If I were younger, if I’d ever learned to smoke and inhale, and if marijuana were legal, it would probably drive me to pot. Fewer calories.
Speaking of legalization…..Advocates and opponents of marijuana decriminalization have generally based their arguments on theory and supposition; they’ve exchanged “I think this will happen” scenarios, since there were no jurisdictions from which actual data could be gathered.
That has now changed. And the Shorenstein Center’s Journalist Resources has helpfully compiled studies reporting actual–as opposed to theorized–results.The compilation is timely: this November, voters in at least nine states will decide whether to legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use.
Most states that have relaxed previous prohibitions have done so by making pot available for medicinal purposes. But the distinction between medical and recreation use is not as significant as we might imagine:
Most research on the link between marijuana and crime finds that medical marijuana laws (often abbreviated as MML) cause a general uptick in the use and availability of marijuana — beyond the patients who are prescribed the drug. “The legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes approaches de facto legalization of marijuana for recreational purposes,” write D. Mark Anderson of Montana State University and Daniel I. Rees of the University of Colorado Denver in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. By examining pre- and post-legalization in these MML states, they can “make predictions about what will happen in” states that legalize marijuana for recreational use.
So what does happen when marijuana use is legalized? What about predictions that crime will rise?
In widely cited research, Robert G. Morris of the University of Texas and colleagues see crime fall in every state that has introduced MML. Using FBI data on seven types of crime across states with and without MML, they dismiss concerns about rising crime.
“MML is not predictive of higher crime rates and may be related to reductions in rates of homicide and assault,” Morris and colleagues write in the study, published in PLoS One in 2014. That may be because people seem to use alcohol less when they have access to pot: “Given the relationship between alcohol and violent crime, it may turn out that substituting marijuana for alcohol leads to minor reductions in violent crimes.”…
Economists Edward M. Shepard and Paul R. Blackley of Le Moyne College find that medical marijuana is associated with significant drops in violent crime. Looking at crime data from 11 states in the west, seven of which had medical marijuana laws before 2009, they see “no evidence of significant, negative spillover effects from MMLs on crime.” Instead, they suspect a fall in the involvement of criminal organizations after marijuana is legalized for medical use and conclude, “MMLs likely produce net benefits for society.”
Looking at crime data before and after the depenalization of marijuana in the United Kingdom in 2004, Nils Braakmann and Simon Jones of Newcastle University suggest most types of crime, risky behavior and violence fall. But they observe a 5 percent to 7 percent increase in property crimes among 15- to 17 year olds.
Opponents of decriminalization predicted increased traffic fatalities from impaired driving, but according to the research, during the first year following changes in the law, traffic fatalities decrease between 8 percent and 11 percent.
Other findings: there is a modest increase in pot use among young people, but not older cohorts. Suicide rates fall. Racial profiling declines. So do opioid overdoses.
Medical cannabis laws are associated with significantly lower state-level opioid overdose mortality rates.” Patients seem to be using these as substitutes, and marijuana is far less addictive and dangerous than drugs derived from the opium poppy.
And then there’s this: one study found that the U.S. could take in some $12 billion in new tax revenues by regulating recreational marijuana.
We sure could use the money.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll pour myself a drink……
Last Thursday, statewide Americorp volunteers met in Indianapolis for a day of workshops and training. I was honored to keynote the day’s activities, and I’m sharing those remarks below. (Regular readers will recognize “themes”…..)
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Americans talk a lot about civic engagement. We don’t talk as much about what we mean by that term, or the different forms such engagement can take. And we talk even less about the different, important roles of the public and voluntary sectors, and why genuine, productiveengagement requires that we understand and support the proper functioning of both government and what we call civil society.
Most of you here today are just beginning your term of service. During that service, you will learn new skills, recognize new values, and come in contact with volunteers motivated by a variety of life experiences and beliefs. If relevant research is to be believed, that experience will keep you civically engaged long after you have completed your service.
What Americorp volunteers do for Hoosier communities is impressive and beneficial; your efforts will improve communities across the state and the nation. Your willingness to engage with your communities is commendable.
But I’m not here to commend you.
I am here to suggest that the efficacy of your volunteerism, the effectiveness of your efforts, depends to a considerable extent upon two underappreciated aspects of American culture that are in dangerously short supply: an understanding of America’s constitution and governing system—what I call civic literacy–and that old-fashioned but essential virtue we call civility.
Let me start with civility.
A year or so ago, I came across the proceedings of a symposium on political civility. The contributors wrestled with difficult questions: what is the difference between the necessary arguments that illuminate differences and help us resolve them, and rhetoric that “crosses the line”?
The consensus seemed to be that incivility is rudeness or impoliteness that violates an agreed social standard. I’m not sure we have any agreed social standards left in this age of invective—certainly, no such standard has been evident during this election season, which has featured a real “race to the bottom.” We have been assailed with rhetoric that focuses on, and disrespects, persons rather than positions, substitutes name-calling for reasoned debate, and elevates bigotry over the fundamental American values of inclusion and community that have led each of you to join Americorp.
When I first became “civically engaged,” the political environment was very different. I always appreciated Dick Lugar’s often-repeated phrase recognizing “matters about which reasonable people can differ.” That phrase was an acknowledgment of the equal status of citizens who might hold different opinions on matters of public concern. It was civil, and it encouraged civic engagement because it recognized the legitimacy of people with whom we might not share positions or backgrounds.
A trenchant observation in that symposium attributed the gridlock in Washington and elsewhere to “partisan one-upmanship expressed in ways that do not show respect for those with differing views.” In other words, if your motivation is simply to beat the other guys–to win an election, or prevail in a matter of public debate–and if that need to win outweighs any concern for the public good, civility is absent and both governing and civic service become impossible.
And he made those observations before the current, dispiriting campaign season.
The reason politicians and civic leaders no longer begin arguments by saying that they “respectfully disagree” is that they do not in fact respect their opponents.
When political discourse is so nasty, and regard for truth so minimal–when the enterprise of government has more in common with a barroom brawl than a lofty exercise in statesmanship–is it any wonder that so many of our “best and brightest” shun not only politics, but civic engagement of any sort? Who wants to go to work for a government agency the very existence of which is regarded as illegitimate by a substantial percentage of one’s fellow-citizens? Who wants to work with a nonprofit organization co-operating with that agency? Who cares about that abstract concept called “the public good”?
One reason for our current cynicism and lack of mutual respect is that America has developed a troubling disregard for fact and truth. That disregard has been enabled by partisan television, talk radio and the internet. Survey after survey shows that people on the left and right alike get their “news” from sources that validate their biases. Meanwhile, we have lost much of the real news, the mainstream, objective journalism that fact-checks, that confronts us with inconvenient realities and demands that we attend to the substance of arguments rather than the personalities of those making the arguments. In this environment, it becomes easier to characterize those with whom we disagree as unworthy of our respect.
It is easier still if we lack even an elementary grounding in the origins and philosophy of American government, which brings me to the second impediment to all civic engagement, whether political or through civil society: civic ignorance.
Americans have spent the last thirty plus years denigrating both government and public service to an audience increasingly ill-equipped to evaluate those arguments. Now we are paying the price for our neglect of civic education and our reluctance to defend the worth of both the public sector and the common good.
You know, we Americans tend to have a bipolar approach to most things: they’re either all good or all bad. But our polyglot communities and policies are rarely all good or all bad. We don’t have to abandon critical evaluation of the performance of our common institutions, we don’t have to close our eyes to their faults–but we do need to remind citizens of their importance and value. We have to rebuild civic trust. In a very real sense, your servicewill be part of that effort.
Political scientists have accumulated a significant amount of data suggesting that over the past decades, Americans have become less trusting of each other. This erosion of interpersonal social trust—sometimes called social capital—has very negative implications for our ability to govern ourselves.
In 2009, I wrote a book titled Distrust, American Style, in which I examined the research on declining social trust, and argued that the “generalized social trust” our society requires depends upon our ability to trust our social and governing institutions.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but fish rot from the head. When we no longer trust the integrity of our social and governing institutions, that distrust infects everything else. And when we don’t understand what government is supposed to do and how it is supposed to operate, we lose the ability to evaluate its performance. That makes us vulnerable to all sorts of claims of mischief and malfeasance.
Many people are currently blaming America’s growing diversity for the erosion of social trust. It’s those immigrants, those “Black Lives Matter” agitators, the troublemakers pushing the “Gay Agenda.” The “Other.” Those of you who are on the front lines in your communities, working with a variety of Hoosiers, know better.
The cure for what ails us doesn’t lie in building a wall between the United States and Mexico, discriminating against Muslims or LGBT folks, or recasting America as a White Christian Nation. Looking for someone to blame for our problems, retreating into an “us versus them” tribal worldview doesn’t fix anything; it doesn’t make our communities happier or richer or safer.
It’s people like you, who are willing to serve those communities, who care about what happens in them, that make them better.
The remedy for what ails us really is civic engagement; a broad effort to make our governmental, religious and civic institutions trustworthy again. And we can’t do that without recognizing the pre-eminent role of government, which is an essential “umpire,” enforcing the rules of fair play and setting the standard for our other institutions, both private and nonprofit.
If I am correct–if understanding and supporting government is an important part of building the trust and social capital that our private and nonprofit organizations require in order to flourish —then Houston, we have a problem.
In the years since Distrust, American Style was published, the situation has gotten much worse. We have had Citizens United and its progeny, we have had a Great Recession brought about by inadequate regulation of venal and greedy financial institutions, and we have seen daily reports of government corruption and incompetence—some true, many not. Which brings me to today’s media environment.
It is always tempting to assert that we live in times that are radically unlike past eras—that somehow, the challenges we face are not only fundamentally different than the problems that confronted our forebears, but worse; to worry that children growing up today are subject to more pernicious influences than children of prior generations. (In Stephanie Coontz’ felicitous phrase, there is a great deal of nostalgia for “the way we never were.”) I grew up in the 1950s, and can personally attest to the fact that all of our contemporary, misty-eyed evocations of that time are revisionist nonsense. Ask the African-Americans who were still struggling under Jim Crow, or the women who couldn’t get equal pay for equal work or a credit rating separate from their husbands, for starters.
Nevertheless—even conceding our human tendency to overstate the effects of social change for good or ill—it is impossible to understand the current cynicism about government and the civic enterprise without recognizing the profound social changes that have been wrought by communication technologies, most prominently the Internet.
Even in the smallest communities you will serve, people today are inundated with information. Some of that information is transmitted through hundreds of cable and broadcast television stations, increasing numbers of which are devoted to news and commentary twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But the Web has had the greatest impact on the way we live our daily lives. We read news and commentary from all over the world on line, we shop for goods and services, we communicate with our friends and families, and we consult web-based sources for everything from medical advice to housekeeping hints to comedy routines. When we don’t know something, we Google it. The web is rapidly becoming a repository of all human knowledge—not to mention human rumors, hatreds, gossip, trivia and paranoid fantasies. Picking our way through this landscape requires new skills, new ways of accessing, sorting and evaluating the credibility and value of what we see and hear—and most of us have yet to develop those skills.
Today, anyone with access to the internet can hire a few reporters or “content providers” and create her own media outlet. One result is that the previously hierarchical nature of public knowledge is rapidly diminishing. The “gatekeeper” function of the press—when journalists decided what constituted news and verified information before publishing it—is a thing of the past.
But it is the Web’s redefinition of community and engagement that may prove to be most significant. The Web allows like-minded people to connect with each other and form communities that span traditional geographical and political boundaries. It has encouraged—and enabled—a wide array of political and civic activism, and that’s great, but it has also created and facilitated what Eli Pariser calls “the filter bubble”–the ability to live within our preferred “realities,” in contact only with those who share our beliefs and biases.
The information revolution is particularly pertinent to the issue of trust in—and understanding of—our civic and governing institutions. At no time in human history have citizens been as aware of every failure of competence, every allegation of corruption or malfeasance. At no time have we been as swamped with propaganda and ideological spin. Even the most detached American citizen cannot escape hearing about institutional failures on a daily basis, whether those failures are true or not. Corruption and ineptitude are probably no worse than they ever were, but it is certainly the case that information and misinformation about public wrongdoing or incompetence is infinitely more widespread in today’s wired and connected world than it ever was before.
When people do not respect the enterprise that is government, when they suspect their lawmakers have been bought and paid for, it’s no wonder they remain detached from it. But that detachment, that withdrawal, isn’t simply from government activities; cynicism promotes disengagement from civic activities generally.
Research confirms a strong correlation between civic knowledge and civic participation, so it matters that Americans overall are civically illiterate. And they are.
In one study, only 36 percent of Americans could correctly name the three branches of government. Civic ignorance isn’t a new phenomenon: in a 1998 survey, nearly 94% of teenagers could name the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, but only 2.2 percent could name the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Most Americans (58%) are unable to identify even a single department in the United States Cabinet. In a 2006 study, only 43% of high school seniors could even name the two major political parties; only 11% knew the length of a Senator’s term; and only 23% could name the first President of the United States.
We can’t fix what we don’t understand.
Here’s the bottom line: when citizens do not understand the most basic structure and purpose of their governing institutions, we shouldn’t be surprised if they fail to recognize the multiple ways that structure affects them, let alone their obligations to their fellow citizens.
When citizens don’t understand the foundations of America’s legal system, they can’t evaluate the likelihood that candidates for public office will honor those foundations. When a candidate for President of the United States promises to uphold “Article 12” of the Constitution—an article that doesn’t exist—or “make all Muslims register” in blatant violation of the First Amendment, or institute a national “stop and frisk” program in violation of the 4th Amendment, or suggests that his opponent could unilaterally “get rid of” the Second Amendment even if she wanted to–we have a right to expect most citizens to recognize that such positions betray a total lack of familiarity with our Constitution and legal system and a truly frightening ignorance of how our government works. And that’s terrifying, because commitment to our Constitutional system is what makes us Americans.
The underlying premise of organizations like Americorp is that we are all, ultimately, a national community. We Americans may be composed of diverse and different elements, but when push comes to shove, we look out for each other. We respect each other. We interact with civility, and work together to protect essential American values and extend American liberties and largesse to those who are struggling. People don’t engage with what they don’t understand, and vitriol and insults don’t forge bonds of community. If we are going to foster civic engagement, we have to encourage understanding of and trust in the communities with which we are engaging.
Those of you involved in Americorp are doing yeoman work, but you can’t do it alone. If we want your numbers and effectiveness to increase, we have to get serious about encouraging and rewarding civility and serious about efforts to foster and improve Americans’ civic knowledge.
During your service, you will demonstrate the value of engagement to the communities you serve. You will reap the rewards that come from knowing you have made a real difference, a real contribution to the public good. You will be role models encouraging others to commit to public service, civility and informed civic and political engagement.
This Presidential campaign has been like turning over a rock and seeing the cockroaches scamper out. I really didn’t think it could get any worse.
And I never, ever expected to agree with Charles Krauthammer about, well, anything. But even he was appropriately appalled by Trump’s “lock her up” descent into banana Republicanism–and the hypocrisy of denouncing him only when the “groping” tape emerged.
His views on women have been on open display for years. And he’d offered a dazzling array of other reasons for disqualification: habitual mendacity, pathological narcissism, profound ignorance and an astonishing dearth of basic human empathy.
Donald Trump has indulged in conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birthplace, the FBI’s “rigged” probe of Hillary Clinton, the Federal Reserve’s “political” agenda and whether Ted Cruz’s father was linked to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
With his presidential campaign in full-blown crisis on Thursday, Trump was at it again, putting a new spin on a familiar tactic.
This time, there was a bigger, badder villain — “a global power structure” of corporate interests, the media and Clinton engaging in subterfuge.
As I read reports of his bizarre speech to a rally in West Palm Beach, I remembered a friend’s wry comment from our days in the Hudnut Administration. A neighborhood group had accused the administration of a conspiracy of some sort; after noting that we really weren’t capable of pulling off sophisticated plots, he remarked that simple incompetence explains so much more than complicated conspiracies.
Unless, of course, you are a bat-shit insane megalomaniac absolutely incapable of accepting responsibility for your own behavior.
“For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don’t have your good in mind. Our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven’t seen before,” Trump said…
A day earlier, Trump appeared to allege, without evidence, that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and other GOP elected officials who distanced themselves from him were involved in a mass scheme to undermine him.
“There’s a whole deal going on — we’re going to figure it out. I always figure things out. But there’s a whole sinister deal going on,” he said.
Trump charged that Clinton “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special-interest friends and her donors.” As Martin Longman put it, at Washington Monthly,
Yesterday, he might as well have put the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his teleprompter for all the subtlety he used in going after the media and international bankers. He will be the new Father Coughlin and he’ll make plenty of money.
“International bankers” thus joins the racism of Trump’s “birtherism,” the xenophobia of his rancid anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and his “Alpha male” misogyny. His anti-Semitism–previously a bit more subtle–has now become more overt.
Donald Trump’s supporters in the white nationalist movement have found who is to blame for the tape in which the Republican nominee brags about sexually assaulting women: “The Jews.” Trump’s racist supporters are claiming that Republican consultant Dan Senor leaked the tape, and are responding with anti-Semitic attacks.
Members of the “alt-right” and white nationalist movement have been heavily supporting Trump’s campaign, and the candidate and his team have been courting members of the movement, including by appearing in white nationalist media, refusing to denounce them, and retweeting their messages.
The Daily Stormer is a virulently anti-Semitic website that celebrates Nazism, purports to document the “Jewish Problem,” and attacks “kikes.” Editor Andrew Anglin wrote an October 11 post claiming that “we knew whoever leaked the tape was a Jew. And a #NeverTrump Jew advisor to Paul Ryan is currently being pointed at as being responsible. Dan Senor.” He called Senor “a #NeverTrump kike” and concluded:
If we lose this election, it is going to be because of this pussy-grabbing tape. And having it be known that it was a Jew is extremely important. One of the GOP’s Jews being responsible makes it all the better.
Because if we lose, this country is going to enter a new age of anti-Semitism.
The 35% or so of the country that is hardcore pro-Trump is going to know that it wasn’t “liberals” that defeated Trump, but traitors within the party who abandoned him. And they are going to want to know why that happened.
And there is only one answer:
The Jews did it.
Yes, we Jews–in league with the Clintons, the banks, the Republican establishment, the media, the Kenyan Muslim in the White House (and probably the aliens wholanded at Roswell)….all of whom are expertly and covertly co-ordinating a conspiracy to destroy America by defeating Donald Trump.
We do not have enough mental health professionals in this country.
One of the unfortunate aspects of this bizarre Presidential campaign has been the lack of attention to the truly important issues America faces. Not that sexual assault, bigotry and massive ignorance are unimportant, but between disclosures about Trump’s “groping,” his “scorched earth” attacks on pretty much everyone, and his increasingly obvious mental health issues, the Orange One has sucked up all the oxygen in the room, with the result that issues of enormous consequence have received little attention, and even less thoughtful discussion.
We are already experiencing the severe weather that we’ve been warned will accompany our new climate reality; hurricanes that pick up power from warming oceans, flooding in some regions, droughts in others. But it isn’t only weather and agriculture that should concern us.
I often quote my cousin, an eminent cardiologist whose own blog is devoted to providing accurate medical information and debunking what he aptly calls “snake oil.” He recently reminded me that there is a health dimension to climate change that is too often overlooked:
At this time, most thoughtful people acknowledge the reality of humanly generated climate change on our environment, but they often fail to understand the real threat this poses to human health in general.
Now, the American College of Physicians (ACP), one of our most respected medical institutions, has issued a sobering position paper on climate change and it effects on human health, including higher rates of respiratory and heat-related illness, increased prevalence of vector-borne and waterborne diseases, food and water insecurity, and malnutrition. Persons who are elderly, sick, or poor are especially vulnerable to these potential consequences, according to this group. The ACP also states its belief that it’s incumbent on all those in the health industry to play an active role in protecting human health and averting dire environmental outcomes.
This ACP publication emphasizes that climate change presents a “catastrophic risk” to human health over the next hundred years that may wipe out all of the health advances made over the previous 100 years. The average temperature on Earth has increased by almost 1 degree since 1889, and greenhouse gas emissions have increased by almost 50% from 2005 to 2011. It is predicted that by the end of the century, the Earth’s temperature may increase by 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Ice in the Arctic and Antarctic seas has melted at unprecedented rates and the water levels worldwide have risen by almost 7 inches over the last 100 years. The World Health Organization has predicted that climate change will cause an additional 250,000 deaths per year from 2030 to 2050 due to malnutrition, increased malaria, increased respiratory illness, heat-related illness, food issues due to crop losses, and increases in waterborne infectious diseases and vector-borne illness:
Their current recommendations include the following:
The entire health care community throughout the world must engage in environmentally sustainable practices that reduce carbon emissions.
Support efforts to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.
Educate the public, their colleagues, their community, and lawmakers about the health risks posed by climate change
As guardians of human health, we must assume a more active role in avoiding these disastrous consequences—if not for our own well-being, but for that for our children and all future generations! These efforts could well begin with how we all vote in the coming election!
My concern is not simply with the efforts of fossil fuel companies to stave off changes so that they can continue to profit, or with the fundamentalists (too many of whom are in Congress) who piously insist that God will take care of us.
My concern is that far too many of us arguably normal folks will react just like patients whose doctors tell them to quit smoking or start exercising– patients who know the doctor is right, but who lack the will to follow through.
I knew Rokita was a partisan hack when he introduced Indiana’s Voter ID law, which he sanctimoniously declared was a “good government” measure intended to stop all that nasty in-person “voter fraud” that doesn’t really happen, rather than an effort to prevent “those people” from voting. But in a year when his party’s Presidential ticket is composed of a megalomaniac and a Christian Warrior, I’d sort of forgotten about him.
Last week, however, Rokita had a column in the Indianapolis Business Journal that reminded me why he shouldn’t be in public office.
Rokita was on a rant against the federal Department of Education for its “assault on profit-making.” Translation: how dare the department move against ITT. It hasn’t taken similar action against public institutions! (Rockita also threw in a snide criticism of the IBJ’s editorial board, which had blamed the federal action on ITT’s management.)
Boiled down to its disingenuous basics, Rokita’s argument was that the federal government, motivated solely by liberal animosity to for-profit ventures–had overstepped its authority.
Missing from his diatribe were those pesky little things called “facts.” For years, ITT overcharged students for a shoddy product (its credits wouldn’t even transfer to most other institutions).It enrolled students without regard for their ability to benefit from higher education, because We the Taxpayers were paying the very hefty freight.
State and federal agencies have been investigating ITT since 2002, and it currently faces fraud charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission and a lawsuit from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It has been under investigation by at least 19 state attorneys general.
When U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. issued the Department’s decision to impose increased sanctions upon ITT, he emphasized that the move was not made lightly.
“Ultimately, we made a difficult choice to pursue additional oversight in order to protect you, other students, and taxpayers from potentially worse educational and financial damage in the future if ITT was allowed to continue operating without increased oversight and assurances to better serve students,” King wrote.
ITT was one of several for-profit “educational” endeavors ripping off both taxpayers and the students who left with substandard educations and huge loans to repay. Legitimate institutions of higher education, public and private, have been calling for more oversight of for-profit colleges for a long time.
To label this overdue regulatory action “liberal overreach” is (pardon my language) bullshit.
I can only assume that ITT or its shareholders are among Todd Rokita’s donors. Or his relatives. Or something. The only other explanation for so dishonest a column is abject ignorance.
I am grateful for one thing, though. The column reminded me why I have no use for Todd Rokita.
