Where to Put the Children?

Niraj Chokshi of the Washington Post ran a story about the position of a variety of State Governors on housing some of the immigrant children flooding into the country.  I'd like to respond to the comments attributed to these Governors, but first a little background is in order.

By now you are probably aware that there is a humanitarian crisis at the border as tens of thousands of Central American children and mothers are entering the United States.  It is estimated that 59,000 children from Central America will cross the border during fiscal year 2014.  The fact that these are children from Central America (Primarily Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador) does matter, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act in 2008 (Both signed by President Bush) makes it so that Mexican children can immediately be turned around and deported but children from elsewhere have to go through immigration proceeding and are not immediately deported.

The political aspect of this sudden surge in child migrants is bitterly caustic.  Democrats are saying this is happening because of the dangers of living in these Central American countries while Republicans are blaming Obama's "amnesty" through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).  Trying to sort out the root cause of this problem is beyond the scope of this article, though I hope to write about that soon.  I should point out, though, that perhaps the most compelling argument about the cause of this crisis comes from Honduran President Juan Hernandez who blames this problem on America's War on Drugs.  Regardless of the cause, however, there is an urgent need to come to some sort of resolution about how to handle the crisis.

Most of these immigrants have been crossing the border in Texas and have overwhelmed the facilities that are intended to handle these migrants.  There have been legitimate concerns about the conditions these children are being housed in and this has led many of them to be led out of Texas to other parts of the country.  This has given anti-immigration activists an opportunity to rally and protests and generally cause problems around the country.  The first story I heard along these lines came out of Murrieta California.  As someone who lives just minutes from that sleepy town you can imagine how this piqued my curiosity.   Two questions immediately came to mind: 1) How can a nation of immigrants act with such disgusting vulgarity towards children, and 2) Where are we going to put these children and who is going to take care of them?

This leads me back to Chokshi's article in the Washington Post.  The article offers little in the way of hope for a compassionate response to this crisis and a great deal of fear that these children will be used as pawns in the political bickering rampant across this country.  Let's look through the comments.

Democratic Governors Peter Shumlin of Vermont and Deval Patrick of Massachusetts both said that they are looking into options for housing some of these children.  Only time will tell if they made an earnest search and were willing to help in this time of great need.

The case in Maryland could be one of the more interesting ones.  Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley (a potential 2016 candidate) warned the Obama administration that sending the children home could have terrible consequences and could be dangerous for the children.  Then resisted a proposed Westminster location for housing some of the migrant children claiming that "it might not be the most inviting environment for the kids."  The experience in Murrieta suggests that he may indeed be right, but it certainly reeks of NIMBYism.  I would suggest that O'Malley is feeling a great deal of pressure to find a more hospitable location ASAP.  If he doesn't accept any of these children he will be seen as feckless and irresponsible.

All the blame can't be cast on O'Malley alone (though I think he sort of brought this on himself).  Democratic Governors in Delaware and Connecticut weren't much help either.  Kack Markell of Delaware claimed the state had no suitable facility while leaving the door open to private organizations to help.  Dan Malloy of Connecticut denied a federal request for a particular site claiming it was too old and decrepit.  Malloy suggested this highlights the need for Congress to act on Comprehensive Immigration Reform and to pass the President's Emergency Supplemental Funding Request.  This sentiment was echoed by John Hickenlooper, Democratic Governor of Colorado, who said there were limited resources for dealing with this problem.

I will admit to being disheartened by the fact that all six Democratic Governors quoted in this article appear to be, at best, completely useless in helping this dire humanitarian crisis.  While I am dismayed by this lack of concerted response, I am outraged by some of the responses from the Republican Governors.  Let's start with the least caustic and work our way down.

Republican Governors Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Scott Walker of Wisconsin make a similar argument, both to each other and to some of their Democratic counterparts.  Essentially, they claim that this is a federal issue and that it shouldn't be up to the states to cover the costs of this problem.  I actually believe this to be a true statement, the terrible irony is that the money that the federal government is looking for to pay for this problem is being blocked by members of their own party.  So we are left with Republican (and Democrat) governors who say that the federal government needs to pay, while republican members of congress balk at appropriating the necessary funding.  This, of course, hurts the Republican state of Texas where Republican Governor Rick Perry ought to be livid.  Instead he took some time to go have a photo shoot with Sean Hannity at the border with a giant gun.  I don't think I'll ever understand these people.  I should note, this isn't a critique of Sandoval or Walker, they are correct in pointing out the federal governments obligations, it is merely a demonstration of a lack of coherency and communication within the Republican party.

Okay, here is where it starts to get bad.  I think I need to stop paraphrasing and move on to direct quotes.  Republican Iowa Governor Terry Branstad is quoted as saying "The first thing we need to do is secure the border" and "I also don't want to send the signal that [you] send your kids to America illegally.  That's not the right message."  First, the children who are coming into this country illegally are not sneaking in across an insecure or porous border.  They are walking across and putting their hands up waving to border agents trying to be flagged down.  They have been told that they will be safe when they get to America and they will be taken care of and allowed to stay.  It is entirely disingenuous to claim that this is happening because of an insecure border.  Besides, how can that be Branstad's "first" priority.  Shouldn't our first priority be to ensure that the children and safe and fed?  Moving on to the messaging bit, we should be clear that we are talking about where we are going to host these children within the United States not where are we going to host them in the world.  It is totally ridiculous to argue that having the children housed in Iowa as opposed to New York or South Dakota or even still in Texas is going to send ANY message to the central american families.  The only way that idea would work is if EVERY state refused to take the migrant children, but that would violate the law passed with broad bipartisan support and signed into law by President Bush.  We have not only a moral obligation but a legal obligation as well.

I feel compelled to point this out as well.  At the protest in Murrieta many of the protesters argued for immediate deportation.  This appears to be the argument that Branstad is making, that the best way to deal with this situation is to violate the law and immediately send the children back.  I just can't help but laugh at the irony that this is exactly the same thing that Republicans are suing the president over right now.  They wanted to delay (and repeal) the Affordable Care Act and after Obama did that, they sued him for failing to follow the letter of the law and essentially for crafting his own laws.  Now they are doing this again, "Please Mr. President ignore the dutifully passed laws of our nation and deport these children immediately so that we don't have to deal with them… Then if you do we'll sue you for overreaching on presidential authority."

Last but certainly not least is Republican Governor of Oklahoma Mary Fallin.  She is quoted as saying "Many of our public schools are already at capacity and need additional funding…Our healthcare system is strained as it is.  Now, instead of allowing us to address those needs for Oklahomans, President Obama is forcing us to add an unspecified number of illegal immigrants to our public education and public health systems."  I already covered the cost aspect of this problem above so I'll ignore that here.  What is amazing about this comment is that there is no plan for what to do about the migrant children.  Does she want to deport them?  Does she want any state but Oklahoma to have to take them?  There is clearly no plan here, it is pure and simple "not my children not my problem."  Even this total disregard for the problem is not the worst part of this statement, it is the idea that Obama has been too focused on the immigration crisis to deal with the problems of "real" Americans.  This coming from the lady who refuses to accept Federal money to insure over 200,000 Oklahoman adults through medicaid expansion.  The gall to claim that a strained healthcare system is the cause to not provide care for children when she is personally responsible for refusing federal funding to insure her most vulnerable constituents is incomprehensible.  This logic is beyond reason and beyond further comment.

Blaming Environmentalists for CA Drought Costs?

I almost let this article slide by without comment, but I just couldn't do it.  This opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal makes an argument that environmentalists are to be blamed for some of the consequences for the ongoing drought in California.  As a Californian myself I can tell you that it is certainly a serious problem.  Not only can I not even remember the last time it rained out here, it has also been blisteringly hot.  Without any water we can't do any farming; this is not just bad for Californians its bad for everyone.

Allysia Finley who wrote the piece claims that half a million acres of farmland have been left fallow, that fruit and vegetable prices will rise by 5-6% and that "the average American family will spend about $500 more on food this year" from the drought in California.  This concern is legitimate, especially since rising food costs hit low-income American's hardest.  Couple that with the economic impact it will have on farming communities and indeed the whole state economy in California and we are certainly going to suffer some real consequences.  These problems don't particularly seem to concern Allysia though, she only seems particularly concerned with the actions of environmentalists.

She is all riled up about the fact that the state "flushed" about 1,250,000 acre-feet of water into the San Francisco Bay since last winter.  This outrage is logical since that amount of water would have been sufficient to irrigate more than all the fallowed farmland this year.  Why would the state dump all this precious water into the bay?  To save the delta Smelt, a three inch fish that humans don't even eat.  Can you believe this outrage! Let's blame the environmentalists for trying to protect this endangered fish!  Nevermind that this fish is a critical component of an ecosystem that needs protecting and which humans benefit.  There is no need to concern ourselves with an endangered fish when there is a shortage of water for agriculture, how dare they save the fish!

I'm only being modestly hyperbolic of her rhetoric, she called the decision "insane water rationing" and said "Californians already pay dearly for their government's green sanctimony… Maybe the feds have decided that the rest of the country should pay their fair share, too."  To be honest, that would actually be pretty nice.  Since environmental degradation is a collective action dilemma we should all have to share in the burden of resolving this very real and very serious problem.  That is, however, beside the point.  The point I wish to make is far simpler than that, you ready?  Okay, here we go.

There are much simpler, more economical, and longer lasting solution than letting this critical fish species become extinct.

Unbelievable right? With just 10 minutes on the internet I found a better solution that, having not been implemented, makes for actual justifiable anger.  Having been raised in Southern California I was taught that this land is actually a desert (or semi-desert).  Yet if you drive around here you would never know it, the cities are green as far as the eye can see.  Admittedly it does make for a more beautiful area, but at what cost?  My ire is particularly profound when I drive around and see the sea of green lawns in front of every house for as far as the eye can see.  This got me thinking, how much water do we waste on watering the most useless plant we could grow?  It turns out that that information is not particularly difficult to infer.

California residents actually use only about 10% of the state's water, most goes to the 29 million acres of agriculture with the remaining 5-10% going to industry.  Let's just focus on that 10% that households use.  Studies indicate that more than half of that water is used for landscaping and other outdoor uses (there isn't a specific breakdown for lawns).  This means that of the 8,700,000 acre-feet of water used for residential property about 4,611,000 acre-feet is used outdoors (53%).  Keep in mind that the total amount of water used to save the endangered fish was 1,245,000 acre-feet.  That means that the amount of water that was "dumped" with the "insane water rationing" was only 27% of what California residents spend on landscaping.  If we cut the amount of water we used in just this one area by 1/3 there would be more than enough for the smelt.

If Allysia felt the need to be mad at someone for the rising food costs she could point the finger at all Californians.  Collectively we have been able to conserve a whopping 5% statewide.  Honestly, if you drive around Southern California you wouldn't even know it was a drought.  The sprinklers still spray daily, often overshooting the lawns and dumping tons of water down the drain, or running during the heat of the day when the water isn't even able to be observed by the ground.  So what can you do?  Well environmentalists have long argued for Xeriscaping (landscaping that doesn't require additional water than what is natural).  Beyond that most Southern California residents can get virtually free artificial turf, just having to pay the taxes while the state covers the cost of the turf.  The best part about these solutions… they are permanent.  Sadly, droughts in our great state are only going to become more common and worse as time goes on.  If only we had listened to the environmentalists sooner, some of this damage could (and should) have been mitigated.

Keep in mind that environmentalists are the one group of people who have actually expressed earnest concern for the environment and for resource conservation.  Forgive me, but blaming environmentalists when there is a shortage of any resource is not a particularly thoughtful argument.  It would be nice if there was a genuine concern for climate change rather than finger pointing at the one group of people actively combating it.  Let's leave the politically motivated opinion pieces by the wayside and get to work.

Arguing for Marijuana Legalization? You're Doing it Wrong

All In with Chris Hayes did a segment on the "War on Weed" yesterday that really just drove me crazy.    Let me briefly recap before I tear the whole thing apart.  It started with Lee Fang, an author from The Nation who wrote a piece about the reason Marijuana is still illegal.  He points out that Big Pharma spends a bunch of money advocating against legalization because it would cut into their bottom line, this, it should be noted, is also true for the alcohol and tobacco industries and even for illegal marijuana growers, all of whom would suffer financially from legal marijuana.  That is all simple enough to understand (though certainly newsworthy) so let's move on.  He then brings on former Democratic Congressman Patrick Kennedy who now runs what amounts to a "Drugs are bad" type of a group that opposes legalization.  There is not even one single point he makes that I can accept without comment or refutation so I'll have to come back to that whole bit.  Finally he has the neuroscientist Carl Hart who fills the role of legalization advocate.  He was seemingly dismayed by the lack of opportunity to offer any meaningful response to the former Congressman's laundry list of factual inaccuracies (though I must say that the few precious moment he did have were mostly squandered).  I believe there is an appropriate way to make a marijuana legalization argument yet most proponents choose to make the wrong argument.  I'll come to that but first let me dispel with all the nonsense that Patrick Kennedy was spewing against legalization.

1)  He said that medical marijuana was a "trojan horse for legalization"

To a limited extent that is true. The groups that have pushed for medical marijuana are frequently the same groups that push for recreational marijuana.  It is also true that many of the people that have been prescribed medical marijuana might not be considered "legitimate" patients.  Still, I find this argument completely unpalatable.  I don't know that you could find very many people willing to make that same argument to a patient suffering from Glaucoma, Multiple Sclerosis, AIDS wasting or someone undergoing chemotherapy for cancer.  For many of these people Marijuana is not only the best medication for the ailments they are suffering but the only effective medication for their "legitimate" and serious suffering.  

Let's put this another way.  I hate stairs, for years I have told anyone who would listen that I prefer to walk up an inclined plane than to walk up stairs.  When presented with a choice I will usually avoid stairs even if it means a somewhat longer or more time consuming route.  This means that I will frequently walk up or down a wheelchair accessible ramp rather than take the stairs.  Over time I have noticed that I am far from the only one who makes this similar choice.  In fact, my experience tells me that there are far more able bodied individuals who use wheelchair ramps than those for whom it was built.  The logic of Kennedy's argument seems to suggest that we don't need wheelchair ramps if most of the people that use them could walk up stairs.  This, of course, is not what he was saying but is a natural conclusion to draw from a similar logic.  The point is that even if we grant that most of the people that are medical marijuana patients are "illegitimate" (a conclusion we should be hesitant to make) that is not a good reason to keep those who truly need the medicine from it.

2) He then said that we would be adding on to the burden of addiction by legalizing another drug, evidenced by the claim that Opioid addiction has been fueled by "availability and accessibility."

First, I would like to note that there is an important distinction to make between drug use and drug addiction.  Drug use comes from the potential for intoxication (getting high) and is aided by availability and accessibility.  Drug addiction comes from specific physical reactions to certain drugs through withdrawal, reinforcement, tolerance and dependence.  Having cheap and accessible marijuana certainly wouldn't help with the number of addicts but it has to be coupled with these other factors.  Evidence shows that very few people who ever try marijuana become addicted (were talking low single digits or about 4% depending one which study you consult).  So, when Kennedy says that opioid addiction has been fueled by availability and accessibility he isn't wrong, but the key word there is fueled.  Trying to make the same conclusion for marijuana is quite obviously a false equivalency.  The reason is that, unlike opioids, marijuana is not particularly addictive (see table above).  

To his credit, Kennedy does acknowledge that marijuana is already widely available in spite of decades of prohibition.  The problem with legalization, as he argues, is that there would then be for profit companies who would be marketing marijuana to young adults and teens (though i'm sure that would be regulated) targeting vulnerable populations and turning them into addicts.  Again, we need to realize that this isn't a terribly addictive product.  To make a regular marijuana consumer you don't just have to get them to try it, you need them to like it.  To summarize, the only gains that have been made in reducing marijuana use through prohibition is the small subset of the population that is unwilling to try it simply because of its illegality AND who otherwise would have liked it and continued to use beyond a brief experimental phase.  The same could not be said for tobacco or opioids which are actually addictive and need only be tried briefly to hook and individual for life.

3)  Tied into this last point is an argument that we would be sending the wrong message to our kids.  He said that kids would think it's no big deal, like grabbing a bottle of booze from the cupboard.

I have to say, this is one of my favorite arguments to destroy.  Any rational adult knows that it is actually better (were it not for legal consequences) for their kids to experiment with marijuana over alcohol.  Even our sitting president acknowledged this fact.  But, as a marijuana legalization advocate I don't like to play the "look at legal things worse than pot" game.  The fact is trying to have prohibition for popular drugs is always foolish public policy.  Alcohol prohibition was bad, marijuana prohibition is bad, and tobacco prohibition would be bad.  My hope is that even people who are against all these vices will see that the best solution lies with education rather than prohibition.  

Starting about 5 years ago we had a major shift in high school drug use patterns.  For the first time ever recorded there were more graduating seniors who had tried marijuana over cigarettes.  The fact that this happened mostly because of decreased tobacco use rather than increased marijuana use is a major public health victory.  Looking at the chart above we can draw 2 conclusions: 1- Tobacco use has gone down even though it is still legal, and 2- Marijuana use has stayed steady.  The truth is that I don't believe we can replicate the success of tobacco reductions with marijuana.  The problem is that there is no major scare factor, an education campaign will be hard to mount around relatively minor long term risks associated with marijuana use.  Still this would be better than obvious lies we present with abstinence only drug education.  When adults are hyperbolic about the dangers of marijuana use they lose all credibility.  Teenagers are capable of seeing straight through the lies and turn, instead, to the internet to find out the "truth" about marijuana.  This is potentially dangerous because of the potential for misinformation about the actual risks of use.  For example, there is a legitimate concern about high concentrate edibles with marijuana; people have been known to take to much which can lead to problems.  But if we are dishonest with our drug education, why would they believe us when we try to explain the actual dangers?  

Kids are bright enough to get that just because something is legal does not mean that it is safe, especially when taken to extremes.  They appear to be getting this message with tobacco.  They are starting to realize (I hope) that it is legal to eat fast food all three meals everyday, but you'll end up dying of cardiac arrest in your 40's (if you're lucky).  If we want our kids to believe us when we tell them about the danger and warning signs of tolerance and withdrawal, we have to cut out the "reefer madness."

4) Tobacco, alcohol and marijuana are "gateway drugs."

I almost can't believe we are still talking about this.  If I was Carl Hart I would have used my precious few moments on air to debunk this tired myth once and for all.  PLEASE can't we finally put this to rest.  Kennedy said that the "real" gateway drugs are tobacco and alcohol (i.e legal drugs) which leads kids to marijuana before they get tired of this and move on to harder drugs.  I would like to state this as clearly as possible, there is NO SUCH THING AS A GATEWAY DRUG!  It simply does not exist, not tobacco, not alcohol, and not marijuana.  

Here is essentially how the gateway theory developed.  If you filled a stadium with people who were heroin addicts (Kennedy chose Heroin so I'll stick with that) and polled them on whether they had tried marijuana before heroin you would find that virtually everyone would honestly say that they had.  Presto! Gateway theory is proven, right? Wrong!  My favorite rebuttal to this (though not sure who deserves proper attribution) is to ask the same stadium of people how many of them had tried milk before heroin.  Again you would find that it was pretty much everyone (or actually everyone if you count breast milk), does that make milk a gateway drug?  Of course it doesn't, that would be ridiculous. The appropriate way to test for the gateway theory would be to fill the stadium with marijuana users and to ask them how many had moved on to try heroin.  If you did that you would find that almost none did, in fact, it would be about the same percentage as those who used heroin from the regular population.  Marijuana doesn't cause heroine addiction, it doesn't lead to it, there is no gateway.  But, if you were going to become a heroine addict, you are most likely going to have gone through a plethora of other drugs before you tried shooting up, including tobacco, alcohol and marijuana.  

Let's recap.  1) There are at least some medical marijuana patients who are unquestionably "legitimate" and for whom safe and legal access is a necessity, regardless of abuses of the system. 2) Legalization of marijuana will lead to a modest rise in marijuana users in the short term before once again plateauing.  Marijuana is not particularly addictive and there is no rational grounds to assume that "big marijuana" could turn a whole generation into deadbeat stoners. 3) It is better to be honest with our children about the actual  dangers of marijuana use than it is to send hyperbolic scare messages.  Tobacco education has been more effective than marijuana prohibition. and finally 4) THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GATEWAY DRUG!  Instead of lying to kids our politicians and other leaders have been lying to adults, the only difference is that it is actually working.  It appears that we are more gullible than our children.

Okay, with that now out of the way I want to spend a little time talking about the correct and incorrect way to advocate for marijuana legalization.  There are two main approaches to advocating for sensible drug policy, neither of which I am a fan of.  

1) Talking about money

It is true that we spend insane amounts of money maintaining marijuana prohibition and have very little to show for it.  It is also true that we are foregoing insane amounts of money by not taxing marijuana sales in a well regulated market.  The problem with money is that you completely miss the moral argument.  For some reason, money is no concern when it comes to saving even just one child (that is unless we're talking about a latino child from some Central American country fleeing the most horrific violence imaginable).  I have written about how legalization advocates can't just flash dollar signs but have to win the morality argument before.  This still holds true today.  What seems strange to me is that we can win the morality argument.  Whenever someone asks you to think about the message we are sending to the kids ask them about the kids of the non-violent drug users who have been sent to jail for decades, had their assets confiscated, had their student loans rescinded, can no longer support their families, and have been marked forever as felons.  Ask them about entire communities that have been devastated, about whole demographics who have been systematically biased and who were born with dramatically fewer options and opportunities.  How's that for morality?

2) Comparing marijuana to tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals

This one is tempting as seen by the failed effort on Chris Hayes' show last night.  Advocates like to point out that marijuana is safer than any of these legal substances but by making this connection you are inviting all of the problems associated with tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceuticals into the marijuana legalization debate.  Frequent responses include noting that the revenue generated from alcohol taxes doesn't come close to matching the costs associated with alcohol use. That legal drugs are more popular than marijuana and we would essentially be doubling down.  That there would then be corporate incentives to encourage marijuana addiction.  That legal drugs are actually more gateway drugs, etc.  Each of these arguments can easily be refuted, but before you know it you are now talking about other drugs and not marijuana.

So, what is the correct approach to advocating marijuana legalization?  We need to argue that marijuana is actually good.  Not just that it is better than the alternative nor that it isn't worth the cost we have spent but that it is actually good.  We need to argue that all those medical marijuana patients that appear illegitimate are actually legitimate.  We need to argue that marijuana isn't only better than alcohol but better than aspirin.  We need to show that moderate consumption can go a long way to calming the anxious and stressed American population with relatively modest side effects.  We need to show that marijuana is better than sleeping pills, pain pills, and recreational drug use.  We need to argue that the Federal coffers and not the foreign cartels should be profiting of it's distribution.  We need to eradicate non-violent addicts from our prisons and we need to invest in our inner cities.  We need to win the moral argument.  Marijuana is not just "not that bad" rather, "marijuana is good."

*I should note that I don't believe marijuana is for everyone, but I believe that most people are capable of making that decision for themselves (at least with the aid of a doctor).  Certainly we can agree that there is no logical purpose in incarcerating non-violent offenders.