Drug WarRant

Now, it’s not just New Zealand that uses really bad science when it comes to the drug war, but it sure seems like that little country shows up disproportionately, (although a lot of that is attributed to the outrageously bad research coming from the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand, usually involving poor conclusions from inadequate samples).
What caught my attention this time was this article, which dramatically noted that cannabis causes over $30 million in hospital bills each year in New Zealand.
Oh? I was trying to figure out what could possibly cause all those costs. In my experience, cannabis users tended to make more trips to 7-11 than to the emergency room. In fact, while I’ve personally accompanied some idiots to the emergency room who didn’t know how to drink alcohol, I’ve never known a single person to go to the hospital for marijuana use.
So I was looking for the particular study referenced. While I didn’t find that particular one, I found a related study that explored all the social costs of all illicit drugs in New Zealand: New Zealand Drug Harm Index (pdf)
If you want some geeky entertainment, try going through this entire document and note all the outrageous assumptions made and bizarre notions for calculating “social costs.”
This study considers the costs to society of illegal drug use to include

• All costs of producing and selling the drugs
• All crime costs related to drugs
• All enforcement costs related to drugs, including customs, police, criminal courts, prisons, community sentences, preventative expenditures, etc.
• Not only the prison costs, but the lost output of prisoners!
• All health costs related to drugs
• The lost output of drug users who died early
• Pain and suffering related to drug use

… you get the idea. It goes on and on.
The study also bizarrely computes a potential “savings” to society for all drug seizures based on the assumed lack of societal costs that would otherwise be attributed to those drugs.
Here are some quotes that made my head explode:

The costs estimated using the prevalence approach are then compared to a counterfactual situation, in this case where no illicit drugs were ever used. That is, in order to determine the harm avoided by reducing drug consumption we compare the current situation with drug use to a hypothetical case where there is no harmful drug use. […]
[T]his study assumes that illicit drug consumption is abusive and imposes a social cost. Therefore, all resources diverted by illicit drug consumption are regarded as social costs. […]
One input to the drug harm model is an estimate of the ëadditional‰ or ëmissing‰ population who would currently be alive were it not for the deaths caused in the past by illicit drugs. Essentially, this involves estimating the population that would have existed in 2005/06 based on the modified mortality rates assuming no drug use in the past. […]
Drug-attributable mortality causes a reduction in society‰s productive capacity that society could have benefited from in the counterfactual case (a world without illicit drug use). This cost is a function of how many people die prematurely due to drug use and what those people could have earned. […]
As in Collins and Lapsley (2002) we assume that the probability of absenteeism is the same for tobacco use and illicit drug use. […]
In the absence of data on the production cost of illicit drugs in New Zealand, we follow the approach used by Collins and Lapsley (2002). They value the production cost of a drug as a fraction of its street price. This assumes that there is a significant risk premium factored into the price of illicit drugs and that the resource cost of the inputs would be lower in their best alternative legitimate use. The value of resources diverted is assumed to be five percent of the street price for all illicit drugs except for cannabis, opioids and methamphetamine produced from domestically sourced inputs. Cannabis is assumed to have a lower risk premium so the resource cost is equal to 25 percent of the street value. This approach is likely to yield a conservative estimate of the value of diverted inputs. […]
This study estimates costs for three health conditions that are recognised widely as affecting many drug users: depression, HCV and HIV/AIDS. […]
The value of travel delays was estimated by multiplying four components:

• average length of time a vehicle is delayed by an accident
• value of time per vehicle
• traffic flow per hour – gives indications of how many vehicles would be involved when an accident happens
• number of crashes in a particular year.

[…]
The study does not consider licit drugs such as legal party pills, such as benzylpiperazine (BZPs). Nor does it include harm from other legally available substances such as alcohol or tobacco. […]
Incarceration poses a further cost due to the lost output of inmates. Lost output estimates were calculated on the basis of the age and gender profile of inmates jailed due to drug use, and totalled $38.4 million. […]
This study uses a value of $106,600 per year of life lost due to the premature mortality of drug users, and drug-related homicides and road accident fatalities. […]

Again, you get the idea. This is a study designed to find everything you could possibly invent and manipulate to conceivably be a cost related to drugs. You could take the same damn study and change the word “drugs” to “prohibition” and it would make a whole lot more sense (but still be ridiculous).
What is the value of such a detailed time-intensive waste of time?
Propaganda.

“bullet” Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast rounds up a good discussion on the Dynamics of Overcriminalization
“bullet” Budget Woes Kill Elgin’s DARE Program
“bullet” “drcnet”

Scott Morgan has the story

• Annual deaths from extreme cold: 680
• Annual deaths from marijuana overdose: 0

Something must be done about this. My God, they let children play in it! And lots of people even own their own freezers. Somebody oughta write a law.

New Jersey

Gov. Jon S. Corzine said Tuesday that he supports and would sign a bill allowing medicinal marijuana use, but added that economic issues are his top priority.
“I don’t think that we ought to be having fights on issues that don’t go to the heart of the needs of a broad majority of folks,” Corzine told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “I think that this is one that if it can be moved expeditiously because there’s a consensus, I think that’s great. I have studied the issue and I think that if properly structured, it’s an initiative that’s sensible.”

What is it with this country’s apparent thirst for seeing hard-core “law and order” that doesn’t actually respect… the law?

More at Crooks and Liars.

Allan catches this outrageous editorial at a sleazy rag called Investor’s Business Daily.
They start by buying into the most rosy cherry picked statistics they can find direct from the DEA and the drug czar and decide:

The news is nearly all bad for global drug traffickers these days. From the jungles of southern Colombia to the dusty border towns of northern Mexico, it’s bleak for drug lords.

And, of course, that’s nonsense. As Ted Galen Carpenter notes in The National Interest, “We‰ve heard it all before. Many, many times before.”

The reality is that street prices for illegal drugs act like the famous observation about prices in the stock market: they will vary. Over the past fifteen years, the retail price of cocaine has moved in a range between roughly $90 and $200 per gram. The latest spike is nothing abnormal, just as the plunge in prices from November 2005 to January 2007 was not unusual. […]
Not only is the U.S. market for cocaine and other illicit drugs still healthy, the market elsewhere in the world is even more robust. […]
With such vast consumer demand, and with the black-market premium creating profit margins of 90 percent or more, there is little chance of shutting off the supply. The economic incentives to engage in drug trafficking are simply too powerful.

But the morons at Investor’s Business Daily actually think that the government can shut off the supply of drugs and then magically…

There’s no need to help addicts if there’s nothing to get addicted to Ö and nobody’s life is diminished by a lack of exposure to drugs.

And these guys give investment advice.
Then they really go off the deep end…

The three lessons of this are, one, a drug war can be won.

Really? Oh, I give up. Don’t even tell me the other two.
What makes this even funnier is that these idiots actually want me to pay to comment on their article. For the 69 words I excerpted for web use, they suggest I should pay $.25 per word. Right.
I’ll give them this — their copyright is safe. Fiction writing that imaginative is unlikely to be claimed as un-copyrightable fact. But who would pay for this dreck? John Walters? Certainly not me (and my use of it is exempt under fair use anyway).
—-
Speaking of idiots…
“bullet” Lou Dobbs complaining about Obama:

Well, you know, he’s certainly not alone in his — well, in his lack of expression on the issue, because most liberals in the country simply do not want to discuss the reality that Mexico remains the source of the drugs serving this nation’s extraordinary drug habit. The United States, with about just under 5 percent of the world’s population, consuming about two-thirds of the world’s illegal drugs, and this government and the American people, apparently without the political will to stop it, and — continue to permit the devastation of millions of lives in this country.

“bullet” Police in Australia:

POLICE WINNING WAR ON DRUGS
POLICE hope a massive drug bust last week will end the growing number of burglaries and violent assaults in Albany […]
“Part of yesterday’s process was to eliminate those people, which we have done,” he said.
“This whole operation will be ongoing.”

“bullet” The Dallas Morning News thinks it knows how to stop the violence in Mexico. By addressing the fact that cartels often kill or kidnap journalists and other “storytellers” to silence them.

Either way, the locals are less likely to protect those trying to tell the rest of us the truth.
That’s why it’s so critical that Mexican legislators pass a law before them now to make it a federal crime to curtail an individual’s right to self-expression. The proposal also would strengthen the federal office of special prosecutor and give it more clout in investigating cases like Mr. Ortiz’s.
Giving the feds more power to protect journalists wouldn’t end the violence, but at least the cartels would know that Mexico City values the storytellers. And that must frighten them.
The more the truth gets out, the more likely the free world will be to stand up to the merchants of death.

Really? Passing a federal law against curtailing the right to self-expression is going to frighten cartels so they won’t kill or kidnap journalists?

CBS news has been pushing this Mexico Drug War story: Brutal Drug War Fueled By U.S. Appetite.
From the headline, you can see where it’s headed, and, sure enough…

Bill Gore has witnessed the carnage, first as the FBI Special Agent in Charge in San Diego, now as the county’s undersheriff. He says American drug users should realize they have blood on their hands.
“This is not a victimless crime,” Gore said. “That people are dying, literally hundreds of them, on the streets of Tijuana, so they can have their recreational drugs on this side of the border.”

Do drug users have blood on their hands? Um, no. It is American lawmakers who have blood on their hands. They are the ones who have fueled this violence. They are the ones committing the victimfull crimes. Drug users could have all the drugs they want on this side of the border without a single person in Mexico needing to die, if it wasn’t for the lawmakers.
Just suppose that water was made illegal. The violence involved in the distribution of water would be unbelievable. Would those who use water have blood on their hands? Of course not — it would be the morons who outlawed water. (Although the users of water would probably be in their rights to get lawmakers’ blood on their hands.)
Not that water and marijuana or cocaine are the same — of course not — but the principles of what happens when you outlaw an easily produced commodity in high demand are the same.
It is true that there are two ways to get rid of black market violence.

1. Convince all drug users everywhere to stop using drugs forever.
2. Legalize and regulate drugs

However, #1 is just a fantasy. People have always used drugs. They always will. #2 requires political will and smart solutions. #1 requires… magic.
So it’s easy for Bill Gore to complain about drug users, but it’s meaningless and unproductive. It’s like him complaining: “If it wasn’t for gravity, my men wouldn’t keep falling off this cliff to their death.” Well, like it or not, gravity exists, so maybe people like Gore should look to other solutions, like not marching them off the cliff.

I’m honored to have been chosen by NORML and High Times as a Freedom Fighter, in the upcoming February, 2009 issue of HIgh Times.

Freedom Fighter

Blog Star
Pete Guither leads a war against propaganda

As the art of blogging evolves, few have utilized this tool as effectively for anti-marijuana-prohibition advocacy as Pete Guither. Check him out at DrugWarRant.com and enter the Drug War Rant community. Both of these outlets were the result of Pete’s anger at the continued prohibition of cannabis. What started out as research and writing primarily for his own edification has blossomed into a powerful online forum and community of drug-policy reformers that provides a valuable service by supplying activists with news and information on the latest scientific, legal and political developments.

Pete is motivated by the belief that legalizing and regulating marijuana cultivation, distribution and possession for recreational purposes is crucial. “I want to take the black market out of the equation,” he says. “The only way to do that is with full legalization and not a halfway solution. The path to get there requires that people stop being afraid to talk about marijuana and the Drug War.”

The good news is that more and more people are speaking out. “The blogs and the traditional reform organizations like NORML, and the newer groups like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and Students for Sensible Drug Policy, are developing a network of reformers from all walks of life armed with the facts,” Pete says. “But we’re still facing a tough battle — decades of propaganda. We have to get the facts, we have to speak out, and we have to keep doing it.!”

Thanks to Pete Guither, the anti-prohibition community has gained a powerful new voice. Long may he continue to share his insight, his knowledge and the occasional rant.

— Carlos Castillo, NORML Outreach Coordinator

Obama’s team responds:

Q: “Will you consider legalizing marijuana so that the government can regulate it, tax it, put age limits on it, and create millions of new jobs and create a billion dollar industry right here in the U.S.?” S. Man, Denton
A: President-elect Obama is not in favor of the legalization of marijuana.

Next round goes up in a couple of days. My planned question:

The fact that a large portion of the questions last time focused on marijuana laws and the drug war means that these are important issues to people. A recent Zogby poll showed 76% of likely voters think the drug war is failing. Yet frank discussions are still difficult politically and opponents of current drug policies do not currently share an equitable space in major drug policy discussions. Will you appoint an independent, science-based blue-ribbon commission to look at all aspects of drug policy, including the economics of the drug war, and examining alternatives to prohibition?

If someone beats me to it, fine with me.