In his oped of Feb.  4 in the Los Angeles Times, "Fighting A War Armed With Baby-Boomer Myths" [1], Justice Policy Institute Senior Researcher Mike Males argued that "Today's war on drugs sustains itself by depicting white suburban teenagers menaced by inner-city youths' habits." We agree that this is one of many myths sustaining current drug policy.  However, Males went on to accuse baby boomers, both supportive and critical of the drug war, of exploiting "moral panic over any drug use by kids" to advance their agendas.

Wrote Males, "The 'teenage heroin resurgence' repeatedly trumpeted in headlines and drug-war alarms is fabricated; it shows up nowhere in death, hospital, treatment or survey records." Alas, Males is mistaken [2].

Males continued, "...  drug-reform publications such as DrugSense Weekly allege an 'increase in heroin use among our youth' to indict the drug war." [3]

It was indeed our intent to indict the drug war.  It was not our intent to exploit or scapegoat minors nor panic parents.  We appreciate that there is little if any statistical relationship between access, usage rates and the severity of the law or its application.  [4]

Males disagrees, "Mike Gray, author of 'Drug Crazy,' and other reformers claim decriminalizing and regulating marijuana for adults would make it harder for teenagers to get.  Ridiculous."

As Mike Gray responded [5], "eight out of ten high school seniors consistently say they find marijuana 'fairly easy' or 'very easy' to get -- in fact, easier to get than alcohol." [6]

Males explains, "The 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reports 12- to 17-year-olds use legal, adult-regulated cigarettes and alcohol 100 times more than they use heroin; two to three times more teens drink or smoke than use the most popular illicit, marijuana."

Following along with Males' precarious leap from availability to usage rates, the drugs used most by adults are alcohol and tobacco as well. In the language of statistics, the popularity of these drugs and their use by both adults and teens is "endogenous" to their legal status.

Correct inferences about the effect of legal status on teen use, much less teen access, cannot be made by correlating legal status and usage rates given this problem.  Correct inferences can be made by tracing use patterns over time as legal status changes.  [7] Recall much of the opposition to alcohol prohibition was generated by the fact that youth alcohol abuse rates rose during that period.  [8]

Males concludes, "In short, teenagers are not the issue."

Teen access and usage rates are two of many relevant issues when considering the pros and cons of various regulatory models.  As Males observes, "protecting the kids" is one of the primary justifications for the drug war.  We would be remiss as reformers if we neglected to point out that the "message" prohibition allegedly sends to teens by criminalizing their parents is not being heard.  The emperor wears no clothes.  That is not to say we wish to exploit, persecute or scapegoat nudists.

We assume Males recognizes the importance and supports the goal of reducing teen access and minimizing the harm of teen drug abuse.  For the most part, all parents, both for and against the drug war, have a natural and understandable instinct to protect their children from substance- and prohibition-related harm.  This is neither new nor surprising.

As Prof.  Kenneth D. Rose observed, "Intriguingly, even though the women on the two sides of the prohibition issue had diametrically opposed political agendas, the arguments employed by prohibition women and by repeal women were often mirror images of each other.  Far from being a moribund relic of the nineteenth century, the domestic philosophy of home protection dominated the rhetoric and iconography of women who involved themselves in this debate." [9]

Reform groups such as DrugSense, Family Watch and the November Coalition [10] who call our attention to the failure of current policy to protect teens as advertised and, more importantly, to the collateral damage the drug war visits on families, women and children, are quite sincere.

That there is no evidence that prohibition significantly reduces teen access or usage rates compared to less expensive and socially destructive regulatory models is by no means the lone or most compelling issue, but it does bear repeating.

Footnotes:

[1] Fighting A War Armed With Baby-Boomer Myths
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n213/a06.html

[2] According to the 1999 MTF (Monitoring the Future Survey), rates of heroin use remained relatively stable and low since the late 1970s. After 1991, however, use began to rise among 10th- and 12th-graders and after 1993, among 8th-graders.  In 1999, prevalence of heroin use was comparable for all three grade levels.  Although past year prevalence rates for heroin use remained relatively low in 1999, these rates are about two to three times higher than those reported in 1991.

Source:	National Institute on Drug Abuse, Infofax on Heroin No.  13548

(Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services), http://www.nida.nih.gov/Infofax/heroin.html

[3] DrugSense Weekly Newsletter, #149, May 12, 2000
http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2000/ds00.n149.html#com4

[4] "We understand that if the sanctions for cannabis possession and cultivation, both in the law and its enforcement, were to be substantially reduced there would be a risk that more people would use it.  But the international evidence does not suggest that this is inevitable or even likely."

Source:	Police Foundation of the United Kingdom, "Drugs and the Law:

Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act of 1971", April 4, 2000.
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/runciman/

[5] See Mike Gray's response in "Is Prohibition Or Reform Better For Kids?", MAP Focus Alert #197 http://www.mapinc.org/alert/0193.html

[6] Drug War Facts: Adolescents
http://www.drugwarfacts.org/adolesce.htm

[7] "...  in those American states (eleven) which have reduced the possession of marihuana from a criminal offence to a regulatory offence (enforced by way of a ticket or fine), consumption rates do not appear to have been significantly affected.  These rates are not out of line with the rates of use in comparable states where possession of marihuana is punishable by imprisonment.  At times they are actually lower, suggesting that marihuana consumption rates tend to rise and fall independent of the law."

Source:	R.  v. Caine, (April 20, 1998)

http://www.johnconroy.com/caine-decision.html

[8] "In determining the age at which an alcoholic forms his drinking habit, it was noted: 'The 1920-1923 group were younger than the other groups when the drink habit was formed' (Pollock, 1942: 113)."

Source:	History of Alcohol Prohibition / National Commission on

Marihuana and Drug Abuse
http://druglibrary.org/schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/nc/nc2a.htm

[9] American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition / Kenneth D.  Rose, 1997. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0814774660/familywatch

[10] Family Watch, http://www.familywatch.org/
The November Coalition, http://www.november.org/