To most people, it is a matter of common sense and good policy that governments should not subsidize illegal or immoral activities on the part of their citizens. The belief that governments should not only consider the practical effects of their policy decisions but also the moral implications of those policy choices can be found across the political landscape, often on both sides of a debate. It can also lead to policies that might otherwise have been enacted because of their practical value being dismissed.

One area in which the belief in the importance of government policies not promoting immoral behavior manifests itself is the issue of Needle Exchange Programs (NEPs). These programs, in place in many American cities and around the world, allow intravenous drug users to bring in used syringes and exchange them for clean needles. It keeps users from sharing needles with each other which prevents the spread of HIV, Hepatitis C, and other infectious diseases. It also gives users the tools necessary to get high. Despite the alarming increase in these illnesses, many are unwilling to use federal money to enable drug use and this reluctance has very real consequences. So where do the facts lie, and what effect does moral opposition have on an otherwise effective program?

Background

Every year, 50,000 Americans become infected with HIV. Of these, approximately 11-14 percent are the direct result of intravenous drug use from needle sharing. Hepatitis infections also affect intravenous drug users. An estimated 50 to 80 percent of users will become infected with Hepatitis C within five years of starting intravenous drug use. Based on a study of seven pilot needle exchange programs, the cost savings from preventing an HIV infection was about $20,000–a fraction of the cost of treating an individual who contracts HIV. In light of the growing use of intravenous drugs and the need to prevent the transmission of disease, Congress recently took another look at the largely moral argument that kept the federal government from funding needle exchange programs and decided to lift the ban.

The argument against providing federal funding for NEPs is essentially an ideological and moral one and not necessarily one about the effectiveness of these endeavors. Those who would like to ban funding these exchanges argue that using intravenous drugs is immoral and that providing clean needles to drug users will encourage them to use more drugs. Or, at the very least, sends the message that it is acceptable to use. Therefore federal funds would be encouraging an immoral activity and the programs shouldn’t be funded.

A Perverse Incentive?

In legalese, a “perverse incentive” is a consequence or behavior that was unforeseen by the creators of a policy or law when they enacted it–usually, a negative one that thwarts the purpose the law was intended to serve. Let’s say you have a lot of rats in your city and you want to encourage your citizens to kill rats to get rid of them. One way to incentivize them to do so would be to pay a bounty for each rat tail. Instead of killing rats, you might find that everyone starts farming them to make money. Not exactly what you had in mind, but a perfectly reasonable response to getting paid for rat tails.

Opponents of funding NEPs think that providing clean needles to intravenous drug users will have a similar result. It will lead to the use of more clean needles but would also cause an increase in use overall. Just as the rat-tail bounty lead to additional dead rats, it increased the number of living ones as well.

Advocates of lifting the ban on the funding argue that the evidence shows that intravenous drug use does not increase when clean needles are provided for users. In fact, the evidence shows that users come for the needles but often end up availing themselves of other resources, such as access to rehabilitation and counseling. To those advocating that the ban remain lifted the fact that providing clean needles may be tacit consent (more legalese) for using drugs shouldn’t be relevant. What matters, and what should matter to policymakers, is that the programs work.

Morals and Numbers

The former ban on federal funding for Needle Exchange Programs has been in effect since 1988, with a brief respite in the 2010-11 budget. The rationale for this ban was largely due to some lawmakers’ unwillingness–on this issue, it was typically Republican lawmakers–to promote drug use. Although there was clearly a need to take steps to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and other blood-born illnesses, lawmakers were unwilling to provide the funding for clean needles. Essentially arguing that providing that funding amounted to facilitating drug use, and that these programs may even encourage addicts to use more because of increased access to clean needles.

Federal funds could still be used to pay for other efforts in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, such as educating intravenous drug users about the importance of clean needles and providing counseling and rehabilitation services. But clean needles, or even giving out bleach to clean the needles, wasn’t allowed. Nor were NEPs allowed to use federal funds to pay for administrative support for these programs, limiting them entirely to state and local funds.

Although Congress lifted the ban, federal funds still cannot be used to directly purchase the needles themselves. The change simply allows for the use of federal money to pay for everything but the needles involved in these programs. For some advocates of NEPs, such as Daniel Raymond of the Harm Reduction Coalition, it is a compromise that they are happy to make. In his recent interview with NPR, Raymond outlines the rationale for his support for lifting the funding ban.

Those in opposition to federal funding make an argument that resonates with our cultural sense of personal responsibility and our unwillingness to help make bad behavior easier. If it really is the case that an addict who has access to clean needles will continue or even increase their drug use, opponents argue that the federal government should not be a party to it. The goal should be to combat drug use and its effects and lawmakers see direct funding for NEPs as counterintuitive–giving an addict a needle so that they can more safely use while telling them they shouldn’t be using in the first place. To those opposing funding, an increase in drug use isn’t even a perverse incentive but a very foreseeable consequence.

A Closer Look 

Yet the numbers don’t support this conclusion. In fact, those users who go to a needle exchange program often also end up entering into a rehabilitation program. According to the ACLU, they are five times more likely than a user who never sought out an NEP to do so.

The reduction in rates of HIV infections can also be profound. In 2008, the ban on local funding for NEPs in Washington, D.C. was lifted. By 2010, the rate of new HIV infections decreased by 60 percent. There may  be a perverse incentive at work here, but not the one you would think. Addicts want clean needles if they are going to use and that draws them to the NEP. But many of them also want to not need the clean needles in the first place. Once their foot is in the door, drug users are met with the social services that can help them rehabilitate. By making drug use safer, the programs are also, ultimately, making drug use less likely.

The Profit Motive

There is also a second perverse incentive that leads many to oppose funding for needle exchange programs. At most NEPs there is no limit to how many dirty needles you can turn in for clean ones. Therefore enterprising individuals can collect dirty needles and get clean ones, then turn around and sell those clean needles to users, essentially making a profit off of the federal government’s support for clean needles. For those morally opposed to providing the clean needles in the first place, this is an added reason to reinstitute the ban. Now, instead of just giving the needles away, the federal government is creating a business for clean needle sales.

To opponents of the program, this second perverse incentive may be even worse than the first. There is a visceral discomfort with the idea that drug dealers might be benefitting financially from a federally funded program.

But this profit motive may, in fact, be a benefit for drug users (and taxpayers) as well as increase the effectiveness of the NEPs in general. Essentially, you’re taking the exchange program and making it mobile. Instead of needing to plan a trip to the NEP to get the tools necessary to use, an addict can go to an individual supplier, who may be more local. Or a drug dealer, who users will inevitably encounter, now has an ancillary business of providing clean needles.

The proximity of a clean needle to an addict when they need to use is probably the deciding factor in whether they use a clean needle or a dirty one. This makes the clean needle option much easier to choose and it gives the needle supplier/drug dealer an incentive to promote clean needles: they want to sell more needles. One could argue it also gives them an incentive to try to sell more drugs, which it certainly does. Yet, the incentive to sell as much as possible exists anyway. Dirty needles do not diminish that profit motive and they don’t decrease the demand. If an addict is willing to pay a small premium for a clean needle there is an economic incentive for dealers to have clean needles to sell. By tying an economic incentive to drug dealers, you end up promoting the use of clean needles.

Opponents would also point out that if users get needles from drug dealers and not from the NEPs that actually reduces the main ancillary benefit of the program–that addicts get the other social services in addition to the clean needles when they show up. But advocates for these programs would argue that the solution to this problem might be to take the economic incentive model and tie it to those social services as well. Essentially mimicking the drug dealers actions by making NEPs more mobile. In fact, many NEPs are in buses and vans, perhaps for this reason.

For many, this argument does not remove the opposition to letting drug dealers or addicts profit financially from these programs. Nor does the effectiveness of these programs make up for the essential problem addicts are being supplied with the tools they need to use, which is the very thing the government wants to prevent. Even if the program is effective that doesn’t make it morally right from everyone’s perspective; the ends-justifies-the-means argument does not always hold water.

Conclusion

There is an epidemic of intravenous drug use in the United States, and around the world, in addition to a concurrent epidemic of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and other illnesses that are transmitted through the use of dirty needles. You would be hard-pressed to find a community or a family in America today that has not been personally impacted by a friend or a loved one who is struggling with addiction.

Opponents of federally funding NEPs would argue that the federal government should not make it easier for addicts to use. Instead of devoting our resources to giving drug users clean needles, which gives them the ability to more safely use and even profit off federal funding, the government should be devoting all of the resources it has to other methods of combating intravenous drug use. There are ways to promote rehabilitation programs and other forms of help that don’t involve also promoting “safe” drug use.

But advocates of lifting the ban argue that while other services for drug users are critically important NEPs should be supported even if initially they seem to encourage drug use, because in the long run they decrease the transmission of disease and intravenous drug use through the social services they offer. The fact that users may ultimately profit from the sale of clean needles is not a reason to defund these programs if they are still working. If the program is reducing the spread of disease and decreasing drug use, then it should be funded.

The division of opinion on this issue is centered more on the conflict between ideologies than on the effectiveness of NEPs. The programs have been proven to be successful in combating the spread of disease as intended and the evidence does not show an increase in drug use where these programs are available. Ultimately, the question is which should matter more: the moral message that providing needles sends, or the effectiveness of the program itself.

Resources

Primary

University of Texas at Austin, Needle Exchange Program

Additional

Financial Transparency, Farming For Rats: Perverse Incentives and Illicit Financial Flows

New York Times, Surge In Cases of HIV Tests U.S. Policy on Needle Exchanges

NPR, Congress Ends Ban On Federal Funding For Needle Exchange Programs

NPR, Needle Exchange Program Creates Black Market In Clean Syringes

ACLU, Needle Exchange Programs Promote Public Safety

TIME, Clean Needles Saved My Life

The Atlantic, The War On Drug Users : Are Syringe Exchanges Immoral?

University of California San Francisco, Does HIV Needle Exchange Work? 

Mary Kate Leahy

Mary Kate Leahy (@marykate_leahy) has a J.D. from William and Mary and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Manhattanville College. She is also a proud graduate of Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart. She enjoys spending her time with her kuvasz, Finn, and tackling a never-ending list of projects. Contact Mary Kate at staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post Perverse Incentives: Are Needle Exchanges Good Policy? appeared first on Law Street.

With barbed wire fences, armed-guard towers, extensive searching by guards, and locked rooms, prisons seem to be a place almost completely cut off from the world. Few would think marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and OxyContin are commonplace behind prison walls. The War on Drugs has led to nearly half of federal inmates being sentenced for drug crimes. If illegal drugs can easily be found behind bars in the most controlled of environments, what can be done to prevent substance abuse by inmates?

What are the statistics on drug use inside prisons?

Prisons seem to be the last place one would think to find drugs, yet prevalent gang activity and dependency on drugs has created a thriving black market. Drug use in prisons has become more relevant due to increasing calls for improved substance abuse treatment for inmates. According to CASA Columbia, 65 percent of inmates in 2010 met the criteria for substance abuse or addiction. Those who suffer from addiction and committed crimes relating to drugs or alcohol make up 85 percent of the nation’s prison population. A large segment of the prison population has been affected by drugs and alcohol prior to incarceration, but prison walls have not been a barrier to these substances.

Reliable statistics on drug use in prisons are difficult to attain. The frequency of drug testing is not standardized across facilities and can be random or can be issued with reasonable suspicion to specific inmates. Furthermore, prisoners have no reason to confess to using, and officials in prisons do not want to report unfavorable statistics. Technology has helped those behind bars to coordinate their drug trade while locked up. Cell phones allow inmates to track drugs via satellite and can even allow access to mobile banking. The prevalence of cell phones in prisons indicates the ease of obtaining contraband and the method for obtaining drugs.

The case of California

• Roughly 1,000 seizures of drugs are reported in California prisons each year.
• From 2006-2008, 44 of California’s inmates died from drug overdoses.
• From 2008-2009, California officers seized the highest amount of drugs in decades: 2,832 grams of marijuana and 92 grams of cocaine.
• In June 2013, 23 percent of California’s inmates tested positive for illegal substances and another 30 percent refused to be tested.
• In 2013, California alone confiscated over 12,000 cell phones from their prisons.
• More than 4,000 drug-related incidents were reported in California prisons in 2013.

These are far from the rates of drug usage outside of prison, but they still have strong implications. It is important to note that drug testing is often conducted by urine analysis, which will only detect drug use from the past several days. In contrast, testing hair can detect drug use from the past 90 days. In response to testing, drug use in prison often involves drugs that are harder to detect, such as heroin or prescription drugs.

How are drugs smuggled inside the prison?

From the Outside

Reports from the Washington Times and The Economist showed the limitless creativity exhibited by inmates to get contraband through extensive security. In some cases, drugs are thrown over prison walls in a ball or package. Some prisons do not scan all mail, so drugs can be delivered through mail and even on the backs of stamps. Oftentimes visitors may bring in drugs by “plugging” their body cavities or hiding drugs in a baby’s diaper. The drugs are then given to an inmate by way of a kiss, dropped in a shared can of soda, or food. Some inmates’ work detail, such as receiving deliveries, allow them greater privileges and more opportunities to bring in drugs.

From Staff

By the admission of those who work inside prisons, the most likely smuggling culprits are staff members themselves. Staff are searched before entering the facility but sometimes they are not as thoroughly searched as visitors. Staff have brought in drugs on their person or even hidden in their food. Some staff members do it for money to supplement their modest salary. Others are young and easily manipulated by seemingly friendly inmates. In April 2013, 13 correctional officers in Maryland were indicted for aiding the Black Guerrilla Family, a national prison gang thriving in Baltimore. The guards allegedly smuggled in cell phones, drugs, and other contraband on their person and in food. One indicted guard was reported to have made $3000-$5000 dollars a week for smuggling contraband to one inmate. Once guards are involved, drug use by inmates often goes overlooked.  ­­

The Market

Numerous inmates have verified drugs are as available in prisons as they are on the street, but not in the form of a cash market. Prisoners typically trade by using tobacco or items bought from commissary. Prisoners claim drugs inside a prison sell for more than 4 times the legal price outside prison walls. In an interview with The Fix, one anonymous prisoner claimed, “You can get whatever you want in here. Marijuana, heroin, whatever. They had oxy-80s on the pound for $160 each. It’s way more expensive than on the street, but if you got the money you can buy them… The sad thing about it all is, they lock you up for drugs and they can’t even keep the drugs out of the prison.” The shocking video below, made by inmates in Orleans Parish Prison, shows drugs, alcohol, guns, and gambling – all within prison walls:

What are the consequences of drug smuggling?

Consequences of drug smuggling vary. Drug use in prisons can pose security problems, escalate violence, lead to disputes regarding debts owed, and increase health and overdose concerns. Anyone bringing drugs into prison can be prosecuted, and inmates face write-ups and revoked privileges.

New York

In New York, if an inmate is caught with drugs or has tested positive, he is sent to solitary confinement for up to 3 months for his first offense. Prisoners in solitary are prohibited from any treatment programs they may have been in and those on the waiting list for treatment are removed from the list. Between 2005 and 2007, New York sentenced inmates to a collective 2,561 years in solitary from drug-related charges. Time in solitary confinement has negative emotional and physical consequences on inmates, who are potentially more vulnerable to using once they are released in the general population. These inmates are often sentenced to longer prison time with probation revoked or delayed and visiting privileges suspended.

California

Recently the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation proposed a plan where those who test positive for drug use will lose 90 days of pay from their work assignments, though inmates make only 8 to 32 cents per hour of work.

What do prisons do to treat drug addiction?

Access to Programs

Some inmates may not want substance abuse treatment. But for those who do, a 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office showed that while 31,803 inmates were enrolled in basic drug education programs, more than 51,000 inmates were on waiting lists for periods up to 3 months. Prison overcrowding, with federal prisons operating at 40 percent above capacity, has meant limited access to these programs. A 2010 CASA Columbia report showed only 11 percent of inmates with substance abuse and addiction disorders receive any treatment during their incarcerations.

Programs

Different facilities offer different programs to treat drug abuse. Federal inmates have access to residential programs, transitional programs, nonresidential programs, and drug education programs. Other treatment programs vary by state. Tight budgets have forced states such as Kansas and Pennsylvania to cut treatment programs inside prisons and instead divert offenders to less expensive treatment programs outside of prison. Some claim that prisons should be focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Others argue that prison is the best chance to treat those with substance abuse problems to help prevent future crimes, but oftentimes this opportunity goes unused.

Medical Treatment in Prison

Treating an addiction like heroin or opioids can require Methadone or Buprenorphine to help with withdrawal symptoms. However, a drug like Methadone requires strict regulation and is expensive for correctional facilities in the short run. Allowing Methadone in prisons means it may be  sold on the black market and could even lead to inmates robbing the dispensary. Only half of states provide these treatment drugs even though both are listed by the World Health Organization as drugs that should be available to prisoners at all times.

Cost Effectiveness

Human Rights Watch has reported that for every $1 spent on substance abuse programs, states save $2-$6 dollars in the long run from reduced recidivism rates. One study found that for each inmate who remained sober, employed, and crime-free, the United States would save $91,000 per year. There is a great demand for substance abuse rehabilitation programs which can lead to early release and save government money. Watch this video for more information on the benefit of substance abuse programs in prison:

What else can be done to prevent drug use in prisons?

Many consider the Pennsylvania plan to limit inmate access to illicit drugs among the most successful. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections instituted a zero-tolerance policy after facing increasing drug usage in its prisons. The plan called for:

• Criminal prosecution of inmates caught with drugs
• Increased surveillance of inmates and visitors
• Increased visits by drug-detecting dogs
• Greater number of cell searches
• Improved technology in detection and scanning systems
• Random monitoring of phone calls
• Drug testing by hair rather than solely by urine analysis
• Revoked visiting privileges for offenders

In 1996, 7.8 percent of Pennsylvania inmates whose hair was tested showed illicit drug usage in the past 90 days. With the addition of the measures above, only 1.4 percent of inmates tested positive two years later. Along with the falling rates of drug use, assaults on inmates decreased 70 percent and assaults on staff decreased 57 percent.

Many states have looked to follow Pennsylvania’s example. However, many of the strategies in prisons are not replicated in more lax county jails. Furthermore, once inmates leave prisons, they enter less strict programs or probation where drugs are easy to obtain. Limiting drug use in prisons makes little sense if inmates do not have treatment and are overwhelmed by the availability of illegal drugs once they are no longer behind bars.

Critics have taken issue with the level of strictness required to eradicate drug use in prisons. Prisons could always be made worse. States could require inmates to spend more time locked in their rooms, have less free time in the yard, and have very closely-monitored visits. The question becomes at what cost should prisons seek to be drug-free. Many facilities simply do not have the staff to better supervise the amount of visits they receive. Accommodative visiting policies are aimed at making family visits easier since contact with family is integral to an inmate’s success after prison.

Balancing what prisons can actually achieve with their limited staff, funding, and how they can best keep contraband outside without completely dehumanizing inmates remains a complicated act. Stronger substance abuse programs may be necessary to prevent drug use, but completely eliminating the supply of drugs could be a game of hide and seek that will never end.

Resources

Primary

US Code 1791: Providing or Possessing Contraband in Prison

US Code 14052: Enhanced Penalties for Illegal Drug Use in Federal Prisons

NCJRS: Reducing Drug Use in Prisons: Pennsylvania’s Approach

Additional

Nation’s Health: Report Finds Most U.S. Inmates Suffer From Substance Abuse

CASA: Behind Bars II: Substance Abuse and America’s Prison Population

Economist: Drugs in Prisons: Supply and Remand

Washington Times: Drugs Inside Prison Walls

Newsweek: The Case for Treating Drug Addicts in Prison

Daily Beast: With Cigarettes Banned in Most Prisons, Gangs Shift

Hills Treatment Center: Drug Rehab Programs in Jail and Prison

Syracuse: Prison and Drugs: State Often Denies Help

USA Today: Prisoners Face Long Wait for Drug-Rehab Services

The Fix: Drug Treatment in Prison

Columbus Dispatch: Drug Use in Ohio’s Prisons Spiked

CBS: California Prisons Find 1 in 4 Inmates Used Drugs

Alexandra Stembaugh

Alexandra Stembaugh graduated from the University of Notre Dame studying Economics and English. She plans to go on to law school in the future. Her interests include economic policy, criminal justice, and political dramas. Contact Alexandra at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Why the War on Drugs Takes on a New Form Behind Bars appeared first on Law Street.

Picture a drug-dealing teenager in your head. Maybe he’s white. Maybe he’s black. Maybe he’s hispanic or asian. But if the image you’ve conjured looks anything like those portrayed in the media, three things remain the same; he’s a man, his clothes are baggy, and you can probably find him in a back alley somewhere, slapping hands with junkies for cash.

But in a study featured in the Sept. issue of the Journal of Criminal Justice, social work researchers have found that the old corner store cliché of adolescent drug-sellers no longer suffices. Authors Jeffrey Shook, Michael Vaughn, and Christopher Salas-Wright argue that there are three different classes of adolescent drug dealers: dabblers, delinquents, and externalizers.

Dabblers, Delinquents, and Externalizers

According to the study, dabblers rarely use illicit substances themselves, and participate in violent or risky behavior even less. But in comparison with the general population, dabblers still show signs of elevated, marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol use. Of this class, 62% said that they have sold drugs only one or two times in the last year.

A new study shows three classes of teen dealers, all of which share elevated levels of marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco use. Courtesy of Torben Hansen via Flickr.

Delinquents, however, participate in violent behavior more often than dabblers. “Members of the delinquent class” reads the study, “were significantly more likely to reside in households earning less that $20,000 or between $20,000 and $49,000 per year.” But among this class, teenagers were not likely to use illicit drugs like crack/ cocaine, or other hallucinogens.

Finally, the group the authors deemed the “externalizers” engaged in risky and violent behavior the most. Externalizers often come from broken homes, and households where parents do not condemn the use of illegal substances. Externalizers often times belong to peer groups where drug use is the norm.

The study, called “Exploring the Variation in Drug Selling Among Adolescents in the United States,” uses data from the  National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH.) The researchers panned through a pool of 12 to 17 year-olds from across the country to find 3,080 adolescents who reported to have sold drugs in the last 12 months. They then ran analysis on participants for attributes ranging from grades in school to propensity toward risk.

One of the authors, Jeffrey Shook PhD, is an associate professor of social work at the University of Pittsburgh who holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Michigan. He first began to look at youth drug dealing  while writing his dissertation on how court systems process juvenile delinquents. Shook says he began to see trends between selling drugs, and using them.

“The more that I got into it, the more that I looked at some of these links, particularly the link between use and dealing. A lot of the ethnographies that we get, a lot of them focus on urban drug dealing which doesn’t show as strong of a link [between use and dealing] as I think that we’re finding.”

Interventions, New Approaches

In the past, scholars have delved into the differences between drug-dealing youth and the general youth population; but never before has such a study been performed with the guise of comparing drug dealers to other drug dealers. This, the researchers say, will “help reveal key differences in the characteristics and behaviors of these young people and aid in the development of interventions that better reflect the nuances of drug dealers and drug markets.”

One possible intervention, Shook says, could be community based treatment. Rather than the current system, which he believes has a woefully misguided focus on “a more punitive response,” weeding out drug use at the grassroots level could have substantial results.

But he admits that adolescent drug dealing is an area that needs more research before any solid claims can be made on how to bring about wholesale change in the system.

“Each [study] tells you a little part of the story. You have to keep doing them and putting together the picture. I think there’s a lot more work to be done,” Shook said.

[Journal of Criminal Justice]

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Featured image courtesy of [Justin Scott Campbell via Flickr]

Jimmy Hoover

Jimmy Hoover is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Jimmy at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post 3 Kinds of Teen Drug Dealers, Study Says appeared first on Law Street.

This is Rob Ford.  He is the current mayor of Toronto, the largest city in Canada.

Courtesy of West Annex News via Flickr.

He has been in the news for the past few days following an admission on November 5 that he had smoked crack cocaine while in office.

There’s more: the crack smoking is allegedly on tape.

There’s even more: Mayor Ford says that he has no plans to resign from his mayorship.

Mayor Ford doesn’t plan on stepping down because he “loves his job.”  He plans on finishing his current term, and next year he will run for reelection.

Backstory

On May 16, 2013, Gawker published an article which describes in great detail its investigation into the claims of Mayor Ford’s drug use.  Their research includes travel to Toronto, secret meetings in cars, and a cell phone video of Ford with a crack pipe in his mouth.  In fact, Gawker was so invested in securing this video as proof of their claims that they set up an Indiegogo for $200,000, the amount of money that the owners of the video said it would cost for them to sell.

Keep in mind these claims were made six months ago.  At the time, Ford vehemently denied that he had ever smoked crack.

He’s now changing his tune.

In reference to Canadian crackgate, Ford now says that reporters did not ask him the correct questions initially.  His exact words were, “you didn’t ask the correct questions…No, I’m not an addict.  And no, I do not do drugs.  I made mistakes in the past and all I can do is apologize.”

It’s all a technicality, you see.  During an impromptu press conference, he said he does not smoke crack cocaine, just that he has smoked crack cocaine.  Get it?  Semantics.

That’s not all, though.  Ford now says that he did smoke crack cocaine, but that it occurred at a time when he was in a drunken stupor.  He goes further, and implores the various members of the press to provide him with a copy of the video.  Due to the severity of this particular drunken stupor, he has no idea as to what this video contains.   He wants to watch the video with all of Toronto so that everyone can be on the same page.

Unsurprisingly, the Toronto City Council wants Mayor Ford gone sooner rather than later.  There has been a motion made for Ford to take a leave of absence, and other Canadian political figures have also voiced their lack of confidence in the Mayor’s ability to effectively lead the city.

Regardless of how other politicians feel, Ford feels like 1,000 pounds is off his back now that the secret’s out in the open. Phew! The admission of a little recreational crack will surely do wonders for Ford’s reelection campaign (which could probably use some donations right about now).

Why this matters

I don’t know much, if anything, about Canadian politics.  What I do know is that most municipalities prefer to have confidence in the leadership qualities that their Executive branches of government possess.

I also know that I’m a part of a generation that is routinely warned of the dangers of having a picture tagged on Facebook with a beer in my hand, lest that one beer lead someone somewhere to surmise that I’m a raging alcoholic with dangerous propensities and a terrible work ethic.

I know that though I am a recent law school graduate with a job, there are thousands of similar people out there with no job prospects despite high grades, bar passage, and the common sense to not get drunk enough to smoke crack.  So if you’re unemployed, you can always consider a career in politics.

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Featured image courtesy of [sari dennise via Flickr]

Peter Davidson II

Peter Davidson is a recent law school graduate who rants about news & politics and raves over the ups & downs of FUNemployment in the current legal economy. Contact Peter at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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