Where Kleiman gets annoyed once again that people are having a discussion

Mark Kleiman in Another drug legalization pitch notes:

Esquire publishes yet another drug-leglization screed. Whoever does press relations for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition deserves a bonus.

Perhaps. I’m not going to speak to the salary level of LEAP’s press rep (although I’m happy to support a raise). But what’s interesting is the annoyance with the fact that, once again, legalization is being discussed as a serious policy debate (even though he pretends nonchalance by putting “yawn” in the title).

But Kleiman and his colleagues have not only opposed “legalization” (a somewhat odd thing, since Kleiman himself favors a form of marijuana legalization — the term seems to be more related to his obsessive fear of cocaine legalization and his dislike of “legalizers”), but as a group, they have often steered public policy discussion away from even including the discussion of legalization itself. Most references to legalization are snide comments about legalizers, or throwaway arguments that are completely lacking in evidence.

Now, in the case of the Esquire article, it’s interesting and useful to start having more of a discussion of what prohibition actually costs us in numbers of lives (as opposed to the merely anecdotally horrific). That doesn’t mean that I believe the full numbers in the Esquire article stand up to scientific rigor for accuracy (nor do I believe the author claimed it to be more than an attempt at rough number crunching).

For years, we have heard prohibitionists and their apologists toss out numbers that include things like prison and some pretty made-up “lost productivity” numbers as part of the costs to society of drug use, and few (other than legalizers) have stepped up to correct that (See James Roberts just last week at CATO: “Numerous studies have totaled up some of the costs to taxpayers and consumers from the current problems with drug addiction. These burdens on society — estimated at more than $180 billion a year — affect everyone.”). So a bit of hyperbole on the other side to make a point, while not my preference, seems reasonable.

Kleiman has some legitimate beef with the numbers used. Not all overdose deaths will end with legalization. But his “few hints” to get the reader started in demolishing the Esquire article go nowhere.

1. Alcohol – the drug we decided to legalize and regulate – kills about 100,000 people a year: several times as many as all the illicit drugs combined.

Could be. I don’t know. There are so many different numbers out there regarding alcohol deaths, it’s hard to sort through them. This undoubtably includes fatal car crashes where alcohol was a factor and may or may not have been a contributing factor. But regardless, I’m not sure what significance these rough numbers have to the argument. There’s not going to be 100,000 deaths a year from marijuana if it’s legalized. That’s certain. I can’t think of anyone who would dispute that. So merely legalizing and regulating any particular drug does not mean that it will automatically lead to the same actual lethality as alcohol. The 100,000 number gives us nothing meaningful to use in applying to any other drug.

2. The notion that there’s a set of taxes and regulations that would avoid creating a big illicit market while not increasing drug abuse substantially doesn’t pass the giggle test. (Licit pharmaceutical-grade cocaine costs about a tenth as much as street cocaine. So legalization means either a huge price drop or a set of taxes crying out for profitable evasion, and thus requiring enforcement.

As he’s done before, Kleiman here uses dishonest argument structure to create an unsupported conclusion out of thin air. Re-word that argument into its basic form.

Argument: Legalization means either a huge price drop, or a set of taxes crying out for profitable evasion, and thus requiring enforcement.

Conclusion: Thus, legalization means either a substantial increase in drug abuse, or a big illicit market.

Structure: A means either B or C, therefore A means either D or E. Nonsense.

He’s trying to get you to accept that a huge price drop is the same thing as a substantial increase in drug abuse a priori, and that a set of taxes crying out for profitable evasion is the same thing as a big illicit market. Cigarettes have a set of taxes crying out for profitable evasion, and yet the illicit market is negligible compared to the massive world-wide destructive drug prohibition market.

3. Counting all the overdoses as costs of prohibition would make sense – if no one ever died of alcohol poisoning or overdosed on prescdription drugs (often mixed with alcohol).

I agree. However, it’s nice to actually discuss the fact that many overdoses are costs of prohibition, and that ending prohibition could actually reduce the number of overdoses.

4. Yes, street gangs do some drug dealing. But it’s absurd to imagine that the gang killings would disappear if the drug market became legal.

Here Kleiman uses a combination of straw man and the nirvana fallacy. The article never claimed that all gang killings would disappear if the drug market became legal. In fact, they specifically chose to “lowball it” when coming up with the estimated portion that would stop with the end of drug prohibition.

Sometimes I think that the legalizers and the drug warriors have a secret arms control treaty, in which each side renounces the use of factually and logically sound arguments.

What does that mean? Particularly from one who is both a legalizer and a drug warrior, and who uses logically unsound arguments?

I know that Mark Kleiman is convinced that legalization of cocaine will immediately mean that roughly the same number of people using and abusing alcohol now will use and abuse cocaine (with no reduction in alcohol use or abuse) and that therefore we will have armageddon, because nobody can resist the allure of cocaine addiction. And that just isn’t true.

Legalizing cocaine doesn’t mean that it has to be in the alcohol model. There are many options that will make it possible for responsible adults to acquire safe drugs legally without having cocaine keggers and people selling 8-balls in every football stadium. In fact, much like we have dramatically reduced the number of cigarette smokers through education and public attitudes, it’s likely that there will be strong public attitudes directed against public cocaine intoxication. And there are many people who enjoy a drink who will have no interest in ever using cocaine.

Also, legalization is a complex interaction of various options and opportunities. Marijuana legalization will have an affect on the other drugs. Heroin will have its own model, different from cocaine and marijuana. Meth will probably be replaced by a pharmaceutical amphetamine (little blue pills). Most people will continue to use none of them, and many will use drugs but not abuse them. Some will abuse drugs and some will commit crimes, and we’ll be able to focus our limited resources on those last two groups (possibly being even more effective by being able to be swift and certain in our response (but more about that when I shortly review Kleiman’s new book)). The opportunities for rich discussions of public policy will be enormous.

Legalization is on the table. It is a point of discussion. It cannot be ignored or merely pushed off as so politically impractical to negate consideration. Those who would lead policy will have to be willing to have serious discussion about it, or they’ll be left behind.

There are lots of discussions for us to have, arguments to thrash out, policy differences to air, methods to consider, and that should be exciting.

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66 Responses to Where Kleiman gets annoyed once again that people are having a discussion

  1. Steve Clay says:

    I think Mark finds LEAP’s soundbyte message weak — namely that “we should tax and regulate all drugs like alcohol.”

    From a (relatively) informed drug policy perspective, I agree. Is legal PCP a good idea under any regulation? What would “regulating” oxycodone mean? Would recreational prescription drug users get special privileges to ignore FDA OTC availability rules? I’m not convinced we should regulate any drug “like alcohol”, including alcohol.

    But a year ago LEAP’s site introduced me to how much damage prohibition does to poor communities, civil liberties, law enforcement respect, prison populations, et.al. LEAP may not make interesting drug policy wonks (or have a message that you could stick in a bill), but their talent is getting people thinking. We’re in no danger of Congress legalizing all drugs because LEAP said so.

    Re: cocaine, I do believe legalization would result in higher use (and probably abuse), I’d just consider that the far lessor evil. It’s sickening that drug dealing is the primary jobs program for many kids and communities.

  2. Pete says:

    Steve, I may be wrong, but I’ve never read LEAP’s message that way. In that particular article, the quote was “What I’m talking about is applying standards — quality control, just like alcohol.” In other words, alcohol is regulated, and drugs should be regulated. Not necessarily the same way — I don’t know of any LEAP speaker that has claimed that all drugs should be regulated the same way alcohol is regulated — merely that they should be regulated.

  3. SpGNo says:

    If you really want to dig into Mr. Kleiman, look into Leonard Pickard, his former student. Pickard is serving a life sentence for LSD production, and Mr. Kleiman oversaw his thesis on drug markets in russia. I’d sure love to hear some details about the relationship between the two, including if Mr. Kleiman has used Pickards LSD.

    Maybe instead of trying to have this kind of debate with Mr. Kleiman, where we assume he’s arguing in good faith, we should be asking why he is providing jobs, prestige and cover to an LSD chemist associated with russian and dutch criminals while opposing legalization. There are many questions Mr. Kleiman needs to be asked, not least of which is the relationship between him, the international drug enforcement community, Mr. Pickard, and various governments.

    It’s not that you’re wrong about him, but you are only scratching the surface. Everything Mr. Kleiman says appears to me to be based on his involvement with power structures we know very little about. If Mr. Kleiman is going to agitate against drug reform, the drug reform community should push back with very close scrutiny of Mr. Kleiman’s work with foreign governments and his relationships with former students and associates.

  4. Voletear says:

    The overabundunce of drug-reform options is injurious to our cause and a boon to the opposition. Perhaps it’s time to begin the process of hammering out a concrete proposal from which to proceed. Some sort of mechanism, possibly an E-vention, seems in order to argue planks by some agreeable process to finally produce a document forming an actual plan.

    One other thought: The difficulties for “legalization” inherent in questions like: “Do we want to legalize PCP?” or Kleiman’s fears of a coke-addled society miss one possibility real reform would offer that I’ve never seen offered. To wit: ending Prohibition opens up the option of creating recreational drugs for specific properties like safety, low addiction potential, and other desirable features. This should be a cinch for today’s medicinal chemistry. Such agents could obviate a lot of the problems associated with our less desirable drugs – found for recreational use accidentally – and thereby destroy one of the opposition’s big guns.

  5. paul says:

    I haven’t read much of Kleiman’s stuff, but what I have read shows a consistent, sneering attitude toward legalization. He is trying to laugh away our arguments, and he can be insulting to people trying to argue with him, like we saw in the comments a few months ago.

    His usual line of attack is to make few snide comments about the mental health and ability of his opponents, then sigh and patiently explain to these slow children how it really is–because all the answers are SO obvious and legalization is never going to happen, so let’s not waste any more time talking about it.

    It grates, that’s for sure. But Obama tried to laugh away the MJ questions earlier this year, and not so many people laughed with him. People are serious about this, and Obama hurt himself by dismissing their concerns.

    I’ll bet Kleiman’s attitude does a lot more damage to his arguments than he thinks. Arrogance and and condescension don’t become anyone, and people don’t like it when they see it.

    Let’s wait a few more years and see who is laughing then. The tide is with us, now.

  6. kaptinemo says:

    “Let’s wait a few more years and see who is laughing then. The tide is with us, now.”

    Depending upon just how damaging the next economic tsunami is (and there’s bound to be one), the tide could turn even faster. It’s become obvious at the lowest levels of government that the financial ‘infrastructure’ is crumbling…endangering the physical infrastructure of society. Local governments are being faced with the unpleasant possibility of being forced to cut back basic services. It’s triage time, and something as expensive and wasteful as the DrugWar, despite it’s cheerleaders screaming to the contrary, isn’t as important as maintaining emergency services needed by the public daily.

    An inexorable fiscal vise is clamped onto drug prohibition, and with every turn of the handle, the vise’s jaws are slowly squeezing, squeezing, squeezing the ideology out of consideration. And those whose stock in trade includes that ideology don’t like being reminded of their approaching irrelevance.

  7. Nick Zentor says:

    I think the bottom-line is, legalization and regulation of drugs presents the possibility of a peaceful, civilized, and intelligent approach to controlling all drug-use that prohibition does not offer. Obviously, intelligent people that know the differences between the effects of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, and PCP are not going to just toss them all into the same bin and let the consumers treat it all like so many pieces of candy.

  8. BluOx says:

    I’ve got to stop reading Klieman, he’s so intellectually bipolar. Regulation is democracy. Control is tyranny. And, when the money runs out, regulation is revenue.

  9. jackl says:

    I used to get mad at Kleiman, but now I just try to ignore him. He’s just a one-trick pony and prohibitionist ideologue. However, unlike the other prohibitionist spokespeople (like Calvina Fay or Joe Califano or anyone whose ever worked for ONDCP), he’s a respected academic at a major university and hence is going to be the “go to” guy for a lot of media when it comes to a get for a bloggingheads story involving drugs, particularly the legalization thereof.

    His basic trick though — of simply blasting “legalizers” and claiming some armageddon of doom from cocaine without citing any facts or applying logic while projecting that deficiency onto his opponents — is getting tired and transparent. But it is sad that an academic has little more than the other former government or pressure group hacks to productively add to the debate (except his Breaker Morant-ish/Singapore-ish notion of swift but temporary punishment for drug use as the “magic bullet” which has been untried in the 40 year modern WoUSD.)

    As to LEAP and the voodoo supposedly performed on ordinarily sensible publications by their reform p.r. mojo, I don’t know their current salary structure (especially after the apparently somewhat controversial shake up of their leadership positions recently), but I’d imagine that it’s probably like most of the smallish grassroots reform orgs which are in the MAPINC orbit…the position is probably entirely volunteer or extremely low paid (in the $30K range).

    The org is, after all, formed mostly of RETIRED and pensioned LEOs who found themselves — like Pete Christ — retired with a good pension at a relatively young age in their mid 40s with a good pension and a lot of time and energy to devote to reform efforts.

  10. Cliff says:

    “It’s triage time, and something as expensive and wasteful as the DrugWar, despite it’s cheerleaders screaming to the contrary, isn’t as important as maintaining emergency services needed by the public daily.”

    Here in Colorado, Governor Bill Ritter is fixing to pull the DWI check point money out (collected from DWI / DUI drivers), to use it for other state expenses instead of fattening the wallets of overpaid cops with overtime. They make enough as it is. Oh, the freakin’ horror, what will they do?

    In Denver, Mayor Hickenlooper is telling the cops either take less pay or we’re laying off 91 police officers. Gosh, I’ll bet Denver turns into a war zone when that happens, because people can’t voluntarily cooperate without jack boots on their necks.

  11. DdC says:

    Dear Mark Klieman,
    “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man
    without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”

    ~ Frederick Douglass

    LEGALIZE THE SAFER ALTERNATIVE FOR ADULTS NOW! U2b

    Regular Marijuana Users Suffer Less Impairment Than Occasional Users
    Recent research shows regular marijuana consumers are less impacted by negative neurocognitive effects than occasional users.

    CN NK: Editorial: Has It Been Worth It?
    Miramichi Leader 28 Aug 2009

    “America is false to the past,
    false to the present,
    and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.”

    ~ Frederick Douglass

  12. I agree with Voletear that the lack of a detailed set of proposals for the post-legalization management of the major currently illicit drugs is a weakness that the legalization movement ought to address. But it turns out that design problem is actually very knotty.

    http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.spa.ucla.edu/faculty/vitas/cv_kleiman.pdf&sa=U&ei=r-qeSqiEIpngsAPdg6i9Dg&ct=res&cd=1&sig2=8wrrKxnh0X825wEJvoMdvg&usg=AFQjCNHwTOv6qY2TD35FD8ybUOMV5mgyzQ

    So it’s much easier just to wave your hands and imagine that meth-smokers are going to be satisfied with a “blue pill” and then go back to ranting about how awful prohibition is.

    If Pete wants to propose a specific, detailed, actionable set of taxes and regulations for cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine, or to point at such a set produced by someone else, I’d be happy to respond. But he’d much rather just sit there and throw around words like “dishonest.” Projecting much, Pete?

    More here:

    http://www.samefacts.com/archives/drug_policy_/2009/09/another_drug_legalization_pitch.php

  13. Pete says:

    Of course, the design problem is knotty, Mark. It’s going to take trial and error and tweaking. And the unknowns are great. That’s why we have to have the discussion and can’t just dismiss “legalizers,” particularly when the most everything else has failed so spectacularly, giving us disaster in Latin America and Afghanistan, corruption of police and officials, destruction of inner cities and families, lack of respect for law enforcement, environmental damage, lack of help for those who need it, and on and on.

    Now, of course, in your own writing, you can point to experiments with supervised parole in the 1980s that failed, but then find H.O.P.E. in Hawaii. That’s great. It’s wonderful to be able to try things and learn from them.

    And yet the prohibitionists (assisted ably by the “academics”) have consistently attempted to shut off any opportunity to learn about legalization (from the feeral government’s refusal to study their medical marijuana patients to the attempts to interfere with any kind of state action).

    And we’ve done that globally. No country in the world dare really attempt to see what legalization is like. The knowledge is apparently unwelcome.

    So we have to extrapolate from the coffee shops in Amsterdam, the decriminalization in Portugal, the heroin maintenance programs in Switzerland, and medical marijuana in 13 states, all flawed because they are not able to actually attempt the best way of doing it, and yet all providing us with information that undermines the doomsday scenarios of anti-legalizers.

    Sure, I could provide you with an idea of what I think would be a potential post-legalization set of taxes and regulations (and I think I’ve done it before), but any such set of plans would not happen overnight. Legalization obviously is going to happen in fits and starts and be adjusted and the taxes will change and the regulations will change and it’ll start with marijuana, move to heroin (oddly), and then cocaine, followed by others. Marijuana will probably follow an alcohol model; none of the others will.

    Cocaine and amphetamines will be sold in drug stores at about the same price they are now (including tax), perhaps a bit less. It won’t be pure, but it’ll be cut with safe ingredients and no adulterants. There will be regulations on who can purchase and how much they can purchase (sort of like tracking pseudoephedrine). There will be a small black market like cigarettes, but since the majority will be legally produced, it will mostly come from diversion rather than the international black market. There will also be a Coke-lite (that’s more like coca tea) that will be easier to purchase in an attempt to guide people toward that choice.

    Heroin will be dispensed for free in clinics, much like the Swiss program, but with easier entrance. Dosage will be limited to maintenance and job/welfare assistance will be available. A small black market will exist for the rich who want to have fun, but most dealers will go out of business because long-term customers can always go to the clinic.

    LSD and mushrooms will be sold to anyone over 21 at licensed head shops at a 50% tax rate. And nobody will care.

    That’s just one set of possibilities. There are many more and we should be encouraging the experiment, not avoiding the discussion. Sure, there may be some H.O.P.E. in probation supervision, but that’s not going to solve the prohibition problem.

  14. paul says:

    Pete’s possible future sounds reasonable to me. I would hope that Cocaine and amphetamines would be cheaper than they are now so as to kill any remaining black market in those drugs. But this system would end the ills of prohibition itself.

    The drugs themselves would still be a problem, but they have always been. People who want them have always been able to get them (except for LSD, which the government seems to have made very rare), so that wouldn’t change.

    I agree that usage rates would rise after legalization, but probably not as much as the prohibitionists fear. A lot of people have actually tried these drugs already, after all. I have no use for coke or meth myself, and I have no urge to try heroin, for God’s sake. I think most people who have the same attitude about those drugs.

    As for LEAP’s voodoo, I call that persuasion. People listen to their arguments, find them logical and convincing, and join the reformist side. Now that so many people are with us, the snowball is gathering size and speed. The sheer mass of people who are on the reformist side make the arguments respectable and mainstream, which makes it even easier to join us.

    After all, the reform side has logic and common sense going for it, and we defend the great traditional values of liberty and peace. How can we lose? 🙂

  15. Steve Clay says:

    Here’s my cocaine regulation idea: Institute a reasonable cannabis policy then wait a few years and reassess the situation.

    Respectfully, I don’t think we’ll solve our problems by getting a few academics to approve of regulation schemes. Reform requires a lot more people to more completely understand the full impacts of our policies. The costs of drug abuse are well established; very few are aware of the full societal costs of our control policies. I think Mark is right that some underestimate the benefits of policies, but I think Mark and other academics significantly underestimate the costs.

    Considering that orgs pushing for nearly 40 years with science on their side haven’t even been successful in getting cannabis rescheduled, I have more fear of the next Republican administration building a better John Walters than of LEAP accidentally getting congress to regulate coke like alcohol based on some misguided talking points.

  16. kaptinemo says:

    While the practical issues of drug legalization/taxation are matters of economy, not much thought is given to the issue from a philosophical viewpoint. And I believe that once the issue is dissected in this light, one will see very quickly who places their trust in individuals to determine their fates, and who places (historically, unwarranted) trust in governments to accomplish the same objective..

    I believe it is rather easy to state that it was the latter group of people, certain of their own moral rectitude, who originally saddled us with the drug laws. And it is the latter group of people, because of their underlying distrust of their own fellow citizens, that seek to impose their own beliefs – and prejudices – upon those desiring actual, practical solutions that threaten that mindset.

    All too often, the hoary old chestnut of ‘public safety’ is invoked, but in the final analysis one can determine that the philosophical agenda of drug prohibition was based upon that deep distrust of one’s fellow citizens by their self-described ‘betters’ – a distrust that cannot help but be reflected in both their public pronouncements and their political actions.

    In short, prohibs and their enablers are exactly the sort of people Heinlein wrote about when he said:

    “Political tags–such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and. so forth–are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort. “ (Emphasis mine – k.)

    To attempt to maintain drug prohibition despite all its’ failures is to reveal a degree of that anti-democratic control-freak mentality at work. To work for its’ end is to demonstrate that you trust your neighbors more than you do your government…which hasn’t done all that much lately to earn the trust it demands of us. I know who I’d rather be in the company of…

  17. paul says:

    Kaptinemo:

    I heartily agree. Stopping the harm of the drug war is urgent and very important, but even more important is the violence to liberty done by the drug war. Are we adults or children? Citizens, or subjects?

    That we even have to debate the matter is a sad commentary on our times. Free men don’t need to beg the government for permission to grow a plant, drink whiskey, or take a drug. That’s your own damn business, not some bureaucrat’s in Washington. Our pioneer ancestors must be turning in their graves.

    The prison walls have been built up since the end of world war 2, and now they are very high indeed. The nannies, lawyers, cops, and moralists are so entrenched now we will probably never be rid of them, and they get stronger every day. They will not rest until every aspect of your life is watched, programmed and controlled.

    Witness England today. What a long fall from the energy, ideals, and accomplishments of Enlightenment liberalism! Newton, Burton, Nelson, Churchill… Now there’s a camera on every corner, “social behavior orders”, and Gordon Brown. And we are not far behind them.

    This is the reason that I do not listen to prohibitionist arguments. Even if they were right (and I do not believe they are) and there would be more addiction and death caused by reform than prohibition, I would STILL want reform. Freedom is worth it. It is worth life itself, and it is worth a lot more than the opinions of liberal nannies, conservative moralists, and sneering university professors. The Devil take them all.

  18. Pingback: Follow-up on the Kleiman post « Drug WarRant

  19. Joe says:

    “I heartily agree. Stopping the harm of the drug war is urgent and very important, but even more important is the violence to liberty done by the drug war. Are we adults or children? Citizens, or subjects?”

    This is the bottom line. Many things we do are risky and cause serious problems, including resulting in harm to self and others. Consider free marriage choice. The net result here is harm to loads of families, including children. Intrusive laws or bans however are rather lacking relatively (no pun intended) speaking.

    So, though various legal drugs are dangerous, I don’t support bans. I don’t support outlawing people from smoking in all public places either. In NYC, e.g., there should be the ability to smoke in a few places other than cigar bars and the like. But, going to the next level, Mark Kleiman’s arguments — as noted — are strawman emotional laden jobs.

    This from a blog called the “reality based community?” Uh huh.

  20. Peter Moskos says:

    Does Kleinman think alcohol should be prohibited again? Seriously.

    It seems so, since uses legal alcohol to support his belief that legalization of drugs is bad.

  21. Peter Moskos says:

    Does Kleinman think alcohol should be prohibited again? Seriously. It seems so, since he uses legal alcohol an example of the harms of legalization. I’d ask him. But you can’t leave comments on his blog.

  22. David Raynes says:

    I am only dipping in and will not likely be back soon but some serious errors here caught my eye.

    Pete says:
    “be a small black market like cigarettes, but since the majority will be legally produced, it will mostly come from diversion rather than the international black market”.

    Now where did Pete or anyone else here, get the idea that the black market in cigarettes (and tobacco) is “small”? Actually it is huge. In the UK (with which I am most familiar) it is around 20% of consumption and has been substantially higher. It is higher in some other countries, even those with lower taxes. The organised criminality around supply is mostly more serious than around illegal drugs, it involves the real (Italian) mafia and organised crime from eastern europe. Goods are smuggled counterfeit or very often both. Consumers regularly find telling counterfeit from legal, quite difficult, so good is the packaging. Readers here are being seriously misled. Legalising the currently illegal drugs represents a tremendous opportunity for criminality.

    Illegal business can always undercut legal business. It happens in all sorts of commodities from DVDs, to car parts, aircarft parts, etc, just why should drugs be uniquely different?

    Legalising any illegal drug would on the evidence of the tobacco/alcohol model worlwide, increase consumption particularly in respect of whole of life use. As with tobacco and alcohol, use would not just be youthful experimentation. There would inevitably be more total personal and social harm.

    Criminality cannot be priced out of a market. Criminality loves use-reinforcing and addictive substances.

    Argue for legalised drugs if you wish but not on the basis of a false and very intellectually flawed prospectus around criminality, with no understanding of how criminality works.

    Legalised drugs could well mean MORE criminality than now in many countries, it certainly would not lead to reduced law enforcement as legal sellers would demand protection and any legal regime would demand management. Illegality would continue in supplier countries with just maybe even more competition for a slice of the cake.

    Circumscribing supply, with rules by age, quantity, user licence etc creates more reason for criminality not less and criminality could be expected to produce (as with cigarettes) counterfeit product.

    It is also important to remember the historical evidence. In the 60s the UK provided heroin to any addict that wanted it and asked for it (under the then “British System”). That did NOT stop a parralel illegal market, at the time provided by Chinese Number 3 & 4 heroin. The “legalisation to stop criminality argument” is an intellectual dead end. Governments know this. Get back to the drawing board.

  23. Pete says:

    Thanks for stopping, David. I’d love to have further conversation with you.

    First of all, you say:

    Now where did Pete or anyone else here, get the idea that the black market in cigarettes (and tobacco) is “small”? Actually it is huge. In the UK (with which I am most familiar) it is around 20% of consumption

    I realize that small is a relative term, but in my book, compared to 100%, 20% is small. And 100% is currently the black market for illicit substances. And despite widely disparate state taxes (compare South Carolina’s $.07/pack to New Jersey’s $2.57/pack, our black market cigarette problem is absolutely miniscule compared to that of illegal drugs.

    You see, we don’t have gangs of cigarette dealers shooting it out over territory in our cities, with innocent bystanders getting caught in the cross-fire. But we do with illicit drugs. We’re not arresting 800,000 a year for cigarette possession, but we are for marijuana. We have a neighbor called Mexico, where over 100,000 have died in a very bloody drug war and to my knowledge, none of them died over controlling the cigarette market.

    We have destroyed the lives of poor farmers and their families in Colombia and Afghanistan, and lost countless acres of rainforest and national parks to eradication and the resultant shift of criminal grows, and to my knowledge, not a single tobacco crop was involved.

    The families of the thousands of people who die every year in this misbegotten drug war would give anything to have merely the scourge of cigarette smuggling.

    You see, basic economics works. It not only works, but it is a law as certain as gravity.

    If there is a demand, there will be a supply. If that supply is not legal, then it will come from the black market. But providing a legal market is generally preferable to consumers. The vast majority of people prefer to purchase things legally and will pay significantly more in order to do so. Legal markets have an advantage over criminals, and a well-run legal market will shut out the vast majority of criminal enterprise (not all, of course, because some criminality exists everywhere).

    To the extent that any kind of significant (though still comparatively small) criminality exists in conjunction with the cigarette market, it is merely evidence of poorly constructed tax policy.

    You say:

    Legalised drugs could well mean MORE criminality than now in many countries, it certainly would not lead to reduced law enforcement as legal sellers would demand protection and any legal regime would demand management.

    That’s just absolutely ridiculous. I really don’t know where you get the idea that legalizing could conceivably increase criminality. Do you have any historical evidence of that? Did legalizing alcohol increase criminality? No, it dramatically decreased it.

    And the idea that legalization would not lead to reduced law enforcement is also laughable nonsense. Compare the budget in the U.S. for marijuana enforcement to the budget for cigarette enforcement. Seriously.

    Your entire comment is rife with the nirvana fallacy — the notion that if you can’t eliminate all crime, or all illegal use, then the attempt to do any of it isn’t worth it.

    It’s also amazing that you’d consider that getting 80% of the control of illicit drugs back into our own hands is not something desirable. Apparently you like having currently illicit drugs fully controlled by criminals.

    It’s an attitude that is destructive to society — much more destructive than the drugs you claim to be against.

    For those who don’t know, David Raynes is a member of The International Task Force on Strategic Drug Policy with such noted drug warriors as Andrea Barthwell, Robert Dupont, and Calvina Fay.

  24. David Raynes says:

    You say:
    “in my book, compared to 100%, 20% is small”

    It is rather a long time since I studied mathematics but it surely depends on what you are taking your percentages of! I would rather debate, not coach you in basic maths.

    My comments are certainly not about eliminating all crime. That is a nonsense and it is rather a sterile form of debate to put words in your opponent’s mouth and then argue against those words (of yours). I merely point out that the simplistic argument put forward by many legalisation lobbyists that the act of legalisation would remove a substantial amount of organised crime is not true based on the evidence of the current tobacco market as just one example. An inevitably larger market and the normalisation of the currently illegal drugs would create a larger market-as sure as night follows day, it would obviously create increased opportunity for crime. That crime would need policing (small p), that regime would need control mechanisms. That would cost. Legitimate business would want protection from illegal business. That would cost. Legitimate business would need to deal with consumer protection issues and stock and staff security, that would cost. All those costs make criminality, undercutting legitimate outlets-more likely-not less.

    Criminals inclined to make their living from drug dealing would offer something cheaper, stronger, new. They would offer copies, that is counterfeit product. Just WHY would criminals give up dealing?

    You plainly do not like using the history. We used to GIVE HEROIN AWAY in the UK yet STILL we had an illegal market, some of it coming from diverted legal supply. First time heroin users did NOT go to their friendly neighbourhood doctor or clinic for their supply, just like under age drinkers tend not to go to bars or first time tobacco smokers in the school yard do not go to tobacconists.

    You say-and I agree with you absolutely-that basic economics works. The drug market-legal or illegal, is an attractive market for crime and it will prosper wherever it can make a “turn” ie a profit. You have widened your argument to cover more than the crime issue. I do not have time to deal with that. On the crime issue you are wrong.

    There are some respectable arguments for legalisation, removing criminality is not one of them nor is it a satisfactory argument because the tobacco and alcohol markets NOW are riddled with serious crime -worldwide. It is a superficial position not backed up by the evidence.

    Your view of JUST the US market is insular, drug legalisation if it came, would need to involve more than just the US. Look at the historical tobacco traficking on the US/Canada border.

    There is quite a lot of evidence incidentally that people will go out of their way to purchase cheaper drugs of addiction, the more desperate their addiction, the more that addiction impinges on their ability to function nornmally without their chosen drug, the more that argument holds. The tobacco market proves that.

    If you are going to argue about legalisation I suggest you deal with the social reasons for legalization. The widespread reduction in addiction, the reduction in social harm. (Reader help for US citizens, I am being ironic!).

    The harm from addictive drugs is not just to the user, the social penalties are huge, ask the spouse of any alcoholic or of anyone with a tobacco induced, serious illness.

  25. Pete says:

    I merely point out that the simplistic argument put forward by many legalisation lobbyists that the act of legalisation would remove a substantial amount of organised crime is not true based on the evidence of the current tobacco market as just one example.

    Do you read your stuff, David? In what way does the current tobacco market demonstrate that legalization would not remove a substantial amount of organised crime? Seriously. One tiny bit of that evidence would be welcome. Was tobacco illegal and then became legal and crime didn’t drop? This is absolute nonsense. Would you like to apply your argument to alcohol legalization?

    The drug market-legal or illegal, is an attractive market for crime and it will prosper wherever it can make a “turn” ie a profit.

    Tell you what… let’s try a little experiment. You grow some tobacco and stand on a street corner in front of a convenience store and sell it. I’ll grow some marijuana and stand on an adjacent street corner with it and we’ll see who turns the most profit. There’s a reason vodka distributors aren’t on the school playgrounds selling bottles. Legalization won’t eliminate criminality entirely, but it will vastly reduce the profit, shrinking the problem to something much more manageable.

    There are some respectable arguments for legalisation, removing criminality is not one of them nor is it a satisfactory argument because the tobacco and alcohol markets NOW are riddled with serious crime -worldwide. It is a superficial position not backed up by the evidence.

    Again, you do exactly what you accused me of falsely accusing you of doing. You claim that the existence of some crime in conjunction legalized products is evidence that there would be no benefit in crime reduction to legalization.

    If you are going to argue about legalisation I suggest you deal with the social reasons for legalization. The widespread reduction in addiction, the reduction in social harm. (Reader help for US citizens, I am being ironic!).

    We also deal with those reasons here, no irony intended. Legalization will vastly reduce social harms. It will help those who currently die from the scourge of criminally controlled drug “safety” and dosage (see fentanyl poisonings, etc.) to the fear of getting help. It may even reduce addiction, through targeted programs to help people rather than the inefficient sledge hammer approach of prohibition. A strong heroin maintenance program like that in Switzerland could vastly reduce heroin addiction and the crime associated with it (and your scare stories of a parallel market mean only that the program in England was incomplete and partial).

    Reducing the vast incarceration complex would be a tremendous benefit to society, as well as the value of families that are no longer ripped apart by prohibition. Reduction of corruption in law enforcement and government would be an advantage, as would be the value of increasing the esteem of police in the community.

    The social problems of addiction are serious, true, and require a significant effort by society to deal with. But prohibition is the wrong tool for the job — it fails to help the problem and adds tons of problems of its own.

  26. Steve Clay says:

    David, legalizing hard drugs may never be politically possible anyway, but many of us have some hope in Portugal’s model, and Switzerland’s heroin experiments.

    I’d love to hear your thoughts on these programs (which have favorable evidence behind them and are popular with citizens), and with Kleiman’s ideas, which are based on quite a lot of evidence.

    What can be done about black market tobacco in developing countries? Do you think tobacco prohibition in those areas would improve things?

  27. Cliff says:

    Prohibition is a big stick and it doesn’t matter which party wields it or which end is used on the victim, it still hurts either way.

  28. James says:

    I would like to suggest two books and an essay for you and your readers Pete. The Ethics of Liberty by Murray N Rothbard,Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty by Lysander Spooner, and The Law by Bastiat.

    Prohibition is a violation of self-ownership. All the other stuff is meaningless. If you own yourself (and of course you do) then no other individual may tell you what you can or cannot put in your body. The problem with all discussions about the war on drugs is that it automatically assumes that one group of people (calling themselves a government) can say to another group we forbid you to do this thing. The books and essay above expose this fallacious thinking among other things.

  29. Voletear says:

    It seems to me that arguing the potential outcomes of protean proposals isn’t getting us anywhere. It’s endlessly convoluted and most of us aren’t qualified to comment on such things as economics although our side is competent to comment on criminology since we’ve been criminalized by the WOD.

    It should be enough to say to the Prohibitive Puritans: “You’ve had a hundred years to try just about whatever you’ve wanted, with whatever budget you wanted, and with whatever suspension of Liberty you wanted, and all you’ve delivered is a hellish cancer mutating within the vitals of society that grows exponentially in Harm Production. Now it is time – and it is our turn – to try something else. You have forfeited the right even to comment on what we end up trying. During your reign you did much worse for us. This is what it came down to during Alcohol Repeal. So shut up and get the hell out of the way!”

  30. James says:

    This is an excerpt from The Ethics of Liberty.

    In The Ethics of Liberty Rothbard gives the following answer to the question of what I am justified doing here and now: every person owns his own physical body as well as all nature-given goods which he puts to use with the help of his body before anyone else does; this ownership implies his right to employ these resources as one sees fit so long as one does not thereby uninvitedly change the physical integrity of another’s property or delimit another’s control over it without his consent. In particular, once a good has been first appropriated or homesteaded by “mixing one’s labor” with it (Locke’s phase), then ownership of it can only be acquired by means of a voluntary (contractual) transfer of its property title from a previous to a later owner. These rights are absolute. Any infringement on them is subject to lawful prosecution by the victim of this infringement or his agent, and is actionable in accordance with the principles of strict liability and the proportionality of punishment.

    Taking his cues from the very same sources, Rothbard then offered this ultimate proof for these rules as just rules: if a person A were not the owner of his physical body and all goods originally appropriated, produced or voluntarily acquired by him, there would only exist two alternatives. Either another person, B, must then be regarded as the owner of A and the goods appropriated, produced, or contractually acquired by A, or both parties, A and B, must be regarded as equal co-owners of both bodies and goods.

    In the first case, A would be B’s slave and subject to exploitation. B would own A and the goods originally appropriated, produced, or acquired by A, but A would not own B and the goods homesteaded, produced, or acquired by B. With this rule, two distinct classes of people would be created–exploiters (B) and exploited (A)-to whom different “law” would apply. Hence, this rule fails the “universalization test” and is from the outset disqualified as even a potential human ethic, for in order to be able to claim a rule to be a “law” (just), it is necessary that such a rule be universally-equally-valid for everyone.

    In the second case of universal co-ownership, the requirement of equal rights for everyone is obviously fulfilled. Yet this alternative suffers from another fatal flaw, for each activity of a person requires the employment of scarce goods (at least his body and its standing room). Yet if all goods were the collective property of everyone, then no one, at any time and in any place, could ever do anything with anything unless he had every other co-owner’s prior permission to do what he wanted to do. And how can one give such a permission if one is not even the sole owner of one’s very own body (and vocal chords)? If one were to follow the rule of total collective ownership, mankind would die out instantly. Whatever this is, it is not a human ethic either.

    Thus, one is left with the initial principles of self-ownership and first-use-first-own, i.e., original appropriation, homesteading. They pass the universalization test-they hold for everyone equally-and they can at the same time assure the survival of mankind. They and only they are therefore non-hypothetically or absolutely true ethical rules and human rights.

  31. James says:

    Exceprt from The Law

    What Is Law ?

    What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

    Each of us has a natural right–from God–to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

    If every person has the right to defend — even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

    Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

    If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

  32. James says:

    Excerpt The Law

    Law Is a Negative Concept

    The harmlessness of the mission performed by law and lawful defense is self-evident; the usefulness is obvious; and the legitimacy cannot be disputed.

    As a friend of mine once remarked, this negative concept of law is so true that the statement, the purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign, is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.

    But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed — then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. When this happens, the people no longer need to discuss, to compare, to plan ahead; the law does all this for them. Intelligence becomes a useless prop for the people; they cease to be men; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property.

    Try to imagine a regulation of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property. If you cannot reconcile these contradictions, then you must conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.

  33. James says:

    Sorry Pete I just believe that it is very important that we rediscover these ideals that have been forgotten.

  34. paul says:

    I couldn’t possibly care less about the criminality surrounding black market alcohol and tobacco. So what if someone is stealing the tax money on cigarettes? It just means that taxes on cigarettes are high enough to provide them with a target. If you want that particular crime to go away, lower the taxes.

    We can’t expect to end all crime when we end prohibition, but we CAN expect to end certain kinds of crime–specifically drug war violence. The kind that wracks Mexico right now and has killed tens of thousands of people in the last few years.

    Nobody is shooting over alcohol and tobacco. That’s the way I like it. We can get the same result by legalizing drugs.

    If historical efforts to give away heroin at doctor’s clinics didn’t work out, then let’s find another way to give it out. The problem was probably in the unpleasant visit to the doctor and the fact that you had to inject it at the office, not at home.

    Instead, maybe we should give it away at the pharmacy–sign here, let’s see your ID, here’s your health brochure, whatever makes the authorities happy–and give them their drugs to inject on their own. The harm we are trying to prevent is street dealing, impure and unknown strength drugs, stealing for the next fix, full jails, and violence over territory.

    It appears that we have indeed engaged the prohibitionists in conversation at last. Rather than just laughing at those fools tilting at windmills, they are attacking our ideas (like we could do better than the experts, Ha!) and trying to shoot them down one by one. It is a welcome challenge, and one that the reform movement is up to.

    After all, we don’t have 100 years of failure baggage to lug around when we attend debates. They do.

  35. Kdel says:

    Reposting this because this is the most interesting thing, considering Leonard Pickard and the legal high vendors (BBB) who are supposedly involved with the woman who snitched on him:

    If you really want to dig into Mr. Kleiman, look into Leonard Pickard, his former student. Pickard is serving a life sentence for LSD production, and Mr. Kleiman oversaw his thesis on drug markets in russia. I’d sure love to hear some details about the relationship between the two, including if Mr. Kleiman has used Pickards LSD.

    Maybe instead of trying to have this kind of debate with Mr. Kleiman, where we assume he’s arguing in good faith, we should be asking why he is providing jobs, prestige and cover to an LSD chemist associated with russian and dutch criminals while opposing legalization. There are many questions Mr. Kleiman needs to be asked, not least of which is the relationship between him, the international drug enforcement community, Mr. Pickard, and various governments.

    It’s not that you’re wrong about him, but you are only scratching the surface. Everything Mr. Kleiman says appears to me to be based on his involvement with power structures we know very little about. If Mr. Kleiman is going to agitate against drug reform, the drug reform community should push back with very close scrutiny of Mr. Kleiman’s work with foreign governments and his relationships with former students and associates.

  36. paul says:

    Steve Clay:

    I have lived in Vietnam for the last few years. Prohibit tobacco here, and there would be riots in streets. Most men here smoke, and they ain’t giving it up, believe me.

    Any crime associated with tobacco smuggling is caused by taxes that are too high. Reduce the taxes below the level that smugglers would consider worth the risk, and the smuggling will go away.

    Of course, I’m a libertarian, so if you ask me what would improve any given situation, my answer will usually be less government. Tobacco smuggling? reduce taxes. Savage drug violence in Mexico? fire the DEA. A locust cloud of lobbyists in Washington? Reduce federal taxes.

    It’s easy! Just let it go. We can’t control the world, and when we try we find there are unintended consequences. Politicians either don’t understand this, or don’t care because their jobs are all about telling other people what to do, and doing nothing is no fun. That is why they wanted to be politicians, after all!

  37. Pete says:

    Kdel, you’ve posted this twice now, but I fail to see your point. I assume you’re talking about this story. It’s an interesting (and somewhat mysterious) story, but unless you have something specific to say about it, rather than implying something ominous if only we looked into it, I’m not sure what you expect us to do. If you have something to ask Mark Kleiman, then why not ask him?

  38. David Raynes says:

    You say:
    “A strong heroin maintenance program like that in Switzerland could vastly reduce heroin addiction and the crime associated with it (and your scare stories of a parallel market mean only that the program in England was incomplete and partial)”.

    Your ignorance apparently knows no bounds yet still you hold forth.
    The Swiss activity is BASED on the “British System”. the UK has had some form of opiate prescrition since the Rolleston connittee in the late 1920s. There is an account of the system written by my old friend and father of legalisation, Professor Arnold Trebach, who is a US citizen, I do not agree with his conclusions, I am against full legalisation but I commend his work to you.

    The UK never completely abandoned prescription of opiates to addicts, but it never worked in terms of containing the growth of the market, we have more practical experience of it than any other country. We did stop EVERY clinician from prescribing and recently only specially licensed Doctors have been able to so prescribe. With all our experience, more than any other country, there is no great enthusiasm among UK Doctors for prescribing MAINTENANCE heroin. Of course heroin (Diamorphine) is a LEGAL regulated drug in the UK.

    Prescription of heroin in the UK to ANYONE who asked for it did not stop crime, it did not stop the growth of the illegal market, it did not stop addiction, nor will it now (and experiments in prescribing to the most chaotic addicts are currently going on). Many even most addicts are poly abusers of drugs and crack cocaine is probably causing more crime than heroin addiction nowadays. Your understanding of the issues and history worldwide seems to me to be very narrow. It damages the coherence of your arguments and makes it difficult to debate with you properly because you understand so little of the history.

  39. Pete says:

    David Raynes said:

    Prescription of heroin in the UK to ANYONE who asked for it did not stop crime, it did not stop the growth of the illegal market, it did not stop addiction.

    And there you go again. Nirvana fallacy. Plain as day. Why don’t you try coherent argument.

    And don’t tell me I don’t know about heroin maintenance programs. Due to international laws and pressure from sado-moralists, no country has been able to fully craft one to its full potential, but even the partial solutions have shown incredible promise.

    The Guardian

    Switzerland is now leading the way out of prohibition. In 1994, it started prescribing free heroin to long-term addicts who had failed to respond to law enforcement or any other treatment. In 1998, a Lausanne criminologist, Martin Kilias, found that the users’ involvement in burglary, mugging and robbery had fallen by 98%; in shoplifting, theft and handling by 88%; in selling soft drugs by 70%; in selling hard drugs by 91%. As a group, their contacts with police had plunged to less than a quarter of the previous level. The Dutch and the Germans have had similar results with the same strategy. All of them report that, apart from these striking benefits in crime prevention, the users are also demonstrably healthier ( because clean heroin properly used is a benign drug ) and that they are more stable with clear improvements in housing, employment and relationships.

    Abell Foundation:

    Heroin addicts enrolled in programs that provide them with the drug for free may commit fewer crimes and be more likely to enroll in addiction treatment programs, according to a new study by researcher Peter Reuter. […]

    In Switzerland, for example, 60 percent of those who left a heroin maintenance program sought addiction treatment, and crime involvement among participants in a German program fell from an average of 15.6 days to 2.5 days at the end of a 12-month period.

    Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine:

    Conclusions: A heroin maintenance programme is a feasible and clinically effective treatment for heroin users who fail in conventional drug treatment programmes.

    The problem with programs in the UK is less a problem with heroin maintenance as an idea, but more the fact that drug policy is determined there by the editor of the Daily Mail, and the Home Office isn’t interested in things like science or facts.

  40. Voletear says:

    Until very recently, Mr Raynes, the “British System” has been dead. It has been almost impossible to get heroin on prescription for years. Then Whitehall joined the bandwagon following the Swiss breakthroughs, approving trials of the “Swiss System”.

    Really, it’s been ages since the “Jumping Jack Flash” – when addict numbers were a tiny fraction of what they would become under the “American System” that was to be adopted. It is the “American System” which is responsible for the rise in heroin use of recent years.

  41. ezrydn says:

    All the name calling and mud slinging aside, the main item I see facing the reform movement is to figure out how to get rid of the years of lying indoctination the US Public has been brainwashed with, in respect to Drug Prohibition. We see this area beginning to show some change and should stay on top of it. Forget about the talking heads. They’ve already proven they have no platform to stand on.

    From the comments above, Pete has been the only one to proffer any realistic ideas about legalization. Not meaning that they’d work or not, just that he’s not throwing out BS ideologies. I might ask Pete when was the last machine gun contest in Chicago over licquor? How many since Prohib Repeal? And isn’t the “Roaring 20s Prohibition” -style violence what we’re seeing here in Mexico right now? Or, maybe some of you see them as two different operational systems.

    Drug Prohibition has never been about public safety or welfare. It’s always been targeted at some controllable portion of the populace. Yet, no one, NO, NOT ANYONE, can point me to a single prohibition success story.

    Yet, some, even here, argue to keep the status quo. Why? For what purpose? Some of you ask, “What’s your answer then?” Honestly, I have only one answer. I vote and I vote against anyone who enjoys the status quo. While I graduated from law school, I’m not expected to write the new legal framework. I can offer input when it’s requested by those with the power to do something with the information (sorry, that leaves all bloggers out!).

    Yet, getting the truth out to the public seems to be the biggest wall in our path. For once all understand the truth, I believe our work will be finished for those people will demand the change that truth will bring. The recent recession has done much to open many eyes to the hidden truth.

    Oh, and since the subject of illegal cigarettes has come up, can someone post some facts on cigarette shootings? Several of you have mentioned it but you’ve failed to back up your statements with any facts. Just asking.

  42. David Raynes says:

    Voletear says
    “the “British System” has been dead”.

    Well I would agree it has not been very active but even several years ago at least 200 clinicians had the required Home Office licenece to prescribe heroin. There was not much enthusiasm for so doing. Lest there be any doubt about my position, I was one of the very first people in law enforcement in the UK to support heroin prescription for SOME addicts. I said so when I worked with Arnold Trebach in the 70s. My position though is against long term maintenance heroin (or methadone) without considerable effort being made to free the addict from addiction. THAT is what most addicts say they want. The UK National Treatment agency results were last year showing only 3% becoming free from addiction. that is an almost accidental figure. I have written about this subject here:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/27/drugsandalcohol.drugspolicy

    Prescribing for some addicts is NOT legalisation. Legalisation implies free availability, legalisation also implies a continuing rise in drugs use, in addiction and in personal and social harm-usually affecting the underprivileged more than those able to afford proper treatment.

  43. Pete says:

    David — well now we can have a real discussion.

    I agree that we should be expending “considerable effort … to free the addict from addiction” and as you note, current efforts (under our prohibition regime) have a very poor success rate. A good legalization model will have a higher rate of success, in large part because drug abuse is easier to break when the person is in a stable condition.

    Today, most of the people in treatment (regardless of the type), are there in times of stress — they’ve been arrested, their possessions and family taken from them, etc. and are expected to go cold turkey. The recidivist rate is horrendous. However, if you get people in a stable situation first, it’s much easier to quit.

    Legalisation implies free availability…

    I disagree (depending on what you mean by “free availability”). Legalization means that responsible adults are able to legally acquire and consume the drug in some manner, although there may be restrictive conditions. For example legalization of alcohol in various places and times has meant having to purchase it at a state store, purchasing it only during certain hours, restrictions on where you can drink it, what age you have to be, etc.) Legalizing heroin doesn’t have to mean putting pre-filled shrink-wrapped syringes in the checkout lane of the convenience store for 10-year-olds to purchase.

    One possible model for heroin legalization is making it available at special clinics, staffed by nurses and social workers. The dosage would be controlled and safe, it would have to be consumed onsite and it would be free for addicts who couldn’t pay. Most people simply wouldn’t take advantage of this “opportunity” — the social stigma against it would still remain (Ask your friends if heroin was legal tomorrow whether they’d do it. They wouldn’t.) Sure, there’d be some black market for those who wanted more of a thrill out of it, but the huge black market profits would be almost completely gone, since an addict could go to the clinic and get it there. With less profit, fewer dealers and fewer opportunities for people to use it on the streets. The great thing is that this model immediately brings the person with a problem to get help.

    This isn’t the only model for heroin, but it’s a very promising one (particularly compared to the nonsense policies we have today).

    …legalisation also implies a continuing rise in drugs use, in addiction and in personal and social harm-usually affecting the underprivileged more than those able to afford proper treatment.

    Wrong. Legalization can actually result in a reduction in addiction, it would definitely result in a great reduction in personal and social harm (if nothing else, by removing the horrific damage caused by prohibition), and it would help the underprivileged more, because instead of going after everybody, we could focus our efforts on those who need help.

    As far as drug use (as opposed to abuse), there may be an increase with legalization, but that will be almost wholly among the responsible drug users (those who abuse drugs are able to find them regardless of their legal status). Those drug users who are deterred by criminal drug sanctions are the equivalent of alcohol users who have wine with dinner or drink a six-pack of beer while watching the game.

    Another advantage of legalization is that we’ll be better able to educate people with real information about drugs — for example, we’ll be able to talk about the safety of marijuana use compared to alcohol, or encourage the use of vaporizers for marijuana consumption, or point out the relative dangers of cocaine compared to pot, etc., instead of the mindless “drugs are bad, mmmkay” nonsense that passes for drug education world-wide today.

  44. truthtechnician says:

    Why is it assumed that government has the responsibility to reduce or eliminate drug addiction?

    Why is it the government’s responsibility to give out free heroin, and why is it the government’s responsibility to stop people from obtaining a joint or some acid for a party?

  45. Pete says:

    Truthtechnician — the heroin distribution example I gave is but one model, far preferable to criminal prohibition. It’s quite possible/likely that more libertarian-based models would work well, too — certainly far better than prohibition.

    For those who have spent their careers incorrectly believing that prohibition is regulation, it can be very helpful to show what actual regulation looks like.

  46. paul says:

    Pete,

    David was saying that the heroin prescription model didn’t work in the UK, and that addicts were not taking them up on the offer of prescription heroin administered in the clinic.

    So he has already argued against your heroin model. Personally, I also think your heroin model would be weak because it requires that addicts get up, drive to a clinic, and get their daily shot at the clinic. That is more like an outpatient relationship than a legalization system.

    I think if you want to eliminate the harm caused by prohibition of heroin, you are going to have to accept that addicts can keep a supply and self administer at home. Otherwise, most of them are not going to comply. They will just have their dealer deliver it to them.

  47. Pete says:

    Actually, Paul, I don’t think that David said that, and the evidence doesn’t back that up. Heroin abusers will go to any length to get their fix, and if they don’t have money to have their dealer “deliver it to their home,” they’ll go to the clinic (particularly if it’s a choice between robbing someone to pay for it and going to the clinic). Heroin maintenance programs in the U.K. didn’t wither because of lack of interest, but rather because of attacks from people like David.

    Look at the incredible success of the harm reduction centers in Canada and there, the addicts even have to bring their own drugs in with them — all they’re supplied is clean needles and a safe place to shoot.

    I’m not opposed to a system like what you propose (personally, I’m open to any legalization model), but my point was that a program like heroin maintenance (which has already shown tremendous success in places where it’s run properly) can be adapted to a legalization model.

  48. Voletear says:

    The British System wasn’t dead because nobody wanted to avail themselves of a heroin script which DR implies was there for the asking. It was dead because no doctors would prescribe. Very few patients had a prescription and it wasn’t because nobody wanted one. One wonders why Action On Addiction had to provide heroin to “300-400” people for it’s trials of heroin maintenance if it was already in place or if Dep. Chief Constable Howard Roberts, as quoted by the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/nottinghamshire/6172392.stm , found it necessary to call for heroin maintenance in Britain in 2006 if it was already available.

    The last word hasn’t been written on this subject. The treatment will evolve. Depot formulations, patches, controlled-release formulations should and will be considered to free the patient from daily attendance. Heroin itself is not absolutely needed either, as the Canadian NAOMI study found with hydromorphone. Oxymorphone is another option. Both these drugs are legal, schedule 2, drugs now, no re-scheduling needed.

    It is important to say that the desire to get an addict off his drug is very dangerous to said addict. It must never be a requirement. The simple removal of the drug from the addict’s life is not the object of the game unless we’re playing Drug-War rules. The addictive process will surely re-occur and it becomes progressively more dangerous to the subject each time. This is why many older addicts find maintenance preferable.

    In the end, what is needed is a cure – a real cure – for addiction. You will know it is a real cure when super-human feats of will-power are not needed for it to work and compulsion is nowhere to be seen.

  49. SunflowerPipes says:

    There are many persuasive arguments on why America should legalize marijuana, and the reasons are sound, but the fact that many millions of Americans have used pot has not translated into real political pressure on the people who can change the laws. One of the problems inhibiting legalization is that people that smoke a glass pipe are not considered serious or mature. It is This stigma that scares many pot users to hide that they smoke pot. Therefore the Reality of who smokes pot and how much the smoke is very different than it seems. The last three presidents were admitted pot users and by my Understanding the same is probably true of the first three presidents as well. Marijuana Legislation is very serious and has everything with how we define what it means to be American. What credence do we as Americans give the rights of the individual to the pursuit of happiness as well as a right to privacy? In the end it is up to us to be public about our choices and to Voice our opinions to the ones that ultimately decide what the rules are. Every hand written Letter that makes it to a representative is considered to be the voice of a thousand people who did not take the time to write. Send an email, send a letter make a phone call and get counted.

  50. David Raynes says:

    Pete
    You have come up with your model or one model for heroin prescription, you do not say who would pay for it. Nor do you go into the social downsides of a high number of injecting users. The costs applied across a whole national population are truly staggering. As for the suggestion above that the British system died because of people like me opposing it-I suppose you have some evidence of ME opposing the original British System? Ah, thought not! Reality is at the time I was a junior law enforcement Officer of no significance.

    Now it is true I have recently opposed the suggestion of widespread maintenance heroin prescription and as you see I have opposed the poor efforts of our National Treatment Agency which I say is ignoring the wishes of its customers and not truly helping addicts. It is parking addicts on methadone.

    Parking addicts on methadone for years and years is no solution to their problems either. I am no fan of methadone. We now provide methadone to some 22,000 heroin addicts. Example, there is hardly a heroin addict in Scotland who is not on methadone. And yet we have record numbers of addict deaths in Scotland. In Edinburgh there are now more deaths associated with methadone than there are associated with heroin. We also have record levels of Hepatitis C infection amongst injectors.

    There are no easy answers. Voletear implies that I said heroin prescriptionm was freely availble, that is true-in the 60s it was. It failed to stop a parralel illegal market in-part fed from the legal market. The illegal market continued to grow, a generation of 60s kids quite attuned to taking cannabis into their lungs, moved easily into smoking heroin.

    The mood in Britain among clinicians and government around heroin prescription changed, very few clinicians now believe in open ended heroin prescription for addicts and that is not what addicts overwhelmingly call for.

    I have opposed it because unlike Howard Roberts I have considered what addicts want, what is ultiamtely in the longer term interests of society and I have done some sums on the total costs. Under the UK National Health Service it is a political non starter. It would imply transfer of resources from the old or infirm to mostly younger, heroin addicts. I have called it Hips, Hearts or Heroin. No politician can sign up to it.

    It is true a few myopic Police Chiefs have called for more prescription, they have done that primarily driven by crime figures but have ignored that much, even most crime, is now driven by crack addiction.

    The real trouble with the whole debate is the language in which it is conducted and the motives of many of those conducting it. The word “prohibition” is used
    for example, that is a meme created by drug legalisers to imply some false parralel with the prohibition of alcohol in the US. The implication being that all the supposed “prohibited” substances are of equal social validity as what are called “recreational substances” and that the harm from prohibited drugs comes primarily and mainly from their illegality.

    Based on the EVIDENCE of the tobacco/alcohol model, worldwide, a non sequiter.

    Both relatively freely available in most countries, they cause huge personal and social problems, far more that the illegal drugs. Very noticeably, the harm from alcohol is substantially limited in countries with legal, social or religious taboos against use.

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