WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

There is an ongoing debate in the United States about the legalization or decriminalization of drugs by society. Several states have either passed laws or are considering laws that allow the use of marijuana for medical and possibly recreational purposes, but these laws are still controversial, and there is the additional problem that these state laws can be in conflict with federal laws. As a result, no one knows what the outcome will be even though it appears that federal officials are beginning to limit some prosecutions.

A number of prominent Americans—including the conservative Repub­lican senator Rand Paul—have concluded that the War on Drugs is leading to injustices. As this is being written, Senator Paul and Democratic senator Patrick Leahy want to change the law and have introduced the justice Safety Valve Act, which will allow judges more discretion in sentencing.

On the other side, many people believe that any effort to reduce the pressure on drug users and dealers will result in a flood of illegal sub­stances that, in their worst nightmares, will become readily available to children. Unfortunately, drugs are already readily available to anyone, including children, from all economic levels. So that nightmare is here right now.

To reduce demand, we need to increase education. As we have said elsewhere in this book, effective drug education is not just a matter of exhortations to refuse all drugs, because many individuals believe that the drugs they use are harmless. It is a matter of teaching the basic science that can help us appreciate what complex and delicate organisms our brains are, how body chemistry may vary from person to person, and how little we know about the many ways, both positive and negative, short-term and long-term, that the powerful chemicals we call "drugs" can affect us. Good education is expensive, but with it we will be healthier, and as a society, we will save the enormous costs of lost wages, law enforcement, and prisons that drugs have brought us.

GETTING CAUGHT

GETTING CAUGHT

Most people believe that they will not get caught. Teenagers, in particular, have the feeling that they are "beyond the law" But it does happen. It hap­pens to grandmothers, teenagers, lawyers, doctors, and the most ordinary people on the face of the earth.

Many drug arrests come from the most random events imaginable. In Virginia, an officer stopped a car for having something hanging off the rearview mirror. He became suspicious, legally searched the car, and found major quantities of cocaine. Another drug transporter thought he had the perfect scheme and filled fruit juice cans with cocaine, then resealed them. It is a regular practice for tourists to bring back food from vacation in the Caribbean, and he expected to walk right through customs. What he did not realize was that customs officials knew there was no reason to bring

canned fruit juice from the Caribbean, where it is expensive, to the United States, where it is cheap. He was arrested and convicted for transporting millions of dollars' worth of cocaine.

Even grandmothers are not immune to arrest. A pair of DEA agents working a bus station in North Carolina noticed an elderly woman behav­ing oddly. When they approached her, she moved away and they became suspicious. They conducted a legal search and found a large quantity of cocaine in her luggage.

A college student came back to her dorm room to find the place crawl­ing with campus and city police. While she had absolutely no role in any illegal activity, a friend of her roommate had come to town from another college with a shipment of drugs. Another student, obeying the honor code, had called the campus police. Fortunately, the innocent student was not arrested because the roommate cleared her, but it was a very close call.

The law-enforcement community is actually quite sophisticated in its drug-enforcement efforts. DEA agents work all over the world trying to prevent the transport of drugs into the United States. They have agents working major and minor airports, and even bus stations. The highway patrols of most states have drug interdiction units looking for suspi­cious vehicles. This is not a trivial effort, and it results in so many con­victions that both the state and federal prison populations have grown dramatically.

Yet everyone realizes that most countries are overrun with drugs. It is usually easy to buy the most common illegal drugs in many areas of cit­ies and on college campuses. So why is the legal interdiction effort per­ceived as failing? It is not exactly failing, but rather it is being overwhelmed. Many, many people are caught in the legal system, but there is always someone else to replace each person caught. Routine usage of cocaine, crack, or heroin can be a very expensive habit, and the only way that most people can maintain such expensive behavior is to turn to dealing. As we say elsewhere in this book, cocaine and opiates can be extremely reinforcing, and they are also expensive in the quanti­ties that habitual users consume. The combination of dependence and expense often leads users to become dealers until they are stopped by medical intervention, arrest, or death.

What does this have to do with the average reader of this book? Any­one who can read this book no doubt has the ability to do honest and legal work and have a successful life. Such a reader might feel that she is above being caught, or just not in the "wrong" circle of friends. This

naiveté might be the most dangerous attitude of all, because, like most jobs, illegal drug dealing depends on knowledge, skills, and having a network of people. Most casual dealers do not have the knowledge or, fortunately, are not willing to do what is necessary to involve themselves fully in the drug culture. Thus, they approach the whole issue as ama­teurs, and like many amateurs in anything, they fail miserably. Only in this case, the stakes are much higher. They can get caught, lose a lot of

money, become victims of criminal violence, or become heavily depen­dent on the substance they are dealing.

As we all know, some people think they have few opportunities and only a short time to live. They will deal drugs no matter what anyone says. In their lives they see jail time as just the cost of doing business. However, a district attorney who has prosecuted thousands of drug cases had just one bit of advice: people with families, an opportunity for education, and a supportive network of friends have so much to lose from being on the wrong side of the legal system that they should never become involved with it. A felony conviction can strip a person of so many opportunities in this society and can cost families so much in

pain, suffering, and financial loss that no amount of money or drug experience is worth the risk.

DRUG LAWS

DRUG LAWS

The drugs in this book are subjected to a variety of laws. Tobacco and alcohol are legal to possess and use in the United States, as long as you are at least eighteen years old (for tobacco) or twenty-one years old (for alco­hol). The same pertains for many of the over-the-counter cold medica­tions that can be used as precursors of methamphetamine and for dextromethorphan—if you show identification and are at least eighteen years old, you can possess amounts for personal use. Most herbal drugs we discuss (except ephedrine) can legally be purchased and possessed by anyone.

Most of the other drugs are covered by the Controlled Substances Act. According to this federal law, some substances cannot be purchased or possessed by anyone, while others can be used if they have a prescription from a doctor. There are different "schedules" that are based on the dan­ger of abuse, and the medical use. These are described in what follows. These drugs can be purchased and possessed only with an appropriate

license from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or a prescrip­tion from a physician.

· Schedule I: Drugs in this class have no currently accepted medical use in the United States, a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision, and a high potential for abuse. They cannot be purchased or possessed by anyone. Some of the drugs in this category are all forms of marijuana (natural and synthetic), heroin, all serotonin­related hallucinogens (LSD, psilocybin, and all their derivatives), MDMA and all its congeners, and all cathinone derivatives (bath salts). These can be possessed only for research purposes with an appropriate license.

Schedule II: Substances in this schedule have appropriate medical use but a high potential for abuse that may lead to severe psychologi­cal or physical dependence. This includes many opiates, such as methadone, morphine, opium, oxycodone, fentanyl, meperidine, and codeine; some sedatives like pentobarbital; and stimulants that are used clinically, including amphetamine, methamphetamine, and methylphenidate.

· Schedule III: Substances in this schedule have a potential for abuse less than substances in Schedules I or II, and abuse may lead to mod­erate or low physical dependence or high psychological dependence. Drugs in this class include combination products containing some opiates like hydrocodone with acetaminophen; buprenorphine for­mulated with naloxone (Suboxone), which is used to treat opiate addiction; the anesthetic ketamine; and testosterone.

·  Schedule IV: Substances in this schedule have a low potential for abuse relative to substances in Schedule III. Drugs in this category include many benzodiazepine sedatives, including diazepam (Valium), alprazolam (Xanax), and triazolam (Halcion).

·  Schedule V: Substances in this schedule have a low potential for abuse relative to substances listed in Schedule IV and consist primarily of preparations containing limited quantities of certain narcotics.

This list is not comprehensive, but it provides enough examples. The penalties that result from purchasing or possessing them vary by the schedule and by how much you have in your possession, so you should consider this only as an introductory guideline. You need to understand that if you purchase or possess anything in these schedules without a doc‑

tor's prescription, you are breaking the law. In addition, state laws may differ from federal laws. For example, marijuana is scheduled much lower by most states, but many states have broadly liberalized availability for medical purposes (although it is not completely legal in any state).

We have a word of caution about the scheduling of drugs. While this list describes the various schedules for drugs, placement at a given level in the list does not necessarily represent the degree of safety of the drug. For example, marijuana is a Schedule I drug, but it is almost impossible to die from it acutely. On the other hand, benzodiazepines are Schedule IV drugs, and with regular use over a period of time, an individual can become very tolerant to them. At that point, stopping their use can be almost impossible without medical help. If you take one of these drugs, get good information about it and don't depend on the level of scheduling to keep you safe.

Not all psychoactive drugs are controlled substances and, therefore, are on these schedules, but they do require a prescription. In most situations, you are breaking the law if you possess these drugs without a prescription and particularly if you give or sell them to another person.

GETTING SEARCHED

There's this joke about a very large canary: Where does an eight-hundred­pound canary sit? Anywhere he wants to! Likewise, a law-enforcement officer will search just about anywhere if he really wants to do it. Eventu­ally the courts could decide whether the search was legal, but if an officer has reason to believe that a crime is being committed, he may well initiate the search process and let the lawyers settle the issue later.

Laws in the United States on the subject of a search are extremely com­plicated, in part because the legal rights of individuals have been defined over the years by many different court cases. However, there are a few general principles that govern when someone can legally be detained and searched.

First is the "expectation of privacy." The expression "A man's home is his castle" applies here. To search a residence usually requires more strin­gent legal prerequisites than searching elsewhere. Often a search warrant signed by a judge is required, unless there is evidence of a major and immediate threat to public safety.

Next is the automobile. This is the place where most individuals con‑

front the law. An officer will see a traffic violation in progress, stop the vehicle, and then come to suspect that illegal drug activity is being car­ried out. If an officer reasonably believes that a crime is being committed, then he probably has the right to detain the occupants of the car until a legally proper investigation can be carried out. Remember, this officer can stop and hold someone if he believes that a crime is being committed, even if he is wrong!

A court official gave us an extreme example: Say a murder has been committed in the course of a bank robbery and the killer is driving away in a 2007 blue four-door sedan. In the heat of the moment, an incompe­tent 911 operator becomes confused and broadcasts that the killer is leav­ing the scene in a 2003 red pickup truck. An officer down the road sees a 2003 red pickup truck and stops it, removes the occupants, and searches the truck for weapons. He finds illegal substances. Was the search legal? Probably, because the officer had reason to suspect that the occupants were criminals. He was wrong, but with good reason, and the occupants may well be convicted for whatever offense they committed.

There are equally odd outcomes in which convictions are not possible because the officer was found to have no reason to search a vehicle. That is why most officers ask permission to search a car before doing so. That permission usually makes the search legal and any evidence is thus legally obtained. If permission is not given, then the officer may choose to detain the individuals further and call for a drug dog or other assistance to examine the vehicle. This issue then gets very complicated.

The practical side of all this is that a law officer has quite a lot of power to detain and arrest, because the lawmakers have decided it is in the pub­lic good to be able to temporarily detain potential criminals and, to some extent, to ask questions later. Even if an officer is eventually found in court to be wrong, the suspected individuals would have suffered loss of time and perhaps arrest, legal bills, and considerable life discomfort.

Finally, there is the situation when a person is out in public and walk­ing about. This is the least "private" act, and so there is the least expecta­tion of privacy. In this case a law officer has much more leeway in searching a person for the protection of the officer herself and for that of the general public. For example, imagine that an officer sees a person walking down the street in and out of traffic, in an erratic manner. She has the right to stop and talk to that person to ensure that he and the driving public are safe. If in the process of that stop the officer suspects

 that the individual may be carrying a weapon, she could search him by doing a pat down. If in the course of that search the officer feels some­thing she recognizes to be an illicit drug, the officer can seize the drug. Can the person be convicted of a drug-law violation? It is very likely that he can because the search was legal.

The same rules might apply at a concert. Let's say that two students are obviously intoxicated and fighting. An officer moves to stop the fight, the students resist, they are appropriately searched for weapons, and illicit substances are discovered. If the officer chooses to charge them, there is a good probability that the charges will stick.

Do law-enforcement officers have a pathological agenda to harass driv­ers and students at a concert, looking for drugs everywhere? Rarely. Most law officers see their work as a job, not a mission. Think of all the traffic laws that are broken every day and how seldom stops occur. Think of how seldom someone who is innocent of any law violation is stopped in a car or interdicted at a concert. By and large, the legal community just does its job.

LEGAL ISSUES

IT IS SAID that your life can change forever in a matter of seconds. When a person mixes alcohol or other drugs and the legal system, the combina­tion can easily become life-changing. For a variety of reasons, the law­making bodies of most countries, especially the United States, have decided to suppress illegal drug use by making drug laws harsh and cer­tain. All who deal with drugs in an illegal manner are thus at risk for penalties that can disrupt their own lives and those of their families.

The use of almost all the drugs discussed in this book could involve violations of the law, depending on the circumstances. Many of these drugs are illegal in all circumstances—manufacturing, distribution, and possession. Others are legal when prescribed, but not for recreational use. Still others, such as alcohol, can be legal for adults, but their use is prohib­ited for underage individuals and for activities such as driving a car or operating a boat.

This chapter is written to inform readers about very basic laws and principles that come into play around drug issues. It is not intended to give advice about dealing with the law-enforcement community or the judicial system. If you feel that you need that advice, find a good lawyer and ask her all of your questions before you become legally involved.

THE PRINCIPLES

I While laws exist regarding the rights of a law officer to search some­one's car or home, this very complicated issue is often decided in the courts in individual cases. Generally you have the greatest "expecta­tion of privacy" in your home. There is less expectation of privacy in a car, and the least when you are out in public.

2. If a law-enforcement officer suspects you of a crime and really wants to search you or your car, you will be searched, whether or not you give permission. If you give your permission, the search will almost certainly be considered legal. If you refuse permission, the search may or may not be legal, but it may happen anyway. The debate over whether the search was permitted and legal will begin in the court system. The easiest way to avoid trouble is to avoid situations in which a random and unexpected search will yield anything illegal.

3. A person who is innocent of any crime but is with someone arrested for possessing drugs may become involved with the legal system until her innocence is proven. By that time, she may have incurred large financial burdens (e.g., an expensive lawyer), terrified her family, and spent some time under arrest.

4. 'the penalties for drug-related activities can be horrendous, especially in the United States federal judicial system, and particularly for selling drugs. Many casual drug users do not realize that simple possession of a modest amount of a drug can automatically be considered "intent to distribute," whether or not they actually plan to sell the drug.

5. You do not have to be on government property to be in violation of federal law. The federal drug laws apply everywhere in the United States and US territories at all times.

6. State and federal laws can be extremely strict about the use of guns in the commission of crimes. The possession of a gun—even just having one in the vicinity of a drug-law violation canadd many years onto the sentence for the original crime.

Many people believe that they are "safe" from serious legal consequences because they know the local officials, or because they believe the penal­ties are not serious. They are wrong. First, it a local official were to inter­fere with a prosecution, she could be prosecuted for obstruction of justice or public corruption. Second, an arrest by a state or local officer can eas­ily be referred to federal prosecutors not subject to local political influ­ence. Third, in many states and in the federal system there is no parole. Even worse, in some cases "minimum mandatory" sentencing laws give the judges practically no leeway for reduced sentences.

8. Your rights as a US citizen do not apply in foreign countries, and the legal consequences of drug-law violations in some places can literally mean death.

DRUG PREPARATIONS: FROM "HEADACHE POT TO HOSPITAL POT

DRUG PREPARATIONS: FROM "HEADACHE POT" TO "HOSPITAL POT"

The products made from marijuana plants for psychoactive effects vary markedly in their THC content and therefore in their psychoactive potency.

Low-grade marijuana is made from all the leaves of both sexes of the plant. These vegetative leaves contain very little THC compared to the pistillate flowers of the female plant or to the smaller leaves adjacent to them. The THC content of such a preparation may be only 1 percent or lower. Smokers sometimes call this "headache pot" because smoking it can produce more of a headache than a high.

Medium-grade marijuana is made from the dried flowering tops of female cannabis plants raised with and fertilized by male plants. Fertil­ization limits the psychoactive potency of the resulting marijuana because the female flowers secrete THC-containing resin only until fertilization. After that time the flower no longer needs the protective resin, and it begins to produce a seed.

High-grade marijuana is made from the flowering tops, or "cola," of female plants raised in isolation from male plants. The resulting mari­juana is called sinsemilla, which means "without seeds." As the female flowers mature without fertilization, they continually secrete resin to coat the delicate flowers and small leaves surrounding them; the flowers grow in thick clusters, heavy with resin. When these "buds" are har­vested and dried, they contain an average of around? to 8 percent THC. Some samples of sinsemilla test as high as 20 percent.

Such powerful marijuana has been called "hospital pot" because occa­sionally an unsuspecting smoker, expecting the usual gentle high of medium-grade marijuana, gets frightened by the sudden and powerful high of sinsemilla, panics, and winds up in the emergency room. Actu­ally, the best treatment for such a scare is a calm and reassuring "talk down" by a friend. The feeling of panic often arises from an unexpected sense of loss of control, and the individual needs only to be reassured that he is safe and that nothing will threaten him. Some cultivators in the United States, using well-controlled indoor growing conditions, produce marijuana with THC concentrations as high as 24 percent, but the THC content of most marijuana in the United States is in the range of 10 percent. In recent years United States marijuana has been touted as being ten times more potent now than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. This claim isn't exactly true. Since the 1970s the TUG content of marijuana seized by US law-enforcement officials has been measured by the Potency Monitoring Project in Mississippi—a government-funded project. In the early 1970s they generally reported that samples of seized marijuana contained low concentrations of THC—in the range of 0.4 to 1 percent—but those samples often came from low-potency, high-volume Mexican “kilobricks," which probably contained considerably less THC than most of the marijuana that was actually being smoked in those days. Also, it was not until the late 1970s that the higher-potency cannabis products available to smokers, such as buds and sinsern ilia, were included in the samples analyzed by the Potency Monitoring Project. Thus, esti­mates of THC content in the 1970s probably underestimated the average 'INC content of the marijuana smoked during that period. When inde­pendent laboratories analyzed marijuana samples during the 1970s, THC contents were often considerably higher than those reported by the Potency Monitoring Project—in the 2 to 5 percent range—though lower than most marijuana samples today. After 1980 the seized marijuana tested by the Potency Monitoring Project included more representative samples of what was available on the street, and between 1981 and 2000 the TUG content hovered between 2 and 5 percent—consistent with the average range of independently tested samples during the 1970s. Still, marijuana cultivators have gotten better at their business, and it is reason­able to assert that THC concentrations in recreationally used marijuana have increased significantly. They may continue to increase as well. The recent changes in both medical marijuana and recreational marijuana laws in some states will probably help to fuel further refinements in both genetic plant selection as well as growing techniques. Although there are alternatives to smoking marijuana, such as eating it or vaporizing it, most marijuana is still smoked, and for most people the less smoke they need to take in, the better. The higher the concentration of cannabinoids in mari­juana, the less needs to be smoked, so our bet is that cultivators will be motivated to continue looking for ways to increase the cannabinoid con­tent in marijuana.

Hashish is produced when the resin of the cannabis plant is separated from the plant material. The purest form of hashish is virtually 100 per­cent resin. In India this pure material is called charas. Most hashish, how­ever, is not pure resin and contains varying amounts of plant material as well. It often appears as a dark-colored gummy ball that is rather hard, but not brittle. The average THC content of hashish is around 8 percent but can vary quite a bit—up to 20 percent. Hashish is often smoked in a pipe or rolled into a cigarette along with tobacco or lower-grade mari­juana. A more traditional means of smoking hashish is to ignite a small piece and let it burn under a glass or cup. The user then tilts back the glass and inhales the smoke from underneath.

Hash oil is the most potent of the preparations made from the cannabis plant. After the plant is boiled in alcohol, the solids are filtered out, and when the water evaporates, what's left is hash oil. Hash oil is generally a thick, waxy substance that is very high in THC content—ranging from 20 to 70 percent. It can be scraped onto the inner rim of a pipe bowl for smoking or used to lace tobacco or marijuana cigarettes.

THE CANNABIS PLANT AND ITS PRODUCTS

THE CANNABIS PLANT AND ITS PRODUCTS

Cannabis is a highly versatile plant. Hemp, a strong fiber in the stem, has been used to make rope, cloth, and paper. When dried, the leaves and flowers are used as marijuana for their psychoactive and medicinal effects. The roots of the plant have also been used to make medicines, and the ancient Chinese used the seeds as a food. Cannabis seeds are still used for oil and animal feed.

The two most prevalent species of cannabis are Cannabis sativa and Cannabis indica. In years past, people cultivated C. sativa to make hemp. Under natural conditions, it will grow as high as a lanky fifteen to twenty feet, and it still grows wild as a weed across the southern United States. C. indica has been cultivated throughout the world mostly for the psy­choactive properties of its resins. These plants generally grow to no more than a few feet in height and develop a thicker, bushier appearance than C. sativa.

The cannabis plant contains more than four hundred chemicals, and several of them are psychoactive. By far the most psychoactive of these is delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), found in the plant's resin. The resin is most concentrated in the flowers. In an unfertilized plant, it provides a sticky coating that protects the flowers from excessive heat from the sun and enhances contact by grains of pollen. The vegetative leaves contain a small amount of resin, as do the stalks, but the concentrations in these parts of the plant are so low as to have little intoxicating effect.

Today, much cultivation of 'drug" strain marijuana plants has occurred, but the amount of THC present in the flowers of individual plants varies considerably. In addition to the genetic makeup of the plant, the growing conditions, timing of harvest, drying environment, and stor­age environment can all significantly influence the potency of the final product. As the plant matures, the balance of various chemicals in the resin changes, as does the amount of resin secreted at the flowering tops of the plant. Early in maturation, cannabidiolic acid (CBDA) predomi­nates and is converted to cannabidiol (CBD), which is converted to THC as the plant reaches its floral peak. The extent to which CBD is converted to THC largely determines the "drug quality" of the individual plant. When the plant matures into the late floral and senescent stages, THC is converted to cannabinol (CBN). A plant that is harvested at the peak flo­ral stage has a high ratio of TFIC to CBD and CBN, and the psychoactive effect is often described as a "clear," or "clean," high, with relatively little sedative effect. However, some cultivators allow the plants to mature past this peak to produce marijuana with a heavier, more sedative effect. The difference between the feelings associated with peak- versus late-har­vested marijuana has been described as the difference between being "high" and being "stoned."

Burning marijuana for smoking produces hundreds of additional com­pounds. So when someone smokes a single joint, hundreds upon hun­dreds of chemical compounds enter the body. We know that many of these compounds act on various organs and systems in the body, but we don't know what effects most of them have, either acutely or after pro­longed use. Many scientific studies have, therefore, restricted their atten‑ tion to THC, allowing us to evaluate at least some of the effects of cannabinoids on the brain and behavior.