Drug WarRant

thehim has an excellent discussion going on about meth over at Blog Reload (Part one and Part two).
The discussion centers around the role of meth in crime and the extent to which the crackdown on local meth production has increased crime levels (in part due to the fact that eliminating local labs brings in organized criminals to take on the supply role, and that can result in increased violent crime).
I pretty much agree with thehim’s conclusions in part two, although I’m actually a little less pessimistic regarding the challenges of dealing with meth in a legalization model. To a large extent, I believe that a proper legalization and regulation approach to all drugs will cause meth to mostly go away. The availability of regulated “clean” amphetamines will dramatically reduce the demand for meth. There will be some hard-core users who will need some treatment or maintenance programs, and the problem will be greater than it would have been had we not gone down this path in the first place, but meth (as we know it today), will eventually disappear just like the backyard moonshine still.

Further information on the “conversion.” Bob Barr, interviewed by Charles Goyette on KFNX (Phoenix), on the drug war:

There‰s a lot of room to work on that issue. For example, on the issue of medical marijuana and the states‰ rights issues involving that. I‰m very supportive of states‰ rights. I am also very supportive the concept of legitimate testing for the use of medical marijuana and I‰m very disappointed that the government has stood in the way of that. So there‰s a lot of room there. I‰m working through some of those individual liberties issues…

And something that should be entertaining coming January 18 at Fordham Law School:

The Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation Presents a debate: Medical Marijuana: Should the sick be able to smoke?
Featuring
Bob Barr, Former Congressman, 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union
V.
Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director, Drug Policy Alliance

There are indications that we may be seeing an beginnings of an upswing in violent crime in the U.S. Pat at Left Independent blames the drug war.
… and not just in the U.S.

Have a nice Christmas thought for the poor drug warriors. They try to use the drug war to control other countries, but they’re not getting anything nice in their stockings for doing so. Maybe they should just take the rest of the year off.
“bullet” Peru’s president recommends coca

Mr Garcia’s culinary suggestions did not stop at a simple salad.
“You can put coca leaves in your roast dinners, in the oven, you can make many things which it will give a special taste to.”
The president likened coca leaves to the herb rosemary and to rocket, adding that he personally had cooked with coca leaves.
He also said that coca leaves could be used to treat sore throats, suggesting that other world leaders who suffer from hoarseness should take a little moist coca.
The coca plant has been used for centuries in Andean cultures
“You will see how it cleans the throat,” he advised.

“bullet” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Accuses U.S. Ambassador of Lying About Drugs

“A little while ago, the U.S. ambassador in Caracas told a big lie. He should retract it if it’s really true that (U.S. officials) want good relations like they’ve been saying,” Chavez told reporters who questioned him during an unrelated event on Wednesday.

“bullet” Mexico troops find hybrid marijuana plant

Soldiers trying to seize control of one Mexico’s top drug-producing regions found the countryside teeming with a new hybrid marijuana plant that can be cultivated year-round and cannot be killed with pesticides. […]
The plants’ roots survive if they are doused with herbicide, said army Gen. Manuel Garcia.
“These plants have been genetically improved,” he told a handful of journalists allowed to accompany soldiers on a daylong raid of some 70 marijuana fields. “Before we could cut the plant and destroy it, but this plant will come back to life unless it’s taken out by the roots.”
The new plants, known as “Colombians,” mature in about two months and can be planted at any time of year, meaning authorities will no longer be able to time raids to coincide with twice-yearly harvests.
The hybrid first appeared in Mexico two years ago but has become the plant of choice for drug traffickers Michoacan, a remote mountainous region that lends to itself to drug production.
Yields are so high that traffickers can now produce as much marijuana on a plot the size of a football field as they used to harvest in 10 to 12 acres. That makes for smaller, harder-to-detect fields…

Just like the drug war created innovation in developing eradication resistant coca plants in Colombia, the same is true of marijuana plants.
Drug eradication is, in the current situation, the ultimate in job security. Drugs cannot be eradicated. There is a demand. There will be a supply.
It used to be that the U.S. “foreign aid” drug war bribes were enough to get these little countries to sell themselves into destruction. But some of them are saying “enough” and it may not be long before it gets prohibitively expensive for the U.S. to keep the rest of the world in line.

Here’s a few things worth checking out:
“bullet” Radley Balko does a really fine job explaining the meth “crisis” to the uninformed in his latest FOX news column: Government’s Drug War Fuels Meth Problem

So Americans’ access to cold medicine has been restricted, we’ve embarked on questionable sting operations that likely ensnare innocent people, and the FDA is allowing a useless medication to be sold to U.S. consumers. And to what end? Meth is more available and more potent than it ever was.
Typical drug war folly. This is probably the place to point out that drug war itself is the bad government policy gave us the crude form of methampehtamine that’s so popular today in the first place.

“bullet” Bruce Mirken has a good piece at AlterNet: Why Smoking Marijuana Doesn’t Make You a Junkie. He discusses the science that has put to rest the particular gateway theory that marijuana causes people to use other drugs.

The lie that marijuana somehow turns people into junkies is dead. Officials who insist on repeating it as a way of squelching discussion about common-sense reforms should be laughed off the stage.

“bullet” Economist David R. Henderson explains the economics of the drug war in South and Central America in ways that a Kindergartner could understand (but would be totally over the heads of most politicians) in How to Undercut Ch½vez Peacefully With Less Military, Not More

The raw cocaine price in Colombia is only about 1 percent of its street price in the United States, because of the risk premium added on to prices at each stage of the distribution. Therefore, tripling the raw price would cause the U.S. street price to rise by 2 percent.
There’s a better way to go. The U.S. government should stop pressuring Colombia’s government to destroy its cocaine industry, and we the people should demand it. Then Colombia’s government can decide whether to do that or not, and I predict that it won’t. If, in the extreme, Colombia’s government legalized the cocaine trade, production would increase and the price would fall. But even if the Colombian price fell to zero, clearly impossible, the U.S. price would fall by only 1 percent. Meanwhile, the leftist insurgent’s funds would dry up š why pay for protection when you don’t need it? […]

“bullet” Transform Foundation Blog has good coverage of the recent discussion in England regarding the drug trade and the murder of prostitutes in Ipswich. The positive thing is that a real discussion is happening, and the notion of legalization as a form of harm reduction is getting serious play. Also nice to see articles like Prohibition: a crippling habit by Nick Davies:

There are really only two kinds of people who support the prohibition of drugs: those who know the truth and, for some political reason, refuse to admit it; and those who genuinely have no idea what they are talking about.

I’ve never really felt the need to explain the position that libertarians should have regarding the drug war. In fact, in my FAQ, all I say is:

Well, duh! If you need to ask, you’re probably not a libertarian.

One particular recent event, however, is muddying the waters… the conversion of Bob Barr to the Libertarian party. And as Mona notes, this is the same Bob Barr who was once a Congressman Drug Warrior:

Suggesting the depth of hostility toward the notion of legal drugs, Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., asked whether anti-racketeering laws could be used to prosecute people conspiring to legalize drugs.

That’s right. He suggested that the government use RICO to go after people like… me.
And now he’s a spokesperson for the Libertarian party. What a conversion!
Or is it?
Jacob Sullum at Hit and Run notes that Barr avoids the topic in his recent interview with David Weigel and says:

… But it’s hard for me to see how a libertarian (or Libertarian) can support drug prohibition. Contrary to what he says in the interview, this is no “minor disagreement.” Not only does the war on drugs directly violate the basic right to control one’s body and mind; it leads to exactly the sort of wide-ranging civil liberties violations, especially in connection with Fourth Amendment rights, that so concern Barr when it comes to the war on terrorism…

I believe it’s possible to be a pro-life Democrat. You could even be a gay Republican. But a pro-drug war Libertarian? It’s oxymoronic.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens if Barr is pinned down on this issue.

Link (Via Hit and Run)

For years, activists in the marijuana legalization movement have claimed that cannabis is America’s biggest cash crop. Now they’re citing government statistics to prove it.
A report released today by a marijuana public policy analyst contends that the market value of pot produced in the U.S. exceeds $35 billion Ö far more than the crop value of such heartland staples as corn, soybeans and hay, which are the top three legal cash crops.

Now, first it should be noted that there are all sorts of problems with valuing illicit crops, including the methods of estimating quantity, the inclusion of non-viable crops, and the computation of street value. However, as an point of discussion, this report by Jon Gettman is probably as accurate as exists out there.
And his point is that with such a huge activity out there, clearly prohibition doesn’t work and can’t contain it, so it would make a whole lot more sense to bring it into the regulated market.
Naturally, the drug czar’s office was asked to weigh in…

Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, cited examples of foreign countries that have struggled with big crops used to produce cocaine and heroin. “Coca is Colombia’s largest cash crop and that hasn’t worked out for them, and opium poppies are Afghanistan’s largest crop, and that has worked out disastrously for them,” Riley said. “I don’t know why we would venture down that road.”

No, Tom, you ignorant slut. The whole point is that if it’s your biggest cash crop, it doesn’t make sense to give that over to criminal control. You should legalize, tax and regulate. You’re making our point for us.

On one thing the drug czar’s office is right — parents should talk to their teens about drugs. However, the drug czar will tell you that you should lie to them, search their rooms and drug test them on a regular basis. That is the most messed-up kind of parenting out there.
However, there is a method that works. It’s based on a radical concept of telling the truth. And it’s about safety first.
Eight years ago, drug policy expert Marsha Rosenbaum wrote a letter to her son, who was entering high school. She talked to him about drugs in a common sense way, and the letter became somewhat famous, but some people wondered just how such a letter would work.
Last month, her son wrote her back.
Read both letters.

I’ve got to admit that I was a bit puzzled earlier this week when Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon decided to send 7,000 soldiers, federal police and Navy forces to Michoacan to fight the drug war, and then expanded that to other states.
Using troops in a so-called “drug war” is kind of like the British redcoats in bright uniforms, marching in formation and upset that the colonists aren’t playing fair. It just doesn’t work. Sure, you might nail a few of the more obvious targets, but the rest of the trafficking system will just blend in like a chameleon, giving soldiers nothing to shoot at but civilians.
And sure enough, the LA Times reports today: Mexico anti-drug effort mostly a bust (“… and not the kind Calderon had in mind.”)

New president’s initiative yields little in the way of seizures and no arrests despite its high profile.

So far, no surprise.
But there was a very interesting passage at the end of the article:

The Calderon administration’s strategy may be limited, at least for now, to warning traffickers that the government will interfere with their business unless the killings end, analysts say.
“They’re not trying to end drug trafficking or drug use,” said Jorge Chabat, a drug trade expert. “They’re just trying to maintain a minimum amount of order.
“This is more like a father with a misbehaving adolescent.”

Woah! That’s very interesting. My reading of that is that Mexico may be wishing to send a negotiating message that non-violent trafficking may be winked at by the state in order to reduce the violence. If so, that’s a pretty major policy decision that won’t sit well with the U.S.

Ratified December 15, 1791.