Government War on Marijuana and Marijuana Users
MPP handouts, reports, briefing papers, etc.
Outside reports, studies, etc.
Marijuana Arrests in the United States - 2007 - The most exhaustive collection of data ever on U.S. marijuana arrests, penalties and related information finds no relationship between marijuana arrest and use rates, while penalty structures act as a price support mechanism that boosts the illegal market.
The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990s - Two analysts from The Sentencing Project analyzed data on drug arrest from 1990 to 2002. During this period, U.S. marijuana arrests skyrocketed, making minor marijuana offenses the main focus in the "war on drugs."
The Vortex: The Concentrated Racial Impact of Drug Imprisonment and Characteristics of Punitive Counties - This report presents evidence that the United States' unmatched propensity for incarceration of its citizens for drug offenses suffers from significant racial disparity against African-Americans.
Up In Smoke: ONDCP's Wasted Efforts in the War on Drugs - This report from Citizens Against Government Waste calls the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy "a federal wasteland, throwing taxpayer money toward numerous high-priced drug control programs that have failed to show results."
Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) Highlights -- 2006 - This report looks at the whole spectrum of drug treatment admissions, not just young people (covered in "The DASIS Report: Adolescent Treatment Admissions: 1992-2002," above).
Stories From the Inside: Prisoner Rape and the War on Drugs - Non-violent drug offenders are swelling the prison population beyond capacity, causing crowding and mixing violent predators with vulnerable prisoners unprepared to protect themselves from prison rape.
Project D.A.R.E. Outcome Effectiveness Revisited - The D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program, which seeks to teach school-age children to avoid drugs, remains controversial. This study from the American Journal of Public Health combined the data from published studies of D.A.R.E.'s effectiveness, finding that the program had no effect.
National Drug Threat Assessment 2008 - The 2008 version of this annual U.S. Department of Justice report, compiled from information supplied by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, again unintentionally documents the failure of the government's war on marijuana.
National Drug Threat Assessment 2007 - As with other years' editions, the 2007 version of this annual U.S. Department of Justice report, compiled from information supplied by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, unintentionally documents the failure of the government's war on marijuana.
National Drug Threat Assessment 2006 - This annual report from the U.S. Department of Justice, compiled from information supplied by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, is -- albeit unintentionally -- a critique of the government's war on marijuana and its priorities in the overall war on drugs.
The Limited Relevance of Drug Policy: Cannabis in Amsterdam and in San Francisco - Officials often claim that marijuana must be banned in order to deter use, but this study from the American Journal of Public Health casts doubt upon such assumptions.
The Impact of Marijuana Law Enforcement in an Economic Model of Crime - One of the rationales for spending more money on marijuana law enforcement is to decrease crime overall, thus producing a cost savings and benefiting society. However this study suggests that the costs of focusing law enforcement on marijuana outweigh its benefits, and may even be counterproductive.
Federal Marijuana Policy: A Preliminary Assessment - Despite the federal government spending tens of billions to combat marijuana use over the last three decades, use and perception of the drug has barely changed.
Explicit and Implicit Effects of Anti-Marijuana and Anti-Tobacco TV Advertisements - This study adds to the growing evidence that White House anti-marijuana ads don't work and may even backfire.
Dopey Ads? National Anti-Drug Ad Campaign Might Pique Teens' Interst in Illicit Drugs, Researcher Says - Those government-funded anti-drug ads are supposed to reduce teen drug use, but they could be making the problem worse.
Development of a Rational Scale to Assess the Harm of Drugs of Potential Misuse - While governments, in this case the UK, use harm-based assessments of pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs seem to be classified arbitrarily.
The Dasis Report: Adolescent Treatment Admissions: 1992 and 2002 - Government officials regularly point to increasing numbers of teens in treatment for marijuana abuse or dependence as alarming evidence of marijuana's dangers. What they generally don't say -- but this U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report makes clear -- is that this growth has been fueled almost entirely by arrests.
Can Health Campaigns Make People Ill? The Iatrogenic Potential of Population-Based Cannabis Prevention - The authors of this editorial make a case for better evaluation of the efficacy and possible damaging effects of anti-drug advertising.
MPP op-ed columns
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