Drug WarRant

The first salvo of responses to the Erowid article — Towards a Culture of Responsible Drug Use — is now up.
It is Jonathan Caulkins, Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University‰s Qatar Campus and Heinz School of Public Policy, with Is Responsible Drug Use Possible?
It is a singularly ignorant piece of argumentation, that defies basic logical analysis and completely sidesteps the concept of responsible public policy! I can’t even count how many ways I am offended by this piece of academically dishonest tripe.
He says:

While avoiding a full rehash of the by-now dull legalization debate, two points bear mention. First, American drug policy is easy to criticize as intrusive, ineffective, and mean-spirited. However, it does not follow that prohibition is necessarily a bad policy. […] The problems with America‰s prohibition stem primarily from particulars of its implementation, not from prohibition per se.
Second, the challenge is not in criticizing prohibition, but designing something better.

He finds the legalization argument “dull.” How quaint. The last decades have been about preventing even a proper discussion about legalization. There has been no legalization argument, because the prohibitionists (and the academics) say we can’t discuss it.
Note that Jonathan Caulkins is one of the co-authors of the Rand study “How Goes the War on Drugs” which I wrote about here, which stated:

Nor do we explore the merits and demerits of legalizing drugs, even though legalization is perhaps the most prominent and hotly debated topic in drug policy. Our analysis takes current policy as its starting point, and the idea of repealing the nation’s drug laws has no serious support within either the Democratic or Republican party. Moreover, because legalization is untested, any prediction of its effects would be highly speculative. […] For the purposes of this book, we think it is more productive to concentrate on policy alternatives that are politically imaginable, and for which it is possible to reach more confident conclusions about likely consequences.

In other words, in a prominent think-tank’s paper about drug policy, legalization wasn’t even allowed to be discussed or considered. And now, without having discussed or considered, Jonathan considers it “dull” and not worth considering. How convenient. And how academically dishonest. Caulkins is in the science of public policy. How would this attitude look in other sciences?

Some people say we should stop bleeding patients to purge them of bad humours. They say that the practice is not only ineffective, but dangerous. However, ending the use of bleeding patients is just not politically popular right now, so us doctors should merely study how to better use bleeding to cure people. Maybe we need to do a little more, or a little less, or bleed them in a different way…

Without even refuting legalization or defending criminalization with any logical arguments or… facts, Jonathan can simply state that prohibition simply needs to be… done better, and we should move on.
There are so many flaws in this overall article, I hardly know where to start, from the offensive opening straw man:

What distinguishes the Erowids is their assertion that modern humans must integrate psychoactive use into life. Apparently from their perspective, choosing abstinence, at either the individual or societal level, is inherently inconsistent with being modern.
Denying or denigrating an individual‰s right to choose temperance is an extreme position not worth engaging.

I have to assume that Caulkins has deliberately distorted the meaning of the Erowids’ discussion about how psychoactives, in one way or the other, legal or not, have permeated the fabric of all our lives, and that it behooves all individuals and society to be better informed. The only other option is that Caulkins is dumb as a rock.
Notice once again that, by misrepresenting the original argument, then denigrating the misrepresented argument, he says that there’s no point addressing it.
He then has some interesting speculation regarding various drug using categories, but without a frame of reference — ie, denying any possibility of discussing legalization and denying any responsibility for justifying criminalization — he’s just floating around on a free ride.
None of his discussions have any framework, because he has ignored the basic structure of a proper argument about the legal status of drugs. Throughout his piece, he assumes prohibition, refuses to entertain options other than prohibition, and yet refuses to defend criminalization based on a proper argument. Here’s what that proper argument must look like:
It’s not enough to say that certain drugs should be illegal because they’re dangerous to individuals or society. One must show:

• that they are dangerous,
• that criminalization actually significantly reduces the danger (and not merely use),
• that criminalization is the best way to reduce the danger, and
• that the side effects of criminalization won’t be worse, such as:
  • Corruption of Law Enforcement
  • Putting Drug Safety and Control in the hands of Criminals
  • Over-incarceration and the influence of the Prison-Industrial Complex
  • Enormous Black Market Criminal Profits
  • Drug War Violence
  • Damage to the Environment
  • Destruction of Families
  • Damage to Inner Cities and Poor Communities
  • Militarization of Law Enforcement and the Victims of Drug War Tactics
  • Racism and Civil Rights
  • Erosion of Civil Liberties
  • Foreign Policy Disasters
  • Financial Cost
  • Loss of the Truth

Otherwise. defense of prohibition is meaningless. [Note: The above is also the outline of a new website under construction and a book being written.]
Caulkins ends his piece with the age-old prohibitionist’s self-defining prohibition.

The responsible decision is to obey the law, even if doing so forecloses some pleasures, and in that respect responsible drug use is not possible in today‰s society, even ex post.

It’s bad because it’s illegal.
No discussion available yet at Cato’s site (there will be a full online debate later, I understand), but feel free to discuss at will here.
Jonathan is welcome to join in as well. I’m interested if he is willing to actually justify criminalization as good policy, rather than as good political policy.
Update: Alex at Drug Law Blog (who I don’t link to often enough) has reactions as well. He’s more polite to Jonathan than I am, but still notes that Caulkins “isn’t even attempting to seriously consider the broad range of possibilities.”
… it made Scott Morgan cringe

I‰m just amazed that Caulkins has shown up today to write about drug policy on the Cato website if he finds the drug policy debate boring.

I don’t know if you’ve followed the comments section on this post regarding Karin Litzcke’s article about Insite.
I came down pretty hard on Karin Litzcke, and I still think her article deserved it, but I’ve got to say that I admire her greatly for coming here and participating in the discussion. She did so with grace and good manners and a sincere attempt to understand a different point of view.
Kudos also to Steve and Jim in particular for their excellent, intelligent engagement with her on this subject. They did better than I could, as the unfortunately necessary “neither fish nor fowl” status of Insite is something I have not spent enough time exploring, although I do know enough to see that it is inextricably linked to the prohibition discussion (as became clear in the discussion, though it was a surprise to Karin).
Again, we so rarely have people with differing views willing to test us in discussion, that it’s a joy to have such a visitor (perhaps it’s because Karin did not truly consider herself part of the prohibition debate).
We welcome anyone who wishes to talk with us or debate us. If it seems that we have our knives sharpened, it’s just that we’re so… eager.

More on Towards a culture of responsible drug use…
Daksya has started a discussion on the topic over at MetaFilter that’s worth checking out.
And we’ll be following Cato’s discussion all week.

Now, all I have to do is send that statement to James Kinsella, Managing Editor of Cape Cod Today, and he’ll print it, merely “balancing” it by getting someone else to say “No, marijuana won’t wash your clothes, do your taxes, and walk your dog.”
Thus, readers will be left knowing only that there is some controversy regarding marijuana’s dog-walking, tax-preparing, clothes-laundering capabilities.
How do I know this? Merely look at yesterday’s article

“This is not your father’s marijuana of 20 or 30 years ago,” the district attorney [Michael O’Keefe] said. He said marijuana now is far more potent, and contains substances designed to addict the user.
He also said the rates of automobile and industrial accidents go up when marijuana is involved.
[Whitney] Taylor said statements that current marjuana is much more potent and is infused with addictive substances are “completely untrue.”

See, that’s true journalism. You don’t bother to ask the district attorney to back up his claims with citations or… facts. You don’t say “I can’t print that unless you give me some proof that it’s not a complete lie.” No, you go ahead and print it and turn it into a he-said/she-said piece. After all, it’s not your job as a journalist to inform people, but merely to entertain them and keep your sources happy, regardless of whether they are lying scumbags.
Congratulations James Kinsella on a job well done. Now, about marijuana’s ability to repair potholes…

I must admit… I never thought I’d see an effective political ad that advocated a 15-year-old’s use of marijuana.

The lead essay over at Cato Unbound this month is outstanding: Towards a Culture of Responsible Drug Use by Earth and Fire Erowid.
There will be reaction essays coming out later this week by Jonathan Caulkins, Jacob Sullum, and Mark Kleiman, and a week of online discussion.
Should be quite interesting.

The Agitator/Reason’s Radley Balko will be appearing live online at The Art of the Possible on Wednesday at 7 pm Eastern, and will be taking real-time questions from readers in the comments.

“bullet” Real Commander Needed for the War on Drugs by Neal Peirce

Will America’s ill-starred “war on drugs” and its expanding prison culture make it into the presidential campaign?
Standard wisdom says “no way.”
We may have the world’s highest rate of incarceration — with only 5 percent of global population, 25 percent of prisoners worldwide. We may be throwing hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders, many barely of age, behind bars — one reason a stunning one out of every 100 Americans is now imprisoned. We may have created a huge “prison-industrial complex” of prison builders, contractors and swollen criminal justice bureaucracies. […]
A serious set of problems, a shadow over our national future? No doubt. But do our politicians talk much about alternatives? No way — they typically find it too risky to be attacked as “soft on crime.”
But let’s imagine — what if major party nominees Barack Obama and John McCain were pressed to state their positions on drugs and incarceration?

“bullet” Obama’s Biden Pick Signals ‘More of the Same’ Stupid Drug Policies by Paul Armentano

Voters who hoped that Barack Obama’s call for “change” would include revamping U.S. drug policy are finding themselves with reasons to be skeptical. […]
[recap of Biden’s atrocities] […]
So should progressives cite Obama’s tapping of Biden as reason to abandon all hope for drug law reform? Not necessarily, though the notable absence of the subject at the Democratic National Convention will likely give some folks — this author included — yet another reason to be cynical.
Bottom line: No administration since the Carter administration has proactively taken steps to liberalize federal drug penalties, and there’s little indication that Obama and Biden will possess either the desire or the political will to buck this long-running trend.

The Presidential candidate is the last place to look for drug policy reform.
… or even a discussion about it.
You want a discussion about drug policy reform, come to Pete’s couch.
It is interesting, however, to speculate about the planned press conference that Ron Paul is holding on Wednesday morning at 10:30, for which Baldwin, Barr, McKinney, and Nader have supposedly been invited.
That group, as a whole, could actually talk about drug policy.

David Simon, writer/creator of “The Wire,” joins other writers at Mother Jones to discuss How to Fix a Post Bush Nation – a guide to the next first 100 days:

How to Fix It: Lose the Drug War
“We are the jailingest motherf*ckers on the planet. More than that, the number of violent offenders in federal prisons has gone down to its lowest level ever in the history of the countryÖin the single digits, by the Bureau of Prisons’ own statistics. And the political party that let this get out of control? It was the Democrats. The drug war has actually destroyed the deterrent in inner cities by teaching whole police departments to chase drug stats when they should be solving crimes. And, of course, because they can’t put all those people in prison, it doesn’t even work as a draconian policy. Most people are just thrown back onto the street.
A smart politician could cite all these things, and we could stop the madness. But everyone’s worried that the little old lady in Terre Haute is going to think you’re soft on drugs. I think all the little old ladies in Terre Haute get it. The American people are smarter than politicians give them credit for. If McCain came to a Democratic Congress with reforms, I think he’d be a hero to moderates everywhere, because do you know people who believe in the drug war? I don’t know if there’s a cop in Baltimore who believes in it except as a means of getting overtime pay, hoard pay. I think everybody knows except the government.”

More of that interview here.
Simon also has an important and disturbing article about the “escalating breakdown of urban society across the U.S.” … in The Guardian (U.K.)
He talks about how crime policing in the cities is driven by politics, and how juries in inner cities are starting to actually convict at lower rates than outside the cities, due to the politicization of policing, and how even those statistics are ignored by politicians and the U.S. press.

[I]n my city, we have fought the drug war to the very end of the line, with sergeants becoming lieutenants and majors becoming colonels and city mayors becoming state governors. We have done so for decades, one day into the next, one administration after another, each claiming progress and measuring such in arrest rates, drug seizures, crime stats. And no one asks: why?
No one asks why, with all the arrests and seizures, the availability and purity of narcotics and cocaine has actually increased over the past three decades. No one asks why, with all the law enforcement committed, whole tracts of the city have nonetheless degenerated into free-fire war zones. No one asks why police commanders are routinely able to reduce the rates of robbery, or rape, or assault significantly in any time period prior to an election, while the murder rate – in which the victim can’t be obscured or clerically “unfounded” – stays as high as ever. And now, this week, no one asks why men and women from Baltimore, upon being given a chance to strike a blow against disorder and mayhem by convicting those charged criminally, would shirk their responsibility.
Well, here it is, plain as day…

“bullet” None of us is safe from police raids by Vera Leone

That’s what makes the Berwyn Heights case so potentially important: It is opening a window into the realities lived every day by innocent victims and survivors of the ineffective and destructive “war on drugs.” Let’s remember this case, keep this window open, and use it to address the misguided (at best), unjust and indisputably failed drug war policies that are destroying the fabric of our society.

“bullet” Killing of Mayor’s 2 Dogs Justified, Prince George’s Finds

The Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office has concluded in an internal review that its deputies were justified when they shot and killed two dogs belonging to the mayor of Berwyn Heights during a July drug raid, Sheriff Michael Jackson said yesterday.

“bullet” Is it time to legalise drugs? BBC4 Radio’s Today show discusses drug legalization, with LEAP’s Jack Cole and, from the other side, Ian Oliver. The show’s host clearly appears to be on Jack’s side.
“bullet” Despite U.S. Aid, Coca Cultivation on Rise in Andes

“If you look back at the days of Escobar, the names have changed but there’s as much cocaine or more cocaine coming out of the Andes as a whole as in the peak anti-Medellin war on drugs,” said John Walsh of the Washington Office on Latin America, a policy group critical of U.S. anti-drug policies in the region. “We’re talking almost 20 years later.”
So far this decade, the United States has invested nearly $8 billion in the drug war, funding manual eradication efforts in Bolivia and neighboring Peru and an aerial herbicide-spraying program in Colombia that has covered more than 2.5 million acres since 2000.

“bullet” All their dreams go up in smoke Police in the southwest suburbs of Chicago have their annual pot bonfire.

“bullet” “drcnet”