The ethical omnivorean

Oh sure, we all jump through hoops to cook up the grains and greens when our vegetarian friends pop by, but when the shoe is on the other foot ...

No, mandatory drug treatment is not the answer

Most of the drug debate takes place over the clear-cut issues: should the government be telling people what they can put into their bodies or shouldn't it? But beyond overt prohibition -- and with the potential to outlast repeal -- is the vast, mushy middle-ground where the government "helps" those poor souls who just can't handle their drugs. Surely, pushing addicts into treatment to help them with their abuse is an act of compassion, not an authoritarian intrusion. Ah, but who is an addict, and what's abuse? And who is to say we don't all run the risk of a bit of compassion in our lives if we award our would be saviors with the power to intervene?

In his guest post, "Leave my drugs alone," Denny Chapin, Managing Editor at AllTreatment.com, writes:

People will always abuse drugs, always disrupt families, and always harm others in pursuit of a high. And people will always defend their abuse, deny its effects, and bring themselves and others down with them. If we accept this reality, we can still act for a future of change, bring hope to families, and shake the dirt from career drug addicts. And to that degree, we must take action. Never is it 'just their problem'; it's ours.

Chapin concedes that "many drug users casually use drugs without negatively impacting those around them," but he asserts that the government may have a duty to intervene and force drug users into treatment when their drug use negatively impacts those around them -- particularly children -- and that it "must enforce mandatory drug treatment" when drug use leads to criminal activity.

There's truth in what Chapin says -- particularly about the ability of many people to casually use drugs "without negatively impacting those around them." While getting solid statistics about addiction is difficult, Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum pointed out in 2003, "A survey of high school seniors found that 1 percent had used heroin in the previous year, while 0.1 percent had used it on 20 or more days in the previous month. Assuming that daily use is a reasonable proxy for opiate addiction, one in 10 of the students who had taken heroin in the last year might have qualified as addicts." By contrast, when it comes to perfectly legal booze, according to the National Institutes of Health, "[a]bout 15 percent of those who experiment become alcohol-dependent at some point in life. This compares to a dependency rate of 25 percent in those who experiment with smoking tobacco, and around 4 percent in marijuana smokers."

Most users, then, do so without becoming addicted, and Chapin quotes Alan I. Leshner, Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, to the effect that addiction is "uncontrollable, compulsive drug seeking and use, even in the face of negative health and social consequences."

Chapin is also correct that abusers often do deny that they're abusing drugs and that their behavior is problematic. Then again, so do people accused of addiction and abuse who are actually just engaging in recreational behavior. The difficulty lies in separating use from abuse and in distinguishing criminal behavior caused by an intoxicating substance from criminal behavior caused by a criminal's innate unwillingness to respect the rights and property of others. For starters, what is drug abuse?

That strikes some people as a silly question, but it's absolutely fundamental. And there's no fixed definition of "abuse." Asked whether he thought drug abuse should be illegal, the prominent psychologist, lawyer and drug researcher Stanton Peele replied, "The answer to the question depends on what you mean by drug abuse—whether any use of illicit drugs, extreme or addictive drug use, or illegal behavior associated with drug use or extreme drug use."

Chapin seems to flirt with the first definition, suggesting that the mere act of ingesting certain intoxicants is, itself, abusive:

Does our government have a responsibility to get heroin out of households? "They're my kids, so what if they see a few needles or a joint around? I'm not forcing them to do anything." This disposition is far more dubious, with the potential to truly harm the future generations of Americans, our youth.

Does seeing a few needles or a joint really harm kids? If it does, does it really harm kids so much that their parents should be forced by armed men into drug treatment programs? If that's the case, mandatory treatment for drug abuse becomes something of a tautology, with all ingestion defined as "abuse" and evidence of a need for a forcible response. Drug treatment, then, is less of a medical response than an ideological one, and those providing treatment are acting less as psychologists, physicians and therapists than as agents of state policy.

But what if we go to Peele's second definition: illegal behavior associated with drug use? And by "illegal behavior" we mean real crimes against people and property. It's this definition that Chapin addresses when he says, "many criminals are forced into treatment programs because their crime was caused by, or related to their addiction, resulting from their uncontrolled, compulsive, and harmful behavior."

Since many crimes are a result of drug use, mandatory treatment, we're told, is the obvious response.

Peele differs, saying "addicts—or any drug users—should be liable for any crimes they commit, whether committed while intoxicated, in the pursuit of their addiction, or under any other conditions. In this regard, I differ from many advocates for addicts, who may say that—since addicts are out of control of their behavior—they should not be liable for their actions, at least while intoxicated." (Peele, by the way, also takes issue with the way many 12-step programs go about their business, especially with coerced participants.)

The idea here is that people are responsible for their actions -- the devil didn't make them do it, and neither did the booze or the methamphetamine. Yes, a criminal may have alcohol or drugs in his or her system when he knocks over a convenience store, but that was the culmination of a series of choices. Treatment might be offered to criminals in the same way as other medical and educational services are offered, as a means of maintaining or improving their health and changing their circumstances. But pursuing drug treatment would have to be the choice of the criminal who is responsible for his or her own actions in all circumstances.

Fundamentally, the argument for mandatory treatment comes down to two fundamentals: all drug use is abuse, and drugs make people do bad things they wouldn't otherwise do. But not all use is abusive -- in fact, most drug use is not. And an asshole who does bad things and takes drugs is, at the end of the day, just an asshole.

Forgetting those points creates an invitation to the government to intervene in our lives if we simply engage in behavior that rubs officialdom the wrong way -- and it also allows the powers-that-be to let real criminals off easy for their bad decisions.

Chapin argues that, with mandatory treatment, "[a]t their worst, an addict won't benefit from treatment, simply going through the motions." But that's not the worst; the worst is that people living peaceful lives will lose their freedom and become subjects of forcible government intervention.

If you want to be compassionate toward those who use intoxicants to excess, that's great. Just don't arm that compassion with handcuffs and guns.

Guest post: Mandatory treatment for drug users

As part of a continuing series that I just started and will repeat whenever I feel like doing so, below is a guest post from a reader who takes a position contrary to my own on at least one topic -- in this case, mandatory treatment for drug users who are perceived to have crossed a line and so necessitated government intervention. The author is Denny Chapin, Managing Editor at AllTreatment.com.

Wait with eager anticipation for my response.

'Leave My Drugs Alone'
by Denny Chapin

As citizens of the United States, we want two things: first to be protected against the Hobbesian Leviathan of governmental power and second, to be protected by that governmental power when other citizens are threatening our freedom. We ask our government to stay out of matters that don't concern them, while demanding they protect us from irate citizens that diminish our quality of life.

In practical terms, we want freedom from government oppression when we want to do something our government does not allow, like taking drugs, and we also want protection from the government when a drug addict breaks into our home to fuel his addiction. The question we must ask is this: when, how, and what actions should our government take to ensure the protection of its citizens? and when is this protection oppressive and negative? How do we weigh these two forces against one another? Is there a satisfying solution, or is will this balancing act always produce argument and dissatisfaction?

Real World Example: Drugs

Alan I. Leshner, Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, defines addiction as "uncontrollable, compulsive drug seeking and use, even in the face of negative health and social consequences." Drug addicts, by their nature, act in uncontrolled, compulsive ways, having a negative impact on their health and the social atmosphere around them.

Many drug users desire to be protected against governmental prosecution for using illegal drugs. They say "let me smoke marijuana in peace, it's my body I'm hurting, not anyone else's!" or "I'm less crazy when I take a hit of heroin, otherwise I'd be messing up even more peoples lives". And to a degree, there is some merit to their arguments, since many drug users casually use drugs without negatively impacting those around them.

But what about those drug users who cannot--does the government have a responsibility to step in and demand some form of action when an alcoholic completely ignores, or worse, physically abuses their children? Does our government have a responsibility to get heroin out of households? "They're my kids, so what if they see a few needles or a joint around? I'm not forcing them to do anything." This disposition is far more dubious, with the potential to truly harm the future generations of Americans, our youth.

Landing in Jail

In America, many criminals are forced into treatment programs because their crime was caused by, or related to their addiction, resulting from their uncontrolled, compulsive, and harmful behavior. When it gets to the level of incarceration, our government has a duty to intervene, not for the sake of an addict, but for the sake of the people that addict is surrounded by. It is at this extreme degree of action that we must enforce mandatory drug treatment, irregardless of the intentions of the addict. At their worst, an addict won't benefit from treatment, simply going through the motions. But hopefully, at its best, treatment will give them some perspective, showing them a window of sobriety to look through and see the world as they've built it up, and the world they could have.

There will never be a satisfying answer. People will always abuse drugs, always disrupt families, and always harm others in pursuit of a high. And people will always defend their abuse, deny its effects, and bring themselves and others down with them. If we accept this reality, we can still act for a future of change, bring hope to families, and shake the dirt from career drug addicts. And to that degree, we must take action. Never is it 'just their problem'; it's ours.

My response is here.

Judge Jim Gray calls B.S. on drug prohibition

"The government has as much of a right to control what I as an adult put into my body as it does what I put into my mind. It's none of their business." So says Jim Gray, who recently retired as the presiding judge of the Superior Court of California for Orange County. A former drug warrior as a prosecutor and then a judge, Gray came to see that prohibition of disfavored intoxicants was a perverse and impractical policy -- and one with serious moral and economic consequences.

Gray was unusual among government officials who have turned against prohibition in that he started speaking out while he was on the bench, making public appearances calling for changes in policy, including full legalization, and authoring a book making the same case.

He presents his arguments in short form in the video below from ReasonTV.

Hüsker Dü -- Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely

Apropo of not a goddamned thing, Here's Hüsker Dü's "Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely." (The video is here, and if you can figure out how to embed that, let me know.)



A lot of Hüsker Dü fans dismiss Candy Apple Gray -- the album that featured "Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely." I disagree, finding the album mature, but still angry, and connected to real life. There's a reason I keep coming back to it, again and again. Warehouse, on the other hand ...

These guys, the Pogues and the Replacements largely defined my musical life in the '80s. Interestingly, they all continue to sound good to me and multiple albums by each band are loaded on my Sansa Clip. After listening to a lot of jazz and lounge singers recently, I've been turning back to punk, at least partially because my four-year-old has Sinatra on a continuous loop and refuses to listen to "that yelling music." Yeah, really. Maybe we can compromise with Sid Vicious's take on "My Way."

Watch out for 'Tea Party terrorists' -- like Paine and Thoreau

You'd think that, after a couple of centuries of major American figures describing government as, at most, something to be tolerated, political pundits would have made their peace with the idea that skepticism toward state power has a core place in American political life. If your toes tingle at the thought of more coercive programs, laws, politicians and bureaucrats, you're the (very) odd duck, not the folks with anti-government views. And yet, we still get the likes of Frank Rich throwing high-profile hissy fits because "the unhinged and sometimes armed anti-government right that was thought to have vaporized after its Oklahoma apotheosis is making a comeback," as heralded by ... Andrew Joseph Stack III's Kamikaze-style airborne attack on the Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas?

For those not in the know, Stack, like many people, had a bone to pick with the I.R.S. and with the federal government. But the manifesto he left behind also accused drug and insurance companies of "murdering tens of thousands of people a year," charged that poor people get to die for the mistakes of the wealthy, and quoted Karl Marx. Anti-government Stack was, but his ideology, such as it was, doesn't appear to have been coherently right-wing or left-wing so much as ticked-off and populist.

Rich does appear to be aware that Stack isn't a very logical stick with which to beat the Tea Party movement that has him and his government-cheerleading chums so knicker-twisted. At least, he concedes "it would be both glib and inaccurate to call him a card-carrying Tea Partier or a 'Tea Party terrorist.' But he did leave behind a manifesto whose frothing anti-government, anti-tax rage overlaps with some of those marching under the Tea Party banner."

Nice how Rich works that gratuitious "Tea Party terrorist" bit in there, eh? But even as he smears his political opponents as guilty by distant and tortured association, he manages to overlook the fact that the anti-government sentiment he so regrets is neither a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tea Party movement and the Right, nor an aberration coughed up every decade or two by by unenlightened neanderthals briefly emerging from the philosophical swamps.

Frank Rich is a well-educated man with an Internet connection paid for by a respected news organization that has a vast historical archive of its own, so it's impossible to believe that the New York Times scribbler is unaware that Thomas Paine wrote in one of the more popular political tracts of the revolutionary period that "government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one." Nor can we believe he's unaware that James Madison hedged on Paine's sentiments only to the extent that he wrote, "It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune." And certainly he knows about Thomas Jefferson's warning that "[t]he natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground."

And Rich must surely be aware that he's skipping over a bit of context when he drops the overworked Joe Stack connection to shriek in shock that "[t]he Tea Partiers want to eliminate most government agencies, starting with the Fed and the I.R.S., and end spending on entitlement programs. They are not to be confused with the Party of No holding forth in Washington -- a party that, after all, is now positioning itself as a defender of Medicare spending. What we are talking about here is the Party of No Government at All." Surely, if only in high school, he read Henry David Thoreau's open hostility to the power of the state:

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe--"That government is best which governs not at all"...

The United States of America was founded on anti-government sentiment. The shapers of its institutions and many of its major thinkers have always clearly viewed the state as something like the equivalent of a portable kerosene heater in a Wisconsin winter -- you might need the damned thing, but be very careful.

True, the fact that the heart and soul of American political history is thoroughly skeptical of government power doesn't mean that Madison and Jefferson were right and that Rich is wrong. Maybe he and his buddies are correct and we should stop worrying and learn to love big, well-armed institutions that claim a monopoly on the use of force and slaughtered 262,000,000 people over the course of the 20th century alone. (It's for the children, don't you know?)

But history shows that anti-government sentiment is in the mainstream of American political life, and Rich and his buddies are the out-liers. No shrieking effort to paint skeptics of state power as kamikaze terrorists -- shoe-horning Joe Stack in with Thomas Paine and Henry David Thoreau -- can change that fact.

Judge reads elegy for the Fourth Amendment

Last week, admonishing his colleagues, who had just turned away an important search-and-seizure case, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, effectively pronounced the Fourth Amendment dead. After the court signed off on police search of an apartment without a warrant, probable cause or reasonable suspicion, Kozinski said, "Whatever may have been left of the Fourth Amendment ... is now gone."

In the case of United States v. Lemus, police peacefully arrested Juan Hernan Lemus of Calexico, California, outside his home "before he could fully enter the doorway and retreat into his living room." With Lemus in custody, and without a search warrant for the apartment, police then entered the dwelling for a look around.

From the majority decision (which is written like a crime novel):

Diaz, in the living room, got Detective Longoria’s attention. Wasn’t there something sticking out from the couch? Detective Longoria thought it looked like the butt of a weapon. Since Lemus was a felon, having a gun would be a crime. Detective Longoria lifted the couch cushion to make sure, and confirmed that it was a semi-automatic handgun. It was later determined to be a Sturm and Ruger, 9 millimeter.

Unsurprisingly, Lemus's attorneys challenged the search, which was the basis for subsequent charges unrelated to the original arrest. They pointed out that precedent permits search of the immediate area around suspects arrested in their home to assure the safety of the arresting officers, and limited protective sweeps of the full dwelling to make sure no potential allies of the arrestee are lurking in the shadows. But Lemus was already in custody, having been arrested outside. Police chose, on their own, to enter the residence.

No problem, said the district court. The majority of judges at the appeals level agreed.  "Lemus was arrested in an area 'immediately adjoining' the living room, a limited search of that room was proper without either reasonable suspicion or probable cause as a protective search incident to the arrest."

But Kozinski objects (PDF):

The panel's fig leaf for this clearly illegal search is that "at most Lemus was only partially outside" of his living room door when the officers seized him. Lemus, 582 F.3d at 963. So what? Under Buie, Lemus’s location at the time of arrest is irrelevant; it's the location of the police that matters. Buie authorizes a search incident to an in-home arrest because being inside a suspect's home "puts the officer at the disadvantage of being on his adversary’s 'turf,' " ...

Frankly, the majority's reasoning seems to suggest that police can conduct a full, warrantless search of your home if they arrange to arrest you within reach of your front door. Not that they would ever game such a legal rule, of course ...

Judge Kozinski points out the startling implications of the appeals court's decision to let the lower-court decision stand.

This is an extraordinary case: Our court approves, without blinking, a police sweep of a person’s home without a warrant, without probable cause, without reasonable suspicion and without exigency -- in other words, with nothing at all to support the entry except the curiosity police always have about what they might find if they go rummaging around a suspect’s home. Once inside, the police managed to turn up a gun "in plain view" -- stuck between two cushions of the living room couch -- and we reward them by upholding the search. ...

The opinion misapplies Supreme Court precedent, conflicts with our own case law and is contrary to the great weight of authority in the other circuits. It is also the only case I know of, in any jurisdiction covered by the Fourth Amendment, where invasion of the home has been approved based on no showing whatsoever. Nada. Gar nichts. Rien du tout. Bupkes.

Whatever may have been left of the Fourth Amendment after Black is now gone. The evisceration of this crucial constitutional protector of the sanctity and privacy of what Americans consider their castles is pretty much complete. Welcome to the fish bowl.

Very well reasoned. Very strongly worded.

But the majority decision in favor of the "fish bowl"still stands.