Drug WarRant

Here’s a good article to start the New Year — an excellent piece by Atlanta-Journal Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker

Some four or so decades into an intensive effort to stamp out recreational drug use, billions of dollars have been spent; thousands of criminals, many of them foreigners, have been enriched; and hundreds of thousands of Americans have been imprisoned. And the use of illegal substances continues unabated.
With the nation poised on the brink of a new political era, isn’t it time to abandon the wrongheaded war on drugs? Isn’t it time to admit that this second Prohibition has been as big a failure as the last – the one aimed at alcohol? […]
The nation’s so-called war on drugs recalls that old Vietnam War phrase about burning the village in order to save it. It also brings to mind Albert Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Our war on drugs really is a war on people. That’s true insanity.

Strong words from a major newspaper.

Something in the air
Snow, and the promise of change
The New Year beckons

Whenever the Drug Czar links favorably to some news report, I pretty much expect that it’ll be pretty amazingly stupid.

Bertha Madras said drug use and abuse are associated with all kinds of problems.
Madras, deputy director of demand reduction in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, mentioned that drugs can cause delinquency, violence, accidents and brain damage.
Her advice? Say no to drugs.

Did you know that food can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hives, asthma, diabetes, kidney failure, anaphylaxis, gout, and death?
My advice? Say no to idiots who give meaningless advice.

… and another open thread, as I continue my vacation in the snowy wilds of Iowa.
“bullet” Via Scott at Grits for Breakfast… Apparently, the U.S. government is not only running cocaine, but providing loans to Mexican drug cartels.
Well, the loans were supposed to be to help trade with Mexico, so I guess that works.
“bullet” OpEd by Rob Kampia: If Tobacco Regulation Works, Why Not for Marijuana?
“bullet” Fortunately, she wasn’t home… Drug Police Smash Down Front Door of Innocent Gran in Cannabis Search

DRUG-busting police smashed down the front door of a grandmother’s house in a hunt for a cannabis farm.
Anne Mayor was stunned when she returned to her small home in Aintree to discover six officers had broken in and scoured it for drugs. […]
“The officer apologised, but I don’t want an apology. It’s not good enough.”

“bullet” OpEd by Paul Armentano: Ending America’s Domestic Quagmire: No-Knock, You’re Dead
“bullet” OpEd by Sanho Tree: What Darwin Teaches Us About the Drug War

As politicians intensified the drug war decade after decade, an unintended consequence began to appear. These ‹get toughŠ policies have caused the drug economy to evolve under Darwinian principles (i.e., survival of the fittest). Indeed, the drug war has stimulated this economy to grow and innovate at a frightening pace.
By escalating the drug war, the kinds of people the police typically capture are the ones who are dumb enough to get caught. These criminal networks are occasionally taken down when people within the organization get careless. Thus, law enforcement tends to apprehend the most inept and least efficient traffickers.

“bullet” Greg Francisco at LEAP: Making Criminals Out of People Who Are Not
“bullet” Need a job? Search under way for new drug war czar (No, it’s not Walters’ job, just a HDTA task force executive director position.
“bullet” “drcnet”

Still on the road visiting family. Finally getting some internet access at my mom’s place in Iowa. Pretty strange to move one state over to Iowa and suddenly there is a massive Presidential campaign going on! Yard signs, endless TV ads, and more. Yet in Illinois, relative silence. What a dysfunctional electoral system.
“bullet” In its semi-endorsement of Dennis Kucinich for President, The Nation magazine mentions as part of the overall package, Kucinich’s opposition to the drug war. It really does seem to be getting easier for people to actually say that.
“bullet” LEAP’s Howard Wooldridge has been working hard on the Hill, and now he’s looking for your help. Write a letter to your Senator and let him deliver it for you. Great idea.
“bullet” On a personal note, I will be missing the huge hands and amazing talent of Oscar Peterson, who died this week. I got to see him twice — once at Avery Fisher Hall with Joe Pass, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie and his Orchestra. The second time, he and his trio were performing at The Blue Note, and I and my friends had the table right next to the piano. Incredible.
His hands were so big that running tenths were a breeze for him, yet he could also play delicate waterfall passages with precision. I once heard it said that he could play anything he could think. As a piano player, that both depressed me and filled me with awe.
Here’s a taste:

Holes Found in U.S. Claims of a Drug-War Win

For the past few months, the federal government has been celebrating the fact that U.S. cities are experiencing “an unprecedented cocaine shortage” due to increased law enforcement in the southwestern United States and Mexico.
But fact-checking by NPR reveals that while there are indeed spot shortages of cocaine, they are neither nationwide nor unprecedented. And the scarcity may have unintended consequences.

Walters is learning that the days where he could just claim whatever he wanted and everyone would nod in agreement are gone.
People are checking…

Four cities declined to respond to questions about the local cocaine supply; five said there was simply no shortage.
The question brought laughter from Sgt. Roger Johnson of the Detroit Police Department.
“No, we don’t have a problem finding it at all,” Johnson said.

The article goes even further into the historical trends showing that Walters’ boasts are meaningless.
A good piece — kudos to John Burnett for looking into this story.

I’m going to be on the road for the next week visiting family. My online access will be spotty, but I’ll be stopping in now and then adding some more posts when I can.
For those of you traveling – be safe. And I wish all of you a wonderful Christmas.
“bullet” Just a Girl in short shorts talking about whatever brings us a delightfully quirky and moving story: A Christmas Miracle in Colombia
“bullet” Via Blog Reload, revelations from Bill Conroy of Narco News that the mysterious downed cocaine plane in Mexico was part of a Department of Homeland Security Operation (not the downing, but the transporting) and that the Mexican government is keeping Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) involvement quiet to avoid messing up the huge drug war funding bonus from the U.S. Oops.
“bullet” Nice letter from Howard Wooldridge in the Amarillo Globe-News
“bullet” We could save money by giving canine officers a quarter to flip, instead of a dog. Expert: Drug dogs wrong 48% of the time. You don’t have to feed a quarter or pick up after it.
“bullet” Something the kaptin’s been saying is coming… Alex at Drug Law Blog talks about Gov. Schwarzenegger proposal to release 20,000 low-risk prison inmates early because of budgetary problems.
“bullet” Apparently Drug WarRant is in the top 55 liberal bloggers/sites by traffic, according to this article. I’ll take the compliment with pleasure, even though Drug WarRant doesn’t specifically define itself as being either liberal or conservative. I’m also pretty sure that’s higher than my normal traffic numbers — probably hit me on a day I got a big boost from digg. But thanks, Kevin!
“bullet” This is from a while ago, and I can’t remember who pointed it out to me, but it’s sitting on my desktop, and it’s such classic reefer madness stuff… Did you know this? According to reporter James Schugel, “High-grade marijuana is four times more addictive than commercial grade.” Four times. Not three. Wow.
“bullet” Read this article about homicides in Allentown and see the strange disconnects… Intelligent people interviewed about drugs and gangs who understand the basic problems — that the drug war doesn’t work, that it’s about black market territories and profits, that arresting one dealer just means adding another one and increasing violence. They get it… but just can’t connect that last dot. …So they’re talking about re-instituting DARE.
“bullet” Drug Sense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

Via MPP – a statement from Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums

‹As the mayor of a city that believes in compassionate care, we support Medical Cannabis Dispensaries. We are discouraged to learn of the DEA‰s actions that appear to be in opposition to the will of the residents of this city. Rep. Conyers, Chair of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, expressed deep concern over the DEA landlord threats and other efforts to undermine California law, and committed to sharply questioning these tactics as part of the committee‰s oversight efforts. I am grateful for and supportive of Rep. Conyers‰ concerns.Š

He’s also sent a letter to Conyers, urging hearings

The DEA’s recent surge tactics, such as the dissemination of threatening letters to property owners and unrelenting raids that continue to place citizens in harm’s way, undermine state and local authority, and jeopardize the integrity of state law. We urge the House Judiciary Committee to expeditiously hold hearings and examine this very important issue.

They’re So Scared They Put 20 Tons on One Ship! by Jacob Sullum at Hit and Run

Is a rising seizure total a sign of success or a sign that the volume crossing the border has increased? Is an increase in large-volume seizures a sign of smugglers’ desperation or a sign that smugglers are not terribly worried about interdiction, treating the risk as a cost of doing business? […]
However much the Coast Guard seizes, enough drugs always get through to meet the demand. The most drug warriors can expect is to temporarily increase prices by raising traffickers’ cost of doing business. Since the cost of replacing seized drugs is very small compared to their retail value, with most of the markup occurring after they arrive in the U.S., interdiction is a highly inefficient way of discouraging drug use. But don’t tell John Walters. The drug czar thinks “every load of drugs seized represents that much less that can be used to poison our young people and harm our nation.”

And that is the point, exactly, why supply side interdiction bragging is absolutely moronic — particularly with an illegal commodity, where the markup is so high (many reports peg the the markup for cocaine at 100:1.
Let’s take a made-up example to demonstrate:
Bob Wilson owns a factory that makes widgets. For some strange reason, these widgets are in high demand and there isn’t much competition out there. It costs Bob ten cents per widget in manufacturing costs, but he can sell them in the stores for $10. He sells a million widgets each year for a total income of $10 million and a total manufacturing cost of $100,000 (for a gross profit of $9,900,000). Not bad.
But these widgets are popular, and Wilson’s Widgets is in a bad section of town, so some of his shipments out of the factory get highjacked and the widgets stolen. Bob doesn’t like it, and he does what he can to disguise the trucks, or send them out at unusual times, but he knows that a certain percentage of them will be lost.
Does this mean he won’t be able to sell a million widgets in the stores? Of course not! He has a factory — he just makes more widgets. If a truck gets highjacked, he sends out another truck.
But what about the financial cost of all those lost widgets? Won’t that dramatically change the price? Let’s take a look.
Assume that ten percent of Wilson’s Widgets normal annual production are highjacked. That’s significant. That means that he’d have to make an additional 100,000 widgets at a cost of $10,000 to replace the highjacked widgets. That extra cost means raising the price in the stores to make up for the losses, right? Gee, I wonder if that will get expensive…
In order to make the same gross profit of $9,900,000, Bob will have to raise the price in the stores from $10 per widget to… $10.01
That’s right. A penny more.
If half of Wilson’s Widgets’ usual million widgets were highjacked, so that Bob had to manufacture an additional half million widgets, the price would go up from $10 to… $10.05
If two million widgets were highjacked, so that Bob had to manufacture three million in order to supply one million, the price would go up from $10 to… $10.20
There is no way that supply side interdiction can work, unless you can seize 100% of all product — an impossibility in the illicit drug market.
Now, the example I gave above is simplified somewhat to make the numbers easier — drug cartels have additional costs along the process (transportation, bribes, middlemen, etc.) — but the principles remain the same.
One difference between the widgets and the cocaine, however. In the Wilson scenario, an assumption is made that the crooks don’t do anything with the widgets they highjacked (it might be helpful to imagine it as a percentage of the widgets having melted, rather than being stolen). It’s hard to imagine crooks highjacking all those valuable widgets without going into business. If they were to sell all those widgets that they stole, then it could dramatically cut into Bob Wilson’s widget business and he’d stop making money.
However, with cocaine, the federal government obligingly destroys what they highjack (for the most part), keeping the rest of the supply highly profitable for the cartels.
Study Question:

Supply-side interdiction of illicit commodities is:

1. A stupid idea
2. A really stupid idea

Thus ends the Economics 101 lesson.

Due to rampant/Rampart abuse by Los Angeles police in the past, a federal plea bargain required that officers in gang and narcotics divisions sign disclosure agreements documenting their finances, starting in 2001 (to ensure that they weren’t skimming). It’s just now finally starting to be enforced, and the officers are threatening to quit or file lawsuits.
I find it oddly, darkly amusing that the people who spend their days busting people for narcotics — probably busting down doors and seizing possessions — have these concerns:

“And then who has access to the documents? We see the kind of record-keeping they do at police headquarters. I can show you photos of stacks of boxes in the hallways that are open to the public.” […]
“It’s a total invasion of privacy,” an unhappy 20-year veteran gang detective told me.

The OpEd author also thinks that enforcing it is wrong.

Even in the worst old days, financial graft has never been the LAPD’s problem. For that you’d want to look eastward to Chicago or New York.
Or as one upper-level officer said to me, “Historically, we may beat you up, but we don’t take your wallet.”

You can’t make this stuff up.