|
|
|
Drug WarRant
 |
Saturday, December 22, 2007 |
Open Thread
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.
 Just a Girl in short shorts talking about whatever brings us a delightfully quirky and moving story: A Christmas Miracle in Colombia
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.
Nice letter from Howard Wooldridge in the Amarillo Globe-News
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Drug Sense Weekly
10:37:33 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Friday, December 21, 2007 |
Oakland's Mayor Speaks Out
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."
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.
3:16:52 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Supply Side Economics
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:
- A stupid idea
- A really stupid idea
Thus ends the Economics 101 lesson.
9:00:50 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Thursday, December 20, 2007 |
L.A. cops complain about law enforcement
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.
10:43:21 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Plan Mexico and fundamental economic principles
From the Council on Hemispheric Affairs comes a detailed discussion of Plan Mexico: Does the Merida Initiative Represent a New Direction for U.S.-Mexico Relations, or Does It Simply Refocus the Issue Elsewhere? by Laura Starr and Maria Delle Donne.
The article does a good job of looking at the entire picture, including the controversy over the secret nature of the negotiations, and some of the real concerns that the Merida Initiative is intended to address.
What's most important comes near the end of the article. The authors clearly understand simple, incontrovertible facts regarding the nature of economics and drugs that seem to escape our political leaders (or are intentionally ignored by them).
While Merida may witness an increase in border security and thus, logically, the number of seizures occurring, it is unlikely that it will be able, in its present form, to inhibit the overall trafficking of drugs. The continuance of such anti-drug aid simply encourages traffickers to seek other alternatives because as long as there is demand, traffickers will ensure the same for an adequate supply. Therefore, prices will be driven up as drastic measures are taken to ensure delivery, as referred to by Bill Piper, director of The Drug Policy Alliance: "Supply-side strategies have failed for cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and virtually every drug to which they have been applied--including alcohol during Prohibition."
Fundamental economic principles demonstrate why: as long as a strong demand for drugs exists, there will be a supply to meet it. There are always newly organized cartels ready to step into someone's place should he or she be arrested or made to flee. [...]
The Merida Initiative may appear on the surface to strengthen United States-Mexican relations. However, it may not go far in averting drug traffickers' intentions as they seek borders and routes elsewhere. Meanwhile, drug consumption will remain high, and traffickers will readily be able to sell drugs while purchasing any number of weapons necessary to get the job done.
8:35:04 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Open Thread
You know they're going to get coal in their stockings... Santa Claus shot at by drug dealers while flying south.
Ethan Brown: Big Easy offers only tough choices for America's drug war in the Guardian
Jacob Sullum: The Dose Makes the Poison, Even for Marijuana Smoke. Sullum clears up mis-information about a recent study published by the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology. The media is always looks for the smoking gun when it comes to marijuana, but it simply isn't there.
The obvious problem with the media doing scare stories about marijuana is that there are no bodies. Marijuana has been smoked by hundreds of millions of people over the course of hundreds, if not thousands of years. Where are the bodies -- the mass graves of people who died when all the toxic aspects of marijuana caught up with them? Every time a new scare comes out, I look around me, but fail to see large numbers of people suddenly drop dead, so then I have to dredge through the actual details of the study to determine... yep, no big deal. Fortunately, Jacob Sullum and NORML have already done that with this study.
Jerry Paradis of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) visited Colombia and and talked to farmers, activists, bureaucrats, cops, and soldiers. He writes about his experiences in this blog series. Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four
12:12:02 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Wednesday, December 19, 2007 |
Christmas Greetings
I'd recommend buying hemp products for your Christmas presents instead.
12:13:19 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Wrong-address raids reaching wider audience?
Another wrong-address raid, as a result of bad informant information, took place in Minneapolis earlier this week.
With her six kids and husband tucked into bed, Yee Moua was watching TV in her living room just after midnight when she heard voices -- faint at first, then louder. Then came the sound of a window shattering.
Moua bolted upstairs, where her husband, Vang Khang, grabbed his shotgun from a closet, knelt and fired a warning shot through his doorway as he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. He let loose with two more blasts. Twenty-two bullets were fired back at him, by the family's count.
Then things suddenly became clear.
"It's the police! Police!" his sons yelled.
Khang, a Hmong immigrant with shaky command of English, set down his gun, raised his hands and was soon on the ground, an officer's boot on his neck.
The gunmen, it turned out, were members of a police SWAT team that had raided the wrong address because of bad information from an informant -- a mistake that some critics say happens all too frequently around the country and gets innocent people killed.
The difference in this wrong-address raid? In the wake of the Kathryn Johnston murder, it's getting national attention. And the articles are at least starting to ask the tough questions.
That was an AP article with wide national distribution quoted above, and, in addition to talking about the Kathryn Johnston story, included information on Radley Balko's work
A study last year by the libertarian Cato Institute said: "Because of shoddy police work, over-reliance on informants, and other problems, each year hundreds of raids are conducted on the wrong addresses, bringing unnecessary terror and frightening confrontation to people never suspected of a crime."
Another version of the AP story hit my local paper. generating dozens of online comments, most unfavorable to the police. And it's been in USA Today, Washington Post -- all over.
Rubén Rosario in the Twin Cities' Pioneer Press interviewed Radley Balko for Botched police raids not so rare -- worth checking out.
It's possible -- just possible -- that people are starting to wake up a little bit regarding this issue of indiscriminate use of paramilitary-style raids on homes.
The question is, how many Khang families will have to have to experience that terror before significant changes are made? How many more Xavier Bennetts and Alberto Sepulvedas and Ashley Villareals will have to die first?
7:48:02 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Monday, December 17, 2007 |
Odds and Ends
Tom Angell has been looking over the big appropriations bill in Congress. Here's what he's found so far (of course, this could still change).
- Drug Czar's "anti-drug" ad budget is being slashed down to $60 million
next year (down from $99 mil this year and considerably less than the
President's 2008 request of $130 mil).
- DC is now allowed to spend its own money on needle exchange (but is
still barred from spending federal funds on the practice).
- DC is still barred from implementing the medical marijuana initiative
passed by voters in 1998.
- ONDCP and other federal agencies are banned from producing video news
releases ("prepackaged news stories") unless they are clearly labeled as
being prepared or funded by that agency (ONDCP got into a lot of trouble
a few years ago for putting out "covert propaganda" (GAO's term) in this
form).
- Random student drug testing is funded at $10.8 million.
Thanks, Tom!
Dutch Police Insist on Smoking Marijuana Off-Duty via Scott Morgan.
Mark Kleiman talks about drugs on bloggingheads.tv
Send the Right Message has Presidential Candidates report cards.
An enjoyable read and a blast from history: Bill and Hillary's Hippie Daze
It was, after all, 1971. It was, after all, Berkeley California. If the Clintons, during their first prolonged cohabitation, were at all "normal" for the time their evenings at home would have consisted of
- rolling a fat doobie, probably three or four;
- whipping up some chicken curry
- smoking a fat doobie;
- getting some dim candles going along with a stick of incense
- putting on a tried and true series of records; and
- hopping into bed and, as we said then, "balling" until they passed out.
War on Drugs has unlikely foe
As a friend of presidents and hobnobber with governors, David Fleming makes an unlikely insurgent against the War on Drugs.
He's been dubbed by a local business weekly as "The Valley's Most Powerful Person," chairs the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and doles out dollars to charity by the millions.
He works for one of the world's largest law firms. He can preach for hours about business tax, government reform and transportation.
With his immaculate white shirts, slicked-back hair and easy familiarity with powerful people, Fleming embodies The Man. [...]
The Man, a registered Republican and consummate insider, thinks the drug war is "stupid."
9:39:15 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
Word of the Day: Fungible
noun:
1. Something that is exchangeable or substitutable.
In an interesting article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune about the fear-mongering over the retroactivity regarding the slight reduction in crack cocaine sentencing, this caught my attention:
[Federal judge Ruben] Castillo, who helped build large-scale drug prosecutions in the Chicago U.S. attorney's office in the 1980s, says the commission's vote is recognition that the current strategy in the war on drugs is flawed. Twenty years ago, Castillo said, "we were going after the right defendants." Now, he complains that his docket overflows with low-level street dealers.
"These people are very fungible," he said. "They're replaced the very next day by someone else with no criminal background. ... We're not making a dent."
Fungibility - another reason the drug war doesn't work.
8:48:23 AM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
Sunday, December 16, 2007 |
What's in a name?
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
- Shakepeare's Romeo and Juliet
I've been doing some thinking about names and words used in connection with drug policy reform. Do they matter? Are there some we should avoid?
Marijuana
There are those in the reform community who would prefer that we didn't use the word "marijuana." And with reason.
It's got some baggage. Look back in history -- the earliest efforts to outlaw the plant at a federal level involved racism and the intentional use of the Spanish word for the plant -- so that those who used it for medical and industrial reasons under other names did not even realize what was happening.
And even today, many people associate "marijuana" with the so-called Cheech and Chong image of recreational use -- a fact that distresses many medical use activists. They hate the term "medical marijuana" and prefer "medical cannabis." They're right -- cannabis is the scientific name. They also claim that their chances of getting political cover with the name "marijuana" are greatly reduced. Possibly.
But the fact is that marijuana has become an accepted part of the language, and it is a perfectly correct term. And, quite frankly, it's not possible to fool people today, even if we wanted to. They know we're talking about marijuana, regardless of the word we use.
So yes, "cannabis" is a good term -- a proper term. One that I'll continue to use often, particularly when discussing the plant in scientific/medical terms. But "marijuana" is a good term -- a proper term. One that has meaning to everyone -- something that 100 million Americans know on an intimate basis.
If we're going to make significant progress in eliminating the public reticence in talking about this plant, it won't be through being afraid to speak any of its names.
Drug War/War on Drugs
In a very real sense, these are meaningless terms.
"War on drugs." Sounds like an army on one side with a bunch of pills and plants on the other side. In fact, think about the words "War on..." What's up with that? You can have a "war in" (war in the middle east) or "war against" (war against Islamist extremists), but whenever you hear "war on..." there's something messed up going on.
And "drug war"? That invokes images of a battle between Paxil and Prozac -- or price wars like the old gas wars of the 1970s.
And the problem with the war metaphor is that it encourages people to think in terms of winning and losing from the perspective of those waging the war, so that supporting the war (government) is seen as good, and opposing it (seeking another approach) is seen as undermining the war effort and advocating surrender/loss.
However, this is a true war, waged by the government against its own people. Maybe some day it will become known as the People's War, but for now, we can't escape the Drug War.
What we need to do is remind people that the Drug War is a war against the people and help them understand that they may not be on the side that they thought, regardless of whether they use, or condone the use of, currently illicit drugs.
Besides, I can't avoid using the words "Drug War" at Drug WarRant now, can I?
Legalization
Here's a controversial term. Some people ask me if I really mean "legalization" and not "decriminalization." After all, we talk of the evils of criminalization, so why not reverse them with decriminalization? And "legalization" can be used by prohibitionists to invoke the absurd image of having pre-filled heroin needles shrink-wrapped for sale in the 7-11 for eight-year-olds to buy.
But "decriminalization," like decaffeination, just doesn't do it for me. It implies fixing everything that this drug war has done with some kind of minor adjustment. And while it can have the correct meaning, it is often used to refer to extremely unsatisfactory "solutions," such as eliminating criminal penalties for marijuana use, making it merely a civil fine (leaving intact all the worst aspects of the drug war, including the black market and all that entails). Decriminalization can allow people to claim a reform view, without really taking a stand. It's better than nothing, but it's not good enough.
Legalization is sometimes misrepresented as anarchy by definition. But in fact, there are plenty of examples of legalized activities/products that are regulated -- alcohol, tobacco, bungee jumping, etc., etc. There are plenty of different models of legalization -- but the key thing is that the product/activity will be available through legal channels, not solely through the black market, and that's critical.
Another reason to hang on to "legalization" -- if we give up the word, it will become the property of the prohibitionists to define as they wish and to hang on us. It's something they already have tried. They'd like "legalizers" to be some kind of nasty word, but they haven't really pulled it off, except with a few enablers like Kleiman. The general public isn't sure about legalization, but we have the ability to claim it and educate people with it.
So, to sum up:
Let's end the drug war and legalize drugs, including marijuana.
What do you think?
"Words. Words.
They're all we have to go on."
- Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
11:19:39 PM | drug policy | Links | permalink |
|
|
|
|
|
|
