Days 7-8: Drugs in Houston

Keith dropped me off at the Denver airport for a side-trip to Houston. Fighting my way through the chaos accompanying the merger of United and Continental airlines, I finally boarded my plane. I spent the flight preparing a new talk I was about to give as a keynote address to an assembly of drug policy wonks to kick off an all-day conference on the topic.

On the airplane, Fox News was dishing out its idea of “fair and balanced” news coverage on the backs of 100 seats all around me. I don’t know how United can inflict that on a captive audience of their passengers. (Meanwhile, I enjoyed the thought that just yesterday, Fox News friend Pat Robertson came out in favor of legalizing marijuana.)

In Houston, Professor Emeritus William Martin — a wonderful man, a fixture at Rice University, and the official biographer of Billy Graham — hosted me at the James Baker Institute, where speakers from around the world are brought together to inspire Houstonians to thoughtful civic responsibility. I gave a one-hour, two-part talk: the abbreviated TED version of my Travel as a Political Act talk, followed by my NORML material that emphasizes European drug policy. While I was a bit nervous (speaking to a room full of leading Houstonians and well-connected patrons of the university from a podium that has been occupied by everyone from Nelson Mandela to Bill Clinton to Henry Kissinger), my talk was well received.

Later that night, over dinner with drug policy activists (on both sides of the issue), we had a lively conversation. I sat next to a mentor of mine, Ethan Nadelmann, the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Ethan has recently been shuttling between sitting presidents south of our border. Several Latin American countries (including Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Colombia) have begun talking about the wisdom of taking the crime out of the drug equation to help alleviate some of the violence wracking their societies. As Ethan counsels them on the pragmatism of legalizing marijuana, Joe Biden is flying there to remind them that if they do, they’ll find themselves in a costly trade war with the USA.

A drug policy expert from England and I explored the existentialism of drug abuse. It seems like hard drug use in the rich world correlates with futility and meaningless in life (for example, many Russians with go-nowhere lives drown themselves in vodka all alone). He made a good case that consumption in Europe is related not to the impact of existing laws, but to how a society supports its struggling citizens. For example, the Netherlands and Switzerland have similar laws — but the Swiss, with a less forgiving welfare system, have more needle junkies, while the Dutch, with a more generous way of taking care of its troubled citizens, have far fewer hard drug users. I asked him why the Czechs smoke more marijuana than any other European country. He speculated that it may be because after they won their freedom from the USSR, and the poet and playwright Václav Havel was swept into power, it was a little like the hippies taking over. Comparing the war on marijuana to Prohibition back in the 1920s and 1930s, someone said, “Alcohol with Al Capone is worse than alcohol without.”

A man at our table who had advised the US drug czar recalled how, during one negotiation session with European officials on drug policy, the Americans started the meeting by saying, “If you say the phrase ‘harm reduction,’ we’ll have to leave the room.” (For eight years during the Bush Administration, no drug policy proposal with that term was even allowed to be considered — as “harm reduction” is considered code for legalization.)

Confirming my understanding that countries are extorted into keeping pot illegal by American trade policies (enforced through United Nations agreements), I learned that while rich countries incur a trade war if they legalize any drug, poor countries get “decertified” (in other words, disqualified from receiving foreign aid) if they decide to legalize marijuana. Because of this, the presidents of Mexico and other Latin American nations are between a rock and a hard place when it comes to taking the violence and money out of their local drug wars.

Then, after a day of events for Houston PBS, I flew north to Oklahoma City to meet Keith and continue our Road Trip USA.