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Drug WarRant
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Just what is drug abuse, anyway?
YouTube has bowed to pressure to remove certain categories of videos, based on demands by Joe Lieberman in his efforts to protect us from the terrorists. I'm not sure how it was supposed to work for the terrorists -- maybe they were using funny YouTube videos to distract us at work in order to bring down America's productivity -- but obviously Deputy Droopy Dog is out there watching out for us...
Among the other changes handed down was a prohibition of videos containing "drug abuse"--a phrase that, like other parts of YouTube's rule set, comes with no context, elucidation, examples, or anything else that would help users figure out what "abuse" might actually mean in practice. [...]
Not until drug videos do begin disappearing will we be able to tell if there's any rhyme or reason to the application of the rule. But as far as a drug purge goes, count me as a skeptic. I doubt if YouTube tries to smoke out every last pot, Salvia, and alcohol video from its giant database. It'd be too much work, and with all that stuff already in its system, I doubt YouTube would have the motivation anyway.
Banning videos of "drug abuse" will have no more affect on reducing drug abuse (or terrorism) than banning videos of Joe Lieberman would have on reducing the number of cowardly un-American politicians.
The debate over legalization really is dull. That's because it's over with. The prohibitionists have lost in all important respects, and I suspect they know it.
I love to travel. However, Indonesia will never make my list.
109. Mr. Zulfiqaraw, aged 40, from Lahore, Pakistan, was arrested at Jakarta Airport in November 2004 on allegations of drug related offences. While he was abroad the police raided his apartment in Jakarta which he shared with a friend who possessed drugs. Despite the friend's confession and assurances that Mr. Zulfiqaraw was not involved in any drug related matter, the police took Mr. Zulfiqaraw from the airport to a private house, where he was tortured for three days. He was frequently punched, kicked and threatened with being shot unless he would confess. Nobody knew his whereabouts. After three days his health deteriorated so much that he had to be taken to the police hospital, where he was treated for 17 days.
Subsequently, he was transferred to Polda Jakarta where he spent two and a half months in official police custody. The prosecutor in charge, Mr. Hutagaol, offered to drop any charges for a payment of 400 million IDR (about 42,700 $US).
Mr. Zulfiqaraw perceived his ensuing trial as strikingly unfair and biased against him since he is a foreigner. No convincing evidence was presented; during the trial session his judge fell asleep. He did not receive any legal aid although he was not able to finance a lawyer; his embassy was wrongly informed and failed to support him. He was sentenced to death.
Over at Cato Unbound, in the discussion of the Erowid article Towards a Culture of Responsible Drug Use, Jonathan Caulkins was the first respondent with Is Responsible Drug Use Possible? -- a thoroughly out-to-lunch response (which I discussed here --be sure to read the comments as well). It was embarrassing in its display of logical fallacies and falsehoods.
Now Jacob Sullum has provided his resonse to Caulkin's mess with True Temperance
To say that "modern humans must learn how to relate to psychoactives responsibly," as Earth and Fire Erowid do, is not the same as "denying or denigrating an individual's right to choose temperance," as Jonathan Caulkins suggests. First of all, what the Erowids are preaching is temperance. Aristotle defined that virtue this way:
The temperate man holds a mean position with regard to pleasures. . . . Such pleasures as conduce to health and bodily fitness he will try to secure in moderation and in the right way; and also all other pleasures that are not incompatible with these, or dishonorable, or beyond his means. . . . The temperate man desires the right things in the right way and at the right time.[1]
Sullum does a nice polite job of debunking Caulkins (and from what reactions I've found so far, it seems to be unanimous that Caulkins really screwed the pooch on this one). Sullum also takes a moment to differentiate two distinct political philosophies...
I see the drug laws as unjust because they go beyond the proper function of government by punishing people for actions that violate no one's rights. By likening drug use to speeding and to driving while intoxicated, Caulkins obscures the distinction between self-harming behavior and behavior that endangers others. Still, he clearly believes it's appropriate to forcibly protect people from risks they voluntarily assume, whether by using drugs, "riding a motorcycle without a helmet, driving without a seatbelt, or swimming when there is no lifeguard" (even in your own swimming pool?). I see "laws designed to protect people from their own poor choices" as unethical impositions and dangerous precedents, based on an open-ended rationale for government intervention that logically leads to totalitarianism.
I'm glad that Cato has provided this opportunity and look forward to the next installment (Kleiman) as well as the open discussion that I believe is scheduled to begin next week.
To the border patrol agent who ignored the pot in my car in NY in 1973 - I did become a math teacher, I did get married and have a family, and so much more. Thank you so much for letting me live my life.
Ever wonder why, if Venezuela is doing so badly in the war on drugs, the U.S. hasn't decertified them (supposedly that's what we do with non-cooperative countries). Well...
"If they were to decertify Venezuela, the Senate of the United States would have to suspend its financial assistance provided to the opposition NGO's for its alleged fight against drug trafficking. Therefore, over the past three years they just say that we do not cooperate with US anti-drug authorities," said Reverol.
Yep, it's so the U.S. can, under the guise of drug enforcement, fund groups in opposition to Chavez.
But of course, John Walters claims that DEA spying and other such activities are out of the question
"The DEA does not engage in any activity but counternarcotics. ... A country's sovereignty is always observed by DEA "
There's video of the whistle-blower, some revelations, and some conjecture. There's also some potential controversy in the fact that apparently the Washington Post had a story on this and pulled it.
Now the fact that Cindy McCain had a drug problem should be of no concern to me or anyone else but her family and her doctor. Nor should the drug use of anyone else.
However, if Senator McCain interfered with the DEA, or called in a favor, then that's a potential concern (or if political persuasion was used in other aspects of the case).
On one side, don't forget... this is the political silly season. Anything can and will happen, and it's reasonable (and smart) to be suspicious of any controversy that surfaces now.
On the other hand, the idea of a politician using political connections to give his/her own family better drug war treatment than the rest of us is so common as to be almost unremarkable.
Regardless of what you may think about Venezuela and Chavez, you can't fault him for wanting his country to not be under the thumb of the U.S., nor is his claim far-fetched that the DEA agents that he kicked out were spying for the U.S.
But this is what happens when you try to prevent the U.S. from pushing its drug war down everyone's throat:
White House drug czar John Walters said Tuesday that Venezuela President Hugo Chavez' policies toward the cocaine trade represents a "global threat" that puts Europe, especially, at risk.
That's right, he's claiming that Chavez is a danger to Europe because he isn't doing a good enough job preventing cocaine from Colombia from getting through.
Cocaine from Colombia, that the U.S. has been spending billions of dollars spraying, eradicating, interdicting and preventing from leaving Columbia in our supposedly "successful" war against drugs there, is pouring out of the country in such massive quantities that the amount making its way via Venezuela is a threat to Europe. And that's Chavez's fault. And, of course, the only way to solve that is to let the U.S. drug war apparatus, that couldn't stop the cocaine from leaving Colombia to begin with, run things for Chavez in Venezuela.
Should No-Knock Police Raids be Rare-or Routine? (POLICY FORUM)
Featuring Cheye Calvo, Mayor, Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Radley Balko, Senior Writer, Reason and author of Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, Peter Christ, Co-founder, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute.
Radley Balko took questions at Art of the Possible last night. The discussion is in the comments of the post.
The Last King of Potland. An interesting article. Canadian accused of major shipments of pot is caught when the U.S. convinces Mexico to turn back his plane with a stop in Texas, where he can be arrested. Now he can't hire a lawyer, nor can his parents on his behalf, because the U.S. will seize the lawyer's fee, so he has to apply for a public defender.
I may talk about this more later -- An article at MSN titled What if we legalized all drugs? at least brings up the question in a mainstream media article. And it poses some of the reasons why it might be worth considering. So it's a step forward. At the same time, it is woefully incomplete as to the costs of prohibition, and the academics interviewed in the article (Peter Reuters and Mark Kleiman) as usual fail to engage the primary discussion and instead get trapped in one of their favorite side loops -- one that is only partially relevant.
It is Jonathan Caulkins, Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Qatar Campus and Heinz School of Public Policy, with Is Responsible Drug Use Possible?
It is a singularly ignorant piece of argumentation, that defies basic logical analysis and completely sidesteps the concept of responsible public policy! I can't even count how many ways I am offended by this piece of academically dishonest tripe.
He says:
While avoiding a full rehash of the by-now dull legalization debate, two points bear mention. First, American drug policy is easy to criticize as intrusive, ineffective, and mean-spirited. However, it does not follow that prohibition is necessarily a bad policy. [...] The problems with America's prohibition stem primarily from particulars of its implementation, not from prohibition per se.
Second, the challenge is not in criticizing prohibition, but designing something better.
He finds the legalization argument "dull." How quaint. The last decades have been about preventing even a proper discussion about legalization. There has been no legalization argument, because the prohibitionists (and the academics) say we can't discuss it.
Note that Jonathan Caulkins is one of the co-authors of the Rand study "How Goes the War on Drugs" which I wrote about here, which stated:
Nor do we explore the merits and demerits of legalizing drugs, even though legalization is perhaps the most prominent and hotly debated topic in drug policy. Our analysis takes current policy as its starting point, and the idea of repealing the nation's drug laws has no serious support within either the Democratic or Republican party. Moreover, because legalization is untested, any prediction of its effects would be highly speculative. [...] For the purposes of this book, we think it is more productive to concentrate on policy alternatives that are politically imaginable, and for which it is possible to reach more confident conclusions about likely consequences.
In other words, in a prominent think-tank's paper about drug policy, legalization wasn't even allowed to be discussed or considered. And now, without having discussed or considered, Jonathan considers it "dull" and not worth considering. How convenient. And how academically dishonest. Caulkins is in the science of public policy. How would this attitude look in other sciences?
Some people say we should stop bleeding patients to purge them of bad humours. They say that the practice is not only ineffective, but dangerous. However, ending the use of bleeding patients is just not politically popular right now, so us doctors should merely study how to better use bleeding to cure people. Maybe we need to do a little more, or a little less, or bleed them in a different way...
Without even refuting legalization or defending criminalization with any logical arguments or... facts, Jonathan can simply state that prohibition simply needs to be... done better, and we should move on.
There are so many flaws in this overall article, I hardly know where to start, from the offensive opening straw man:
What distinguishes the Erowids is their assertion that modern humans must integrate psychoactive use into life. Apparently from their perspective, choosing abstinence, at either the individual or societal level, is inherently inconsistent with being modern.
Denying or denigrating an individual's right to choose temperance is an extreme position not worth engaging.
I have to assume that Caulkins has deliberately distorted the meaning of the Erowids' discussion about how psychoactives, in one way or the other, legal or not, have permeated the fabric of all our lives, and that it behooves all individuals and society to be better informed. The only other option is that Caulkins is dumb as a rock.
Notice once again that, by misrepresenting the original argument, then denigrating the misrepresented argument, he says that there's no point addressing it.
He then has some interesting speculation regarding various drug using categories, but without a frame of reference -- ie, denying any possibility of discussing legalization and denying any responsibility for justifying criminalization -- he's just floating around on a free ride.
None of his discussions have any framework, because he has ignored the basic structure of a proper argument about the legal status of drugs. Throughout his piece, he assumes prohibition, refuses to entertain options other than prohibition, and yet refuses to defend criminalization based on a proper argument. Here's what that proper argument must look like:
It's not enough to say that certain drugs should be illegal because they're dangerous to individuals or society. One must show:
that they are dangerous,
that criminalization actually significantly reduces the danger (and not merely use),
that criminalization is the best way to reduce the danger, and
that the side effects of criminalization won't be worse, such as:
Corruption of Law Enforcement
Putting Drug Safety and Control in the hands of Criminals
Over-incarceration and the influence of the Prison-Industrial Complex
Enormous Black Market Criminal Profits
Drug War Violence
Damage to the Environment
Destruction of Families
Damage to Inner Cities and Poor Communities
Militarization of Law Enforcement and the Victims of Drug War Tactics
Racism and Civil Rights
Erosion of Civil Liberties
Foreign Policy Disasters
Financial Cost
Loss of the Truth
Otherwise. defense of prohibition is meaningless. [Note: The above is also the outline of a new website under construction and a book being written.]
Caulkins ends his piece with the age-old prohibitionist's self-defining prohibition.
The responsible decision is to obey the law, even if doing so forecloses some pleasures, and in that respect responsible drug use is not possible in today's society, even ex post.
It's bad because it's illegal.
No discussion available yet at Cato's site (there will be a full online debate later, I understand), but feel free to discuss at will here.
Jonathan is welcome to join in as well. I'm interested if he is willing to actually justify criminalization as good policy, rather than as good political policy.
Update: Alex at Drug Law Blog (who I don't link to often enough) has reactions as well. He's more polite to Jonathan than I am, but still notes that Caulkins "isn't even attempting to seriously consider the broad range of possibilities."
I don't know if you've followed the comments section on this post regarding Karin Litzcke's article about Insite.
I came down pretty hard on Karin Litzcke, and I still think her article deserved it, but I've got to say that I admire her greatly for coming here and participating in the discussion. She did so with grace and good manners and a sincere attempt to understand a different point of view.
Kudos also to Steve and Jim in particular for their excellent, intelligent engagement with her on this subject. They did better than I could, as the unfortunately necessary "neither fish nor fowl" status of Insite is something I have not spent enough time exploring, although I do know enough to see that it is inextricably linked to the prohibition discussion (as became clear in the discussion, though it was a surprise to Karin).
Again, we so rarely have people with differing views willing to test us in discussion, that it's a joy to have such a visitor (perhaps it's because Karin did not truly consider herself part of the prohibition debate).
We welcome anyone who wishes to talk with us or debate us. If it seems that we have our knives sharpened, it's just that we're so... eager.
Marijuana will wash your clothes, do your taxes, and walk your dog.
Now, all I have to do is send that statement to James Kinsella, Managing Editor of Cape Cod Today, and he'll print it, merely "balancing" it by getting someone else to say "No, marijuana won't wash your clothes, do your taxes, and walk your dog."
Thus, readers will be left knowing only that there is some controversy regarding marijuana's dog-walking, tax-preparing, clothes-laundering capabilities.
"This is not your father's marijuana of 20 or 30 years ago," the district attorney [Michael O'Keefe] said. He said marijuana now is far more potent, and contains substances designed to addict the user.
He also said the rates of automobile and industrial accidents go up when marijuana is involved.
[Whitney] Taylor said statements that current marjuana is much more potent and is infused with addictive substances are "completely untrue."
See, that's true journalism. You don't bother to ask the district attorney to back up his claims with citations or... facts. You don't say "I can't print that unless you give me some proof that it's not a complete lie." No, you go ahead and print it and turn it into a he-said/she-said piece. After all, it's not your job as a journalist to inform people, but merely to entertain them and keep your sources happy, regardless of whether they are lying scumbags.
Congratulations James Kinsella on a job well done. Now, about marijuana's ability to repair potholes...
The Agitator/Reason's Radley Balko will be appearing live online at The Art of the Possible on Wednesday at 7 pm Eastern, and will be taking real-time questions from readers in the comments.
Will America's ill-starred "war on drugs" and its expanding prison culture make it into the presidential campaign?
Standard wisdom says "no way."
We may have the world's highest rate of incarceration -- with only 5 percent of global population, 25 percent of prisoners worldwide. We may be throwing hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders, many barely of age, behind bars -- one reason a stunning one out of every 100 Americans is now imprisoned. We may have created a huge "prison-industrial complex" of prison builders, contractors and swollen criminal justice bureaucracies. [...]
A serious set of problems, a shadow over our national future? No doubt. But do our politicians talk much about alternatives? No way -- they typically find it too risky to be attacked as "soft on crime."
But let's imagine -- what if major party nominees Barack Obama and John McCain were pressed to state their positions on drugs and incarceration?
Voters who hoped that Barack Obama's call for "change" would include revamping U.S. drug policy are finding themselves with reasons to be skeptical. [...]
[recap of Biden's atrocities] [...]
So should progressives cite Obama's tapping of Biden as reason to abandon all hope for drug law reform? Not necessarily, though the notable absence of the subject at the Democratic National Convention will likely give some folks -- this author included -- yet another reason to be cynical.
Bottom line: No administration since the Carter administration has proactively taken steps to liberalize federal drug penalties, and there's little indication that Obama and Biden will possess either the desire or the political will to buck this long-running trend.
The Presidential candidate is the last place to look for drug policy reform.
... or even a discussion about it.
You want a discussion about drug policy reform, come to Pete's couch.
It is interesting, however, to speculate about the planned press conference that Ron Paul is holding on Wednesday morning at 10:30, for which Baldwin, Barr, McKinney, and Nader have supposedly been invited.
That group, as a whole, could actually talk about drug policy.
An uplifting 
