Drug WarRant

The Brutal Logic of a Drug Warrior: Put ‘Em All in Cages

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf does a wonderful job of dismantling David P. Goldman’s column in the Asia Times.

Goldman’s notions are truly pathetic, involving solving Mexico’s problems by waging war against the poor and locking them all up, and Conor handily smacks him down.

But there’s one area in particular I wanted to highlight, because we hear this argument from prohibitionists so often.

Here’s a rebuttal [to legalization] that the author apparently finds persuasive. “Libertarians used to argue that arresting criminals was futile as long as crime paid, because there always would be someone willing to take the job; the only remedy, they added, was to legalize drugs, bring down the price and eliminate the economic incentive,” he writes. “The trouble is that the Mexican gangs do not restrict their predations to drugs, as the frightful incidence of kidnapping makes clear.” He is apparently blind to the fact that those gangs would be far less powerful, far less formidable to stop from kidnapping people, if they weren’t enriched with obscene amounts of wealth the likes of which they could only plausibly obtain from one source that can in fact be eliminated: drug profits. Prohibition era gangs committed crimes besides producing and selling alcohol. Do you know what made them less powerful? Or why they’ve long since ceased to terrorize law-abiding Americans?

But this is the illogic of a drug warrior. His solution requires locking up vast swaths of a country’s population in cages while the folks that remain free are caught in a hopeless attempt to eliminate a black market. He nevertheless points at the libertarian solution and says, as if its a commensurate complaint, “Even if you legalize drugs there will still be other crime in Mexico.”

Yet his side is still driving policy in the United States.

Unfortunately, true.

It drives me crazy when I hear that argument.

Now I bring in about $100 a month from advertising and donations to this blog, enough to cover hosting costs. And I have a full-time job that pays my rent, food, and everything else. Imagine someone saying “It wouldn’t matter if Pete lost his job. He’s got a blog.”

If you eliminate the black market drug profits for the traffickers, then they don’t have the money to hire as many soldiers, which are used to intimidate people when they commit other crimes. They also don’t have the money to bribe police, judges, and government officials to look the other way when these crimes are committed.

Sure, when drugs are legalized these really bad people will try to operate in other areas, but they’ll have lost the bulk of their funding and be easier to stop. And this time when we catch or kill one, there will no longer be the same incentive for someone else to take their place.

Update: It still amazes me how this argument refuses to die. I think part of it is that some people look at the problem and correctly recognize that if we legalized all drugs today, the bad people in Mexico who are decapitating rivals wouldn’t suddenly disappear in a puff of smoke like some suddenly irrelevant cartoon creature. Of course not – we never said that they would.

They’ll try to do other things that they already do (kidnapping, etc.), but they’ll no longer be drug trafficking organizations. They’ll merely be murderous criminals. And when they are caught or killed, there will be nobody to take their place, because there will no longer be billions of dollars — close to the entire national budget — coming in to their organizations from drug trafficking.

There isn’t enough money in Mexico to replace the money they get from drugs.

Is getting rid of the cartels the ONLY reason to legalize? Of course not. It’s just one of many very good reasons.

More of this, please.

Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple on Friday said he has shut down the department’s drug unit and reassigned the controversial squad’s investigators within his department.

“The Drug Interdiction Unit is no longer. … We’re going in a different direction,” Apple said. “We’re not going to turn our head to drug activity or gambling or prostitution or any other crimes they were investigating, but there’s a lot of other crimes that need attention.”

Apple’s decision to close the unit follows a series of Times Union stories about the unit’s use of criminal forfeiture funds, including purchasing take-home vehicles for its six investigators.

Drug task forces are a bad idea for a whole lot of reasons. They are especially prone to corruption. They have a tendency to consider themselves above local supervision. They lose touch with their core purpose (serve and protect) and are more likely to consider the citizenry as the enemy (like soldiers in a war zone). The fact that they work exclusively with a crime that is consensual means that they spend their time trying to entrap and turn people, rather than truly investigating crime.

Unfortunately, the feds encourage drug task forces through funding and through assisting them in getting around local/state regulations. And the money for drug task forces means that drug enforcement becomes more of a priority than other crime.

Sheriff Craig Apple appears to have the right idea. Focus on policing.

Apparently Defense Secretary Leon Panetta didn’t get the message that Gil Kerlikowske had ended the war on drugs.

Panetta set to announce more support for drug war

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrives in the Canadian capital Monday, where he is expected to announce new measures to support the fight against narcotics in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

I’m waiting to hear back from the ONDCP how they managed to miss sending the memo to the largest agency in the government.

All options on the table in Central America. No decisions, but good discussions….

Perez:

“We are talking about creating a legal framework to regulate the production, transit and consumption of drugs.” […]

“It’s important this is on the discussion table as an alternative to what we’ve been doing for 40 years without getting the desired results,”

A legal framework to regulate the production, transit and consumption of drugs. Can’t get clearer than that.

Oh, and I like this:

The president added that Central American leaders are considering requiring the United States, the biggest consumer of South American cocaine, to pay the region for drug raids.

“We’re talking about economic compensation for every seizure undertaken and also the destruction of marijuana and cocaine plantations,” said Perez, a 61-year-old conservative.

That’s marvelous!

Update:

Headline of the month. Guatemala Times:

US no longer dominates drug war agenda in Central America

Mother of College Student Who Smoked Synthetic Marijuana,Then Crashed His Car and Died, Says Rand Paul “has blood on his hands”.

Once again, grieving parents send blame in the wrong direction. Making drugs illegal has never increased their safety or reduced their availability. In fact, just like alcohol prohibition, banning drugs tends to encourage the production of more dangerous drugs.

More of this please. Mandatory Minimums Distort Justice System Discussion of the dangerously unchecked power of prosecutors.

There are police and there are police from Cop in the Hood.

Why are some departments so committed to prevention over apprehension or meaningless patrol? Why are some departments so committed to protecting the civil rights of everyone with whom they are in contact, and others so flagrant in their violation of them? Why are some individual police officers so thoughtless, and others so thoughtful? Why do some agencies handle protests in ways that protect the right of protesters, and others almost guaranteed to provoke conflict?

Guatemalan president leads drug legalization debate

Discussions occurring. With or without the U.S.

The Pope landed in Mexico today and doubled down on the failed drug war.

“We must do whatever is possible to combat this destructive evil against humanity and our youth,” he told reporters, referring to the some 50,000 people killed since 2007 as rival drug trafficking cartels fight each other and the state.

“It is the responsibility of the Church to educate consciences, to teach moral responsibility and to unmask the evil, to unmask this idolatry of money which enslaves man, to unmask the false promises, the lies, the fraud that is behind drugs,” he said. […]

The pope’s strong words on the drug menace should offer comfort to Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who has staked his reputation on beating down the cartels.

The fraud that is behind drugs? Drugs aren’t beheading people. As far as unmasking the idolatry of money, well, it wasn’t really masked.

Identifying the traffickers as evil doesn’t do anything. It isn’t even news. Calling for “whatever is possible to combat it” is exactly what got us in this mess.

Maia Szalavitz has an interesting piece in Time: How Getting Tipsy May Inspire Creativity

In it, she talks about a recent study that discovered that a little alcohol actually helped stimulate inspiration and creativity and resulted in a better job answering word-association tests.

Increasingly, science is confirming that altered states of consciousness — whether induced by drugs, alcohol, sleepiness, travel or anything else that removes us from our usual way of seeing the world — do indeed improve creative thought. The inhibition of what researchers call executive functioning, which includes focus and planning — abilities that decline when we’re under the influence — may be what lets us generate new ideas and innovative solutions, instead of remaining fixed on the task at hand.

Of course, that’s not a surprise in any way to us. And you can bet that if the study involved marijuana instead of alcohol, they’d find even stronger positive effects.

Artists have long found their creative juices stimulated by drugs. The entire field of jazz exists in part because of cannabis.

This doesn’t mean you have to use drugs to be creative. Of course not. And many creative people spend their entire careers successfully without using anything. But as Maia notes, the inhibition of “executive functioning” can be critical in opening your mind to new things. And for many people, the use of mind-altering substances helps open that door.

I have spent most of my life around creative people. I’m an artist, a musician, a theatre professional and have an incredible number of artistic friends. I’ve also met a lot of creative people in other fields.

In my experience, people who are creative, or lean toward creative thinking, are less likely to be boring assholes. People who are unable to turn off their “executive functioning” are more likely to be boring assholes.

Our world needs artists, musicians, poets, and creative thinkers in all disciplines. We don’t need boring assholes.

And if marijuana or a glass of wine helps a few more people find their creative muse, the world will be a better place.

Yesterday, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition endorsed I-502 – Washington’s marijuana legalization initiative

A group of police officers, prosecutors, judges and other criminal justice professionals – including Seattle’s former chief of police – is endorsing I-502, the Washington initiative to regulate and tax marijuana that voters will decide on this November.

Norm Stamper, the former Seattle chief and a spokesman for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), said, “Everyone knows that marijuana prohibition has failed. When even those who once worked to enforce these laws are saying this, the only logical next step is to enact a system that legalizes, regulates and controls marijuana. Doing so will not only take money away from the gangs and cartels that sell marijuana now, but will generate new, much-needed revenue that can be used to pay the salaries of police officers and teachers and for substance abuse prevention and education.”

This came shortly after Gary Johnson endorsed it this weekend.

Former New Mexico governor and U.S. Presidential candidate Gary Johnson has endorsed Washington State Initiative Measure No. 502 (I-502) to legalize marijuana for adults 21 and over. Visiting Washington for the state Libertarian conference, Johnson stated that “Washington’s I-502 is fiscally responsible and socially pragmatic.”

Links:

• Yes on I-502 site
• Text of the initiative

I haven’t really talked about any initiatives out there this year — I’ve left the wrangling over language and specific provisions to others.

I’m not a fan of the 21 age limit, either for marijuana or for alcohol. I’ve spent too many years working at a university to be deluded into believing that such a limit is practical or workable. All it does is drive the use underground.

However, that said, at this point I’m in favor of any initiative or law that legalizes marijuana for anyone in any way. Until we crack that wall and have some real legalization out there, I’ll take anything — even an initiative legalizing marijuana use for people aged 47-51 on alternate Tuesdays in their bathrooms, if that’ll help it pass. Might as well start somewhere.

Perhaps the Pope will prove me wrong. But I doubt it.

Good article at Religion Dispatches: A Pope, a Poet, and a Drug War: Will Benedict stoke flames of culture war, or will he attend to the conflict that is truly devastating Mexico?

With the Pontiff’s upcoming trip to Mexico, there is a real opportunity to make a major statement about the most pressing concern today, and Mexican poet Javier Sicilia has been pushing for exactly that.

“I still believe, but these days it’s a naked belief, it’s a belief that’s in a very dark place. I can’t really comprehend or rationalize it right now, because my grief has been so all-consuming—but the faith is still there inside me.” It is this profound faith that motivated Sicilia to write the pope, hoping that his presence might console a troubled nation.

“In their name, for this us, for this body, I have come to Rome, Benedict, to ask that in your visit to Mexico you embrace it, before anyone, as the Father embraced the pained and murdered body of Christ, that you might carry it in your arms and console it: to help us know the response of resurrection in the face of death and pain that the criminals, a fractured State administered by governments and corrupt parties and a Church hierarchy that seems always attentive to its own political interest, have imputed to us.”

But,

Mexico’s ambassador to the Vatican, Héctor Federico Ling Altamirano, has said that the pope’s agenda will touch on the family, abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research, and the morning-after pill.

Morning-after pill. Really?

That’s what you have to offer? Talking about the morning-after pill?

John 11:35

DirecTV has a series of ads that essentially parody the gateway theory (although they may not realize it themselves). Here’s my favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2ZYIdmdx14

• When you have cable and can’t record all your shows, you feel unhappy.
• When you feel unhappy, you go to happy hour.
• When you go to happy hour, you’re up for anything.
• When you’re up for anything, you head to a Turkish Bathhouse.
• When you head to a Turkish Bathhouse, you meet Charlie Sheen.
• And, when you meet Charlie Sheen, you reenact scenes from “Platoon” with Charlie Sheen.
• Don’t reenact scenes from “Platoon” with Charlie Sheen. Get rid of cable and upgrade to DirecTV.

Hey, every single person I know who has reenacted scenes from “Platoon” with Charlie Sheen started with being unable to record all their shows. It must be true!!!