Daniel Forbes, a smart journalist who covers drug policy, has a new scoop. It’s that the Bush Administration is set to ramp up the rhetorical crusade against recreational drug use with the appointment of one John Walters as the new Drug Dictator (I think we should call a Czar a Czar). Walters was Bill Bennett’s deputy in the old Just-Say-No days. According to Forbes, Walters sees no distinction between mild drugs like marijuana and Ecstasy and harder drugs like crystal meth, crack cocaine, or heroin, and sees a bright line between all these drugs and nicotine and alcohol. We’ve had false leaks from the White House before, so I reserve judgment on this. But Forbes has been right in the past. He exposed former Drug Dictator Barry McCaffrey’s scheme to bribe the media to slip anti-drug propaganda into regular broadcasting. I see no signs that the new administration won’t be even harsher than the punitive Clinton regime. But it would truly be ironic, wouldn’t it, if a man who went from cocaine user (he won’t deny it) to president wants to initiate a policy that says that all drug-use is a dead-end.
WATCH IT: The case for broadcasting Timothy McVeigh’s death. See the new TRB opposite.
THE TIMES VERSUS MEDICAL PROGRESS: The New York Times is now on a crusade: to kill off the global pharmaceutical research. Anyone who doubts this should read the “Analysis” in the Times today on drug patents. It could have been written by Ralph Nader. Worse, it’s the lead news story. The piece starts with its bias up-front: “The big pharmaceutical companies march to the beat of a steady chant – that patent protection for drugs is essential for innovation.” But this is not some quixotic belief of the “big” pharmaceutical companies. It’s the rationale for any form of patent law at all. Then in reporting the efforts of activists to cripple intellectual property rights, the Times opines that this is the drug companies’ fault! “But now, it seems, the industry may have overplayed its hand… some analysts say the industry itself fueled the backlash by staunchly defending its intellectual property in the face of a pandemic that could claim more lives than the Black Death.” (I love that statement “some analysts,” i.e. the Times, a representative of Canadian generic drug companies; an attorney for the left-wing Doctors Without Borders; and a former Republican who wants to squeeze drug companies further.) Of course, the industry also “fueled the backlash” by creating the drugs in the first place! No drugs, no conflict. Nowhere in the article does the writer analyze the feasibility of mass provision of HIV drugs in a continent that cannot even tackle dysentery. Nowhere does he worry about how newer drugs will replace the current ones whose usefulness will soon decline, if you kill research incentives. These are not extraneous points to this debate. They are central to it. Ignoring them is not analysis. It’s propaganda. Only buried at the end of the “analysis” is this nugget: since Canada started protecting drug patents in the late 1980s, “spending on research and development by drug companies in Canada has zoomed, to about $900 million in 1999 from $166 million in 1988.” Duh. The Washington Post’s piece today, while still stacked against the drug companies, at least acknowledges many of the nuances of this question – such as the fact that South Africa itself has tried to protect intellectual property rights to encourage investment. The Times prefers to grandstand. Its editorial today, while misguided, is more honest than its front-page “analysis.” But it has begun increasingly to substitute the views of left-wing activists for serious analysis on AIDS, on abortion, and on the environment. It’s still a great newspaper and can do better. If it is to maintain any credibility, it must.
GREAT MINDS DEPT.: “I have to say that the most impressive act of President Bush’s young presidency
occurred, in my opinion, this weekend. It was his refusal to greet the home-coming “detainees” from Hainan Island. He let them see their families again unmolested by politics – a classy, quiet move. Can you imagine Clinton staying away?” – The Dish, April 16.
“The other day, George W. Bush did something momentous and marvelous: nothing. Specifically, he did nothing to exploit the return of the 24 military men and women whose release he had won from China. … For eight years, we suffered under a president who gave you an idea of what God would be like if He was a media hound.” – Michael Kelly, Washington Post, April 18.
“For all their descent into self parody, the era of the Clintons is clearly drawing to a close. The first sign is the silence. Listen. Every now and again, the air is not filled with the incessant circumlocutions of the blabberer in chief. Whatever other qualities he had, the man could surely talk. He had very little to say, of course, but that never deterred him. The sheer volume of verbiage he must have expelled over eight years is enough to make John Updike look blocked.” – TRB, <a HREF = http://www.tnr.com/011501/trb011501.html TARGET = NEW>The New Republic, January 15.
“He talked so much that, by the middle of his second term, people just got too tired to listen any more… Now, we have the president as the quiet man. Lord, it’s nice. You can hear the birds again, the gentle lapping of the Potomac against its grassy banks, the spring breeze wafting through the cherry blossoms. You can hear yourself think again.” – Michael Kelly, <a HREF = http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/columns/kellymichael/A30340-2001Apr18.html TARGET = NEW>Washington Post. April 18.
HOME NEWS: I’m doing a ‘cyber-chat’ this afternoon at 3pm on USAToday.com. Check it out if you feel like it.
The Dish 