READ: A Going Away Present From ENGL. 122.

Reading is important. Books are our connection with our literature, our language. They civilize us. They make our brains stronger. They h

And if/when you have kids, READ TO THEM. Their future English teachers will thank you. (Seriously, if kids don’t acquire language skills before the age of three…)

Here are some of your selections:

David Sedaris.
The Lost Symbol Dan Brown
Life After Life
Twilight (by far the most often recommended.)
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Thirteen Senses
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (arguably one of the best American novels in the last 50 years); and Outer Dark
Phillip Roth, Human Animal (or Human Stain?)
Jack London, Jon Barleycorn
Upton Sinclair, Cup of Fury
A Math Book (Boo!)
Susan Jacoby, The Age Of American Unreason
The Secret
Mark Danieleweski, House of Leaves
Marching Powder and I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell
Lucky
Amityville Horror

Here are my suggestions:

David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas and Number 9 Dream
Chris Bachelder, Bear v. Shark
David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Robert Boswell, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards
Amy Bloom, Away
Tobias Wolf
Junot Diaz, Drown
Alain De Boton
Denis Johnson, Jesus Son
Larry McMurtry, The Last Picture Show
The Soul of A Chef
Antonya Nelson
Lorrie Moore
Andre Dubus (Sr)
Michael Ondaatje, Stuart Dybek The Coast of Chicago, Richard Yates…

Read my friends. And be merry.

No Class. 12/1

We are having optional conferences tomorrow and thus will not meet for class. Have a nice day off and study for your final.

You will get your final papers back on 12/3.

The Last Step

The final step to any writing process is proofreading. Many of us don’t wait for the paper to be finished to begin proofing and editing our work, but no matter how much we have done along the way, it is often helpful to spend one last moment with your paper focusing on its sentences.

There are a few key points to make:
1. Be realistic. You have to turn this paper in on Thursday. You cannot start proofreading and then decide you want to change your topic, nor can you rewrite the entire thing. You are stuck with this. But you can make significant changes that might dramatically improve your grade.
2. If your proofing process leads to a lot of new writing, be sure to go back and proof it again. Spend one LAST pass through the paper skimming for typos, fragments, missing apostrophes and such.
3. Understand the difference between revision and editing. Revision means you are making big, significant changes to your paper. Editing means you are fine tuning the language. Revision is installing the engine, editing is running it through the car wash and vacuuming the seats.

Here’s a 10-step process for this.
1. Take a break between when you stop writing and begin editing. Let your brain recharge. Let the muse find its way back to your shoulder.
2. Understand your purpose, according to Murray, “Editing helps you to have a fresh and objective look at your essay and do away with its weak points. Editing is a careful process of going through your essay paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word.”
3. Start editing your essay with the spellchecker and grammar checker option on your computer. But don’t stop here. Most spell checkers are valuable. Most grammar-checkers are not. NEVER hit change all.
4. Next print out your essay and edit it manually. Read the thesis and see if it:

* is clear, argumentative and easy to grasp? I should know what you are trying to communicate
* reflects the content of the essay? If not, rewrite it. It is okay to change your thesis to fit your paper.

5. Then go on to editing the introduction. Is it interesting? What last second changes might you make to bolster its ability to catch our attention?

6. From, www.bestessaytips.com: “Check if each paragraph contains relevant information and is free of meaningless sentences. There should be transition sentences linking the paragraphs. Otherwise your writing will look jerky without a clear transition from one point into the next. Try reading backwards, a sentence at a time. You will be able to focus on the sentences, rather than on the content of your essay. Refine your sentences and make them smooth and clear. Get rid of too long sentences. Pay attention to the rhythm of your writing: vary sentence lengths and patterns.”


7. The conclusion is the last thing the professors read and the first thing they remember. So make sure it takes the next step. Explain why this topic is important. What it reflects in society. What further measures should be taken. Etc.

8. Read it out loud. There is no substitution for this. Manually check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Proofread for one type of error at a time. If commas are your weak point, look through your paper checking only that problem. Then proofread again for the next most frequent problem. Be especially attentive when checking your references. Make sure all the cited and paraphrased material is properly referenced.

9. Ask somebody to read through your paper and offer suggestions for polishing it.

10. Make the changes. Spell check. If time permits, read through it once more before submitting it. Save it on your hard drive, your jump drive and email it to yourself.

Grammar Check

A Twenty-Minute Lesson in Grammar

Fragments

A sentence consists of a subject and a predicate. Period. The subject announces what the sentence is about and the predicate tells us something about the subject.
Subject Predicate
I like bacon.
Hulk Hogan was a great body slammer.
The book is on the shelf.

Fragments are incomplete sentences because they lack a subject or a predicate.
Like: “And then went to Michigan.”
To fix them: Incorporate the fragment into an adjoining, and related sentence.
Like: “I went to Ohio State, and then went to Mighican. Football rules!”

Run-ons
Jamming together two or more sentences or independent ideas.

I do not recall what kind of wrestler he was all I remember is the Hulkster had a red face and blonde hair and always fought Rowdy Roddy Piper.

If you have sentences that are very long and your name is not A) James Joyce or B) William Faulkner then: Woah. Slow down and put some periods in there.

Comma splices
Run-ons, now with commas!

The concept of nature depends on the concept of human “culture,” the problem is that “culture” is itself shaped by “nature.”

Overwriting
Using more words than you need to. Remember, don’t write beyond your capabilities. Complex ideas are best present in clear language. These are some of the most valuable lessons I’ve been taught by two of my favorite professors.
Balancing the budget by Friday is an impossibility without some kind of extra help.
Boo.
Balancing the budget by Friday will be difficult without extra help.
Yea.
Eliminate redundancies. Ie: Cooperate together, close proximity, basic essentials, true fact (Hacker, 137)
Don’t repeat the same word in a sentence. The ball player was the best player ever to play.
Cut out inflated phrases.
Along the lines of = like
As a matter of fact = in fact
At the present time = now, currently, presently
Because of the fact that = because

Also, always delete “really.”



Active verbs
Passive: The coolant pumps were destroyed by a surge of power
Active: A surge of power destroyed the coolant pumps.
Do this by limiting your To Be verbs; ie; be am is was were being been.

Homonyms
Know I really have to know a lot to do well on my history test.
No I am going to study until I have no time left.

Affect Changing the way you eat will affect your health.
Effect I can’t see what effect these new laws will have on me.

Accept My insurance will accept the charges for the accident.
Except I like all vegetables, except for asparagus.

To We went to the store.
Too I am going, too. I have too much sand in my mouth.
Two There are two birds and they are looking at me.

There You can put the dinner in the trash. You’ve ruined everything.
Their Their house was full of people, so they remained outside.
They’re They’re just walking around barefoot right now.

Your Your dog is bigger than my dog.
You’re You’re going to have to keep him on a leash.

Whose Whose scarf is this?
Who’s Who’s going to the movie with us?

Than I am tanner than her.
Then We were both on the beach, but then she went inside.

Apostrophes.

The ‘ mark, as in “Jeff’s class” marks a possessive. Ie: The teacher’s lounge. The driver’s side. The children’s money. It marks ownership, even if it is loosely implied.
They also mark contractions. Don’t, can’t, won’t, should’ve, It’s, etc.
They are NOT used to make a word plural.
There are a few exceptions: It’s = It is.

Semi-colons.

You get one. In your entire career. Use it wisely. Otherwise, try to avoid them. The semi-colon is a strange misunderstood piece of punctuation and it is best to keep your distance.

The English language is complicated. There is so much more to writing than mere grammatical rules. However, you must know them before your can break them.

Workshop Assignment

You traded drafts. Here's what to do now:

1. Read each draft twice. First, to get the meaning. Second, to analyze it.
2. Edit one section, list common mistakes
3. Mark up the draft.
4. Write a letter to the author, detailing:

A. 3 aspects of the paper that you like and what you think the author is doing well.

B. 3 suggestions, based on the grade sheet I passed out yesterday, for how this paper needs to improve.

C. Give it a mock grade. Explain why. Be honest.

One letter for every author in your group, due tomorrow.

Parts and Paragraphs in Your Paper.

First. What is a paragraph?

Definition: They develop a single main idea…
Maybe it is better to say what they are NOT:
Confusing paragraphs are often confusing because the author is out of control. He doesn’t know what he is doing here, so he merely smashes several points of evidence together. This reveals poor planning, development of the main idea, and is REALLY hard to read.

Try using topic sentences. Sentences that state what the following paragraph will be about. They should not be called insecticides. They should be called biocides. Then you would have to prove why, with evidence.
One of the first examples of X is ________.
Another instance in which X is being threatened by Y is _______.

Try using transitional paragraphs.

The paragraphs combine to make up the larger parts of your papers.


Introduction: Introduce your paper, yes. But introduce each new turn in the text, too. You are the guide here. The reader is the wide-eyed follower. Don’t lead them into a Croc nest without first telling them why you are heading there.

Context/Background. It helps, in a lot of situations, to discuss the history of your topic, the various positions held, the posed solutions, the failed plans, etc, as a lead-in to your idea on the matter.

Narration: These are parts of your paper that narrate (tell the story of) certain events or circumstances so that the reader will agree with you. In addition to citing a law, it also helps to narrate what that means (by showing how it is enforced).

Evidence/Proof Paragraphs: This is where you really make your argument. A good model to follow is this:
i. topic sentence / support thesis
ii. lead-in to concrete detail
iii. quotation/concrete detail
iv. warrant/commentary
v. transition and lead-in to next quotation/concrete detail
vi. quotation/concrete detail
vii. warrant/commentary
viii. concluding or clincher sentence (From Google Docs. )

Signal Phrases:
X States”_____”
As the prominent philosopher (list specialty) puts it “
According to X, “ “
Writing in her book _________, X maintains that “ “
X disagrees when he writes “ “

Counter Arguments and Responses to Counter Arguments: Where you consider and rebut opposing views.
Of course, many will probably disagree with this assertion that ___________. However, (your refutation of their points)

While it is true that _________, it does not necessarily follow that ________>

On the one hand, it seems logical that ___________. But on the other hand, it must be pointed out that _______________.

Disagreeing with others:
X’s claim that ____________ is mistaken because, as recent research (or whatever) suggests, ________.
By focusing on _______________, X overlooks the deeper issue of ____________.


Warrants: These are a collection of sentences at the beginning and end of a proof paragraph that explains the logical connection this proof has to your claim, and why it is important. Focus on writing warrants to explain the assumptions that make you think the information you have given reinforces your case. Remember, quotes don’t speak for themselves; if you want a reader to accept a quote as evidence that proves a claim, you must spell out how or why the quote you’ve selected supports your argument. (Helpfulhint: In your body paragraph, you should have twice as much commentary as concrete detail. In other words, for every sentence of concrete detail, you should have at least two sentences of commentary.) (

As this shows, (describe relationship/proof of thesis).
Recent studies like these shed new light on _______, which help show how __link to thesis.

Conclusion. This IN NOT merely restating your thesis. It is drawing conclusions. It is saying, “therefore, then this.” It is expanding the ramifications or consequences of your argument. If what you are saying is right, good thinking, then what. Conclusions are very hard to write. It is that final line that is so often the hardest to pen because, well, it’s the FINAL LINE. However, you also have to conclude each idea in your paper. Use words like “Therefore…,” “Thus…,” “As a result…” “This shows that…” Etc. This reconnects your evidence to your thesis.
Although X may seem trivial, it is important because
Ultimately what is at stake here is
These conclusions/This discovery will have significant applications/consequences for the broader domain of ______.

Example: From writing.csu.edu
Section One: An analysis of the weaknesses of current curricular approaches to writing

Transitional Paragraph tying analysis to thesis and next section: As the analysis above shows, none of the available curricular models address multiculturalism except in the most cursory manner. Worse, their very superficiality does more damage than good. By introducing the topic of writing for multiple communities, the pedagogies make an attempt to bring diversity into the classroom; yet their focus remains on teaching academic writing with standard usage and grammar. Although they admit that such teaching is only for this context, putting such emphasis on standard forms introduces the issue: which forms of writing have more power in society, something none of the pedagogies address. By putting forth the academic model as the one which must be taught and learned in schools, they implicitly devalue other forms. The failure to foreground these power issues, then, leads students of difference to conclude that although their language and forms of writing might be acceptable in certain places, they are not welcome in the places which count in society. The effect of such an implicit message can be devastating to maintaining cultural values and difference.

Section Two: Discussion of research on multicultural student reactions' to writing classes.

Sources:
http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/documents/arguedraft/examplecombined.cfm
http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:DZ-lMMO41VUJ:rhsweb.org/assignments/Blaber/Essay%2520Exposition/Brave%2520New%2520World/Essay%2520Outline%2520and%2520Claim%2520Evidence%2520Warrant%2520Model.pdf+sample+warrants+essays&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiRXnp_rjfp4HhFgsAICqS8vA4x3oSU4xCQV8XejoaTxrhHX0eF5uOodTe4Q0z_aq8XFnMpcPn5Q5oi0eNXtKYFUXHtSNC202HVhsYrcoZf-7Qn9HB-jlsblEdrFUM241XGOF4X&sig=AFQjCNFO4ncCaBlgGTzEsoXUvBK4OL5EQw

Sample Paper

An Analysis of the War on Drugs

The term “War on Drugs” was first used by Richard Nixon after signing the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act into law in 1970, to emphasize the problem of drug use and characterize the action being taken against it. This act, which includes the Controlled Substances Act, codified the patchwork of existing anti-drug laws and forms the legal basis for the federal government’s anti-drug efforts. As the defining point of the beginning of the War on Drugs the act consolidated drug laws, which had before been enacted based on many different rationales, as a system of laws based on a central set of conclusions.
On signing the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act, President Nixon stated that drugs are a national problem and major cause of street crime in the U.S. He links drug use to crime several times and makes the statement that a program against drug abuse can “save the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people who otherwise would become hooked on drugs and be physically, mentally, and morally destroyed” (Woolley and Peters 1).” Several conclusions underlying these statements have formed the basis for the War on Drugs since, and in order to define the War on

Drugs is it necessary to understand those ideas.
The basic premise supporting any conclusion in favor of battling drug use is the relatively uncontroversial assumption that drugs can be harmful, not only to the user but to the people around them and by extension, society. This premise alone does not support the War on Drugs, because in order to build a case for criminalizing drugs two conclusions need to be drawn on that basis. The first of these is the conclusion that people need to be protected from drugs, and the second is the conclusion that a criminal prohibition will accomplish this goal.

These conclusions formed the basis for the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act and any laws passed since that rest on these ideas can also be considered part of the War on Drugs, as can the enforcement actions thereof, because they are rooted in the same ideology. Although an exact and unanimously agreeable definition of the War on Drugs may be impossible, a usable definition can be reached by stating that the War on Drugs is comprised of any and all actions based on both of those conclusions. This definition of the War on Drugs serves to refer to the vast system of laws, rhetoric, and enforcement actions that treat drugs as a criminal problem.
By classifying the War on Drugs as any application of that concrete set of ideas, any argument that attacks either of them attacks the entire War on Drugs as defined here. Therefore, the common argument against the criminalization of a specific drug based on the failure of that specific prohibition is an argument against the War on Drugs as a whole, because it refutes the conclusion that the criminal prohibition of a drug will protect people from it.

Arguments supporting the War on Drugs tend to take its supporting conclusions as axioms and focus on supporting the basis for that conclusion, that being the assertion that drugs are harmful. Although arguments are sometimes made by attacking that claim, especially in the case of marijuana, it is not necessary to refute the idea that drugs are harmful in order to make an argument against their criminalization. All that is necessary to accomplish that goal is to refute, as history has already done for alcohol, the conclusions that form the case for criminally prohibiting a substance.
That refutation can be seen in the history of American alcohol prohibition, which began in 1920 when the 18th amendment to the U.S. constitution went into effect. The 18th amendment prohibited alcohol nationwide until its repeal in 1933 with the goals, as noted by economist Mark Thornton, of reducing crime, social problems, government expenditures on prisons, and health problems. With legal supplies of alcohol gone tens of thousands of speakeasies sprang up in major cities, supplied with alcohol by organized crime. The huge profits led to police corruption on a massive scale, and violence as criminal groups organized around the steady income source provided by prohibition. Thornton summarizes the results of alcohol prohibition by stating that it not only failed to reduce drinking and the problems it was intended to address but made them worse, with bootleggers and crime bosses being prohibition’s primary beneficiaries (Thornton 9-11).

These results can be explained by considering the economic effects of prohibiting a substance. As a study of drug market economics by Jonathan Caulkins and Peter Reuter published in Journal of Drug Issues explains, criminally prohibiting a substance artificially increases its value. This is dramatically illustrated by the cost of marijuana, which despite being one of the less expensive drugs by weight, is worth its weight in gold. The study goes on to state that while higher prices do provide some deterrent to consumption of the prohibited substance, in the case of drug prohibition it seems that the effect of law enforcement on price encounters a point of diminishing returns. When this is reached, increased drug prohibition enforcement produces smaller and smaller increases in the price of those drugs (Caulkins and Reuter 593-594, 601).
As Mark Thornton concluded, rates of drinking actually rose during prohibition, and if alcohol prohibition can be used as a model, one would expect an increase in drug use. This expectation is realized according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which reports 41.7 percent of the population over age 12 reporting lifetime drug use in 2001, compared to 31.3 percent in 1979 (United States- Office of Nation Drug Control Policy 1). In addition, in 2007 the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported roughly eight percent of the population over age 12 having used an illicit drug in the past month (United States- Center for Disease Control 271). Clearly, tens of millions of Americans are continuing to use drugs despite massive and increasing expenditures on the enforcement of their prohibition.

This suggests that that in the case of drug prohibition the point of diminishing returns suggested by Caulkins and Reuter has already been reached, and increasing enforcement is failing to drive prices up enough to strongly discourage use. Furthermore, as economist David Sollars of Auburn University explains in his analysis of the War on Drugs, prison space is a finite resource; therefore as more people are incarcerated, the terms of incarceration must become shorter. Sollars presents data showing this happening in Florida where prison space constraints have resulted in shorter and shorter sentences served (Sollars 31). The result is a situation where increasing enforcement of drug laws provides a disincentive to break them via a higher arrest rate, but this disincentive is balanced by the reduction of the severity of punishment. With increasing enforcement already unable to significantly discourage drug use by further driving up the cost of the drugs, and the incentive power of higher arrest rates neutralized, it is unlikely that additional enforcement of drug prohibition would significantly reduce use.

With a demand that is accordingly very difficult to reduce via law enforcement and extremely high prices for prohibited substances, a powerful economic incentive to break the law exists. The resulting black market is inherently problematic because it exists outside the structures and regulations that apply to legal businesses. Not only is consumer protection non-existent, but the profits go to whomever is willing to break the law, providing a ready funding source for organized crime or terrorism. Also, lacking legal recourse, business disputes arising in the black market tend to be settled with violence. This conclusion is illustrated in “An Economic Analysis of Alcohol Prohibition”, a study by Harvard economist Jeffery Miron published in Journal of Drug Issues, by looking at the homicide rate during alcohol prohibition (Miron 741).
Ultimately the economics of prohibiting substances like alcohol or drugs, both of which can be addictive and harmful, explains why despite strict enforcement of those prohibitions fails to stamp out their availability. Not only does a criminal prohibition fail at this, but also produces unforeseen negative consequences. Given that the reason to stamp out availability of drugs is to protect individuals and the public, and the fact that these drugs are still widely and increasingly used with no reason to believe that additional law enforcement can change this, the idea that a criminal prohibition will protect people from drugs shown to be false. Furthermore, considering that this strategy incurs serious negative consequences while failing to accomplish its stated goals, the strategy of criminally prohibiting a substance is seen to be seriously and fundamentally flawed.

The failure of the criminalization strategy of protecting people from drugs begs the question of why people are unwilling to accept that prohibition of drugs should be followed, on the grounds that these laws are in place to protect them. This is a question without a simple definitive answer, because medical, economic, social, cultural, and even religious issues can all play a role in why someone may choose to break drug laws. However, for this question to be relevant it would need to be established whether protecting people from their own choices regarding drugs is necessary, and to do this one can examine the history of another highly addictive and dangerous substance.

Where the War on Drugs makes the assumption that drugs are too dangerous to allow people to make their own decisions regarding use, and therefore attempts to deny people the choice to use drugs, tobacco users have never been denied that choice. If one takes the results of modern anti-smoking efforts which are based on presenting evidence to people faced with the choice to smoke, compared to anti-drug efforts, which are based on denying potential users the corresponding choice, the results clearly show the superiority of a strategy allowing that choice. According to the 2000 Surgeon General’s report “Reducing Tobacco Use” smoking has been declining since 1965, whereas the government statistics already presented show overall drug use increasing. The reasons for that decline in smoking are clear and highlight a problem with parallel efforts to reduce drug use.

In “Reducing Tobacco Use”, the surgeon general shows that for many years smoking rates steadily rose despite numerous efforts to stop tobacco use based on moralistic and hygienic concerns, and even evidence linking smoking to health problems. This report gives a detailed analysis of the history of tobacco reduction efforts, concluding that these efforts were largely ignored because they were seen as moralistic and based on biased evidence. The report goes on to conclude that the turning point for efforts to reduce tobacco use was the 1964 surgeon general’s report which codified the evidence and made a nearly indisputable case linking tobacco to health problems. “Reducing Tobacco Use” concludes in no uncertain terms that the success of following anti-smoking efforts has been based on this more solid platform (United States-
Department of Health and Human Services 38-40).

In parallel efforts to reduce drug use, the strategy of criminalization purports to deny people the opportunity, and therefore the choice, to use drugs. However, because of the flaws in that strategy, drugs are still widely available and nearly everyone is faced with the opportunity to make the choice to use drugs. Drawing the parallel with tobacco it becomes clear that in order to influence that choice, it is necessary to present evidence that leads to the desired conclusion, and that this evidence must be free of the perception of bias.

One problem with the attempt to protect people from drugs by purporting to deny them their own choice is the de-emphasis of the need to present them with credible evidence to base that choice on. If we assume that people will respond to evidence regarding drugs the same way they have with tobacco, this means the single greatest factor in the success of reducing tobacco use has been ignored where it could be applied to drugs.

As with pre-surgeon general’s report on tobacco, the case against drugs can be seen as moralistic or biased, and attempting to deny people the choice to make their own decisions on the matter is insulting. It implies that their conclusion would not be valid, an insult compounded by the fact that the government positions on drugs can be highly questionable. For examples, certain government positions will be detailed including positions on MDMA that cite the studies of the highly controversial Dr. Ricaurte, and positions that refuse to acknowledge the conclusions of the existing research on medical marijuana issue. The issues with positions such as these can result in people, with good reason, seeing government positions on drug use as biased and therefore untrustworthy.

Due to perceptions of bias all around, the validity of the evidence supporting nearly every claim regarding drugs is a contentious subject on its own. These controversies however, invalidate that evidence for the purposes of persuading people to make the choice to not use drugs. It is not the validity of the claims that people will act on but rather their perception of that validity, suggesting that anti-drug efforts that exaggerate the dangers of drug use may actually be counterproductive. This is once again exemplified by the history of anti-tobacco efforts, where evidence of very real health problems was ignored due to lack of consensus and perceived or actual bias of the platform presenting it.

MDMA is a perfect example of a drug where the rationale behind its prohibition can be seen as biased. When the DEA placed MDMA into schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act in 1985, members of the medical community took legal action. Schedule I is the most restrictive schedule under the Controlled Substances Act, defined as having no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, and these doctors felt that MDMA did not meet either criteria. In 1986 Judge Francis Young ruled that MDMA could not be placed into schedules I or II, because it did have an accepted medical use, and the DEA failed to demonstrate that it had a high potential for abuse relative to other scheduled substances (Young 65-66).

After this ruling, attorneys for the DEA filed a statement accusing Judge Young of bias, accusations they later retracted (Stone and Charlotte 2-3). The United States Court of Appeals eventually agreed with Judge Young in Lester Grinspoon, M.D. vs. DEA that the DEA’s interpretation of “accepted medical use” was incorrect (Justices Coffin, Pettine, and Toruella 39). This resulted in MDMA briefly becoming legal and convictions based on its improper scheduling were overturned. In 1988 the DEA once again placed MDMA in schedule I, a decision based on a re-interpretation by the DEA of “accepted medical use” that stands today and ignores Judge Young’s earlier ruling that MDMA does have an accepted medical use (United States: DEA- Schedules of… 1).

This leaves a situation where both making the law by scheduling MDMA, and the interpretation of the law has been delegated to law enforcement rather than being made by our elected representatives and interpreted by the courts. That delegation is significant, because as will be shown, law enforcement has a vested economic interest in keeping drugs illegal and arrest rates high. Furthermore, the perception of bias behind the DEA’s actions can be inflamed by the fact that if they had followed Judge Young’s ruling they could still have placed MDMA in schedule III. Schedule III drugs are available only with a doctor’s prescription, and the primary result for the recreational user would have been that enforcement efforts would be a lower priority.
The scheduling procedures are not the only controversial aspect of the prohibition of MDMA, the research itself showing MDMA to be unsafe is questionable. The National Institute on Drug Abuse’s info sheet on MDMA, which is itself cited on the DEA’s website, cites a study by Dr. George Ricaurte showing brain damage in animals (National Institute on Drug Abuse 4). Dr. Ricaurte has been widely criticized for his studies on MDMA, with one study being retracted because by his own admission the wrong drug was administered to the study’s subjects (Ricaurte- retraction 1429). The study in question was supposed to show the effects of the equivalent of a common recreation dose of MDMA in primates, but after two of the ten animals died from the drug Dr. Ricaurte went ahead and published the results showing brain damage in the remaining subjects (Ricaurte- Severe Dopaminergic… 2260-2263). With a one in five death rate among two different species of primate in a study designed to examine the effects of a common recreational dose, Dr. Ricaurte’s failure to examine the obvious fact that his study did not model common human use suggests either bias or incompetence.
At least one other study on MDMA co-authored by Dr. Ricaurte, “MDMA- and p-chlorophenylalanine-induced reduction in 5-HT concentration: effects on serotonin transporter densities”, published in the European Journal of Pharmacology also found evidence of MDMA causing brain damage and has been retracted (Boot and Mechan, et al 239-244). A 2006 study published in the Medical Journal of Australia examined every study indexed by Medline to be retracted over a 20 year period, finding a total of 395 out of over nine million and specifically mentioning Ricaurte’s study (Nath, Marcus, and Druss 152-154). With a retraction rate of less than one article in 20,000, two retracted studies by the same author on MDMA severely undermines the credibility of his work. The fact that the government stands by his work hardly inspires confidence in their credibility.

Another area where government positions are seen as highly biased is the issue of medical marijuana. The DEA posted a position statement on their website that in every way exemplifies why a strong perception of government bias regarding drugs exists (United States: DEA- DEA Position on Marijuana 1-2). Once again, the DEA states their case that marijuana has no medical use based on the lack of FDA approval, the very definition ruled invalid twice in the MDMA scheduling proceedings. They go on to cite medical organizations as supporting the assertion that marijuana has “no documented medical value”, but none of those sources explicitly state this. In fact, the American Cancer Society’s statement explicitly acknowledges that marijuana can help some cancer patients and only discourages it as “not the best choice” for treating chemo side effects (American Cancer Society 1-2).

The government position on medical marijuana, as found on the FDA website and cited by the DEA, cites several government agencies in concluding that “no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States” (United States- Food and Drug Administration 1). This is simply false; there is no justification for refusing to acknowledge the numerous studies published in peer-reviewed journals here in the U.S. Kevin Zeese, a notable activist for drug law reform, has compiled a long list of studies on the subject highlighting five studies published in scientific journals and six state health department studies concluding that marijuana has useful effects. (Zeese 1-9) Although one can accuse medical marijuana activists of bias, these studies are valid and simply ignoring them without providing a reason while accepting Dr. Ricaurte’s work hardly shows a lack of bias.
Given these examples of anti-drug zealotry, it is easy to discount all anti-drug efforts as propaganda, and as the history of smoking reduction efforts clearly tells us; in order to succeed at reducing drug use efforts need to be based on clear and unbiased evidence. Therefore, unbiased and conclusive research is sorely needed to put the questions regarding just how harmful and potentially useful each drug can be to rest. This needs to be done whether or not drugs are penalized criminally, both because the success of other methods of reducing drug use depends on this evidence, and it is a serious injustice to imprison people for activities that may not cause the harm that those who support and enforce the laws claim.

Punishing people who violate laws which are based on flimsy rationales is a serious injustice, but it is far from the only injustice perpetrated in the War on Drugs. Justice is by its nature a nebulous concept, but an excellent definition of justice as it applies to a law is laid out by Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. King defines an unjust law as a code out of harmony with moral law, and states that any law that degrades human personality is unjust (King 3-4). This supports the need to base our laws on sound facts rather than opinions because imprisoning a person for an activity that they believe is morally sound, an opinion solidly based on evidence more credible than that opposing it, degrades this person. Our current laws are degrading because they deny a person’s free will to judge right from wrong simply because they may not reach the desired conclusion, simply holding a different opinion rather than committing a clear moral misdeed, and therefore are unjust.

This position can be attacked because those people that choose to use drugs break the law. That argument holds the view that one is obligated to obey the law, and that punishing someone for breaking that obligation is just. This is, however, an erroneous argument because it assumes that the authority to morally obligate one to obey the law rests with the government that passes the law.

A government does not have the power to impart a moral authority to its laws, a fact exemplified by the segregation laws Martin Luther King Jr. argued against, but rather a laws moral authority comes from a higher, natural law. To borrow a quote from King, “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or law of God” (King 3). The lack of consensus regarding the basis for drug prohibition laws could by itself leave the moral authority of those laws in doubt. When one faces that doubt and also considers that prohibitions fail due to intrinsic problems, and that drug prohibition in fact causes injustice, it is clear that these laws are neither natural nor moral and therefore have no moral authority.

That is not to say that government does not impart any authority to its laws, merely that the authority imparted is not necessarily moral, and that in the case of drug prohibition it is not. With prohibition laws lacking the backing of moral law, abiding by them is not an obligation, but rather an exercise of reason. The argument that one still has an obligation to follow these laws is refuted by a significant number of circumstances under which using choosing to use drugs is reasonable despite prohibition, and that prosecuting someone who follows both moral law and reason is in fact an injustice.

Without suggesting every drug law violation is reasonable, and that every prosecution under drug prohibition laws is by definition unjust, people are prosecuted unjustly in many different circumstances. Probably the first of these to come to mind occurs when a person is punished for using or helping others to use marijuana medicinally as recommended by a doctor. Another injustice arises in religious traditions including but not limited to the Native American Church and Uniao do Vegetal, which include practices that have forced members to choose between following the law or their religion. Both religions only won their freedom to practice after lengthy and probably expensive court battles that in both cases reached the Supreme Court (Supreme Court of the U.S. 1-19). Although these injustices of the War on Drugs may not be pressing enough to break its laws on principle as Dr. King urged people to break segregation laws, drug prohibition and the enforcement thereof also includes a component of racial injustice.

Some of those opposed to the War on Drugs claim that the first anti-drug laws in this country were based on racial bias, and as the War on Drugs can be seen as a descendant of these earlier prohibition laws they see it as a fundamentally racist set of laws (Drug Policy Alliance 1-3). Today school zone laws, which primarily act to increase penalties, as shown in a study by Boston University disproportionately impact poor inner city areas (Brownsberger and Aromaa 22-26). The Massachusetts school zone law is similar to those in other states, in that it disproportionally affects inner cities and therefore minorities, but school zone laws are not the only type of law to disproportionately target minorities for violations of drugs laws. Another example is the crack vs. powder cocaine sentencing disparity, where harsh sentences for crack as opposed to powder cocaine are disproportionately applied to minorities (Human Rights Watch- Cracked Justice 1-5).

These racial disparities only highlight the problem of racial discrimination in the War on Drugs as the direct effect of its laws, however perhaps an even larger issue is the racial effects of the enforcement of laws in the War on Drugs. A 2008 report by Human Rights Watch examines these effects, showing that minorities are represented at a far higher rate than whites in U.S. prisons for drug offenses. This disproportion arises mostly in a higher rate of arrest for minorities compared to whites who commit the same offenses rather than a higher rate of lawbreaking among minorities, which would have to be enormous to explain the different rates of arrest. The report suggests that this arrest rate is partly a result of enforcement of drug offenses in inner-city neighborhoods being more common, but that race neutral factors are incapable of causing the racial differences seen in the war on drugs (Human Rights Watch- Targeting Blacks 42-47).

In addition to adding another reason for the perception of bias, supported once again by very real evidence, racist trends in the enforcement of the War on Drugs are just one facet of another problem underlying the criminal prohibition of drugs. That problem is the negative effects of the War on Drugs on law enforcement itself, which has resulted in abuses such as the Tulia, TX scandal. Tulia is a rural town where drug laws were used by police to round up and imprison mostly black residents based on false testimony and, as CBS news noted in an interview with former undercover officer Tom Coleman, they received additional federal funding for doing so (Targeted in Tulia, TX 1-6). Tom Coleman was later convicted of perjury for his testimony in the Tulia cases.

Without suggesting that corruption on this scale is common, it is still necessary to recognize that the economic incentives that lead to police corruption are universal and because the scope of the War on Drugs is so vast police corruption is inevitable. Going back to David Sollar’s study, we see that enforcement of drug prohibition may be the most profitable law enforcement activity; therefore it is hardly surprising that his data shows the percentage of arrests for drugs vs. other crimes rising. This creates a problem when as Sollar’s economic model predicts, property crimes rise as police divert more and more resources to more profitable drug enforcement, an effect also seen in his data from Florida. Furthermore police not only lack incentive to reduce drug use, but because their funding for drug enforcement is based on arrests an incentive exists to keep drug arrests high, and under heavy enforcement conditions where the price of drugs rises, the huge profits realized by drug dealers provide a ready incentive to further police corruption (Sollars 29-34).

Having shown that a strategy of criminally prohibiting a substance is inherently problematic, the use of that strategy could only be justified by a benefit outweighing the problems. Examining the economics and history of substance prohibitions, the primary economic beneficiaries are lawbreakers and the police whose jobs depend on the existence of those lawbreakers. Economics aside, the idea that drug prohibition benefits society by preventing the harm caused by drugs is questionable in a pros-and-cons analysis. Due to the continuing availability of drugs, the choice whether to use drugs still lies with every individual, and a prohibition law causes significant problems while only adding one more reason to abstain. Comparing drug prohibition with the history of tobacco use reduction efforts clearly shows that this legal incentive to abstain from drugs lacks the same deterrent power as the health problems posed by tobacco.

Also relevant is the severity of the injustices accepted to achieve this disincentive to drug use, injustices including racism and interference with religious and medical practice. Additionally, the reasoning used to justify the War on Drugs is refuted by an examination of the economics of a prohibition strategy, which suggests that its costs and consequences are incurred without hope of success. Most importantly however, if drugs are truly as harmful as claimed, there exists a proven alternative strategy that does not incur these problems. There is no reason to believe that simply providing proof of the harm caused by drugs would not produce a deterrent effect commensurate with that harm, as illustrated by smoking reduction efforts. Clearly the War on Drugs ignores the lessons of history: not only is a criminal prohibition intrinsically flawed and ineffective, but denying people their own choice in a matter lacking consensus results in injustice.