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The recent release of the study done by the National Academy
of Sciences Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,
Informing America's Policy on Illegal Drugs:
What We Don't Know Keeps Hurting Us, needs
to be read by everyone to see how reactionary and obstructive
it actually is despite its superficially objective and helpful
tone. The conclusions of the report state categorically that there
presently exists no valid data to evaluate the success or failure
of the current (last 100 years) governmental policy and that new
research is needed to accomplish this goal. At the least, this
report will maintain the status quo in Washington. At best it
will produce valid data showing the Drug War to be ineffective,
but this data will not exist for 20-30 years. In the meantime,
it suggests no changes whatsoever in policy!
The url for the report is: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309072735/html/index.html
for those interested in and willing to reading it.
Basically, the same criticism holds for
this report as I presented about the previous report done by the
National Academy of Sciences done in 1997, Dispelling The
Myths About Addiction, a report that was used as a
major reference for the current report. This critique is
posted at: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/17lettertothedirectorofthenationalacademyofmedicinesboardonn/
Many inherent problems exist for why these
reports are useless and harmful to the understanding of addictions
and drug policy. They can be summed up as, "The foxes are
guarding the chicken coop." The
same addiction "experts" who have caused the current
mess in this area of human behavior have been used to critique
it! Another problem with this report
is that an economist, Charles Manski, was the
chief editor. Although he recognizes addictions have something to do with a disease, he uses an economic model to make recommendations on the drug war. How could this be valid? What other disease uses an economic model to make policy recommendations? Moreover, the report makes at least a hundred assumptions about addictions for which it has no valid basis. The only valid fact is ignored: "In their view, chronic drug use was not a wholly voluntary choice but rather a disease to which some helplessly succumbed. The disease MAY have its roots in biology. But whatever the sources, once these factors are present, an individual's ability to act independently is undermined. Given this FACT, it seemed both unjust and ineffective to respond to drug use among individuals as a crime. It seemed unjust because addicts were unable to decide to stop using drugs; ineffective because deterrence would fail, and incapacitation (jail) would work only as long as the restraint continued." The rest of the report ignores this wisdom and continues as is.
Although the authors recognized the political,
intellectual, moral, financial, and philosophical conflicts of
interests currently interfering in this review process, their
proposed remedies for this are inadequate and naïve. Over
twenty useless and irrelevant recommendations were suggested at
the end of the report all of which are impossible to accomplish
under the current system, and even if they were to be attained
would not prove anything definitive other than what we already
know: The current morality based policy
has had 100 years to work and it hasn't.
Do we need to spend billions of dollars to prove that it doesn't
work before we move to the next policy? There already exist a
prototype public policy that has been proved to work, the Swiss
PROVE program.
http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/harmreductionprototypeswissproveprogram/
While we're getting better data, at least
we could switch to a policy that has been shown to accomplish
all the goals we currently are failing to achieve under our system.
The report is a 20 year temporizing effort
just to maintain the status quo. This is reprehensible and unconscionable.
In spite of this obvious conclusion, there hasn't been a single
mention of it in the press except for the one NY Times article.
The public has been damaged by this report as it has for many
years from previous reports on the same issues by the same kind
of experts. I demand a massive public outcry!
The main issue that needs to be addressed,
which wasn't in this report, is the issue of ETIOLOGY OF ADDICTIONS.
The report recognized the importance of this issue, but then went
on to repeat the same misconceptions on etiology that have caused
the mess in policy. I repeat my admonition to current addictionology:
This is exactly why we are in the current mess. The current paradigm on addictions is wrong. A direct quote from the 2001 report clearly makes these points. "In its final report in 1973, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse applauded a 400 percent increase in the federal investment in research from 1969-1973, urged intensification of the investment in research, and emphasized the importance of free scientific inquiry in what had been a highly politicized domain (NCMA, 1973:368-370): This commitment to research ... reflects a significant change in official policy. For many years, research into the effects of prohibited drugs and into the behavior of users was viewed as an attempt to question and subvert government policy. In addition, the aura of criminality surrounding drug-using behavior and the overly rigid protocol requirements often made this area unattractive to researchers. When ... researchers became [interested], they were often hindered by the law enforcement community.... At last, this has begun to change. With the, significant increase in drug use during the 1960's the government recognized the need for information which could come only from expanded research efforts. Prohibited drugs have been made available for legitimate research; confidentiality has been extended to research subjects; and now, public resources are being devoted-to this important area ... In urging [increased] research, the Commission cautions against research that points in only one direction. In the past, government agencies have sometimes used drug research to support policy rather than shape it. Studies that produced the answers they wanted were promoted and publicized; projects which appeared to document the "wrong" results were quietly buried and not released. [New research] should specifically include studies that examine without bias alternate hypotheses and approaches." "It is no less important in the year 2000 to emphasize the need for scientific independence in research on illegal drugs than it was in 1973."
Is this an indictment of the people running addiction research today or not?
This committee was afraid to directly say what it wanted, so it quoted the 1973 committee. The only problem is that 28 years have gone by since this was first said, and now it is being said again. All the anger that reviewers of my book dislike is based on the above listed fraud. And I have been criticized for it. The fraud is responsible for addictophobia and addict genocide. And I have been criticized for mentioning it? What is wrong with all of you? I have been attempting for ten years to have my purely neurobiological hypothesis on addictions, Hypoism, considered but it has been ignored in spite of the above directives both in 1973 and now in 2001! When will a new hypothesis be considered without bias? Hypoism is the reality behind all addictions and solves all the social problems of these addictions. Why is Hypoism ignored? Because it removes the moralistic judgmentalism from addictions, something the government and the ignorant and hateful populous demands remain. We are in the same mess we were in in 1973 and the same people are making the same recommendations as were made then. Does someone think something new will happen on its own out of this report? No. Thus, this report is just another fraud perpetrated on the American people by obstructionists desiring to maintain the status quo for another 28 years. Does anyone care? Will someone other than me raise hell about the need to change faces and players in this deadly game? Again, I ask you to read and consider replacing Alan Leshner as the only way to get to the truth about addictions and end the drug war: http://www.nvo.com/hypoism/15replacingalanleshneristheonlywaytoendthedrugwar/
The whole point I am raising now and have raised many times
in the past, including in my book, is that,
"the Commission cautions against research that points in
only one direction [their own
biased theories]. In the past
[and now],
government agencies have sometimes used drug research to support
policy [ideology at the expense
to addicts] rather than shape
it. Studies that produced the answers they wanted were [invented,
misinterpreted], promoted and
publicized; projects which appeared to document the "wrong"
results were quietly buried and not released. This
statement is a massive indictment against the current corrupt
pseudoscience of addictionology and I bet it is ignored as an
anachronism. I assure you, it is not. The corruption of addiction
science by its grantors and acquiescence and co-conspiracy by
its grantees has caused the current absence of valid data and
paradigm on the drug war and addiction etiology. I implore all
reading this article to inform your legislators of this fraud
and to have them heartily investigate this behavior by the NIH,
NIDA, and NIAAA, the three branches of addiction science funded
by the government and the place where over 90% of all research
money on addictions comes from. The other 10%, drug companies,
are equally co-conspiratorial with full knowledge of the NIH and
the addictionology medical community. If nothing is done about
this fraud, addicts and society will suffer indefinitely. We must
demand a thorough investigation by completely disinterested scientists
with real integrity. |
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You can take the addiction out of the hypoic, but you can't take the Hypoism out of the addict.
