seriously question our approach. In just the last week, Time, the LA Times, the NY Daily News, Denver Post, Orange County Register, Miami Herald and San Francisco Chronicle have all called for a drug policy re-think -- or for outright marijuana legalization.

Day-in, day-out, for years, we've seen stories about arrests, about drug seizures, about addicts and treatment. But virtually all coverage just reinforces conventional wisdom: treatment stories tend to boost a particular method without looking at the data or lack of data supporting it, cops and dealer stories tend to hype the amount of drugs seized and rarely look into the long term impact of such busts.

"Science" stories tend to conflate correlation and cause -- and fail to note contrary evidence. [In the instance of the linked story, if marijuana causes psychosis, why hasn't psychosis increased with the worldwide rise in marijuana use since the 60's?]

And of course, every so often we get a big wave of stories about a dangerous, new drug that's more addictive than anything that preceded it which menaces our youth and calls for a crackdown.

Those "drug menace" stories used to sell papers--but on the internet, it is trivially easy to search and find that while this year, methamphetamine is the most addictive and dangerous drug, last year, it was Oxycontin and ten years ago, the same was said of crack. Meanwhile, the last drug didn't addict all youth or collapse our society (bankers managed that all by themselves), so why should this one?

For years, virtually every internet discussion of drug policy has been dominated by drug policy reformers and outright legalization advocates--but this growing sentiment amongst the most educated and connected went unreported.

Maybe the MSM is finally waking up--they can no longer simply create and re-enforce conventional wisdom. When the facts about drugs are only a few clicks away, the propaganda loses its luster.

Given that the vast majority of journalists have smoked pot and at least a third of those in their 40's or up have probably taken cocaine without significant problems, does it really make sense for them to go on carrying water for the drug warriors, worrying about "the children" and infantilizing their audiences by repeating myths that many must know themselves to be untrue?

Will we finally dump the tired "gateway drug" nonsense about marijuana and the ridiculous "not your father's marijuana" idea that in the 60's and 70's marijuana wasn't dangerous and now it is?

This is not at all to imply that marijuana has no risks or that addiction can't do terrible harm -- but it's time to put risks in context and look at whether the solutions cause more harm than the problem they're intended to solve.

The media does still have significant power to shape policy and public opinion -- it simply can no longer sustain myths. If it starts to turn on the drug war and raise questions about other policies that have been seen as untouchable despite utter failure, maybe people will start to trust it again, too.

[hat tip to Tony Newman of DPA for the round-up of the current coverage].

Comments

[TheFobster]

I sure hope the media is starting to finally see how horrible the war on drugs is. It's a war against our own people and we've lost miserably. A good first step to ending this failed war would be legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana.

[todd432]

The media has always been a problem on this issue. If you look closely and pay attention to their coverage they always like to slip some negative connotation on the issue. Just the shear fact that no one other than the police and drug agencies show up to testify Against Marijuana Legalization should be enough to push it through.. Do the police and the drug agencies really speak for the American people?

[kindGSL]

"Do the police and the drug agencies really speak for the American people?"

They would like to.

It looks to me like the media have always been the drivers on this issue, in hand with the (alcoholic) cops that is. Any time any politicians come out against it, the (alcoholic) news media immediately takes them down as 'soft on crime', which actually translates into being against rape and torture in the real world. Go figure.

I would like somebody to explain why that is.

I think it is all about religion because it expresses the religious prejudices of the folks in media. But that is just my opinion, I'd like to know for sure.

Sister Lauren
THC Ministry

[flipper99]

The more you know about the history of cannabis control in the U.S. the more obvious it is that the roots of drug prohibition began with blatent racism...fear that farm workers in the southern border states would somehow compromise the virtue of white women by offering them marijuana.....and a similiar fear was evident in the southern cotton-growing states that blacks under the influence of cannabis would be raping white women. There is no science here...no pharmacology...no addiction medicine....just racial stereotypes and ignorance.

[Dwight5]

One unavoidable effect of drug prohibition is that every child in America can get any drug they want, anytime they want, in school, every day. The other is that our prisons are filled to overflowing with people who harmed no one and we've criminalized more than half the population.