Fifty-one percent (51%) of American adults say alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Just 19% disagree and say pot is worse.
But 25% say both are equally dangerous. Just two percent (2%) say neither is dangerous.
Younger adults are more likely than their elders to view alcohol as the more dangerous of the two.
Fifty-three percent (53%) of women say alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana, compared to 48% of men. Men by a two-to-one margin over women say pot is riskier, but women are more inclined to say both are dangerous.
Unmarried adults are more critical of alcohol than those who are married. Those with children at home think alcohol is more dangerous than those without kids living with them.
Given the multitude of ways that our culture celebrates booze while simultaneously stigmatizing cannabis, these survey results are rather remarkable. Despite more than seven decades of federally sponsored pot propaganda, a slight majority of adults — including many Americans who drink booze and don’t smoke pot — recognize that alcohol poses far greater harms to the consumer and to society than does weed.
Quite literally, alcohol is an intoxicant; cannabis is not.
The word intoxicant is derived from the Latin noun, toxicum, meaning: “a poison.” It’s an appropriate description for booze. Alcohol is toxic to healthy cells and organs, a side-effect that results in some 35,000 deaths per year. Ethanol, the psychoactive ingredient in booze, is carcinogenic following its initial metabolization, which is why even moderate drinking is positively associated with increased incidences of various types of cancer. Heavy alcohol consumption can depress the central nervous system — inducing unconsciousness, coma, and death — and is strongly associated with increased risks of injury (Booze plays a role in about 41,000 fatal accidents per year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.) and acts of violence. In fact, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Crime Statistics, alcohol consumption plays a role in approximately one million violent crimes annually.
By contrast, the active compounds in marijuana, known as cannabinoids, are remarkably non-toxic and actually mimic chemicals naturally produced by the body, so-called endocannabinoids, that are vital for maintaining one’s proper health. Unlike alcohol, marijuana is incapable of causing fatal overdose — cannabinoids do not act upon the brain stem — and its use is inversely associated with aggression and injury. Finally, lifetime use of cannabis is not associated with increased risk of mortality or various types of cancer — including lung cancer — and may even reduce such risk.
Given our government’s demonization of the cannabis plant and its users it’s a wonder that anyone — much less over half of America — is finally recognizing these facts. That said, this awareness does not yet translate into majority support for legalizing cannabis, which Rasmussen reports remains below 50 percent — meaning that we still have our work cut out for us.
Ms. Corry is a Denver-based public policy analyst and political strategist, specializing in civil rights issues. In 2008, Jessica was highlighted as one of Colorado’s most influential women by the Denver Examiner; in 2007, she was named one of Colorado’s top political “Movers and Shakers” by the Colorado Statesman. She regularly appears on Denver TV and radio for her policy expertise and her blog, “The Corry Story,” is published by The Denver Post’s PoliticsWest.com.
Jessica is a former GOP candidate for the Colorado state senate, where despite being outspent more than four-to-one, she garnered nearly 47 percent of the vote against a two-term incumbent. She began her career as a press secretary in the United States Senate, working for U.S. Senators Fred Thompson (R-TN) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and for the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.
Ms. Corry is the proud parent of two young daughters, and is an outspoken critic of cannabis prohibition in particular, its adverse effects on children. “It costs $30,000 a year to incarcerate a pot dealer,” she says, “and we spend $10,000 a year to educate a child.”
Jessica says, “Yes we cannabis” and so should you! Meet Jessica and hundreds of other like-minded people at NORML’s 38th annual conference, taking place September 24-26 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown San Francisco. For registration information, please visit: http://www.norml.org/conference.
It’s that time of year — time for one of America’s leading prohibitionist organizations, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (aka CASA), to once again report that seven-plus decades of criminal pot prohibition have resulted in making cannabis more readily available to teens than alcohol!
A recent study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has some startling results about teens and drugs.
In their study, they found that 40 percent of teens could get marijuana within a day; another quarter said they could get it within an hour. In another portion of the survey, teens between the ages of 12 and 17 say it’s easier to get marijuana than buy cigarettes**, beer or prescription drugs. That number is up 37 percent from 2007.
[**Note: The CASA study actually reported that teens could more readily access pot than beer or prescription drugs; the percentage of teens reporting that either marijuana or cigarettes were the "easiest to buy" were equal (26 percent) -- got to love the mainstream media's dedication to accuracy in reporting. That said, the percentage of Americans actually smoking cigarettes is now at an all-time low.]
Ask any advocate of marijuana prohibition, including CASA’s head Joseph ‘Russian Roulette’ Califano, why they oppose legalization and you will almost always receive the same response: Keeping pot illegal keeps it out of the hands of children. Yet CASA’s own survey demonstrates once again that just the opposite is true. In fact, it’s legalization, regulation, and public education — coupled with the enforcement of age restrictions — that most effectively keeps mind-altering substances out of the hands of children.
Abdicating the production and distribution of pot solely to black market criminal entrepreneurs increases, rather than decreases, teens’ access to cannabis.
In short, no system could possibly provide America’s children with greater access to weed than the one we have: prohibition. Now when will our elected officials get the message?
Mr. Stamper was a police officer for 34 years, the first 28 in San Diego, the last six (1994-2000) as Seattle’s Chief of Police. He has a doctorate in Leadership and Human Behavior, and is the author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing (Nation Books, 2005). He is an advisory board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and is a frequently featured critic of the drug war on radio and cable news outlets.
Most recently, Norm penned the forward to the book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? (Chelsea Green, 2009), stating: “From my own work and the experiences of other members of the law enforcement community, it is abundantly clear that marijuana is rarely, if ever, the cause of harmfully disruptive or violent behavior. In fact, I would go so far as to say that marijuana use often helps to tamp down tensions where they otherwise might exist.”
No employee of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) sans the director has ever drawn more public and academic criticism than David Murray, ONDCP’s chief scientist.
Virtually an entire book was derived from the ONDCP’s twisting science and statistical data during Murray’s eight-year tenure—Dr. Matthew Robinson’s Lies, Damn Lies and Drug War Statistics, A Critical Analysis Of Claims Made By The ONDCP. You can watch Murray and Robinson debate about the drug war and ONDCP’s methodology at the Cato Institute here.
Question: When will Obama and Holder finally kick Murray to the curb and replace him with someone other than another anti-cannabis zealot masquerading as a ’scientist’?
The Washington Monthly’s Charlie Homans cast some much needed, white hot light in Mr. Murray’s direction.
******
The Bushie Obama Can’t Fire
by Charles Homans
August 25, 2009
Obama vowed to reverse Bush’s hard-line drug policies, but Dubya still has a man raising havoc in the White House drug office. Problem is, Obama can’t fire him.
The Bush years were not the finest hour for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. Drug czar John Walters, who ran the place beginning in late 2001, waged a militaristic drug war, pouring money into dubiously effective efforts to fight trafficking abroad while letting treatment programs stagnate at home, and obsessing over marijuana at the expense of more dangerous drugs.
It’s an approach that Barack Obama’s drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, is now trying to steer away from. He has vowed to end the use of the phrase “war on drugs,” and the hard-liners who filled out Walters’ office are now gone. All of them, that is, except one guy: David Murray, the drug czar’s chief scientist, and Walters’ most enthusiastic disciple.
David Murray is a lone human memento of the Bush administration’s drug war, surrounded bypeople who are trying to undo the work on which he has spent the past eight years.
“He was brought in as a political hatchet man,” says Ross Deck, a former ONDCP analyst and a 16-year-veteran of the office who quit during the Walters years. Before joining in the ONDCP, Murray had no prior experience in addiction science, or law enforcement, or anything else particularly related to drug policy.
He is on the record questioning many of the drug policies espoused by Kerlikowske. Congress has spent three years trying to get him fired.
Why, then, does Murray somehow still have a job in the Obama administration? The reason can be found in the fine print of the federal bureaucracy. Midway through his tenure, Walters moved Murray—at the time his special assistant—from a politically appointed job to the chief scientist’s post, a theoretically apolitical position that makes him much harder to fire. By law, Kerlikowske can’t touch a hair on his head for the first 120 days of his own stint as drug czar. Which means that until the middle of September, Murray is living in a peculiar limbo: a lone human memento of the Bush administration’s botched prosecution of the drug war, surrounded by people who are trying to undo the work on which he has spent the past eight years.
ONDCP veterans speak fondly of Murray’s predecessor, a defense research veteran named Al Brandenstein, who was the drug czar office’s only previous chief scientist from 1991 until Walters removed him in 2004. Brandenstein worked to put advanced drug-detection technologies in the hands of law-enforcement agencies, but he was also interested in advancing the understanding of the demand side of the drug-use equation. In the 1990s, he got government funding for brain-scanning equipment that medical researchers would use to better understand the biochemistry of addiction. Critics in the drug-policy community argue that Brandenstein’s work produced little of value, and that his post existed mostly to provide a pretext for government spending on gadgetry—but for better or worse, that was what Congress had asked for when it created the chief scientist job.
Murray, on the other hand, was not. A former cultural anthropologist who had left academia for the conservative think-tank circuit, he had made a name for himself in Washington a decade earlier with an article in Policy Review about the danger out-of-wedlock births posed to the fabric of American society. (It began, memorably, “America is becoming a nation of bastards.”) As Walters’ special assistant, he had made headlines in Canada in 2003 by suggesting that the U.S.’s northern neighbor’s experiments with marijuana decriminalization could cause diplomatic problems along the border.
Shelving most of Brandenstein’s work, Murray pursued the occasional science project—he was enthusiastic about testing the Beltway’s sewage for traces of cocaine—but mostly used his office as a political soapbox, lambasting opponents and burying unflattering data that suggested his boss wasn’t exactly winning the drug war. (The Statistical Assessment Service, a research organization that Murray himself launched in 1994, has in recent years devoted much ink to debunking its own founder’s claims on drug-policy issues like needle exchange.)
In congressional testimony, Murray branded medical-marijuana advocates “modern-day snake-oil proponents”; in a 2007 appearance on a panel at the libertarian Cato Institute, he derided the think tank’s pro-legalization stance to be “an illusion” that “grows out of late-night dormitory engagements in college that one hopes one outgrows.” He also alienated more middle-of-the-road drug-policy experts both inside and outside the bureaucracy; one outside expert recalls attending a drug-research group meeting with Murray and hearing him offhandedly refer to the pot-friendly Netherlands as a “narco-state.”
“David acted as though he had said nothing the least bit unusual in saying that,” the expert says. “It’s indicative of how off the map he is—he simply doesn’t understand how strange his own views are about these things.”
Congress felt similarly. In the fall of 2005, as the panic over methamphetamine use in rural America was reaching its apex, Walters sent Murray to brief the members the House of Representatives’ Meth Caucus—a group formed by mostly rural and Western congressmen in 2001—on what the administration planned to do about the burgeoning problem. The assembled lawmakers were so spectacularly unimpressed that one of them, Indiana Republican Mark Souder, marched out of the meeting and promptly demanded that Murray step down from his post, calling his briefing “pathetic” and an “embarrassment.” Murray’s performance was so bad, Souder declared, that “if Director Walters and anyone else in that office agrees with what was said today, they should resign.”
This was grandstanding, of course. But Congress made more substantial efforts to oust Murray after the Democrats came to power in 2006. Over the next three years, the Senate Appropriations Committee—which controls the federal government’s purse strings—used its annual report to criticize the chief scientist directly, a highly unusual gesture. “The Committee,” one of the reports reads, “is highly disappointed in the director of this program”—Murray—“and is troubled by his ideas for research and development that appear to have little or no value.” When Walters insisted on keeping him in the post in the face of such criticism, the Appropriations Committee responded by slashing funding for it. Murray’s office, which received nearly $47 million in 2003, got just $1 million this year.
The committee has made it clear that ONDCP’s science shop won’t see another dime until Murray is gone, at least from his current job. What happens after that is an open question. (Repeated calls to the ONDCP’s press office for an interview with Murray or a comment on his future prospects went unreturned.) While most drug-policy watchers assume Kerlikowske will kick him out of the chief scientist post as soon as he can, actually firing him is trickier. There are ways to encourage burrowed-in ideologues to quit, however—ONDCP veterans recall that George Bush Sr.’s drug czar, Bob Martinez, used to do it by assigning them to an office with no windows, phones, or computers.
“He’ll be there until somebody runs him off,” Ross Deck, the former ONDCP analyst, says of Murray. “What can they do with him? They can give him a job counting paperclips.”
Earlier today Reuters News Wirefinally took the time to report that lifetime marijuana use is associated with a reduced risk of head and neck cancer. That’s according to the findings of a population-based case control study of some 1,000 subjects, published in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.
But you already know this because NORML initially posted the news in July.
Authors reported, “After adjusting for potential confounders (including smoking and alcohol drinking), 10 to 20 years of marijuana use was associated with a significantly reduced risk of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma … [as was] moderate weekly use.”
Subjects who smoked marijuana and consumed alcohol and tobacco (two known high risk factors for head and neck cancers) also experienced a reduced risk of cancer, the study found.
“This association was consistent across different measures of marijuana use (marijuana use status, duration, and frequency of use). … Further, we observed that marijuana use modified the interaction between alcohol and cigarette smoking, resulting in a decreased HNSCC risk among moderate smokers and light drinkers, and attenuated risk among the heaviest smokers and drinkers.“
Notably, Reuters‘ writers took a much more skeptical view of the study’s findings, as evident by the headline:
Strange that Reuters would frame their headline in the form of a question. After all, the study’s authors expressed no such reservations, concluding in the final line of their abstract, “Our study suggests that moderate marijuana use is associated with reduced risk of HNSCC (head and neck cancer).”
Reuters skepticism continues:
It’s unclear why marijuana would prevent cancer, if in fact the study is borne out by others, but the authors note that chemicals in pot called cannabinoids have been shown to have potential antitumor effects. Other studies have linked marijuana use to a reduced risk of some cancers, such as cancer of the prostate, and now head and neck cancer.
… Overall, however, research on the effects of marijuana on human health is mixed. Some studies have suggested the drug can increase a person’s risk of heart attack or stroke and cause some cancers such as lung cancer.
Let’s take things one at a time, shall we. First, it’s hardly ‘unclear’ as to why marijuana would be cancer-preventive. To quote the scientific journal Nature Reviews Cancer from 2003:
Cannabinoids inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals. They do so by modulating key cell-signaling pathways, thereby inducing direct growth arrest and death of tumor cells, as well as by inhibiting tumor angiogenesis and metastasis. Cannabinoids are selective anti-tumor compounds, as they can kill tumor cells without affecting their non-transformed counterparts.
Reuters unnamed author(s) further add the caveat: “if in fact the study is borne out by others.” News flash: this study was performed precisely because pot’s cancer preventive effects had been “borne out in others,” such as this:
The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer. … “We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”
Reuters further states: “Other studies have linked marijuana use to a reduced risk of some cancers, such as cancer of the prostate, and now head and neck cancer.” Notably, the wire service failed to include that cannabinoids also have documented anti-cancer fighting abilities in the treatment of: brain cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, and pancreatic cancer — just to name a few.
And finally, Reuters obligatorily adds that pot’s effects on health are ‘mixed,’ alleging that “some studies have suggested the drug can increase a person’s risk of heart attack or stroke and cause some cancers such as lung cancer.” Ah yes, the ever elusive “some studies.”
Well, as for cannabis smoking and lung cancer, that claim was rebutted by the largest study of its kind, profiled above. As for the alleged risk of “heart attack or stroke,” a large-scale population study by Kaiser Permanente reported “no association of marijuana use with cardiovascular disease hospitalization or mortality.”
That said, I’m all for the media espousing skepticism regarding claims about cannabis. Of course, were the MSM to apply this same attitude to the federal government’s claims about marijuana and pot prohibition, we wouldn’t have to suffer through stories like these, now would we?
Recently, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released a state-by-state drug use report that is both useful and informative. These government reports, like others regarding drug use, are based on surveys and the willingness of respondents to be truthful about their illicit drug use.
According to SAMHSA, what states had the highest and lowest marijuana rates of cannabis use? Rhode Island (16.2%) and Utah (7.17%) respectively.
The New York Times‘ Economix blog created some helpful interactive mapping to illustrate the SAMSHA data.
Hempfest’s massive crowds last weekend spurred Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Wells and former state Rep. Toby Nixon to pen a bipartisan letter in the Seattle Times on the need for Washington State to join the other 13 states that have ‘decriminalized’ possession of cannabis–as well as the state’s largest population center, King County (Seattle), which effectively decriminalized possession by popular vote in 2003. Checkout this CNN iReport about this year’s Hempfest here (and kudos for the closing shot on the wrap).
Time for Washington state to decriminalize marijuana
By Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Toby Nixon
Special to The Times
Once again, the Seattle Hempfest drew tens of thousands to parks along the waterfront this weekend. In its mission statement, the all-volunteer organization that produces the event says, “The public is better served when citizens and public officials work cooperatively in order to successfully accomplish common goals.”
We agree. That is why we, as a Democratic state senator and former Republican state representative, support state Senate Bill 5615. This bill would reclassify adult possession of marijuana from a crime carrying a mandatory day in jail to a civil infraction imposing a $100 penalty payable by mail. The bill was voted out of committee with a bipartisan “do pass” recommendation and will be considered by legislators in 2010.
The bill makes a lot of sense, especially in this time of severely strapped budgets. Our state Office of Financial Management reported annual savings of $16 million and $1 million in new revenue if SB 5615 passes. Of that $1 million, $590,000 would be earmarked for the Washington State Criminal Justice Treatment Account to increase support of our underfunded drug-treatment and drug-prevention services.
The idea of decriminalizing marijuana is far from new. In 1970, Congress created the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. A bipartisan body with 13 members — nine appointed by President Nixon and four by Congress — the commission was tasked with conducting a yearlong, authoritative study of marijuana. When the commission issued its report, “Marijuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding,” in1972, it surprised many by recommending decriminalization:
Possession of marijuana in private for personal use would no longer be an offense; and distribution of small amounts of marijuana for no remuneration or insignificant remuneration not involving profit would no longer be an offense.
Twelve states took action and decriminalized marijuana in the 1970s. Nevada decriminalized in 2001, and Massachusetts did so in 2008. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, states where marijuana possession is decriminalized represent more than 35 percent of our nation’s population.
These states have not seen a corresponding increase in use. Nor have the 14 states that have adopted legal protections for patients whose doctors recommend the medical use of marijuana. Nor the several cities and counties that have adopted “lowest law enforcement priority” ordinances like Seattle’s Initiative 75, which made adult marijuana use the city’s lowest law enforcement priority in 2003.
On the flip side of the coin, escalating law enforcement against marijuana users has not achieved its intended goals. From 1991 to 2007, marijuana arrests nationwide tripled from 287,900 to a record 872,720, comprising 47 percent of all drug arrests combined. Of those, 89 percent were for possession only. Nevertheless, according to a study released earlier this year by two University of Washington faculty members:
• The price of marijuana has dropped;
• Its average potency has increased;
• It has become more readily available; and
• Use rates have often increased during times of escalating enforcement.
We now have decades of proof that treating marijuana use as a crime is a failed strategy. It continues to damage the credibility of our public health officials and compromise our public safety. At a fundamental level, it has eroded our respect for the law and what it means to be charged with a criminal offense: 40 percent of Americans have tried marijuana at some point in their lives. It cannot be that 40 percent of Americans truly are criminals.
We hope that the citizens of this state will work with us to help pass SB 5615, the right step for Washington to take toward a more effective, less costly and fairer approach to marijuana use.
State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Seattle, left, chairs the Senate Labor, Commerce & Consumer Protection Committee. Toby Nixon was state representative for the 45th legislative district, 2002-2006, and served as vice-chair of the House Republican Caucus and ranking member of the House Committee on State Government Operations and Accountability.
According to today’s New York Times the Mexican government has “legalized” drug possession. Really? Perhaps someone at the NYT ought to inform Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
First of all, let’s explore the various connotations evoked by the word “legal.” After all, without proper context this term can mean many different things to many different people.
Oranges are legal. So are alcohol and tobacco. Aspirin is legal, as are thousands of prescription medications — including highly dangerous drugs like oxycodone. Yet while all of these products are ‘legal’ — in the sense that they may be lawfully produced and purchased by certain consumers — their distribution and possession are governed by vastly different regulatory controls.
Oranges, for instance, are widely available to all consumers, regardless of age. People can even grow their own, if they so desire. Aspirin is also readily available to the general public as an ‘over-the-counter’ medication, whereas prescription drugs may only be purchased at a state-governed pharmacy by those who possess written authorization from a licensed physician.
The sale and possession of alcohol and tobacco are also legal, yet both substances are heavily taxed and tightly controlled. State-imposed age restrictions place limits on who can legally purchase and use both products, and federal laws also specify how and where these products may be advertised. Federal, state, and county laws also impose strict controls regarding where these products can be legally purchased. Adults may legally produce certain types of alcohol, like beer and wine, privately in their home — if their production is intended for their own personal consumption and not for sale to the public. By contrast, federal and state laws tightly regulate the commercial production of any type of alcohol.
So then, when the NYT’s headline asserts that drug possession in Mexico is “legal,” do they mean that marijuana is now legal like oranges are legal? Or like alcohol? Or like prescription drugs?
Unfortunately, the answer is ‘none of the above.’ In fact, no definition of ‘legal’ that I’m aware of resembles Mexico’s new drug possession scheme. The Associated Pressexplains:
The new law [Editor's note: NORML initially reported on Mexico's impending legal change this past May.] sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities no longer face criminal prosecution.
… The maximum amount of marijuana for “personal use” under the new law is 5 grams — the equivalent of about four joints. The limit is a half gram for cocaine, the equivalent of about 4 “lines.” For other drugs, the limits are 50 milligrams of heroin, 40 milligrams for methamphetamine and 0.015 milligrams for LSD.
Anyone caught with drug amounts under the new personal-use limit will be encouraged to seek treatment, and for those caught a third time treatment is mandatory.
… “This is not legalization, this is regulating the issue and giving citizens greater legal certainty,” said Bernardo Espino del Castillo of the attorney general’s office.
So let’s review, shall we? Under Mexico’s new law:
* The private production of cannabis will remain a criminal offense;
* The commercial production of cannabis will remain criminal offense (and this production will continue to be monopolized by criminal enterprises/drug cartels);
* The commercial distribution of cannabis to consumers will remain a criminal offense (and this distribution will continue to be monopolized by criminal enterprises/drug cartels);
* The private possession of cannabis in quantities greater than “four joints” will remain a criminal offense;
* The private possession of cannabis in quantities under “four joints” will no longer be a criminal offense, but the marijuana will continue to be classified as contraband (and therefore seized by police), and the user will be strongly urged to seek drug treatment (or coerced to do so if it is one’s third ‘offense.’)
Does any of this sound like “legalization” (or even “regulation,” to quote the Mexican attorney general’s office) to you? I didn’t think so. A small step in the right direction, perhaps — but legalization? Not a chance — no matter how you define it!
Fire up the ol’ DVR this weekend because C-SPAN TV is airing Washington Times‘ ‘Inside the Beltway’ columnist and author John McCaslin being interviewed by NORML founder and legal counsel Keith Stroup.
Keith interviews John for an entire hour about his new book Weed Man, a biography about Jimmy Divine–one of America’s most prolific cannabis smugglers.
Broadcast times for this one-on-one interview on C-SPAN2, BookTV are:
More than half of Americans agree that marijuana is safer than alcohol. Rassmussen Reports has the details here:
It’s that time of year — time for one of America’s leading prohibitionist organizations, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (aka 
Mr. Stamper was a police officer for 34 years, the first 28 in San Diego, the last six (1994-2000) as Seattle’s Chief of Police. He has a doctorate in Leadership and Human Behavior, and is the author of 
Well, that only took a month.
According to today’s New York Times the Mexican government has 
