Drug WarRant

Transform got a leaked copy of a restricted media briefing — the spin that the U.K. Home Office will be using to defend their drug strategy. It’s the standard litany of drug warrior fact-free propaganda talking points, aimed at “answering” any opposition. Transform does a nice job of fisking it.
There’s one point in particular that I’d like to highlight.
The home office anticipates the following question:

Q: Wouldn‰t legalisation surely reduce drug related crime?

And part of their prepared answer is:

The legalisation of drugs would not eliminate the crime committed by organised career criminals; such criminals would simply seek new sources of illicit revenue through crime.

I’ve heard this kind of argument before — mostly from morons on messageboards. This, however, is from a major world government. (And note the blatantly obvious switch from “reduce” in the question to “eliminate” in the answer.)
Transform takes it on:

Obviously it is ridiculous to imagine they will all ëgo straight‰ and get jobs in McDonalds, or selling flowers, but it is equally absurd to suggest they will all embark on some previously unimagined crime spree. […] it is impossible to imagine that there is enough criminal opportunity to absorb the manpower currently operating an illicit drugs market with a turns over somewhere in the region of £300 billion pounds a year globally, or over £10 billion a year in the UK alone. Even if there is some diversion into other criminal activity, the big picture will undoubtedly show a significant net fall in overall criminal activity. Getting rid of illegal drug markets is about reducing opportunities for crime.
This concern is a curious one because it seems, when considered closely, to be advocating prohibition as a way of maintaining illegal drug empires so that organised criminals don‰t have to change jobs. [emphasis added]

Exactly.
You see, the real stupidity in such a statement is the implied assumption that there are a specific, finite number of “career criminals” in the world and all they are capable of doing is pursuing criminal activity. In such a fantasy word, if we were able to lock up all of those specific individuals, there would be no crime. However, in fact it is a matter of degree, relative values, and opportunity.
We’re all criminals. Especially today. Everyone has broken a law, whether it’s the speed limit or one of the millions of laws on the books that nobody can even keep track of. That doesn’t mean that everyone is bad. Some people would break the speed limit, but draw the line at selling drugs. Someone else would sell drugs, but not get involved in violent crime. Someone else might reach a point of desperation and do things that others wouldn’t. Someone else has a warped morality and will even kill people in order to further a particular goal.
It is prohibition and its enforcement that fuels criminal activity, actually expanding the number of so-called “career criminals.”
The huge profits of the black market become irresistible incentives to move up the criminal ladder for many people. Someone who, in another world, might settle for working a job in a factory, can be enticed into criminal enterprises by the lure of riches, and drug dealing is an easier step because of the consensual nature of the transaction. The process is sped up by enforcement. Each arrest of a dealer is the advertisement of a lucrative job opening.
Start with one drug dealer. Arrest him and put him in jail. What happens is someone else steps up to take the high paying job. Now you have two drug dealers (one on the street and one in jail). Arrest the second one and a third steps up. Even if you never release the ones you’ve arrested and you keep arresting, you’ll never get “ahead.” But eventually, you’ll end up releasing those arrested and you’ll have a glut of dealers, all created by prohibition.
Under legalization, the criminal recruitment never happens, so there’s no growth or replacement due to black market drug demand. Those already in the game suddenly find their vast incomes drying up. Let’s say one of them decides to go in for bank robbery instead of finding legit work. Now you’ve got a non-consensual transaction with the bank eagerly helping the police to catch the criminal, the police no longer bogged down by drug arrests, and when the bank robber is caught, there’s nobody waiting in line for his job.
Legalization means both a reduction of those in prison and a reduction in crime.
Which reminds me of a particularly disturbing statement I saw this weekend (via Hit and Run)
National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru reacts to the news about the fact that we lead the world in incarceration this way:

It’s too bad we have such a high rate of criminality–but given that we do, I’m glad we have been putting more people behind bars over the last generation. […] when I see a headline about a record incarceration rate, I’m glad. Aren’t you?

This ignorance is the face of the modern conservative movement.

“bullet” Give drugs away for free. That’s the idea in A Modest Proposal for the War on Drugs by Demonsthenes (a somewhat flip approach but with some understanding of the economics of drug policy).
“bullet” Prozac doesn’t work say scientists. Oops.
“bullet” Chocolate-covered mushrooms and butterscotch-flavored marijuana. The students at Savannah College of Art and Design apparently are quite creative.
“bullet” The War on Drugs is insane, but there’s no end in sight by Will Moredock
“bullet” When he stood up to speak against the school’s random drug testing policy he faced inquisitions from administration and questions from the police. Kudos to 16-year-old Anthony Maitilasso and his mother.
“bullet” In the tantalizing headline category: Drug Czar Gets Eight Years For Ecstasy Bust…. oh… not that drug czar.
“bullet” The ONDCP notes that we could reduce the revenue of Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations by 61% just by legalizing marijuana…. (they didn’t actually phrase it that way, though)
“bullet” “drcnet”

The Daily Telegraph:

It surfaces each summer — in fly-by-night rickety booths at county fairs and amusement parks while police turn a blind eye. For a mere handful of change, even the youngest of children can get their fix. It’s a horrifying sight, watching 8-year-old girls suddenly supercharged out of control, their hearts beating wildly and their limbs flung every which way as they race through the crowds.
Hot on the heels of her shocking on-camera experience last week shooting up the main ingredient in skunk as a cautionary tale against cannabis use, journalist Nicky Taylor will do the unthinkable: This week, live, on camera, she will inject herself with the main ingredient in…

cotton candy

Yes, that seductive confectionary of youth, made appealing to the youngest in it’s soft-spun stickiness in nursery colors of pink and blue and yellow.
Miss Taylor will then be filmed as the effects of the drug take hold. Dr Paul Morrison, one of the scientists in charge of the programme, told The Daily Telegraph: “I can’t talk about the experiences of any of our participants without their say-so. I don’t know what she’ll specifically be injecting. Cotton candy is really just an intense little bit of sugar and a lot of… air. If she injects air into her veins, well that could be a bit shocking to viewers.”
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, refused to speculate on the number of young people currently injecting cotton candy. “Anything we can do to protect the lives of our children is worth it. We must not be swayed by those who would destroy our society by allowing such substances to remain legally available.”
Next Week: If Nicky Taylor survives her cotton candy trip, she will inject herself with the main ingredient in bullshit.

Via Paul Armentano at the NORML blog…
This has it all: Sensationalism, scare tactics, irrelevancy, and… just plain… bizarre. Bad journalism, bad science, bad government and more.

The BBC is to break one of the last broadcasting taboos by screening footage of a woman injecting drugs.
Nicky Taylor, a journalist, is filmed smoking cannabis in cafes in Amsterdam before injecting the main ingredient of the stronger “skunk” variety of the drug in a laboratory. […]
Miss Taylor was then filmed as the effects of the drug took hold. Dr Paul Morrison, one of the scientists in charge of the programme, told The Daily Telegraph: “I can’t talk about the experiences of any of our participants without their say-so.”
The BBC also declined to provide a detailed account of what happened.
However, one source who has seen the effects on Miss Taylor said: “The effect was dramatic. It was unpleasant.”
The BBC is understood to be keen to show the film on the eve of a decision by Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, to recriminalise cannabis by upgrading it from C to B status. Her decision is expected in the spring.

That’s right. A “journalist” is going to show the dangers of drugs by injecting herself with “the main ingredient of the stronger ‘skunk’ variety of” cannabis.
Yes, that’s a very convoluted way of saying THC.
This is to give “a strong anti-drugs message that will stop people experimenting rather than glamourising drugs use” — apparently by convincing people that shooting up cannabis isn’t a good idea — something that, until this moment, hadn’t been an idea at all.
My prediction: The British Government, fueled in part by stupidity like this, increases the penalties for marijuana. The black market, inspired by this “documentary” responds by developing a more compact, easier to smuggle, pure THC. A year later, the Daily Mail does a sensational report on an alarming new trend — intravenous skunk use.
“bullet” Update: See also this at the Washington Post — with comments (thanks Cannabis).

Sorry to be a bit off-topic here, but check out this disturbing footage of the war in Iraq.
Link (WMV video)
Oops. I was wrong. Turns out this is the war in the United States. Fought against U.S. citizens, and brought to you as entertainment on the TeeVee.
My bad.

This is getting a lot of press right now:

The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world and for the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in every 100 American adults is confined in a prison or jail, according to a report released on Thursday.
The report by the Pew Center on the States said the American penal system held more than 2.3 million adults at the start of the year.

Of course, the primary reason, downplayed in most of the press coverage, is the drug war.
This is a good time to remind folks graphically of what we’re doing:
The United States has 5% of the world’s population…

… but 25% of the world’s prison population.

We dramatically lead the entire world in incarceration rates.

Spread the word.

I ran across this intriguing bit from scientists in Heidelberg, Germany. It’s not a proper study — merely an anecdotal incident based on one individual, but it’s still fascinating.
Turns out that they discovered a 28 year old man with ADHD who had a history of ADHD-related driving problems, improved dramatically after smoking pot. The scientists

conclude from their investigation that “it has to be taken into account that in persons with ADHD THC may have atypical and even performance-enhancing effects.”

It’s not enough to prove anything, but it does point out the fact that different people are affected by drugs in different ways.
It reminds me of a good friend of mine in college many years ago. Brilliant man. Theatre major. Unusual brain. As an actor, he never said the same lines exactly the same way twice, yet they were perfectly fitting and he could actually ad-lib Shakespeare in iambic pentameter. We once lost a performance space for a mainstage production the day before opening night and in one day he re-lit the show in another theatre with a totally different configuration and ran the lights for the show by feel without a light plot. He did all of these things while under the influence of marijuana. If you ever ran into him when he was not, he was incoherent.
Everybody’s different. I had another friend in High School who would pass out for 12 hours if she took just half of a simple cold capsule.
This points out the potential problem with determining driving capability by what’s in a person’s blood. It may be better than no method at all, but it’s not an accurate measure of actual impairment.
So what would be?
Here’s my idea, but I need someone out there to invent/develop it (technologically, it seems that we’re pretty close if not already there). Modify regular police cars so that you can, with a switch, change the driving controls to become a full-fledged driving simulator with the windshield turning into a video screen. The simulator would test reflexes and measure driving ability.
Seems to me that this would be a much more accurate measure of impairment than breathalyzers, urine samples, or blood tests. Wouldn’t it?

Daniel Williams — a regular commenter here at Drug WarRant — has thrown his hat into the ring and is working at becoming the Libertarian Party Presidential candidate.

William F. Buckley, Jr. died today at the age of 82. You may have loved him or hated him, but one thing is clear — more than anyone else, he made it cool to be a conservative against the drug war.
My first real exposure to his drug war views was this 1996 issue of National Review (I still have my copy). He regularly spoke out for legalization, particularly of marijuana, and will always have a home in the drug policy reform community.

WE ARE speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen — yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect. […]

I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors. [link]

…

I’m in favor of legalization of marijuana not because I’m in favor of people being allowed to do what they want to do but because I think that the war against marijuana is not worth it, that more people are suffering on account of that war than would suffer without it… [link]

…

The War on Drugs Is Lost…. The cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with an intensive education of non-users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs. [link]

…

“bullet” William F. Buckley, Jr.’s latin logical fallacy pun about the gateway theory of marijuana (link):

post pot ergo propter pot

“bullet”William F. Buckley, Jr.’s eulogy to Peter McWilliams
“bullet” Buckley also made famous Richard Cowan’s quote:

“One of the problems that the marijuana-reform movement consistently faces is that everyone wants to talk about what marijuana does, but no one ever wants to look at what marijuana prohibition does. Marijuana never kicks down your door in tbe middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.”

“bullet” Brian Cook talks about “The Wire”

In a recent story in The Nation, Chris Hayes used 2,200-plus words to argue why progressives should back Sen. Barack Obama. I’ll use only seven: Obama’s favorite TV show is The Wire. It’s certainly true, as Hayes noted, that Obama, like every presidential candidate, won’t be saying one word about the prison-industrial complex or the disastrous consequences of the “war on drugs.” But it’s heartening to think that at least he’s tuning in to one of the few public forums that fiercely drags such issues into our consciousness.

“bullet” A relatively good OpEd in the Wall Street Journal! (not even in the real part, but the usually execrable opinion pages) by Mary Anastasia O’Grady about the drug war in Mexico shows people who actually understand the basic principles of economics.

Under prohibition, only criminals can serve the market for illegal narcotics. And they have a lot of incentive to do so since prohibition pushes prices up. These market dynamics have given rise to transnational crime networks — modern, savvy businesses run by ruthless killers bent on preserving their income. Anyone who tries to get in the way risks becoming a statistic. Last year in Mexico there were 2,713 homicides attributable to organized crime, up from 2,120 in 2006 — according to the intelligence arm of the country’s attorney general. […]
Mr. Medina Mora suffers no illusions about his office’s capacity to shut off the supply of drugs to the U.S., or for that matter in Mexico, where drug use is on the increase. That’s a welcome relief: After decades of a war on drugs claiming thousands of innocent lives, poisoning institutions in developing countries, and raising the incentive for pushing narcotics on children — all the while delivering not a modicum of success — the argument for attacking supply to end demand is by now tedious.
Instead, Mr. Medina Mora is a realist. “The objective,” he says, “cannot be destroying narcotrafficking or drug-related crime, because demand is inelastic.” “It is very important not to lose perspective on the goal,” he tells me. “Trying to get rid of consumption and trafficking is impossible, as a bold objective.”

The entire OpEd doesn’t hold completely together, but still… this is impressive.

“bullet” Radley Balko at FOX: Straight Talk: Should Tax Dollars Be Used to Help Drug Addicts Avoid Overdoses?

We’re told that certain drugs have to be prohibited because they’re too dangerous. But we should also resist efforts to make them less dangerous because doing so might encourage drug use.
It’s a bizarre argument until you consider the real motivation behind it: In truth, it’s not so much about the harm some drugs do; it’s about an absolute moral opposition to the use of some drugs.
Even if they were completely harmless, some people simply don’t like the idea that we can ingest chemicals that make us feel good.

“bullet” This is refreshing. Sheriff cuts ties with MDEA

Sheriff Donnie Smith of the Washington County Sheriff‰s Department has ordered his staff members not to work with the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency until further notice.
Smith made the order in a memorandum that was sent out Friday to his department‰s patrol deputies and other law enforcement officers.
“Until further notice all operations with Maine Drug Enforcement Agency are suspended,” the memo reads. “No personnel from the Washington County Sheriff‰s Office will participate in any operation involving Maine Drug Enforcement.”

Note: It’s not because the Sheriff has decided not to fight the drug war — merely that shenanigans on the part of the MDEA had gotten pretty bad — but still…