What Reactionaries Get Wrong About Drugs, Decriminalization, And Homelessness

Twenty-One Debunked does not take an official position on hard drugs (i.e. illicit drugs other than cannabis and some psychedelics) or the question of their legalization, but we generally lean more towards the decriminalization and harm reduction side of the spectrum as opposed to the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs.  There is a lot of nuance that tends to get glossed over in debates that are, more often than not, typically dominated by hysterics.

Reactionaries have lately been giving some red-hot takes about the supposed perils of decriminalization and harm reduction, and often pointing fingers at Oregon for their decriminalization policy causing or exacerbating homelessness, crime, and overdose deaths.  However, such hot takes are typically completely devoid of nuance, and thus conflate correlation with causation.  Such nuances include the role of super-deadly fentanyl and its variation over time and geography, the role of the pandemic and lockdowns and their aftermath, the still-growing housing crisis, the inherent pitfalls of forced treatment, and so on.  Better articles about such nuances can be found here and here, for starters.

Those who have the GALL to oppose basic and increasingly necessary lifesaving harm reduction measures like making naloxone (Narcan) and fentanyl test strips readily available are, to put it mildly, murderously stupid.  Fentanyl often gets mixed into other drugs and can make the drug supply much deadlier than it would otherwise be.  While treatment and recovery are no doubt important goals, we also still need to meet people where they are as well.

Of course, the reactionaries do get one thing partially right, as a stopped clock always does twice a day.  There has been a general breakdown of law and order in most major North American cities in recent years due to a combination of general policy changes, anti-police sentiment, catch and release, political ideology, political correctness, and perhaps even deliberate chaos manufacture by various agents provocateur.  Of course, they should shut down and clear out the sprawling homeless encampments on the city streets and sidewalks and the open-air drug scenes that all too often go along with them.  End catch and release.  Re-criminalize theft.  Crack down on violence of all kinds.  Bring back "focused deterrence" policing, and take the classic "broken windows" theory literally.  All of these things are really just common sense, and none of them require ending harm reduction or reversing Oregon's decriminalization of simple possession of small amounts of illicit drugs.

In other words, simply enforce existing laws, and repeal bad or counterproductive ones.  But please, do it ethically, and don't let it be a springboard for an illiberal reactionary agenda.  If you feel the urge to show "tough love", look to Portugal or Alberta, not the current or historical drug warrior nations.

That said, we should always keep in mind that hard drugs called "hard" for a reason, as they are a different beast from alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis.  They may not be quite a million miles away from the latter ones, but they clearly don't belong in the same category either.  While illiberal drug policy clearly makes them much more dangerous than they have to be, they are also pretty inherently dangerous, deadly, and highly addictive in their own right as well regardless.  This is especially true for opioids in particular, as there is really no such thing as a truly safe opioid.  And we have also long known that "speed kills" and "meth is death".  And yet, unfortunately these things are still not going anywhere either.  Policymakers need to handle these things with great care as they should with any wicked problem.  And consumers would be wise to avoid these substances like the plague, especially in the age of fentanyl. 

As for the perennial wicked problem of homelessness, the housing crisis still needs to be solved before there is any hope of ending it for good.  Artificial scarcity of housing needs to end, yesterday.  And a recent study found that some form of UBI can also play a net positive role in the solution as well.  Contrary to popular opinion, spending on "temptation goods" did not actually increase for such recipients.  But good luck convincing the reactionaries of that!

Twenty-One Debunked Opposes Most Drug Testing

In light of recent reports of student drug testing now including nicotine in some schools due to the moral panic over vaping, Twenty-One Debunked needs to reiterate our general opposition to such testing:

• We oppose any drug testing that is not strictly to determine current impairment or "fitness for duty" in cases of driving, operating machinery, or working at safety-sensitive jobs.
• We oppose any drug testing that privileges or excludes some people over others, whether by age, socioeconomic status, race, or any other suspect or quasi-suspect classification.
• We oppose schools and employers having any jurisdiction whatsoever over what students and employees do to their own bodies off the clock and off the premises, as long as it does not unduly adversely affect their job or school performance and behavior.
• Even if the above criteria are satisfied, we still oppose any drug testing method that has detection times longer than a day or two at the cutoff used, and/or uses inactive metabolites as a proxy for the main substances being tested.  That excludes essentially everything except blood and saliva tests for most substances.  (Note that SCRAM bracelets and sweat testing for offenders in the 24/7 Program are an exception to this rule.)

Twenty-One Debunked, therefore, opposes the vast majority of drug testing done in this country.  We are the supposed land of the free, it's time to start acting like it!

A Generation of Sociopaths?

Are Baby Boomers (i.e. the generation born between 1946-1964) really a generation of sociopaths and/or narcissists?  That is in fact the conclusion of a controversial new book by Bruce Gibney, titled A Generation of Sociopaths.  And while we at Twenty-One Debunked are really not fond of condescending broad generalizations about any generation, there does seem to be at least a kernel of truth to his thesis, and it is nonetheless a breath of fresh air to have a book that at least doesn't glibly vilify Millennials and/or Gen Z like so many do nowadays.

According to Gibney, himself a member of Gen X, traits associated with antisocial personality disorder and narcissism do seem to be more prevalent in Boomers compared to any generation before or since.  And the hard data pertaining to behaviors associated with such traits, especially crime rates and substance abuse, do indeed seem to bear this thesis out rather nicely, as do the voting records of that generation.  Reagan, both Bushes, Bill Clinton, and especially Trump could never have been elected without the Boomers voting for them in large numbers.  These candidates all basically promised Boomers (especially white, middle class ones) the moon while asking essentially nothing of them in return, and no price was too high as long as someone else (i.e. future generations) paid for it.  And all of these candidates, to one degree or another, did serious damage to our country--economically, socially, and ecologically.

Granted, "not ALL Boomers" are like that.  But enough of them are to be a problem, and more so than any other generation.  Sound familiar?  It really should.

The real question here is WHY this generation who had so many advantages in terms of wealth and power turned out the way that they are.  Gibney, predictably, blames "permissive parenting" and the fact that they were the first generation raised with television.  True, as the Dr. Spock generation they (mainly white, middle-class Boomers) were raised more permissively than previous generations, and likely more so than subsequent generations in at least some ways.  The mid to late 1970s could indeed be considered a time of "peak permissiveness" in terms of both parenting practices and public policy, and such trends towards permissiveness indeed began from about 1945 onward.   No doubt about that.

But stating such time-series correlations does NOT actually establish causation.  Another factor, overlooked by Gibney, explains Boomer (and early Gen X) traits, behaviors, and statistics far more than anything else:  preschool lead poisoning from leaded gasoline and paint.   Leaded gasoline begain being used in the 1930s, and after WWII, gasoline consumption (and thus lead pollution) increased dramatically until the 1973-1974 oil crisis and the phaseout of leaded gasoline beginning in 1976.  Lead paint, which was banned completely in 1978, had already been phased down in decades prior, but lingers in older housing stock.  Thus, the first permissively-raised generation and the first televison-raised generation and the wealthiest generation in history and the most heavily lead-poisoned generation in history are all in fact one and the same.

And unlike the specious correlations with parental permissiveness and screen time, the correlation with early lead poisoning (a known nasty neurotoxin) and various traits and behaviors that can be described as sociopathic (or at least poor impulse control) is undeniable and meets all of the Bradford-Hills criteria of causation.  As researcher Rick Nevin notes, relationship between preschool lead exposure and such adverse later outcomes as major and minor crime, juvenile delinquency, unwed/early pregnancy, and stuff like that remains highly robust across studies numerous time periods, nations, cultures, and functional forms.  And while white, suburban and rural, middle-class Boomers were arguably much less affected by such lead poisoning than their poorer, urban, black, and/or Latino counterparts in terms of lead poisoning, that doesn't mean that they were completely unaffected by it, since there was still plenty of lead to go around everywhere.  The difference was really one of degree, not kind.

Fortunately, thanks to the phaseout of leaded gasoline and paint, newer housing stocks, and reduction of lead emissions from incinerators, lead poisoning in children today is now at the lowest level in at least a century.   But there is still much work to be done.  There is plenty of old housing stock with deteriorating lead paint, and there is still too much lead in the drinking water of many communities across the country.  According to Nevin, replacing old windows in old housing with new, double-glazed, energy-saving windows, along with stablilizing currently deteriorating old lead paint on walls, would be "low-hanging fruit" in terms of lead abatement that would more than pay for itself in the long run.  As for drinking water, replacing the older service lines would be expensive and time consuming (though still worth doing nonetheless), but in the meantime we could stop adding fluoride yesterday (which is not only neurotoxic in its own right, but potentiates the neurotoxicity of lead and increases lead corrosion and leaching from pipes) and perhaps use ozone instead of chlorine (which also leaches lead) for disinfection of the drinking water supply.

And while many of the Boomer-induced problems left for future generations are indeed real, we should also note that Gibney's fretting about the national debt and Social Security's supposedly impending insolvency is misplaced since these things are really non-problems for a Monetarily Sovereign government like our own federal government.  It is in fact a Big Lie that federal taxes actually pay for federal spending and that the federal government can somehow run short on dollars.  And that big, scary number that is our so-called "national debt" is not debt in the usual sense of the term but rather more like a national savings account.  Author Rodger Malcolm Mitchell, himself a member of the Silent Generation, would have some choice words for authors like Gibney in that regard.  But that is a topic for another discussion.

So perhaps what is really needed here, instead of vilification of an entire generation, is that crucial trait that sociopaths and narcissists lack:  empathy.

The Dark Side of the Icelandic Model

Recently, we posted an article about the seemingly successful Youth in Iceland strategy for reducing teen substance abuse. To wit, since 1997, the consumption of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and other substances among 15-16 year olds has plummeted there, more so than any other nation, according to surveys.  And in fact, by 2016, Iceland was able to boast having the cleanest-living teens in the industrialized world, in contrast from being home to Europe's heaviest-drinking teens twenty years ago.

This was done through a combination of things: 1) laws were changed to raise the age of majority from 16 to 18, raise the smoking age for tobacco to 18 and the drinking age to 20, and set a 10 pm curfew law for people under 16, 2) most parents pledging to basically close ranks and keep their kids on a fairly tight leash overall, at least by European standards, and 3) the government investing in providing sports and other recreational activities for young people to give them something to do as a healthy alternative to drugs or alcohol.   And while not explicitly considered a part of the strategy, Iceland's very high alcohol taxes no doubt played a role as well.  We at Twenty-One Debunked noted how this strategy was a mixed bag and would support it if (and only if) it could be done without the ageism/adultism, like Kaunas, Lithuania (and some other cities) supposedly was able to do.

But one thing we did not look at right away was what happens when Icelandic youth finally do come of age.  The surveys used to support the Icelandic Prevention Model are of 15-16 year olds, but curiously the model's supporters don't even mention any data for people just a few years older.  Surely there should be a positive spillover or at least a cohort effect that follows youth exposed to the strategy if the ageists' theories are correct, so such a glaring omission is very curious indeed.

We think we know why.  For adults, Iceland is in fact one of the drunkest and druggiest countries in the world.  This is particularly true for prescription pills:  they seem to lead the world (or at least Europe) in the use/abuse of opioid painkillers, sedatives, tranquilizers, and stimulants.  And such drugs, particularly opioids, have been on the rise lately even as they have fallen in many other countries.  And despite fairly strict drug laws, the use of illicit drugs, both cannabis as well as hard drugs, have also increased significantly recent years as well. Iceland also notably leads the world in antidepressant use, and is also on the increase, which can be true for a number of reasons.   Though their overall per-capita alcohol consumption is below the OECD average, it has nonetheless risen 35% since 1992 despite recent alcohol tax hikes, and when they do drink, they really drink themselves into oblivion--kinda like stereotypical American college freshmen.  Of course, Iceland was already kind of like that before the Youth in Iceland strategy began in 1998, as well as for cohorts that came of age before that, but the fact that such widespread substance use/abuse has held steady or increased for the cohorts of adults that were affected by the law changes shows just how hollow the whole thing really was.

Oh, and for those who think that America's so-called "hook-up culture" among young people is out of control, well, let's just say that you've never been to Iceland.  And not just for young people either.  Over there it seems that "f**k first, names later" is the norm, often literally, and they are usually under the influence of alcohol when they do it.  Not to knock casual sex per se, or to shame anyone for it, but it is nonetheless sobering to note that Iceland leads Europe in terms of STD's, or at least chlamydia in particular, a disease that has even been nicknamed the "Reykjavik Handshake".  So apparently many Icelanders are getting so wasted that they fail to use condoms as directed, if at all, when they hook up.

In other words, the otherwise-progressive Iceland has basically become Little America in that regard, and not necessarily in a good way either.  That is what happens when ageists in power focus only on young people while ignoring the pink elephant in the room--the behavior of their elders.  The contrast between "abstain from everything" adolescence and "anything goes" adulthood couldn't be any more stark, and simply raising age limits or revoking civil rights from young people merely kicks the proverbial can down the road.  It's the Law of Eristic Escalation in action:  imposition of order leads to escalation of chaos/disorder, particularly if the order in question imposed is arbitrary and/or coercive. Renowned sociologist and youth-rights activist Mike Males would surely have a field day with Iceland!

2018 UPDATE:  A recent article has been written detailing the numbers of alcohol consumption in Iceland.  Also, we would be remiss if we did not note that the so-called "Reykjavik Handshake" was primarily the result of (largely imported) condoms becoming pricier and less affordable for young Icelanders after their currency devaluation in the wake of their financial crisis a decade ago, as opposed to a purported increase in boozy sex compared with the 1990s, which does not really seem to be true.

2020 UPDATE:  Apparently, Iceland's drinking age was never actually below 20 at any time since the repeal of alcohol prohibition.  It was set at 21 in 1935 upon repeal of prohhibiton, then lowered to 20 in 1968 and remained as such since then, as attempts to lower it to 18 have all failed.  Thus, the articles that claimed that raising the drinking age to 20 was part of Iceland's new prevention strategy are factually inaccurate.

Latest MTF Results Are In

The 2012 Monitoring the Future survey results are finally in.  We see that, in a nutshell, alcohol use and "binge" drinking* has reached historic lows for grades 8 and 10, while there has been a slight increase from the previous year's record low for grade 12.  Cannabis use has leveled off after rising for five straight years, use of most other substances either held steady or declined, and tobacco use has fallen to record lows.  In fact, cannabis is now more popular than tobacco (but still less so than alcohol) among today's youth, and has been for the past three years in a row.  Note that this reversal of rank was more due to a decrease in tobacco use rather than due to an increase in cannabis use, since the use of both substances are down from their respective peaks in the late 1970s.

So what should we make of these results?  While the pro-21 crowd would like to take credit for the massive decrease in alcohol consumption among teenagers since 1979, one must remember that teen drinking also plummeted in Canada (and more recently in the UK) despite not raising the drinking age to 21.  Also, tobacco continued its long-term decline while for alcohol there are some signs of a turnaround, despite the smoking age remaining at 18 in nearly all states.  Thus, the relationship between the drinking age (and its enforcement) and the levels of teen drinking is not nearly as cut-and-dried as the pro-21 crowd would like us to believe.  In fact, some studies have found that the opposite may be true for dangerous drinking practices among teens and young adults.

*We at Twenty-One Debunked always put the term "binge drinking" in scare quotes when we are referring to the 5+ or 5/4+ drinks definitions, as we believe that such definitions are grossly inaccurate measures of the very real problem of truly dangerous drinking.  More information about this issue can be found in our previous posts here and here.

Is Alcohol Really a Gateway Drug?

While the "gateway drug" theory has historically been associated more with cannabis than any other substance, many of the theory's proponents have also fingered alcohol and tobacco as possible culprits in somehow inducing hapless youth to "graduate" to harder drugs and eventually become hopeless junkies, tweakers, and/or crackheads.  In this post we revisit the decades-old theory with a fairly new twist.

A new study of high school student survey data claims to find that alcohol, as opposed to cannabis or tobacco, is the real "gateway" drug.  The study found that of all of the numerous psychoactive substances asked about in the Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey, alcohol was the one that was the single most likely to predict (statistically) the use of the others with the greatest accuracy.  Ergo, if there is such a thing as a gateway drug, alcohol would most likely be it.

If there is such a thing, that is.  And that's a pretty big "if" if you ask us.  For starters, the historical background of the gateway theory has a rather tainted pedigree.  The gateway theory as applied to cannabis turns out to be a virtually whole-cloth fabrication in the early 1950s by Harry Anslinger (the man responsible for cannabis being federally banned in 1937) who needed a justification for its continued ban and even harsher laws against it after the original Reefer Madness claims (murder, rape, insanity, and death) had been debunked by the La Guardia Committee Report in 1944.  So he flip-flopped and claimed that cannabis led its users to heroin addiction, which even he himself actually said was not the case in the 1930s.  But it turns out that a more general version of the theory is even older than that.  It can be traced back to at least 1910, when it was believed that indulging in smaller pleasures (such as eating spicy food) would lead one to crave larger pleasures (such as opium).  And that in turn would eventually lead one to the drunkard's grave.   Thus, the latest manifestation of the gateway theory, besides being recycled garbage, has actually come full circle (with alcohol at the start of the sequence rather than the end).  And nearly every major study of drugs and drug policy for the past century has been far more likely to refute the theory than to support it.

If not a causal relationship between alcohol (or cannabis) and later use of harder drugs, what explains the apparently strong association between the two?  One study by RAND in 2002 found that there was a more parsimonious explanation based on a mathematical model of:  1) the age at which each substance was typically first available to an individual, 2) individuals' propensity to use substances, which varies and is assumed to be normally distributed among the population, and 3) chance or random factors.  This explanation was equally accurate at predicting drug use progression compared with a model that assumed a causal relationship.  In the case of cannabis, another likely alternative explanation of the supposed gateway effect is the black market itself, as users are exposed to harder drugs through many of the same dealers who sell them their weed.  This was one of the reasons why the Netherlands adopted their policy of tolerance for cannabis (which can be purchased in "coffeshops" in many towns), and to this day the Dutch have significantly less of a problem with hard drugs than the USA and many other Western nations. 

Additionally, when young people are lied to about the dangers of alcohol and cannabis, they may eventually assume that all anti-drug messages are bunk and experiment accordingly.  Unfortunately, honest alcohol and drug education is not nearly as commonplace as it should be in this country.

So where does the issue of the 21 drinking age figure into all of this?  For starters, the authors of the study that links alcohol with subsequent use of other substances predictably claim that the longer alcohol use is delayed, the fewer problems there will be with not just alcohol abuse but the abuse of other substances as well, and they recommend zero tolerance for teen drinking.  This study would thus most likely be seen as vindication for the pro-21 crowd.  However, one can also look at the study's results a bit differently and see that the supposed gateway effect occurs despite (or perhaps even because of) the 21 drinking age.  For example, forcing alcohol underground makes it more likely to be used in the same environment as other substances, thus increasing young drinkers' exposure to the other substances.  The fact that "underage" drinkers are already breaking the law may encourage them to break other laws as well.   Also, at least some 18-20 year olds may find other substances easier to get than beer, and will thus be more likely to use them as substitutes.  In fact, a recent study found that when alcohol retreats, cannabis advances (and vice versa), and that is discussed in a previous post on this blog.  Therefore, one could say that the 21 drinking age acts as a "social gateway" to other drugs in a somewhat similar manner as cannabis prohibition, albeit much more modestly since there is not much of a real black market in alcohol (save for the modern-day speakeasies known as frat houses).  Indeed, it may not be a coincidence that American teens are more likely to use illicit drugs than their European counterparts despite being less likely to drink or smoke cigarettes.

In other words, we ought not to put too much stock in the rather dubious gateway theory, except to note how it could be one more way that the 21 drinking age yet again does more harm than good.