Drug WarRant

Some great responses by readers in yesterday’s post about the drug czar’s flawed “argument, and I’ll just add a couple of thoughts…
What the drug czar’s office is using there (and what they do so often) is the Straw Man argument – a logical fallacy based on the misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.
This is essentially the line of argument used:

Drug policy reformers claim that legalization and regulation will result in an end of all violent crime related to drugs, yet here are some specific examples of violent crimes related to drugs. Therefore, the drug policy reformers are wrong.

Classic straw man. Reformers have never claimed that legalization and regulation would end all crime. Rather, our argument has been that crime — specifically prohibition-related crime — would be greatly reduced. And that’s true. As has been pointed out by the readers here, robberies of valuable goods will happen in any area, and that has nothing to do with the prohibition vs. regulation argument, (other than the fact that under the regulation system, it’s actually easier to catch the criminals since the owners can call the police.)
If you look at the whole picture, the argument is absurd. We talk about dramatically reducing gang violence and cartel violence and street shootings and armed conflicts over territory and armed conflicts with police… and the drug czar says “but someone might try to break in and steal the drugs if they’re regulated.”
Now since since prohibitionists are always in a position of arguing without actual facts or reason on his side, logical fallacies are heavily used, and it’s useful to be able to identify them.
The Nirvana Fallacy is the assumption that there must be a perfect solution to a problem. This is bizarrely used by prohibitionists even though they cannot ever show that their solution has any chance of working at all. But you see them oddly using it: “legalization won’t stop people from abusing drugs… legalization won’t end violence..”
Burden of Proof is also used by prohibitionists in… interesting ways. They ask us to show extreme levels of proof regarding the levels of drug use and abuse that would exist post-legalization — levels of proof that are impossible with no real-world laboratory to test (which they also work to prevent). This, despite the reality that they cannot prove the efficacy of their method (in fact, the proof is that their solution does not work). So what we have is a proven failure (prohibition) in place, with plenty of evidence that regulation would work much better, yet we’re told there’s not enough proof to consider turning from a failed path.
Appealing to Motive is most often used against medical marijuana support. You’ve all seen this one: “drug policy reformers don’t give a rat’s ass about sick people — they just want medical marijuana legalized in order to get marijuana legalized”
Poisoning the well used to be used more, but is getting much harder. It’s the argument that says “look at that long-haired pot head who is talking about legalization.” But when you have people like Walter Cronkite and William F. Buckley, Jr. and LEAP promoting legalization, it’s a much harder fallacious argument to get away with.
There are others used certainly — Appealing to Fear is a big one, for example. (What others can you identify?) Understanding the logical fallacies used by the drug czar is a great help in easily dismantling his groundless “arguments.”
Marijuana: harmless? [straw man]

Here’s a fun little test for you —
The drug czar is blatantly taunting us with this post.
Point out the flaws in his “argument.”

Having a great time in New York. I highly recommend both August: Osage County and Passing Strange — two very different shows with a lot to offer. August is the best combination of writing and acting I’ve seen in years. Passing Strange is not a traditional Broadway musical by any means — more like a “rock story” — Stew did a brilliant job with both the music and the journey.
So I’ve been a bit behind on blogging…
“bullet” Desperation time? Walters and friends are busy trying to convince the taxpayers that Mexico’s doing a great job in the drug war and we should support plan Colombia…. without any conditions
“bullet” All Indicators Point to a Softening of America’s Harsh Marijuana Laws by Alexander Zaitchik at Alternet
“bullet” DrugSense Weekly

The drug czar has teamed up with The Daily Mail Reuters to promote the latest in anti-marijuana junk science.
The bold headline: Heavy marijuana use shrinks brain parts: study. Ut oh. We’re in trouble now.
Except…
1. We’re talking about people who smoked 5 joints a day for 20 years, and.
2. The study did not in fact find that marijuana use shrinks brain parts.

The researchers acknowledged that the study did not prove it was the marijuana and not some other factor that triggered these brain differences.

I’d love to get paid to do studies that determine things without having to actually determine them.
But instead, I simply tried my own unscientific experiment and compared the brains of noted pot smoker Carl Sagan and noted non-pot smoker John Walters (which i was able to borrow and return without it being missed). In every test performed, Sagan’s brain won handily, despite being dead for 12 years.
More here and here
Marijuana. Harmless?
Um, no. But probably less harmful than — prohibition, alcohol, cigarettes, aspirin, global warming, working as a miner, politicians, prison, Hostess Twinkies, jogging, driving, sex, cheeseburgers, skiing…

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled yesterday that money laundering requires actually, you know, laundering the money. Merely hiding cash so someone won’t find it no longer qualifies as laundering.

This was one of a pair of the decisions handed down Monday that could make it harder for prosecutors to win convictions for money laundering. This law has been one of the government’s most powerful weapons in the war on drugs.
In the second ruling, the court said the law against money laundering applies only to the profits of an illegal operation, not all of the cash it generates.

This is good news, because it cuts back on one of the abuses of the drug war — that of piling on all sorts of multiple charges for the same offense.

Defense lawyers complained the law was used to press defendants to plead guilty to other crimes, such as drug dealing. A conviction for money laundering can result in up to 20 years in prison.

I’m on a delay at O’Hare waiting for my new plane so i can board (the old one had a clogged drain!)
Allan sent me this Letter to the Editor in the Illinois Daily Herald by Janet Chandik — one of those bizarre individuals who somehow slipped by Darwin’s selection process.
It’s worth sharing in full…
We Should Keep Marijuana Illegal

I would like to respond to D. Skipworth’s letter last Monday. She stated the war on drugs is hypocritical and a lost cause and potential tax dollars go uncollected because of ignorant politicians and police. The benefits of hemp are mentioned, and she states cannabis is good for the planet. We learn Chris Columbus may have come to America with sails made from hemp. While that may or may not be true, I think they used to pull teeth without Novocain, too.
In a perfect world we would all do the right thing and use common sense. Too bad for us, we all have a different idea of common sense. I’ll just use one word as an extreme example: pedophiles. Cannabis may or may not be good for the planet, but for the average person it is not. It is a proven fact cannabis, or marijuana, is a gateway drug. The war on drugs is a war that I gladly take on. Why would our society want to legally unleash another mind altering substance when we as a society clearly cannot handle the one we have: alcohol. I am speaking of those individuals who drink to excess and then put others at risk. How about the misuse and abuse of prescription medication? Even over-the-counter meds?
So, hemp is used for food and medicine in other ( more sophisticated – implied ) parts of the world? That’s great. We in America have a lot of freedoms and choices that those in other parts of the world do not have, and I readily give them their use of hemp and gladly keep our public servants, who I dare not as a whole call ignorant.

So, to recap:

• Smoking pot is like pedophilia
• The fact that we have novocaine shows that we don’t need hemp
• The gateway theory is proven [despite all the evidence to the contrary]
• Janet would personally like to conduct the war on drugs [maybe we can turn the whole thing over to her?]
• Janet feels it’s appropriate to give up freedoms in exchange for keeping public servants.

Where do they spawn these people?

Nick Gillespie has a delightfully fun piece> over at Reason, detailing some of the best of the worst — anti drug advertisements, with an honorable mention to the Stoners in the Mist website.

Stoners underscores what most Americans already knew: Real winners don’t do anti-drug websites.

All sorts of interesting stuff that probably deserves individual posts, but I want to get it out here…
“bullet” Vindictive Prosecution – an editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal smacks down the Feds’ most recent medical marijuana busts.
“bullet” U.S. conditions threaten Mexico anti-drug package. There’s talk that some high placed Mexican officials are looking for an excuse to turn down the money.
“bullet” Drug War Madness: Smoke a Joint and Your Whole Family May End Up Homeless by Tony Newman
“bullet” Failing Upward: New Frontiers in Scalia‰s ‹New Professionalism by Radley Balko
“bullet” Barbara Kay Says Mean Things About Marijuana Users and the Reform Movement by Scott Morgan
“bullet” Bush can’t remember if he used cocaine or not
“bullet” Killing the Messenger: Bexar probation chief wants to fire PO who snitched on faulty urinalysis results at Grits for Breakfast.
“bullet” “drcnet”

As some of you know, I’m involved in a lot of other pursuits in addition to the Drug WarRant blog (and my day job). Some of these are going to keep me pretty busy in the near future — I’ll try to keep up the blogging, but I may miss a couple of days here and there.
Living Canvas I’m Producer/Artistic Director for a new production in Chicago this summer. Unsex Me Here – a Living Canvas production is the fifth performance art show based on the concepts in my fine art photography. This show will be loosely based on Macbeth. I’ll be in Chicago every weekend for rehearsals until the show opens July 11 (running through August 16 at National Pastime Theater). More information available at my Living Canvas site. Don’t miss it.
New York On Monday, I’ll be taking 70 community people to New York for a seven day theatre trip. We’ll be seeing shows every night and I’ll give walking tours of different parts of the city each day. We’re seeing August: Osage County, Passing Strange, The Country Girl, Reasons to be Pretty, The 39 Steps, and November (I’ll also be seeing Momix at the Joyce Theater). I’ll be pretty busy all week, but if you’re in New York and would like to get together for coffee or a drink and talk drug policy, drop me a line, and we’ll see if we can find a time.
Illinois Shakespeare Festival As part of my job, I’m doing the graphic design for the Festival’s program guide and doing their photography. It’s a great Festival, and if you’re in Illinois, you should check it out this summer.
I sure wish there were more than seven days in a week sometimes.

Drug war cops want bigger guns

Mexican police need bigger guns to fight increasingly violent drug gangs, a federal police chief said, after drug hitmen killed seven officers in the northern city of Culiacan.

“We need machine guns,” said General Rodolfo Cruz, the federal police force’s link with the army in their joint 18-month-old war on Mexico’s powerful drug cartels.

“Pistols are just for showing off, they are good for nothing,” he told reporters in Culiacan

Oh, yeah, machine guns are a really good choice for police work, especially when you’re working in populated areas of your own country filled with… citizens. You know, children, families, etc. Rather than just “showing off” with a pistol, you need something that indiscriminately scatters bullets all over the place.
You start with a drug war with massive black market profits. As criminal enterprises jockey for this gold mine, violence breaks out. Rather than deal with the root cause, you send in troops to go after the criminals. They fail to oblige by packing up and leaving their gold mine, but instead buy AK-47s and fight back, with violence escalating. So now you want machine guns to respond. And what will the criminal groups do? Roll over and play dead? No. They’ll just get bigger guns, or escalate other guerilla warfare techniques. And then what happens?

Stratfor – publisher of online geo-political intelligence analysis written by a global team of intelligence professionals (read former CIA staff) – has argued that Mexico rapidly hurtling down the road to becoming a ‘Failed State’ due to the ‘War on Drugs’.

You should read the entire Stratfor article: Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State?”

There comes a moment when the imbalance in resources reverses the relationship between government and cartels… That is the prescription for what is called a ‹failed stateŠ Ö a state that no longer can function as a state.

Escalating the war doesn’t destroy the cartels. You can destroy individuals or even individual cartels, but the profits will still be there. They can bunker down within the citizenry and strike when they wish. And if the level of their ability to corrupt exceeds the resources of the country to counter (see Guitherism:”No government in the world can compete with the black market in financial compensation for police officers.”), then you achieve a failed state.
The really sad thing is reading the conclusion of the Stratfor analysts.

One way to deal with the problem would be ending the artificial price of drugs by legalizing them. This would rapidly lower the price of drugs and vastly reduce the money to be made in smuggling them. Nothing hurt the American cartels more than the repeal of Prohibition, and nothing helped them more than Prohibition itself. Nevertheless, from an objective point of view, drug legalization isn‰t going to happen. There is no visible political coalition of substantial size advocating this solution. Therefore, U.S. drug policy will continue to raise the price of drugs artificially, effective interdiction will be impossible, and the Mexican cartels will prosper and make war on each other and on the Mexican state.