Drug WarRant

It is, however, a simple solution to the drug prohibition problem.

Mark Kleiman has an interesting post: On caffeine-alcohol mixes. Not surprisingly, he’s in favor of a federal ban on such drinks. Also, not surprisingly, I don’t support such a ban. I’m in favor of considering studies, regulating, providing warnings, and providing appropriate limitations to use, but, while I don’t particularly care much about alcohol-caffeine mixes, bans don’t provide an increased societal “good” over regulation, and public policy generated as the result of public hysteria is the worst kind of public policy.

Mark used this particular ban to make a broader point about prohibition in general.

He made some good and appropriate points about the nature of drug use and prohibition…

4. Fighting drug abuse by reducing availability always has costs: loss of liberty, loss of the benefits of non-abusive drug-taking, and sometimes illicit markets and the need for enforcement. Good policy balances those control costs against the costs of abuse, looking for a system that minimizes total harm.

… but then concluded erroneously:

Consequently, anyone offering a simple “solution” to the drug abuse problem, in the form of maximum controls to produce a “drug-free society” or eliminating prohibitions in favor of “taxation and reguation” or “prevention and treatment” is peddling snake-oil. The costs of drug abuse, and the costs of drug abuse control measures, are both real and inevitable, and the grown-up approach requires facing the tradeoffs squarely rather than pretending they don’t exist.

Ah, yes, the both-sides-are-wrong meme shows up again. In Mark’s mind, people who are in favor of “eliminating prohibitions in favor of ‘taxation and regulation’ or ‘prevention and treatment'” are claiming to give a simple solution to the drug abuse problem, and therefore have not considered facing the tradeoffs. Mark is ignoring the entire basis of the legalization argument in order to pull this sleight of hand.

I like to turn to the quote from LEAP’s Peter Christ

Drug legalization is not to be construed as an approach to our drug problem. Drug legalization is about our crime and violence problem. Once we legalize drugs, we gotta then buckle down and start dealing with our drug problem.

Of course I’d add a list of about 20 more things after “crime and violence,” including corruption, over-incarceration, lost rights, destruction of families, bad foreign policy, etc., etc.

In comments over at The Reality-Based Community, Daksya does a good job of pointing out the problem with Kleiman’s argument, but it appears to go completely over the heads of the folks there, as nobody addresses it:

Consequently, anyone offering a simple “solution” to the drug abuse problem, … or eliminating prohibitions in favor of “taxation and reguation” … the grown-up approach requires facing the tradeoffs squarely rather than pretending they don’t exist.

At the base of drug policy, there is a binary choice to be made, either prohibition or accommodation. The prohibition can be tempered with some judicious leeway and accommodation can be constrained by some prudent barriers, but essentially, there are only two modes and one must be adopted. One of the fundamental deficits of prohibition is that, being an absolutist policy, it allows no room for engaging and developing a considered attitude towards its object, thus locking the policy ‘in’. Any attenuation of its instruments have to be defended in roundabout ways, and can’t be set appropriately given the rhetorical and/or ideological surface commitments.

Nice job, Daksya. Let me try to put it another way…

The “grown-up” approach of “facing tradeoffs squarely” doesn’t in any way require keeping prohibition, particularly if prohibition doesn’t limit the total overall harm to society any more than appropriate regulation does. And by any reasonable measurement, it doesn’t.

In a post-prohibition model, it is actually quite possible to face the tradeoffs and provide the best harm reduction model for each drug (recognizing the differences between drugs). Mandatory reading in this area: Transform’s After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation

In fact, it takes some major unsupported assumptions to believe that you can be a grown-up and face tradeoffs squarely while keeping prohibition as basis for your drug policy model.

Let’s take a look at total harm.

Under prohibition, you have:

• Prohibition Harm (including crime, violence, corruption, incarceration, destruction of families, infringement on rights, harm to people who use drugs responsibly, interference with medical needs, foreign policy disasters, great expense, etc.)

— PLUS —

• Drug Abuse Harm (including overdose, health costs, harm to others by abusers, etc. – obviously this is part of the harms under prohibition since drug abuse exists under prohibition)

–EQUALS —

• Total harms under prohibition

Now, let’s take a look at total harms under regulation

• Existing Drug Abuse Harm (this, for ease of simplifying equations, is the same as the line item under prohibition)

–MINUS–

• Harm Reduction Value to Drug Abusers from Regulation (this is a real identifiable value from such things as regulated dosages reducing overdoses and drug poisonings, education reducing abuse (as with tobacco), reducing the stigma involved in getting help, etc.)

–PLUS–

• (The harms resulting from a completely uncertain change in the rate of drug abuse as a result of legalization) – as mitigated by the Harm Reduction Value above. This refers to the notion that drug abuse (and not just use) will increase significantly with legalization, regardless of the regulation approach. It is a notion that is fervently believed by people like Mark Kleiman, but not supported by existing models (ie, Portugal. Those models are necessarily flawed, since no real legalization laboratory has been allowed, but on the other hand, the belief in significantly increased abuse appears to be mostly a matter of faith. There are also those who believe that there will be no significant increase in drug abuse under regulation.

–EQUALS–

• Total harms under regulation

When you simplify the equations, it’s pretty clear:

For prohibition to be even an option in a policy that in a grown-up way compares trade-offs in harms to society and individuals, the unknown and unsupported “increase” in drug abuse harm, minus the harm reduction values of regulation to all drug abuse, must be greater than the very well known and established harms of prohibition.

With each drug out there, it is quite possible to craft a public policy of regulation that reduces the overall harm to society below what exists under prohibition. Therefore, there is no reason for us to consider prohibition as a viable tool in the crafting of drug policy.

Note, this shows that prohibition is not viable in a simple harm cost comparison. This doesn’t even include such additional factors as the basic immorality of prohibition as policy.

The argument might be made that prohibition can somehow be changed in such a way that it can exist without having great harm, but no such prohibition scheme has been demonstrated. The fact is that the most harmful aspects of prohibition have to do with its very basic nature (the creation of a black market) and are unlikely to be mitigated significantly by tinkering with sentencing reform.

It is not the legalizers who are peddling snake-oil. The prohibitionists are selling the quack medicine. In fact, what they are selling is poison — a concoction that fails to address the disease while killing the patient in other ways.

It’s good to be back, but I’ll have some catching up to do.

I didn’t get to read all the comments, but scanned a number of them on my phone. Pretty much every time I discovered an article that I thought would make for a good post when I returned… the commenters here had already found it, reported it, and commented it to death. (Makes me feel better about being away, knowing that the blog is in good hands.)

There were 700 messages waiting in the spam filter. I’m sorry if yours was in there, but I was not about to go through all of them, so they’re gone.

… because you need a new one and I’m still in wifi hell until tomorrow night.

It’s really too hard for me to do any kind of real posts on my iPhone.

There have been some great conversations in comments. Remember to keep it civil.

Give thanks for what you have, and remember those families that won’t be together today because of the war on drugs.

I’ll be without wifi for the next few days, so posting will be light.

Rio

Ten dead in police operations in Rio shantytowns

At least ten people were killed on Wednesday morning during a series of operations carried out by the Rio police in the city’s shantytowns.

The operations aimed at catching the criminals involved in a crime spree which has been devastating Rio’s metro area since last weekend. Multiple incidents occurred in different parts of Rio, with criminals setting cars and buses on fire. […]

The police’s public relations officer, Lieutenant Colonel Lima Castro, told a local TV station that it is possible that two rival criminal gangs have teamed up to carry out the attacks.

According to Castro, local crime lord Nem, who dominates the drug trafficking industry in the city’s largest shantytown, Rocinha, may be the mastermind behind the crime spree.

Brazil police battle Rio de Janeiro gang violence

For three days, suspected gang members have been blocking roads, burning cars and shooting at police stations.

Military police have been deployed in 17 different slum districts.

Rio’s governor says the violence is retaliation by drugs gangs who have been driven out of some areas by a police pacification programme. […]

The authorities are convinced that the attacks are being orchestrated by drugs gangs in retaliation for being forced out of their traditional strongholds in some slum districts by police pacification units.

“Without doubt these attacks are related to the reconquest of territory and the new policy of public security in Rio de Janeiro,” Mr Cabral said.

“We are not going to retreat in this policy. We are going to push forward, pacifying communities and bringing peace to the population.”

Never retreat. Never surrender. No matter how many die and how futile the effort, we will continue to fight the drug war until we achieve peace through death.

Because the alternative, regulating drugs that are already used thereby depriving criminal gangs of their livelihood and saving the lives of the innocent, is unthinkable and not part of our vocabulary.

You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Cannabis is here to stay. And now, the medical cannabis industry is becoming a major entity.

New York Times

DENVER — It is being called the green rush. With more states moving to legalize medical marijuana, the business of growing and dispensing it is booming, even as much of the rest of the economy struggles.

Now, flush with financial clout, and with their eyes on pushing Congress to further loosen laws, medical marijuana industry leaders are forming a national trade association. While there are smaller, local trade groups, organizers around the country say this will be the first business organization working on the national level.

Based in Washington, the group, the National Cannabis Industry Association, will focus primarily on lobbying, but will also help medical marijuana businesses navigate a patchwork of laws that differ depending on location.

I expect to see new stress lines between an emerging medical cannabis industry and the push for legalization. In the long run, legalization will win, because every step forward that medical cannabis takes is also a step forward for legalization. There may be some short term profit-taking that could put temporary wrenches in the works for legalizers…

But in the long term, the fact is that medical cannabis users like cannabis and they would not put up with any move by the medical cannabis industry to make it non-recreational (ie, an unpleasant yet necessary medicine), which is the only way that the medical cannabis movement could end in anything other than legalization.

Today’s candidate: Lt. Andrew Hawkes, a 19-year police veteran who has worked in patrol, K9, investigations, narcotics and administration. His book, Secrets of Successful Highway Interdiction, “contains eleven chapters on Highway Drug Interdiction.”

Why does the debate continue over marijuana legalization? at PoliceOne.com (comments from registered participants only).

People see that there isn’t much upside to legalization. Crime will always be associated with drug use whether it’s legal or not. Driving under the influence, thefts, burglaries, and crimes against persons would continue to be related to people using and selling drugs.

In my opinion, if California had passed this into law it would be a matter of time before Mexican drug cartels controlled American production of the drug under legal circumstances. We can control the border violence as it is, what makes us think we could stop the Cartel’s from having a legitimized business front to control production in California.

Wow. Just wow. Forget the typos. What does it take to actually imagine this? Let’s just look at that second paragraph (have fun with the first yourself)… How would the Mexican drug cartels control American production under legal circumstances? In a legalized market, how does the drug cartel compete economically with an American grower and still pay for their army back in Mexico and the guns and the politicians…?

Perhaps we should focus on taking down the cartels — the violent organized crime units that are committing so much more crimes than just the smuggling of drugs.

Um. We have. And lots of people are dying because of it.

Bureaucrats need to stop all the bullcrap discussions in Washington about “how” to protect our border and just do it.

Just do it? What is this, a Nike commercial? Maybe if we paint a swoosh on the fence, the drugs will stay out.

Bonus stupidity: wr134 in comments:

Potheads will still be potheads and will still rob/steal/burglarize to support their habit. Why make it any easier.

Update: Shaleen with LEAP has joined in the comments there, and now so has Howard Wooldridge:

Our Thin Blue Line is getting thinner. We waste some 10 million hours nationally chasing the green plant. Aside from issues like personal liberty and limited govt intrusion in one’s house, should detectives be in chat rooms catching pedophiles or flying around in helicopters? BTW, we are currently missing tens of thousands of child cyber porn folks and 400,000 rape kits have never been opened.

In my 18 years as a street cop I went to zero calls generated by the use of pot.

Via Grits for Breakfast, everybody’s after a piece of that asset forfeiture pie.

Cashing in: Who benefits most from seized currency?

Perhaps no issue proves more quietly contentious in the local law enforcement community than how the seized currency – about $14.6 million in 5 1/2 years – is divided among agencies hungry for revenue in a struggling economy.

In the end, only about 6.4 percent – or roughly $935,000 – of those seizures have remained in the area to benefit regional law enforcement agencies and taxpayers, according to hundreds of pages of documents released by the DPS in response to a public information request by the Amarillo Globe-News.

Records indicate DPS officials often choose to bypass Panhandle state courts in exchange for Amarillo’s federal court when the largest amounts of money are at stake. It’s a decision that has left some I-40 district attorneys frustrated and raised concerns the federal court route gives DPS an easier and larger payday at the expense of local counties and taxpayers.

Of course, none of that money should even come close to going to any law enforcement or court agency. It is a perversion of the justice system to have law enforcement policy and enforcement/prosecution decisions potentially influenced by how much money could end up coming to the agency.

If I was President (and no, that’s not likely to happen), this is one reform I think I could take on even without Congress (because of course no Congress is likely to agree with what I would do). Just an Executive Order. You see, currently, the feds offer an 80-20 split (80 going to the state law enforcement agency) when they’re involved in an asset forfeiture case. This provides incentive for agencies to involve the feds, because they get to have more money (often bypassing state law that requires it to be used for other things).

My Executive Order would direct how seized funds in joint federal-local actions would be handled:

1. In states where there is a mechanism for seized funds to go to a non-law enforcement purpose (ie, education, etc.), then the state will get the 80% (with funds going directly to the state for that purpose, not to the law enforcement agency).
3. In states where there is no qualified mechanism for insuring that seized funds don’t go to law enforcement, then the federal government keeps 100%.
4. All federal seized funds go to deficit reduction.

This would encourage states to have a non-law enforcement seizure distribution method in order to get the most money, while eliminating the perverse incentive of law enforcement to make decisions based on the cash they might get.

Of course, there’s more reform in this area needed. At the least, asset forfeiture should require that the property owner be convicted of a crime and that prosecution proves the assets were ill-gotten gains of that crime, but that kind of reform would also require Congressional action.

The Planning Commission in Colorado Springs is not only looking out for the welfare of the citizens, they’re going all out to make sure that Colorado Spring doesn’t sell its soul to the devil.

Apparently this involves making it almost impossible to find a location for a medical marijuana dispensary.

The commission recommended a 1,000-foot buffer zone between dispensaries and schools, including preschools, colleges and universities. […]

The commission also recommended the same 1,000-foot setback between dispensaries and all residential child care facilities and drug and/or alcohol treatment facilities, which could include places where Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are held.

But they’re pretty despondent, because they know that the City Council will probably over-ride them — not because the idea is stupid, not because they want to prevent sick people from getting medicine, but because they’ll get licensing fees from the dispensaries, which is apparently the hardest bargain they are able to negotiate with the devil for the souls of Colorado Springs.

Commissioner Carla Harstell said the council seems motivated “by one thing and one thing only” when it involves medical marijuana: revenue.

“I think we’re selling our soul to the devil if we make all our decisions based on how much money we’re going to get from a business,” she said.

You know, selling your soul to the devil used to mean something.

Of course, those who have followed so-called “drug free zones” know that the notion of zones is just a fancy way of trying to legislate something out of existence. I fail to understand the value of requiring a heavy regulated place that provides medicine to sick people to be far away from schools.

A post that really has very little to do with drug policy (other than perhaps another reminder that with legalization, pot becomes less valuable to steal).

Soldiers: No Sir, We’re Here to Get Rid of the Marijuana

Three soldiers try to rip off a dispensary and manage to get themselves locked inside the dispensary (yet outside the safe holding the marijuana and cash).

While several officers guarded the front, Langlais went around to the back and saw that the door knob had been knocked from the door and was lying on the ground, leaving a large hole.

Through the hole, Langlais said he saw a “dark-colored finger” poking at the dead bolt, which had apparently re-engaged in the door jamb after the break-in.

“I announced ‘Police!’ at which time the finger quickly retracted into the business and I immediately heard at least two voices screaming profanities,” he wrote.

After being arrested, two of the suspects told officers they broke in with the best of intentions: They were going to steal the marijuana not to sell or smoke but to destroy it, Langlais said.

Right.