Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Human Events Online again For the third time in a week, Human Events Online has a drug war piece. I'm wondering if the new one is an attempt to repair their image after the John Hawkins disaster. This one is Big, Big Government by John Stossel, and what a breath of fresh air it is after what we've been getting. Whatever happened to America's federal system, which recognized the states as "laboratories of democracy"? [...] The constitutional plan presented in the Federalist Papers delegated only a few powers to the federal government, with the rest reserved to the states. The system was hailed for its genius. Instead of having decisions made in the center -- where errors would harm the entire country -- most policies would be determined in a decentralized environment. A mistake in California would affect only Californians. New Yorkers, Ohioans, and others could try something else. Everyone would learn and benefit from the various experiments. It made a lot of sense. It still does. Too bad the idea is being tossed on the trash heap by big-government Republicans and their DEA goons. Drug prohibition -- like alcohol prohibition -- is a silly idea, as the late free-market economist Milton Friedman often pointed out. Something doesn't go away just because the government decrees it illegal. It simply goes underground. Then a black market creates worse problems. [emphasis added] Update: Oh, no. I spoke too soon. Here's another extraordinarily stupid drug war article in Human Events, this time by Mac Johnson, titled Libertarians on Drugs. According to this idiot, the drug war is the only thing preventing us all from becoming slobbering addicts, since none of us have free will when it comes to drugs. 11:40:07 PM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Mark Kleiman gets it right, mostly. Mark Kleiman has a really outstanding piece at The American Interest Online: Dopey, Boozy, Smoky -- and Stupid (although the title, which he didn't pick, sucks). This is Kleiman's best piece to date, and finally does justice to his analyses of the failures of prohibition. For the most part, he avoids his usual unsupported attack on legalizers, with only the slightest obligatory mention... ...the standard political line between punitive drug policy "hawks" and service-oriented drug policy "doves." Neither side is consistently right; some potential improvements in drug policy are hawkish, some are dovish, and some are neither. Some of his suggestions for policy reform are a little bizarre and unworkable (his drinking license, which he's been promoting for over a decade if I recall right, is laughable). But his discussions about the nature of drug use and prohibition are really quite good. Here are a few snippets: Most drug use is harmless, and much of it is beneficial--at least if harmless pleasure and relaxation count as benefits. [...] Not all drugs are equally risky or abusable. But since different drugs are abused in different ways and have different harm profiles, there is no single measure of "harmfulness" or "addictiveness" by which drugs can be ranked. Moreover, the overall damage caused by a drug does not depend on its neurochemistry alone; the composition of the user base and the social context and customs around its use also matter. [...] Some pairs of drugs are substitutes for one another, so that making one more available will reduce consumption of the other. [...] Taxes, regulations and prohibitions can reduce drug consumption and abuse, but always at the cost of making the remaining consumption more damaging than it would otherwise be. [...] But once a drug has an established mass market, more enforcement cannot greatly shrink the problem; existing customers will seek out new suppliers, and imprisoned dealers, seized drugs and even dismantled organizations are replaced. Moreover, the effectiveness of enforcement tends to fall over time as the illicit industries learn to adapt. We have 15 times as many drug dealers in prison today as we had in 1980, yet the prices of cocaine and heroin have fallen by more than 80 percent. [...] And some of his suggestions include legalizing personal growth of marijuana, eliminating the drinking age, not relying on D.A.R.E., expanding opiate maintenance programs, and getting drug enforcement out of the way of pain relief. I haven't had time to analyze the full piece, but as a policy recommendation short of a full legalization regime, it's one of the best ones out there. 10:11:42 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Drug War... Victories? Over at Human Events Online, which recently embarrassed itself by printing John Hawkins fetid In Defense of the Drug War, there is a new piece: Drug War Victories by Robert J. Caldwell. Caldwell touts the recent extradition of Mexican drug lords with a kind of "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead" enthusiasm -- you can almost hear the voices of munchkins in his writing. Once among the most powerful and feared criminal syndicates in Mexico, the AFO is now a shambles. Its top leaders are dead or in custody. Most if not all of the AFO leaders now behind bars face trial in the United States, where bribery cannot buy the criminal justice system and intimidation doesn't work. [...] A counter-narcotics war popularly disparaged as a chronic loser, yet vital to the national interests of both Mexico and the United States, is producing its biggest victories ever. While he notes that this won't mean an end to the "plague of smuggled narcotics," the degree of his celebration seems to know no bounds, and really has no relevance to the real world. By the time the trials of these drug lords are completed, the DEA will be soft-pedaling their significance, because a whole new structure of cartels will be fully in place and functioning smoothly, with ownership of much of the Mexican government. (Just like the conviction of the leaders of the Colombian Cali cartel this past September was such a non-issue, given the transition of cartel power in that country.) The only true victory will come from ending the drug war. A strange game. The only way to win is not to play. Note: In regards to the Hawkins piece, I left out one rebuttal -- from Mark Draughn of Windypundit. 9:34:49 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []

Kenneth Starr doesn't like 9th Circuit libertarians While working on my new Bong Hits 4 Jesus Supreme Court page I've found some interesting quotes in some of the briefs. For example, check out these from Ken Starr's brief representing Principal Morse: ... the court of appeals substituted its unforgiving libertarian worldview for the considered judgment of school officials (and school boards) in seeking, consistent with Congress' statutory mandate, to foster and encourage a drug-free student lifestyle. [...] As to both the First Amendment and the law of qualified immunity, the court of appeals' uncompromisingly libertarian vision is deeply unsettling to public school educators across the country. The decision below is doubly -- and dangerously -- wrong. Interesting that Starr thinks... that libertarian principles are wrong and dangerous that the 9th Circuit is wildly libertarian, and that being opposed to libertarian principles will be attractive to the Supreme Court. Additional note in the case. If you had any doubt about the government's intentions in this case, it was cleared up in the government's brief, which included: ... an effective anti-drug program must not only teach the dangers of drugs; it must also protect impressionable young people from the countervailing effects of peer pressure. At a minimum, such a program entails prohibiting student advocacy of illegal drug use in school or at school events, where students are entrusted to the schools' care. [...] If schools permitted advocacy of illegal drugs, such speech could counteract, if not drown out, the schools' anti-drug message, especially because of peer pressure. Permitting students to make light of the school's anti-drug message or launch a pro-drug use campaign would undermine both that message and the school's disciplinary authority generally. [emphasis added] It's not just speech advocating breaking the law that the government wants to ban, but any speech that interferes with or even makes light of their propaganda. 12:51:27 AM | drug policy | Related  | permalink | comment []