Drug WarRant

Jacob Sullum thinks proposed marijuana taxes will be too high. Mark Kleiman thinks they’ll be too low.

• High Marijuana Taxes Could Derail Legalization Plans – Jacob Sullum
• Cannabis taxes will wind up too low, not too high – Mark Kleiman

I’ll let you read the two competing pieces and see where you think reality will land. I haven’t studied the tax proposals enough to have a prediction. I will say that I’m not personally opposed to a cannabis tax, in large part because it’ll make it harder to reverse legalization once governments get a taste. But it’s important that taxes be low enough to encourage people to quickly switch to legal channels.

In trying to decide between the two, you can’t really be faulted for questioning the reliability of Kleiman’s arguments, given the petty and petulant way Mark deals with people who have a different opinion.

Once again, Mark trots out the tired and offensive “you must be smoking” ad hominem:

“Anyone who’s worried about the price of cannabis is spending far too much time stoned.”

[Update: Mark explains his use of this argument in comments. Though not obvious, I can see how it could be read that way.]

It’s a ridiculous argument device that he uses to a bizarre extent.

Later on, he tries to “refute” Sullum in advance by attacking libertarianism in general.

Naturally, true-believing libertarians insist that cannabis legalization be done in the way likely to generate bad outcomes. Taxes BAD! Regulations BAD! “Commercial speech” is SACRED! The free market FOREVER! And of course drug abuse is a merely imaginary problem, so cannabis is just an ordinary commodity that the market will handle perfectly.

Again, a common Kleiman technique – refer to differences of opinion regarding how policy will work as opponents’ desiring a bad outcome. I’ve never heard a libertarian say that drug abuse is an imaginary problem – they just disagree with Kleiman regarding the best way to deal with it.

The slogan at the “Reality-Based Community” is “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” What they don’t say is that Kleiman treats his opinions as if they were facts.

More violence in the drug war in Mexico is nothing to laugh at, but I couldn’t help it when reading this headline:

Mexico drug lord shot dead by clown assassins

It immediately made me think of the movie “Real Men” starring James Belushi and John Ritter.

A friend shares his personal story:

In 2010, as part of my conditions of probation, I was asked to enter a drug treatment program for treatment of my dependence on cannabis.

I was reccomended a treatment center by the court system, which I went to. The guy who owned the treatment center sat down and did my intake appointment… we ended up getting pretty friendly and he came out of left field with the following request….. “if you can help me out I can help you out”. What ended up happening was I paid the guy $200 for his pocket, $200 for the classes, and he signed a paper saying that I had completed 20 hours of drug treatment………

Now, at the moment, I did it. Of course. I smoke pot… I’m not dependent on substances, I was happy to not have to sit through a bullshit class about drug dependency and DUI’s. But as time has gone on and I see how our criminal justice system works it truly saddens me and I had to speak up about it. Our criminal justice system is a RACKET, the war on drugs is a joke and if people don’t wake the fuck up and try to make a change……. we stay in the same revolving circle. […] Truly makes me sick.

Just one of an incredibly long list of rackets driven by this drug war.

At least that’s apparently the view Iran has of drug offenders.

Reminiscent of over-the-top villian movies where the bad guy tortures his victim to death, and then brings them back to life in order to exact more torture…

Iran to hang drug dealer twice

According to official state media, a doctor declared the man dead after the 12 minute-hanging, but when the prisoner’s family went to collect his body the following day he was found to still be breathing.

He is currently in hospital, but a judge reportedly said he would be executed again “once medical staff confirm his health condition is good enough”.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve talked about the Sunrise police before, but this is an amazing investigative report in the Sun Sentinel:

Cops. Cash. Cocaine. How Sunrise police make millions selling drugs by Megan O’Matz and John Maines.

In most drug stings, the police attempt to buy drugs from dealers. But in Sunrise, the police sell the drugs. And instead of trying to bust people in their community, they lure people to Sunrise from all over the country to buy cocaine from the police, and then take their money and cars.

They have a network of informants who go out and find buyers and get them to come to Sunrise. Some of these informants are paid (usually a percent of the take), while others are victims of previous reverse stings and now are working to reduce their sentences. One paid informant has made over $800,000 in the past 5 years.

This investigative report has amazing detail, down to the individual amounts that informants have been paid and the incredible amount of overtime paid to police (from their profits, of course).

Kudos to the writers for bringing all this detail to light and showing just how much the drug war is a profit-driven business.

Ethan gave a particularly stirring and effective speech at the Nantucket Project last week.

I enjoyed this quote defining who we are as drug policy reformers:

We’re the people who love drugs, we’re the people who hate drugs, we’re the people who don’t give a damn about drugs, but every one of us believes that the war on drugs is not the way to deal with the reality of drugs in our society.

Yep.

The speech is about 20 minutes, but it’s quite engaging, so the time flies by. Very nice job and worth a watch.

I struggled a little bit with his drug policy reform objective statement:

The objective of drug policy reform is to reduce the role of criminalization and the criminal justice system in drug control to the maximum extent consistent with protecting public safety and health.

I think it’s a good statement — he’s definitely on the right track and he’s trying not to make it even longer or more convoluted, but I guess my own bias is that I’m not sure that “reduce” is a sufficiently strong term when talking about the criminal justice system and drug policy. Because it isn’t just a matter of lessening the devastation of the criminal justice system, but also of recognizing that other methods besides the criminal justice system can be more effective in reducing the harms of drug abuse (without adding their own harms).

Perhaps adding two words: “…to reduce and replace the role of criminalization…” would strengthen that statement a bit.

Alternatively, I might take a different approach to the notion and say that the ultimate goal of drug policy reform is to achieve a system of drug controls whereby the negative effects of drug abuse are lessened to the extent possible without adding negative effects to society from the controls themselves. (That’s also not perfect, but I may continue to work on it.)

Rochester, New York, police apparently never heard of the First Amendment’s right to assemble. ‘Drug free zones’ proposal for Rochester neighborhoods

Rochester City Council member Adam McFadden is proposing a law that would create drug free zones in the city of Rochester. It would mean that police officers would have the authority to arrest anyone who is loitering in front of a home, a businesses or on a street corners…no questions asked.

Number of babies born with drug addition rising – that’s right – drug addition (same mistake is made in the body of the article).

It’s not just the spelling. The whole article is a joke.

So this is how science is conducted?

Cannabis causing strokes in young people, Irish medic says

When the blood vessel was examined by a neuropathologist, they found that the lining had “grossly thickened” and blocked off the artery resulting in the stroke. Prof Harbison said that this echoed findings in another of his patients, a heavy cannabis user who had had a blood vessel outside the brain biopsied after surviving a stroke. […]

“There is a level of concern that there is an association with particularly heavy users. We are seeing people coming in with strokes where we cannot find any cause but their cannabis use. This case and the other case leads you to think that there is a direct organic effect to it,” he said.

Well that explains it then, doesn’t it? If you can’t find another cause, and two of them are heavy cannabis users, you got yourself some cannabis deaths.

As science, it certainly seemed to impress Kevin.

Harmless? Cannabis linked to strokes and deaths in Ireland, Irish medic tells inquest: http://t.co/mnNmVu1qLg

Having a government shutdown while the DEA goes to work is like not having enough money to buy food for your children while still buying bullets to shoot yourself in the foot.

The Economist has been holding a week-long debate on the question of “Should Cannabis be Legal Everywhere” between Ethan Nadelmann and Neil McKeganey, moderated by Josie Delap.

There’s certainly no doubt among the internet community as to who is winning this particular debate, as the vote has been consistently 93% to 7% in favor of Nadelmann each day.

The usual character has shown up to make his scare argument about marijuana big business, use non-sequiturs about alcohol, and promote his book.

There’s still an opportunity to go over there and add your 2 cents to the discussion.