Well, Bill, sex and alcohol are generally legal for adults (as is tobacco, which is also down among teens), and so serious criminalization and criminal enforcement has not been needed to urge teens to behave better in these arenas. It seems likely the same is proving true for marijuana according to the latest Monitoring the Future survey: http://www.usnews.com/news/data-mine/articles/2016-12-13/marijuana-is-harder-than-ever-for-younger-teens-to-find.

Moreover, as you have been heard to lament, Prez Obama and Congress and the states in various ways have pulled back on the Drug War a lot in the last decade. Doesn't the latest data thus suggest we can and should continue to scale back this big govt anti-freedom programming (especially at the federal level)?

"Doesn't the latest data thus suggest we can and should continue to scale back this big govt anti-freedom programming (especially at the federal level)?"

No, it suggests that claims that the War on Drugs failed are false.

P.S. What is the source for the claim that governments have "pulled back" the war against any of the drugs specifically noted in my linked article? Somebody not prosecuting smack anymore?

P.P.S. The notion that taking life-destroying drugs like heroin and meth is a component of "freedom" has to be a burlesque.

Freedom of speech (the sort that is menaced on left wing campuses in the absurd name of "inclusiveness" and "safe spaces") is very important, you bet. The "freedom" to do drugs is, if you'll excuse me, trivial.

OF COURSE the War on Drugs has contributed to a decrease in drug use. It is a statistical certainty.

In EVERY scientific study done since the beginning of such studies, it has been proven that assigning punishment to an act reduces the number of times the act is committed. It is not even controversial.

It is why Douglas and the anti-drug warriors always ignore this fact when Bill or someone else mentions, "attaching costs and risks to the use of X will reduce the use of X."

Move on. Nothing to see here.

One can make an argument ( a weak one, IMO) that the drug war is not financially worth it.

One can make the argument (another weak one) that people should be entirely free to ruin their lives.

An argument that cannot be made, however, is that attaching punishment to an act creates more (or an equal amount) of the act.

Lots here, I will try in multiple responses to continue an important and respectful discussion. I will start with a focus on the history of alcohol Prohibition and marijuana criminalization, because these are the most widely used intoxicants through US history (unless we also include tobacco).

Let's start with alcohol: alcohol use went down a good bit in the early years of Prohibition, but the best evidence suggests that by the tail end of this period, drinking was actually higher in 1930 than in 1918. And deaths from drinking and crime associated with alcohol distribution were much higher during prohibition. When criminalization went away, so did a lot of these problems. Drinking did go back up a bit after Prohibition AND arguably continues to be too high if you do not respect the freedom people want to drink a beer or have a glass of wine. But if you do not respect that freedom, do you let people (especially kids) play football? Do you respect the freedom to eat fatty foods or sugary drinks?

Moving to marijuana: according to USSC data, federal MJ prosecutions dropped from roughly 7000 in 2010 down to 3500 in 2015. During that period, marijuana sales and use has spiked up dramatically in western states among adults. That is what I mean about a pull back. In addition, the FSA cut crack sentenced a lot and the USSC cut the drug guidelines across the board in 2013-14. Those are significant enforcement pull backs and they are ones I want to see continuing at the federal level.

Tarls: How does your basic analysis account for the modern surge in heroin use and deaths?

Please know that I agree that rational individuals respond to basic rewards and punishments AND I also agree that most Americans are rational. But those human basics alone do not fully account for the operation of black markets especially when the likelihood of punishment for participation in a black market is low and the rewards from the market are high. This was the story/lesson of alcohol prohibition, and it seems that alternative approaches to drug use and abuse other than criminalization has found some real success in some other nations. I am not asserting alternatives would obviously work better, but I am asserting human behavior around drug use is much more complicated and dynamic that you seem to want to acknowledge.

Adamakis, I am puzzled why you are back on terrorism in this thread rather than on the thread where you first raised it. That curiosity aside, I hope you know I have no interest in ignoring terrorism, and I think others are foolish to ignore this long-term existential threat.

But, while I worry plenty about terrorism of all sorts coming from all sorts of people driven by all sorts of dangerous ideologies, it is unclear what more I can or should do about terror threats either professionally or personally. I try to teach my students to be vigilant and realistic about threats in the world and I am quick to report suspicious activities (and I told my students to stay home the day of the attack on the OSU campus). What more should I do in your mind?

Meanwhile, though nobody in Ohio has died at the hands or foreign terrorists in recent years, many thousands are dying from drug overdoses. And there is something I think I can and should do to try to save Ohio lives here: I advocate for the speeding up of Ohio's medical marijuana program because data indicates from other states that opioid deaths go down as marijuana for pain relief becomes more available. Do you think me foolish for trying to help Ohioans this way?

Douglas stated: "How does your basic analysis account for the modern surge in heroin use and deaths?"

The "legal" means for obtaining opioids (doctors and pharmacies) became less available, which supports my point. People look to do things legally first (even if it is only the veneer of legality).

Doug stated, "Please know that I agree that rational individuals respond to basic rewards and punishments AND I also agree that most Americans are rational...but I am asserting human behavior around drug use is much more complicated and dynamic that you seem to want to acknowledge."

Have you asked me to "acknowledge" the complexity?

I certainly do. In fact, judging by your remarks about prohibition and marijuana, I probably understand the complexities better than you do.

The most important complexity which undercuts punishment as a deterrent is that addicts are less likely to act rationally. Heroin is a slow motion bullet to the head and they know it but cannot do anything about it, so prison or any punishment will be much less likely to deter their behavior.

Where deterrence still works is with people considering the use of drugs. Most kids are curious and would try drugs minus the social stigma and risk of being caught/going to jail, etc. That reason alone is enough to keep drug use illegal. Unfortunately, you look to remove those final two barriers that will still stop a lot of kids.

The most important play in the liberal playbook the last 50 years has been: 1) Undermine traditional values; 2) Watch society erode with the traditional values; and 3) blame traditional values for the erosion as an excuse to erode society even more.

There are many examples of this. Marriage is one. We were a country of intact families until the 1960s, when divorce started to lose its stigma via progressive legislation. The family fell apart, children suffered, and then single families became the "norm" under the mantra of, "We cannot do worse than those heterosexual married people with 50% divorce rates!"

They created the problem and now we have legalized actions that science shows harms children (eg. gay marriage) under the guise of made up "rights."

Drugs are similar. They were glorified in the 60's and now we have kids who believe that it is just a lifestyle choice in the name of "freedom." Sorry, but making it legal for a 12 year old to inject heroin is the epitome of cultural suicide. Now, I am sure you will come back with "I'm not talking about legalizing it for 12 year olds!" but that is incredibly inconsistent. If the "drug war" you want to end will not work for 18+ year olds, it will not work for 12 year olds either. In fact, it will make it all the easier for them to access drugs.

Tarls, you stated: "An argument that cannot be made, however, is that attaching punishment to an act creates more (or an equal amount) of the act." That struck me as a simplistic statement that fails to acknowledge that attaching punishment to an act might create economic incentives among many people to provide that "act" via a black market, and then now working in that black market may promote their product aggressively and thereby create "more of the act."

It is my sense that this is what transpired with alcohol Prohibition over time. The economic benefits of running a home still or of bootlegging got new folks involved in the (illegal) alcohol business, which in turn increased alcohol production and led to even more alcohol (and more dangerous alcohol) being consumed. Estimates suggest that total alcohol consumption may not have increased because of Prohibition, but the significant drop in consumption at the outset declined over time and most folks say at the end of federal Prohibition we had pretty comparable rates of consumption to what we had in most regions before Prohibition.

I am not sure where your assertions about addiction and about the "liberal playbook" fit into a discussion of US history on alcohol use and abuse, but that would seem to be the most important US social/legal history to consider here, no? I certainly think alcohol and marijuana are much closer than alcohol and heroin (though, of course, heroin was legal and promoted as a medicine by Bayer 100 years ago: http://www.opioids.com/heroin/heroinhistory.html) Perhaps the problem is markets (black and gray and white) and not just "the liberal playbook"?

As I trust you know, it was big govt progressives who largely pushed alcohol Prohibition AND the "war on marijuana" started from the same big federal agency that alcohol Prohibition created.

You comments, Tarls, suggest that for you this issue is much more about culture and government influence on human morals than about intoxicating substances. That is fine, and it actually highlights usefully the link between the war on alcohol 100 years ago and the war on marijuana today. There is a good book on this front I am reading that I recommend to all: "The War on Alcohol" by Lisa McGirr http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-War-on-Alcohol/

I have a feeling that you, Tarls, and others here might take issue with many of the ideas/themes/history in the McGirr book, and I would be very interested in your perspective.

Haven't faced an opioid jumping a curb or wielding a knife or firearm without it needing my assistance, has one of your students?
? ? ?

"not a single Ohio citizen has died as a result of radical Islam in the last 5 years"
~D.A. Berman
True, but no thanks to deflectors or minimizers is due.

--> "The Columbus Dispatch reports that ..
in 2011, Ahmed Hussein Mahamud was arrested by the FBI for allegedly providing money and assistance to al-Shabab;

In 2015, a federal grand jury indicted Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud for planning and attempting to recruit others "to carry out an act of terrorism in the United States."
Additionally, his half-brother and former Columbus resident, Abdifatah Aden, was killed in 2014 engaging in violent jihad in Syria.

According to WBNS-10TV in Columbus ..
four Ohio immigrants were also indicted
in 2015.
The two sets of brothers, Asif Ahmed Salim and Sultane Roome Salim and Ibrahim Zubair Mohammad and Yahya Farooq Mohammad "were charged with conspiring to travel to Yemen to provide thousands of dollars" to "support violent jihad against U.S. military personnel."

In 2016, Somali immigrant Abdul Razak Ali Ratan injured 11 Ohio State faculty and students with his car and a butcher knife, with a vow to "kill a billion infidels."

~ nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ohio-state-attack-what-we-know-about-abdul-razak-ali-n689556; www.ocala.com/opinion/20161212/brown-ohio-state-and-immigrant-related-terrorism
-==================

Adamakis: the news you cite is further proof that "deflectors or minimizers" of drug problems in Ohio is the real problem.

Drug deaths should be a MUCH huger concern than islamic terroists because (1) the federal government is clearly working very hard and seemingly very effectively to thwart/intercept this threat in Ohio, and (2) even when someone like Adbul Ratan seeks to act on his terror ideology, he ended up doing less harm than drunk drivers on an average weekend in Ohio (according to MADD, we have on average more than 3 deaths and 50 injuries from drunk drivers each weekend). Meanwhile, it appears to me that local, state and federal officials are still "sleep at the wheel" concerning opioid problems or else they would be trying EVERYTHING that might help, including fast-tracking access to medical marijuana.

Here are some links, Adamakis, that highlight how profound just the opioid epidemic is and how much more carnage it does in Ohio every week than what terrorists have done in Ohio in my entire half-century lifetime:

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/04/--_the_heroin_crisis_in_ohio.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/12/13/where-opiates-killed-the-most-people-in-2015/?utm_term=.e60e3ba629ce

So, I will ask you again, Adamakis, this time with a bit more aggressiveness:

Do you hate/disrespect/spit on the tens of thousands of individuals and families in Ohio who are suffering from the opioid epidemic, Adamakis?

Can you provide any explanation other than your apparent hatred for Ohio citizens and their suffering for urging me to worry less about the out-of-control Ohio opioid carnage and instead worry more about the seemingly small and contained Ohio problems like terrorism?

You did not provide an adequate answer before because you claimed I was deflecting and minimizing. But I was not deflecting from anything or minimizing anything. The simple real-world reality is that here in Ohio, terrorism is a relative small problem posing so-far a quite limited threat to human life and well-being and it seems to be getting plenty of attention from authorities. Meanwhile, opioid problems are a huge problem posing a massive threat to human life and well-being and it seems to be getting still insufficient attention from authorities.

Thanks, Adamakis.... and I appreciate that you have concern for all of gods children