Prohibition: the gangster's best friend, the enemy of civil society

As drug violence spirals out of control in Mexico, a commission led by three former Latin American heads of state blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point.

"The available evidence indicates that the war on drugs is a failed war," said former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in a conference call with reporters from Rio de Janeiro. "We have to move from this approach to another one."

[...]

The three former presidents who head the commission are political conservatives who have confronted in their home countries the violence and corruption that accompany drug trafficking.

The report warned that the U.S. style anti-drug strategy was putting the region's fragile democratic institutions at risk and corrupting "judicial systems, governments, the political system and especially the police forces."

The report comes as drug violence is engulfing Mexico, which has become the key transit point for cocaine traffic to the U.S. Decapitation of rival drug traffickers has become common as cartels try to intimidate one another.

Latin American Panel Calls Drug War A Failure (Wall Street Journal, 11 Feb 2009)

What should the rest of us be smoking?

Michael Phelps, the heroic swimmer from the 2008 Olympics, apparently has been smoking some marijuana lately. Let’s compare his situation to the average American’s. Phelps has a high-paying job doing something that he loves, millions of dollars in endorsement revenue just in the last few months (source), and his own charitable foundation. All of this has been achieved at the age of 23. Phelps has made money so fast he probably didn’t have time to invest it in the stock market, so we can be fairly certain he isn’t depressed about his personal finances.

Joe Typical American, by contrast, is about 35 years of age. His Olympic gold medal count is zero. He is probably overweight, if not obese. Unless he works for the government or in health care, he is unemployed or worried about being unemployed. He probably didn’t enjoy his job that much when he was employed. His retirement savings have been confiscated by the Wall Street bonuses of 1995-2007. His future earnings have been confiscated by the Wall Street bonuses of 2008-2015 (to be paid out of TARP and other taxpayer funds, which will inevitably result in debt).

If Phelps needs to smoke dope, what do the rest of us need to get through the next decade or two?

[On an unrelated note, a few readers pointed out that Phelps was convicted of drunken driving four years ago, shortly after winning 8 gold medals, and the world didn't get its panties quite as twisted. Driving a monster SUV and running the risk of killing someone isn't as exciting as inhaling some marijuana.]

Phillip Greenspun: If Michael Phelps needs to smoke dope, what do the rest of us need?

Good question, and good point.

Harm reduction

You know, you really can't blame them for not wanting to attract the drug tourists:

Swiss voters overwhelmingly approved Sunday a move to make permanent the country's pioneering program to give addicts government-authorized heroin.

At the same time, voters rejected a proposal to decriminalize marijuana.

Sixty-eight percent of the 2,264,968 voters casting ballots approved making the heroin program permanent. It has been credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts since it began in 1994.

Some 63.2 percent of voters voted against the marijuana initiative.

[...]

Olivier Borer, 35, a musician from the northern town of Solothurn, said he welcomed the outcome in part because state action was required to help heroin addicts, but he said legalizing marijuana was a bad idea.

"I think it's very important to help these people, but not to facilitate the using of drugs," Borer said. "You can just see in the Netherlands how it's going. People just go there to smoke."

Swiss approve pioneering legal heroin program - Associated Press via Yahoo! News (30 Nov 2008)

Don't let me catch you again with a Marlboro, son. Now, pass the hash pipe.

The Dutch, bless them, are about to implement the reductio ad absurdum of anti-smoking laws. As Reason's Hit and Run blog reports:

A Dutch ban on smoking in businesses open to the public takes effect on July 1, and owners of marijuana-selling "coffee shops" are worried. They're not worried because the ban will prevent their customers from smoking pot. Although the combustion products of any dried weed include toxins and carcinogens, cannabis is exempt from the law, which is ostensibly aimed at protecting employees. It's hard to see what purpose this disparate treatment serves, aside from horrifying American conservatives with the prospect of a topsy-turvy world in which you can smoke pot but not tobacco. But since European pot smokers often mix tobacco into their joints, The Independent reports, coffee shop operators are afraid the smoking ban will cut into their business...

"I Swear, Officer, It's Only Marijuana!" (Hit and Run)

Tax day musings

You know, I'm as capable of ranting about waste, fraud, and inefficiency in government as any other self-respecting economic conservative.

But when I read a story like this, I sometimes reflect that it's a good thing we're not getting all the government we're paying for.

America's most enduring policy failure

The writers of The Wire tackle the issue of American drug policy in the pages of Time magazine:

...[T]his [drug] war grinds on, flooding our prisons, devouring resources, turning city neighborhoods into free-fire zones. To what end? State and federal prisons are packed with victims of the drug conflict. A new report by the Pew Center shows that 1 of every 100 adults in the U.S. — and 1 in 15 black men over 18 — is currently incarcerated. That's the world's highest rate of imprisonment.

The drug war has ravaged law enforcement too. In cities where police agencies commit the most resources to arresting their way out of their drug problems, the arrest rates for violent crime — murder, rape, aggravated assault — have declined. In Baltimore, where we set The Wire, drug arrests have skyrocketed over the past three decades, yet in that same span, arrest rates for murder have gone from 80% and 90% to half that. Lost in an unwinnable drug war, a new generation of law officers is no longer capable of investigating crime properly, having learned only to make court pay by grabbing cheap, meaningless drug arrests off the nearest corner.

What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we've been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.

Our leaders? There aren't any politicians — Democrat or Republican — willing to speak truth on this. Instead, politicians compete to prove themselves more draconian than thou, to embrace America's most profound and enduring policy failure.

The Wire's War on The Drug War (Time, 5 Mar 2008)

They don't wind up advocating decriminalization outright... but, as a first step, they do advocate for jury nullification.

Their article was so good and so short that I was tempted to reproduce it in its entirety. I damn nearly did anyway. Go: read the whole thing.

And once you've read that, go read this:

One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008 (Pew Center Public Safety Performance Project)

...and reflect on that fact that, here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we lock up more people (both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of our population) than any other country on the planet:

The United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world, including the far more populous nation of China. At the start of the new year, the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults. China was second, with 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia was a distant third with 890,000 inmates, according to the latest available figures. Beyond the sheer number of inmates, America also is the global leader in the rate at which it incarcerates its citizenry, outpacing nations like South Africa and Iran. In Germany, 93 people are in prison for every 100,000 adults and children. In the U.S, the rate is roughly eight times that, or 750 per 100,000. (source)

In case you were wondering, the "1 in 100" figure includes people who are locked up in local jails awaiting trial, explaining the 1% incarceration rate vs. the 0.75% rate of imprisonment (people who have been tried and sentenced.)

How not to discourage meth use

A parent [at a school-sponsored drug education program] asked why anyone would take meth, given all the downside risk and side effects. One of the policemen answered that meth releases 50 times more serotonin in the brain than an orgasm. Then they showed a before and after picture that looked a lot like this one...

So I’m sitting there, doing the calculations in my head: Okay, that’s 4.5 years of meth use, once a day, 365 days in a year, 50 times more serotonin than an orgasm…that’s the equivalent of 80,000 orgasms.

On the downside, your teeth rot out, your skin itches until you scratch it off, you vomit, have withdrawals, possibly burn down the neighborhood, and roll around in your own filth while your life becomes a living Hell. And there is the jail thing.

Still, 80,000 orgasms…

I wanted to raise my hand while the “before and after” pictures were up and ask, “Isn’t that what anyone would look like after 80,000 orgasms?”

Or maybe, "So, on balance, you’re saying it’s totally worth it? Or am I doing the math wrong?"

Why You Can't Take Me Anywhere (Scott Adams, The Dilbert Blog)

Tierney: Dispatches from the War on Drugs

I recommend a couple of articles chronicling the unintended consequences of the war on drugs. One, by Ethan Nadelmann, is a global look at the damage done by prohibitionist policies. The other, by Radley Balko, is a look at a doctor convicted for prescribing opioids — and this case is in some ways more troubling than the Hurwitz case that I’ve been writing about.

John Tierney: Dispatches from the War on Drugs (TierneyLab Blog, New York Times, 31 Aug 2007)

References:

• Think Again: Drugs (Dr. Ethan Nadelmann, Foreign Policy, subscription-only)
• Sex, Drugs & a Federal Prosecution: The shabby case against Dr. Bernard L. Rottschaefer (Radley Balko, Reason magazine, August 31, 2007)

The murder of innocents and the War on Drugs

It sure is a good thing that we've got the brave officers of the Atlanta Police Department protecting us from the scourge of Dangerous Drugs by, among other things, gunning down a 92 year-old woman while botching the execution of a fraudulently obtained search warrant... and then planting evidence to cover their asses.

While an innocent, elderly woman lay bleeding, handcuffed, and dying on the floor of her own home due to their malfeasance, these animals went about planting drugs to implicate her, and concocting a story to save their own hides. Every case these officers ever worked on needs to be reopened. And that's just getting started. A police department that could produce these three dirty cops, and allow them to operate, is a department that has almost certainly produced many more. It would be awfully coincidental if the only three bad drug cops at APD all happened to be working together this particular night, and happened to get caught on this particular raid.

I certainly feel a lot safer. Don't you?

[Kathryn] Johston Timeline (Radley Balko writing at Reason's Hit and Run Blog, April 30, 2007)

Ex-cop plans video on stash design

A one-time Texas drug agent described by his former boss as perhaps the best narcotics officer in the country plans to market a how-to video on concealing drugs and fooling police.

Barry Cooper, who has worked for small police departments in East Texas, plans to launch a Web site next week where he will sell his video, "Never Get Busted Again," the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported in its online edition Thursday.

Source: AP, via Yahoo! News

Cooper describes himself as a disgruntled veteran of the War Against Drugs, and believes that it's an enormous waste of law enforcement resources:

Cooper, once "the best" drug officer in West Texas, according to his former superiors, told the newspaper during an interview Wednesday night that he believes marijuana should be legalized, and that the imprisonment of those caught with the drug destroys their families and fills up jails and prisons across the country with non-violent offenders.

He added that methamphetamines, cocaine and crack should be eradicated from the earth because they are dangerous drugs. But he says marijuana is not.

"I know I won't be accepted by my peers here in East Texas, but in other areas of the country I will be celebrated," he said in his office in Tyler. "When I was raiding houses and destroying families, my conscience was telling me it was wrong, but my need for power, fame and peer acceptance overshadowed my good conscience."

(Tyler Morning Telegraph: Former cop to sell video showing drug users how to avoid police detection.)