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  In the City, Pot Helps Addicts Kick Crack
Posted by FoM on August 14, 2001 at 18:31:36 PT
By Maia Szalavitz, AlterNet 
Source: AlterNet 

cannabis When four people were shot in a robbery at a marijuana dealer's apartment above New York's Carnegie Deli this summer, many newspapers, including the New York Times saw it as an occasion to tut tut that, as the Times' headlined it, "Violent Crimes Undercut Marijuana's Mellow Image."

Far less attention (in fact, no Times coverage at all) was given to a Justice Department study released just a month later which found that amongst young people getting arrested, marijuana use has increased in direct parallel with the decline of crack -- a phenomenon that also tracks perfectly the dramatic fall in violent crime seen in the 1990's.

Contrary to The Times' notion that pot has become a new cause of violence, this data suggests just the opposite. It also implies that the on-going crackdown on marijuana use may ultimately be counter-productive -- and could help reverse an unusual, spontaneous trend in which younger kids saw and disliked what hard drugs had done to their parents and older siblings and turned to pot instead.

Though many people believe marijuana law enforcement has eased -- unbelievably, former President Clinton told Rolling Stone he thought that "most small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized" -- there were more marijuana arrests during the Clinton administration than under any previous President. Pot arrests nearly doubled between 1980 and 1999. And 88% of these arrests -- over 40% of all drug arrests in the U.S. -- are for marijuana possession, not sales.

As in most of the drug war, the burden has fallen disproportionately on minority youth. Though African Americans make up just 12% of the population (and 13% of drug users), 38% of those arrested for drug offenses and 59% of those convicted are black, according to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

But, say ethnographers, it was black and Latino youth themselves who spurred the end of the crack epidemic and the precipitous fall in violent crime that followed. Ric Curtis, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College in New York City has studied street patterns of drug use for decades.

"There are several lines of evidence for the idea that minority youth began substituting pot for crack," says Curtis. "The ethnographic evidence dates back to 1988."

"Back then, a lot of young black crack dealers in Flatbush were switching from smoking crack from glass stems to smoking "woolah" joints." he says. These were developed by West Indians, who would roll marijuana joints in a tobacco leaf and sprinkle some crack into the mix. The leaves were purchased at smokeshops for $1 each.

When a crackdown on headshops began, these leaves became hard to get. To replace them, says Curtis, Rastas began to buy Philly blunt cigars and put crack as well as marijuana inside.

"They did that to wean themselves off the stem," he says. "For lack of a better word, smoking weed blunted the desire to keep chasing that pipe. The dealers were telling us they did this because otherwise they would smoke up all their money."

Finding it an effective way of kicking crack, the dealers gradually reduced the amount of cocaine in their blunts until they became pure pot and tobacco. Then, says Curtis, they "began dogging their partners and friends for [continuing to smoke] crack." Though dealers still made their money from crackheads, no one wanted their sisters, girlfriends or other family members as customers.

33-year-old Awilda, a Brooklyn resident who requested that only her first name be revealed, is one of the former crack users who found marijuana helpful in stopping the pipe. While in jail for a crack-related assault, she swore on the Bible that she would never go back to that drug. When she found herself using it again, she decided to try weed instead. "It made me forget the crack," she says. "It's been four years since I smoked it and I have no more desire for it. I like blunts better."

In 1990, the Philly Blunt craze broke out of the ghetto. Blunt t-shirts became popular with teens everywhere -- as white suburban kids picked up the latest inner city fashion. "My interpretation is that the t-shirts were an anti-crack message," says Curtis, "The blunts took off amongst all kids not just dealers," as crack began to fall away.

And, by 1993 and 1994, quantifiable data started to back the ethnographic research. The federal studies which track drug use amongst arrestees began to show a decline in crack-positive urines and an increase in those testing positive for marijuana.

The trend brought enormously positive results. "You don't have junior assaulting Grandma to knock the gold out of her tooth to get another hit of crack. Instead, he's spending $10.50 a day between three guys on a blunt -- rather than $500 a day, robbing, assaulting, etc. to get that crack. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out which drug you'd rather have them using," says Curtis, adding, "it was directly related to the drop in crime."

'That's a gateway, all right," he continues. "I'm almost willing to accept Nancy Reagan's gateway effect [that pot leads to hard drug use] if she'll accept mine. It's a gate that swings both ways and I think [it's stronger in our direction]. It's not a gateway in for many, but it's a way out for some."

With inner city kids focused on drugs like pot which allow them to retain a sense of self-control, measures to increase price or decrease availability could really backfire. In Liverpool, England in the 1970's, for example, a bust-related pot shortage helped trigger a heroin epidemic. More recently, black rappers have begun writing songs about ecstasy, which had previously been seen as a white drug.

Curtis says that distribution networks for ecstasy have not yet penetrated the ghetto -- but he thinks he knows how they will start. A dealer who was one of his subjects was the cellmate of a Hasidic youth charged in one of New York's major MDMA busts. "If ecstasy folks start spending time in Riker's, it could produce new networks," he says.

While ecstasy certainly doesn't have the potential that crack did to devastate an entire generation (it is calming, rather than paranoia- producing and it doesn't produce the every-ten-minute need for more that crack did, to cite just two reasons), unlike pot, it can kill by overdose and may cause the deaths of some brain cells.

If we are ever to improve drug policy, at some point we will have to face up to the question of the relative risks of different drugs and the trade-offs made when utilizing limited law enforcement resources. Police breaking up pot distribution networks can't stop cocaine dealers.

Efforts to drive up pot prices and crack down on sales are not risk-free. Higher prices do make the possibility of trade-related violence like the Carnegie Deli attack more likely, for one.

The New York Times may view the replacement of crack by pot as an aside to a "larger" story of how high prices may be making the marijuana market more violent, writing that "in some cases, officials said, the market for marijuana has benefited from the fact that many young people are loath to repeat the mistakes of their crack-addicted elders." But the real story is that young people are smart enough to make their own efforts to reduce drug-related harm.

People like New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani may see no difference between pot, crack and ecstasy -- but a whole generation of kids knows better. Helping them keep controls on their use-- rather than pushing law enforcement efforts that could destroy them-- is in everyone's interest.

Maia Szalavitz is the co-author of "Recovery Options, The Complete Guide: How You and Your Loved Ones Can Understand and Treat Alcohol and Other Drug Problems (Wiley 2000).

Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Author: Maia Szalavitz, AlterNet
Published: August 14, 2001
Copyright: 2001 Independent Media Institute
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Contact: http://www.alternet.org/discuss/

Related Articles:

Canada Goes To Pot - We Should Follow
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10487.shtml

Misguided Laws Make Marijuana Deadly
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9838.shtml

Violent Crimes Undercut Marijuana's Mellow Image
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9793.shtml


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Comment #9 posted by Digit on August 15, 2001 at 18:59:58 PT:

Another Rant from Digit! [*-*]
"But the real story is that young people are smart enough to make their own efforts to reduce drug-related harm. "

not all young people do. granted, tha vast majority do, but there is still a large propotion of the public at large who do not...

some take drugs, perhaps because it is ilegal, and are just out to get a buzz. watch these people closely for drug missuse/abuse. then there are those who do not take drugs mainly because they are sucked in by the propaganda spread by the US gov throughout your schools. watch these people even closer, because no matter how deaply you think you've engrained the lies, if the day comes when they decide to smoke a spliff or try something harder will be the day they start down the path of the previous mentioned group.

regardless, both these groups of people are people damaged by the lies of an unfathomably evil, misguided, corrupt way of thinking, and are dangers to society.

Those of us who have educated ourselves so that we may educate others will hopefully one day inherit the world and put all its wrongs (most particularly that of the US gov) to right.

Human rights that is.

Patrick... once again you have played a blinder!!! I never tire of your wisdom. Difficult as it must be to get on air in the sates due to the secret controls the government have enforced on the media, you should really try. And if not ome over here to the UK and try. :) Our battle is almost won, and we could use a voice like yours to aid getting over this last hurdle*.

* we have got the politicians to decide to speak about it and break the code of silence, we just need to convince the prohibitionists among them.

ok... realising that i've gone of on a rant again (even directing my comments to the feds instead of the people who will actually read this at one point) I shall leave it there.

digit

ps, my link goes to the ukcia website, best UK cannactivist site in my opinion. check it out if u want :)

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Comment #8 posted by Doug on August 15, 2001 at 10:04:09 PT
What Goes Around...
There was a prominent theory a couple decades ago -- I believe Richard Cowan had a aticle in the National Review -- that the crack epidemic was created because it was so difficult to get pot. It seems that people wanted a drug they could smoke -- no needles please -- and were very happy with marijuana until it became scare, thanks to police operations, and then crack, much easier to use than free-basing, but almost the same effect, became available.

This result has happened over and over again in the war on drugs. Ban a mild drug and it is soon replaced with a more harmful drug. When will they ever learn?

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #7 posted by Patrick on August 15, 2001 at 09:34:16 PT
Anecdotal evidence
In my life, first it was wine, beer, followed by hard liquor. Next came hashish followed by marijuana. At the age of 23 I smoked my first cigarette. By age 30 I was a 2- pack a day smoker. After many failed attempts during the next 10 years to quit tobacco, I finally quit cold turkey at the age of 40 only moments before I, seemingly, hacked out my lungs and choked myself to death from carbon monoxide poisoning from smoking nearly 3 packs a day. I have probably become the most anti-tobacco person you could ever meet. I care not if you smoke cigarettes. It's your lungs and your choice. You know the risks. This material (tobacco) is proven to KILL and it remains legal, as it should.

During this period I have remained a social drinker and recreational pot smoker. I have experimented with a few other drugs like speed, downers, shrooms, acid, and cocaine. Personally, I have no interest in any of these other substances and haven't for 15 years. I still however, have an occasional drink and puff of marijuana. I must say that marijuana certainly helped take to the edge off of nicotine withdrawals and keep me focused while I mentally freed myself from tobacco. No easy task I tell ya.

My life is no certified medical study. It is an example however, that smoking pot does not ruin ones life. Going to jail for smoking pot in my teens was an eye opener to me not to the "evils of drugs," but the evils of a government that can strip away the right to rule your own mind, body, and soul.

Fact: Marijuana has never killed anyone and it remains illegal. Go figure.

Prohibition will be over for cannabis very soon


[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #6 posted by Sudaca on August 15, 2001 at 08:52:55 PT
Alcohol
this I think is one of the sore points of cannabis for the Alocohol industry. As a regular smoker, booze started to be a problem for me; I found my drink tolerance was halved and decided to drink less and less rather than not smoke weed. Now I've noticed I barely drink socially once in a while starting from a two beer a day habit (still don't think of that as alcoholism) some 10 years ago. Beer gut considerations aside if pot can wean you out of booze it would seem that the the Alochol Industry will be negatively affected by a move to legalize pot.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #5 posted by Ed Carpenter on August 15, 2001 at 05:34:29 PT:

In the City, Pot Helps Addicts Kick Crack
The story started when four people were shot in a robbery at a marijuana dealer's apartment. The New York Times headline read "Violent Crimes Undercut Marijuana's Mellow Image."

Then, the Justice Department released the results of a study showing that "marijuana use has increased in direct parallel with the decline of crack -- a phenomenon that also tracks perfectly the dramatic fall in violent crime seen in the 1990's."

"There are several lines of evidence for the idea that minority youth began substituting pot for crack," says Curtis. "The ethnographic evidence dates back to 1988."

"They did that to wean themselves off the stem," he says. "For lack of a better word, smoking weed blunted the desire to keep chasing that pipe..."

Didn't ONDCP or NIDA or one of those crackpot groups also do a study last year where they got monkeys accustomed to cocaine first, and then they substituted pot for the coke to show that the monkeys would still push the button? And they used that study to show,as if we are all idiots, that cannabis is addictive?

"People like New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani may see no difference between pot, crack and ecstasy..."

Rudy is an idiot. We voters could do much to help take the pain out of government by refusing to elect members of the government's punishment branch (prosecutors) to higher office. Just say no works in other way too.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #4 posted by smileysmiles on August 15, 2001 at 05:00:38 PT
something wrong here
http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/freeworld/2001/table1.htm

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #3 posted by The Offspring on August 15, 2001 at 04:51:46 PT
New York Times
I believe now that the Media is controlled by the government. It seems the media is so selective in picking their stories. If they here something bad about Cannabis, they jump right on it but if they here something good they just seem to ignore it. This is not Journalism.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #2 posted by Ethan Russo, MD on August 15, 2001 at 04:11:37 PT:

The Feds are Gonna Hate this Article
The benefits of treating addiction to cocaine, opiates or alcohol with cannabis have been touted for about 150 years in the medical literature. In his 1902 book, Morphinism and narcomanias from other drugs: Their etiology, treatment, and medicolegal relations, T.D. Crothers has chapters on the addiction to the former three agents and almost everything else you might imagine, including caffeine, nicotine, ether, and bromides. However, cannabis is only mentioned as a treatment of the other additions, not as one in its own right!

They merely did not know, you claim. Wrong. Cannabis was in extensive use in medical practice as an extract, but also as a smoked agent as recommended by famed British pharmacologist W.E. Dixon. Cannabis was rarely associated with side effects unless someone used too much. Then they were "giddy" for a while until it passed. Most resumed their medical usage despite these episodes.

More recently, Tod Mikuriya has written extensively on the treatment of modern addictions with cannabis, and I also touch upon the topic in Handbook of Psychotropic Drugs.

Thus, if you thought the above article far-fetched, think again.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #1 posted by Toker00 on August 14, 2001 at 21:22:19 PT
The Equalizer.
I've been touting cannabis as a harddrug/alcohol/cigarettes addiction treatment for about a decade, now. I'm not so young, and there was a time two of those, alcohol/cigarettes, were alieviated for five years, straight. Cold turkey. Only Cannabis for five years. I NEVER took hard drugs, outside of a few valium, so I can't speak for them. Moved. Lost connection. During the year and three months of being dry, I picked up cigarettes until they were a problem again. I take a social beer or drink occasionally, but alcohol is not a prob. I finally took care of that obstacle. Cigarettes are going. Again.

Peace. Realize, then Legalize.

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