Drug WarRant

Dear President Bush,
With Alberto Gonzales leaving in September, it looks like you’ll be needing to find a new Attorney General to serve out the rest of your term. I am willing to offer my services.
I’m not a lawyer and don’t have any work experience specific to the job, but as I understand it, that kind of thing hasn’t really been all that important.
And I have one qualification that the previous two AG’s were lacking — I’ve read and mostly understand the Constitution of the United States. You may not think this is particularly useful, but it does relate to the oath taken, and might be worth checking out.
I also know that you value appointees who follow your wishes, so I am pleased to tell you that, if nominated, I pledge to use your words (taken from an interview in 1999) as a guide: “I believe each state can choose that decision as they so choose.”
Give me a call, and we’ll chat.
Sincerely,
Pete Guither

The recent excellent Washington Post article by Misha Glenny (The Lost War) and Robert S. Weiner’s “rebuttal” (The War Is Not Lost) has sparked some rather heated discussions about the statistics of drug use patterns, both in comments here and over at Drug Law Blog, where Robert Weiner himself responded to Alex’s fisking. Alex does a nice job responding back.

So essentially, we debate whether drug use statistics are being misused or cherry-picked, which sets of statistics are the most accurate, whether the methodology of the survey instrument is properly constructed and how much to account for changes in that methodology over time, whether the survey is capturing actual trends in illicit drug use or trends in perceptions relating to answering questions about illicit drug use.

But to me, this is all just a distraction. Oh, sure, knowing things is important and having better statistical information to draw upon for the purpose of making educated decisions is a good thing. But we’re talking about the wrong question.

The prohibitionists have framed the entire world’s drug policy solution as “We need to reduce the number of illicit drug users.” And all measurements of success or failure are addressed only to that statement. It’s a nice trick, but it’s horribly dishonest. (Note: they also occasionally use the measurements of “Look how much we seized!”, but that’s even less relevant in a non-finite supply chain.)

While I have my own concerns about the statistics of drug use, I am willing to posit that prohibition itself may have actually contributed to some reduction in the number of overall illicit drug users (primarily casual non-problematic drug users). This means, under the framing promoted by prohibitionists, that I agree that the drug war has been a “success.”

But that, of course is ridiculous.

Prohibition framing is dishonest because it promotes a problem (drug addiction, violence, destroyed children, etc.) and pairs it with a solution (reduced number of illicit drug users) that has little direct relevance to the problem.

Why don’t they come out and say “The problem is that there are too many casual illicit drug users out there, and any amount of cost is acceptable to reduce that number.”? Because people would, rightly, object.

If there are problems associated with drug use, wouldn’t the proper solution pairing be to reduce the problems associated with drug use? Ah, but that’s the goal of the harm reduction crowd, who are, for the most part, legalizers, not prohibitionists.

It is the legalizers who are doing more to fight for reducing the problems associated with drug use. Prohibitionists, on the other hand, are more interested in looking for the pony of reduced numbers of illicit drug users.

A sane and reasoned drug policy regime would start by asking the following three essential questions:

1. What are the appropriate goals of drug policy and how can those be achieved?
2. What are the acceptable costs (by type and quantity) for achieving specific aspects of the drug policy goals?
3. What are the measures for determining the success of #1 and #2?

Now you certainly could simply set a goal of reducing the number of illicit drug users. Congress has done exactly that in its directives to the ONDCP. But it’s hardly an appropriate goal, since the numbers game forces government policy to try to reduce drug use by the least problematic drug use populations (the only way to get enough numbers to make proclamations like the one Weiner gives) and therefore does little to address any legitimate problems.

Clearly a much more appropriate goal would be to reduce the problems associated with drug use, and therefore the methods would have to specifically reflect that revised goal.

Now what about #2? This is a critical question, and yet it’s hardly ever addressed by anyone other than legalizers.

Let’s say that Honda (I’m just using them as an example because I just got a fabulous new Honda Fit) decided as a corporate goal to double their car sales this year. So they come up with an approach: drop the price of all their new cars in half. And eureka! It works! They sell more than twice as many cars this year. It’s a success, right? Of course not. The cost of making those cars was more than they were getting, and so the company goes bankrupt, communities all over the world lose automotive plants, people lose jobs, families go hungry, etc. No major corporation would be irresponsible enough to discuss goals without looking at the costs of achieving those goals.

But whenever the drug war is discussed by prohibitionists, it’s as though cost isn’t even part of the equation. Sure, the supply of money to fight the war is sometimes brought up, but the overall cost, which includes not only money but also a huge list of collateral damages, is not mentioned at all.

Some of the costs of prohibition include:

• Enormous taxpayer costs in enforcement, courts, prisons
• Fueling crime through attractive black-market profits
• Creation of a prison/criminal class with endless job opportunities
• Destruction of families and inner cities; welfare costs
• Extraordinary racial implications
• The lures to corruption among public officials
• Loss of civil liberties and the Fourth Amendment
• Denying young people a second chance (financial aid)
• Escalating violence (both sides)
• Foreign policy disasters; harming farmers in poor countries
• Denying medicine to sick people
• Increasing harm for those using drugs
• Lost lives and potential

And I’m sorry, but saying “Hey, we’re developing some great ideas regarding drug courts” doesn’t even begin to cut it.

It’s important to re-emphasize here that costs are not just monetary. I’m sure some prohibitionist is going to get all outraged at this point and say “How can you crassly do a cost-benefit analysis when the lives of our children are at stake?” And it’s precisely because the lives of our children are at stake, along with our freedoms, and the integrity of law enforcement, and on and on. It is extremely irresponsible to avoid the cost-benefit analysis. If it turns out that lives are destroyed in order to reduce the number of casual pot smokers by one, what kind of lame-brained policy is that?

This leads me to the one absolutely incredible piece of blatant hypocrisy in the drug war, and that’s a comparison between the prohibitionists’ analysis of medical marijuana and their lack of meaningful analysis of the drug war.

When we say that medical marijuana is effective in reducing nausea for some cancer and AIDS patients, the drug warrior scoffs and says “That’s totally unacceptable. You must have double-blind proof of efficacy, with years of testing and verification by the FDA. We need to make sure that there’s absolutely no chance that any of these terminal cancer patients will develop bronchitis in 40 years if they smoke pot for their nausea…” etc., etc.

And yet, when it comes to drug policy, no such rigor is even contemplated. Medical marijuana is a choice by a patient with consultation with a doctor, and yet sick people supposedly can’t be allowed to take the mildest chance, while on the other hand, involuntarily imposing an extraordinarily dangerous regime on the entire population is done without consideration of cost to that population.

And if we ask about those costs — prison, corruption, black market profitability, broken families, cities, foreign policy, etc., the prohibitionists promptly stick their fingers in their ears yelling “LA, LA, LA, LA, LA” and then when we’ve finished talking, they respond: “How dare you question the war. Due to our efforts, Joe stopped using drugs. Would you rather he was an addict?”

Sigh.

Now let’s look at those questions again.

1. What are the appropriate goals of drug policy and how can those be achieved?
2. What are the acceptable costs (by type and quantity) for achieving specific aspects of the drug policy goals?
3. What are the measures for determining the success of #1 and #2?

Unless, and until, prohibitionists (or prohibition apologists) are willing to seriously answer those questions, the legalizers and druggies have the upper hand in reasoned, educated arguments.

Even the academics and think tanks are weak in this area. When RAND Drug Policy Center and American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research released their scathing (and important) assessments of the war on drugs in 2005, they seemed to at least understand that such questions might be relevant, but refused to fully address them, instead retreating primarily to the “safe” domain of drug use and prison statistics.

Just because a critical element doesn’t lend itself to easy quantification or palatable political reality doesn’t mean it can be left out of the equation.

Sure, it’s a good thing to have people analyzing MTF and NSDUH and the other survey tools to see what we can learn. But by no means can those figures represent even the beginning of a proper analysis of the appropriate goals, methods, or costs of drug policy.

This has been making the rounds pretty well already, but I want to make sure everyone knows what kind of country this is becoming, thanks to the drug war. (via The Agitator)
Yes, the police can stop you and take your money at gunpoint for no reason than the fact that you have money.

Anastasio Prieto of El Paso gave a state police officer at the weigh station permission to search the truck to see if it contained “needles or cash in excess of $10,000,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the federal lawsuit Thursday.
Prieto told the officer he didn’t have any needles but did have $23,700.
Officers took the money and turned it over to the DEA. DEA agents photographed and fingerprinted Prieto over his objections, then released him without charging him with anything.
Border Patrol agents searched his truck with drug-sniffing dogs, but found no evidence of illegal substances, the ACLU said.
[…]
DEA agents told Prieto he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money within 30 days and that to get it back, he’d have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.
They told him the process probably would take a year, the ACLU said.

Can you feel it?

“bullet” Ethan Nadelmann makes a splash. His cover article: Think Again: Drugs in Foreign Policy is garnering a lot of attention, including this story on FOX news that actually wonders whether legalizing drugs might be better than prohibition (watch the video).
“bullet” Obama joins the other Democratic candidates in promising to end federal medical marijuana raids.
“bullet” Not only is drug warrior Dennis Hastert (R-Illinois) leaving, he’s leaving before the election, allowing a Democratic governor to control the special election timing. He must be wanting to spend time with his family really bad (or is something else about to bite him in the ass?) Curious.
“bullet” Steve Tucker has had to start again from scratch. He’s free now, a decade after he was put away for the crime of selling light bulbs. The drug war strikes in cruel and surreal ways.
“bullet” Mo Rocca wants to know if he should get baked. The mere fact that he asks the question means that he still doesn’t get it. It’s not about somebody else telling you what you should do.
“bullet” I’m one who gets extremely upset with government waste, and find the excessive use of no-bid contracts in government to generally be a violation of trust. That said, this oddly doesn’t bother me much. Since I consider all drug war spending to be a corrupt waste, I find myself apathetic about whether a no-bid contractor stuck it to the ONDCP.
Update:
“bullet” Drug warrior Joseph Califano gets trashed in Financial Times’ Economists forum

…It is depressing that this combination of hysteria, misrepresentation, intellectual confusion and mindless moralism continues to foist upon our countries a policy with such catastrophic consequences.

Misha Glenny’s outstanding article in the Washington Post: The Lost War has continued to get some attention (although I’d love to see it picked up by more than just the Daily Herald (Utah)).
The web has picked up on it pretty well, including some interesting comments from Ilya Somin (Volokh), Pete McCormack, and Dr. Tom O’Connell.
And, of course, the Washington Post felt obligated to seek out someone to rebut the piece, so they dredged up former ONDCP spokesman Robert S. Weiner for The War is Not Lost

With a comprehensive anti-drug strategy in place, involving foreign policy, enforcement, education, treatment and prevention, overall drug use in the United States has declined by roughly half in the past 25 years […] Do we want to go back?

Notice several sleights of hand, here.
First — Misha Glenny’s piece was specifically about prohibition. Weiner wants the drug war to get credit for education and treatment. Nobody opposes those. In fact, reformers believe that education and treatment are part of the necessary replacements for enforcement. But Weiner has no way of claiming any positive results of the drug war by just talking about enforcement, because none exist. And nowhere does he justify the concept of “comprehensive.”
Second — Statistics. Drug use statistics wander all over the place (partly due to the difficulty of getting reliable information from a survey about committing illegal acts). If you look at the government data, you’ll see that it all depends on what years you pick, what populations, what drugs, etc.
Third — Drug “use.” It is ridiculous to assert that some arbitrary reduction in drug “use” is a benchmark for drug war victory, particularly if you’re trying to promote the idea that the drug war is supposedly providing some benefit to society. Reduction of “use” is meaningless, because it ignores the real problems.
Let’s say you have two drug users — Joe and Larry. Joe likes to do a couple lines of cocaine once a month or so for fun (or maybe smoke a joint). Larry is a pretty hard core heroin addict and spends much of his time working to get more. Strict enforcement might actually affect Joe. His drug use isn’t that big a deal to him, so the risk of jail may just cause him to switch to tequila. Presto! A 50% reduction in drug use by Weiner’s standards. (Of course, no way is Larry going to be deterred from drug abuse by prohibition. He’ll keep at it until some criminal laces his heroin with fentanyl and his friends are too afraid of the cops to take him to the emergency room.) Net value to society from a 50% reduction in use: negative.
Fourth — Completely left out of the Weiner’s equation, of course, are the costs of the drug war — prohibitionists never talk about them. And that was Glenny’s primary point, totally ignored in rebuttal.
But Weiner has to find some way to put a positive spin on a total disaster.

If any other problem — hunger, poverty, illiteracy — were reduced by half, we’d call it major progress.

Now there’s an idea — maybe we should lock up a couple of million poor people. Make students pee in a cup while conjugating verbs to reduce illiteracy. Smash down the doors of hungry people, kill their dogs, set off flash bombs, throw them to the floor and force nutritious food down their throats.
I guess we could win all these wars if we try hard enough.
Note: Also see Pat Rogers’ rebuttal.

Well, the attempts by the government to avoid the comparison of the proposed Mexico drug war funding with the disastrous Plan Colombia aren’t working too well.
The media are quite comfortable calling it Plan Mexico

Known as “Plan Mexico,” the new measure would be aimed at curbing escalating drug violence along the border with Mexico. The majority of the funding will come from taxpayer money and will enable the Mexican government to bolster it’s telecommunications capability and it’s ability to monitor airspace to fight the Mexican drug cartels more efficiently.

And at a press conference today with President Bush, Prime Minister Harper of Canada and President Calderon of Mexico, a reporter asked:

Q Good afternoon, President Bush and Prime Minister. And I thought that
this summit would be the — actually Plan Mexico would come out of this,
the combination of three governments to combat the effects of drug
trafficking. What is the obstacle? What is causing the delay? Why don’t the
societies of each country know what this plan is about? And can you
actually confirm the support of the United States to Mexico? Apparently it
will increase tenfold, and the levels will be similar to Colombia. We hear
very often the United States wants to take part in this situation against
drugs, this war on drugs, and we see it very clearly in Mexico. Now, what
is it all about? Could you tell us?

Of course, President Bush clarified everything…

PRESIDENT BUSH: Man! Hombre! (Laughter.) We discussed a common strategy to deal with a common problem, and that is narco-trafficking and violence
on our border. First, let me say that in order to develop an effective
common strategy there needs to be serious consultations between our
respective governments. It’s one thing to say, we’re interested in working
together; it’s another thing to develop a package on both sides of the
border that will be effective in dealing with the problem. That’s what our
people expect us to do. They expect us to see a problem and to develop an
effective strategy to deal with that problem.
President Calderon and I met in Mexico, and we had a serious discussion
to get this initiative on the table. This is an interim meeting, a meeting
for us to make sure that the strategy that’s being developed is — will be
effective. So we reviewed where we are in the process.
The United States is committed to this joint strategy to deal with a
joint problem. I would not be committed to dealing with this if I wasn’t
convinced that President Calderon had the will and the desire to protect
his people from narco-traffickers. He has shown great leadership and great
strength of character, which gives me good confidence that the plan we’ll
develop will be effective. And the fundamental question is, what can we do
together to make sure that the common strategy works? And that’s where we
are in the discussions right now.
There’s all kinds of speculation about the size of the package, this,
that and the other. All I can tell you is the package, when it’s developed,
will be robust enough to achieve a common objective, which is less violence
on both sides of the border, and to deal with narco-trafficking. And we
both have responsibilities. And that’s what the package is entailed to
develop. It’s to develop how do we share our joint responsibilities.
It’s in our interests that this program go forward. You mentioned Plan
Colombia– this is not like Plan Colombia. This is different from Plan
Colombia. This is a plan that says we’ve got an issue on our own border. We
share a border and, therefore, it’s a joint program that will mean — that
won’t mean U.S. armed presence in your country. Mexico is plenty capable of
handling the problem. And the question is, is there any way for us to help
strengthen the effort? And so that’s what we’re studying.
And I can’t give you a definitive moment when the plan will be ready,
but we’re working hard to get a plan ready. And it’s a plan that, once it’s
proposed and out there, I strongly urge the United States Congress to
support. It’s in our interests, it’s in the U.S. interests that we get this
issue solved.

Wow. That really answered all my questions about Plan Mexico.
What did he say?

“bullet” Samhita at Feministing asks:

is pot culture sexist? And is smoking weed a feminist act?

“bullet” Tanya at Blame the Drug War suggests: I’m a better mother when I’m stoned
“bullet” Rogier van Bakel writes a letter. A Drug War and a Toothless Press
“bullet” More drug war heresy in the Washington Times? Arnold Trebach steps up to the podium

American drug laws and strategies have managed the majestic alchemy of converting relatively worthless plants into substances often worth more, ounce for ounce, than gold and diamonds. […]
But is there a way to make the plants cheap again? There is of course an obvious but politically unpopular answer: It is to treat the plants and the derivative powders as legal articles of commerce. If, say, marijuana and cocaine were worth roughly as much as alcohol and tobacco, there would be no Mexican gangs involved with these legal substances […]
To those who say that we will all be destroyed by drugs if we make drugs legal articles of commerce, I have several responses. For starters, I won’t be destroyed by them because the very thought of using them bores me. Moreover, based upon research, I estimate that perhaps 95 percent of the American people feel the same way. We are not a nation of suicidal fools. Millions of American recently drastically reduced their consumption of readily available red meat, alcohol and tobacco for reasons of personal health. […]
It is high time in this perilous era that we say to these dedicated officials in the DEA and in hundreds of other police agencies that we as free citizens accept the personal responsibility to save ourselves and our families from drugs (and red meat, alcohol and tobacco).

Jacob Sullum perfectly describes this AP story as “a confusing jumble.”

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. – People in the United States are living in a world of pain and they are popping pills at an alarming rate to cope with it.

Obviously, to drug policy reformers, the war on drugs is one of the critical issues of our time — it affects everything, from criminal justice and fundamental Constitutional rights to education to foreign policy to poverty and the inner cities, and on and on.
So it can be baffling to note the degree to which serious discussions about the drug war tend to be missing from the major political blogs on the right and the left. They talk about everything else — abortion, gun control, gay marriage, etc. — but not the drug war, except maybe in passing. [Note, this post is a generalization. I have not read all the blogs all the time, and would be happy to be corrected on this, but it appears to me to be true.]
Drug testing in schools and the workplace? Nothing. Harm reduction? Zip. Medical marijuana? Well, Raich got a bit of play, but where’s the outrage from the left about the jack-booted thugs raiding medical marijuana dispensaries? Where’s the outrage from the right about states’ rights? (Oh, I forgot, that was the old right.)
Mexico? As far as the left is concerned, there is no drug war in Mexico. Some of the right-wing blogs bring it up, but usuall only as an added element to justify a hard-line immigration stance (Mexicans bring disease. And drugs, too.)
Afghanistan? Mostly a side-issue to bash the other side about the war. (“See, the war planning was incompetent.” “See, we need to support the war even more.”)
Criminal justice and sentencing disparity gets some play, mostly due to the tireless efforts of Jeralyn Merritt, the original TalkLeft blogger.
Consider the powerful article by Misha Glenny in the Washington Post yesterday. As of this writing, 40 blogs link to it, but there are no real A-list bloggers there (and you know they all read the Post).
It was interesting, then, to see Brad Plumer concerned (and rather perplexed) in Why the Prison State? He mentions the excellent Daniel Lazare and Glenn Loury pieces I’ve covered regarding incarceration, race, and the drug war.
And it got him thinking…

That’s persuasive, but it still seems incomplete. The War on Drugs, which has contributed more to our mass-incarceration orgy than anything else, strikes me as more than just Jim Crow for the 21st century. […] There seems to be a mass frenzy at work here that goes beyond race, even if that’s how it started.

And then Matthew Yglesias picked up on it, too (although briefly). And both seemed to express some concern over the fact that liberal leaders have been behind much of the historical support of the war on drugs.
I think reading between the lines in the Plumer and Yglesias posts (and the comments) gives a little insight into why so few of the major left or right blogs talk about this — You can’t use the immorality or the injustice of the drug war to score political points. Both sides have been complicit. Both sides have been dupes.
Update: Scott Morgan comments.