Ever notice how similar the Drug War and the War on Guns are?
Officials simply LIE about the facts:
Florida Officials Seriously Overcount "Club Drug" Deaths
drcnet.org
James McDonough is the state of Florida's "Drug Czar." The
former US Army Colonel came to Florida straight from the big
house, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) where
he served as assistant to his old military buddy, Director Barry
McCaffrey. After years spent at the side of the retired four-
star general, McDonough may or may not have learned much about
drugs, but he is apparently well-schooled in at least one aspect
of warfare: disinformation.
In response to the proliferation of raves -- large techno dance
parties -- and the drug use associated with them -- authorities
across Florida began an enforcement drive last summer dubbed
"Operation Heat Rave." The operation's central focus was a
string of raids on dance parties across the state. Over the
winter, state officials followed that up with a study attempting
to quantify deaths caused by "club drugs."
Earlier this year, McDonough took the stage at a state-wide drug
summit to announce that after a "very thorough autopsy-by-autopsy
review," his office had discovered that club drugs, including
MDMA (ecstacy), rohypnol and GHB, had been responsible for 254
deaths statewide.
If this number was meant to shock Floridians, it had the desired
effect. But an independent investigation of that number by the
Orlando Sentinel found the figure to be a gross exaggeration. In
fact, many of the deaths that were counted in the figure were so
clearly unrelated to dance parties or recreational drug use as to
raise serious questions about the intent of the "study."
According to the Sentinel, which reviewed the 60 Central Florida
deaths that McDonough's office attributed to club drugs, more
than half should have been discarded at first glance.
Included in that number was a 15 year-old who died of an
undiagnosed heart ailment while playing basketball, a 4 year-old
boy who died in the hospital after a spinal tap, a 6 month-old
Miami boy who died of sudden infant death syndrome, an 82 year-
old woman who died 8 days after being hit by a car, a 58 year-old
man who died upon leaving the hospital after a heart operation, a
52 year-old nursing home patient who fell and hit his head, and a
74 year-old cancer patient who died in the hospital from an
accidental overdose of morphine.
The report also listed 7 amphetamine-related deaths of middle-
aged men, as well as 10 deaths from heroin overdose. Neither
amphetamine nor heroin is considered a "club drug," and neither,
certainly, qualifies as a "new" threat.
Emanuel Sferios is the Director of DanceSafe, a San Francisco
based organization that provides harm reduction information to
members of the rave scene (http://www.dancesafe.org/).
"We were skeptical as soon as we heard that number (254),"
Sferios told The Week Online. "We've been working with contacts
in Florida for the past couple of months to try to get copies of
the autopsy reports, but have been getting the run around. It is
interesting but not surprising that the Sentinel was also
skeptical. 254 deaths would have been way, way out of line with
the statistics for club drug deaths anywhere in the world."
Florida Governor Jeb Bush created the state's Office of Drug
Control in 1999. In so doing, Bush cited the need for an office
that was "research-based, measurable and accountable for
performance." McDonough, who had served as director of strategy
under McCaffrey at ONDCP, was brought in as director.
On December 12, ten days after the National Institute on Drugs
and Addiction released a report on the rising popularity of
"designer drugs," McDonough contacted all 22 of the state's
medical examiners. McDonough asked them to send the autopsy
reports for every death since 1997 that tested positive for any
of 20 different drugs.
The state's medical examiners, as it turns out, had concerns
about the study even before McDonough announced his findings.
Larry Bedore, director of operations for the state Medical
Examiners Commission, told the Sentinel that the commission did
all that it could to make the study worthwhile.
"I spent weeks trying to educate them on what they were really
looking for," he told the Sentinel. "I talked until I was blue
in the face." The Sentinel also reports that "One hundred and
fifty pages of memos, draft policies and other correspondence"
shows an effort by the examiners' commission to limit the number
of drugs to be tracked.
Steve Lauer, the Office of Drug Control's chief of staff, told
the Sentinel that he was unaware that certain drugs on the list
were used at hospitals. "I'm not a doctor, I'm a layman," he
told them. As to the inclusion of large numbers of very old and
very young people on a list of supposed club drug deaths, Lauer
claimed that he forgot the advice given to him by the examiners'
office not to include these.
Emanuel Sferios of DanceSafe takes a less charitable view of a
process through which numbers were generated for the purpose of
rationalizing policy.
"The logic of the drug war necessitates lies in a fundamental
way. When you deal with a health and safety issue under the
rubric of war, including military leadership and military
strategies, propaganda has to be expected. There are problems
with the raves, and with young people ingesting unlabeled
substances with inadequate information about even those
substances that they know they are ingesting. The solution to
many of the legitimate safety concerns here is more information,
truthful information. As we know, and as we see here, truth is
usually the first casualty in any war."
(The Sentinel report can be found online at:
orlandosentinel.com
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