17 thoughts on “We’re Losing The War On (Some) Drugs”
Glad to see you adopting the nomenclature that the late Robert Anton Wilson used; I’ve always thought it a succinct way to draw attention to the hypocrisy of the drug warriors. And Wilson’s Sex and Drugs: A Journey Beyond Limits remains a fascinating treatise on that most hedonistic of intersections (he left off the rock and roll, though).
Making drugs illegal is essentially saying, “Everybody duck, we’ve decided to put criminals in charge of this segment of the economy. Good luck!”
Lessons of Prohibition were completely forgotten or ignored.
Well said.
This isn’t just a tautological statement, either. If your definition of “criminal” is anyone the state declares to be, then yeah, it is, but if you prefer a definition derived from common law then what you’re saying is that prohibition attracts the worst elements of society.
In a way, prohibition competes with government for that role. That’s a disturbing train of thought and deserves closer inspection.
Realistically, legalization won’t result in them being freely available as some ultra-Liberts seem to assume. Cannabis is one thing, but heroin and methamphetamine are another.
What’s more likely is that the FDA would be put in charge of regulating them, meaning Big Pharma would become the legal suppliers. People will still be able to get them illegitimately, as with oxycontin — but new “designer” variants won’t reach the market for years.
One of the better proposals I’ve seen is an intoxicant license, allowing the purchase and use of the milder drugs. Subject to suspension or revocation if you do something illegal in connection with said intoxicants or the stronger alternatives. This should not preclude employers demanding clean employees.
From the legal perspective, federal drug law goes far beyond what I read the Constitution allowing. Outside of border crossings (including state) and exclusive federal jurisdiction I don’t see where the feds have authority here. And it doesn’t help that drug enforcement is used as an excuse for unconstitutional forfeiture and other abuses.
It also doesn’t help that a growing number of people are seemingly oblivious to the harm drugs do.
George Schultz, who is someone I deeply admire and respect, puts a cost on the War on Drugs at 100 billion/year.
The reason I ask about this number is not because of drugs but because of trains, such as the Amtrak subsidy and the gazillion dollars to build the California train.
There is a gentleman commenting on a railroad-oriented Web site, that there is a hidden subsidy to “cars travelling on rural Interstates” in the amount of about 12 cents/passenger mile.
Now all you Libertarians, hear me out. One of the arguments in favor of Amtrak subsidy is “all modes of transportation (meaning planes, trains, and automobiles) get government subsidy so all you Right wingers who want to zero out Amtrak are fools” or something to that effect. Or maybe something like, “So much money is wasted on boondoggle highway projects, why can’t a pittance (1.5 billion per year compared to 30-50 Federal billions on highways) be wasted on trains.” No, the “train people” don’t say it that way, but you get the idea.
The counter to that is that much of the Federal money spent on highways comes from a “user fee”, the gas tax, and a similar tax on av-gas and av-jet funds and airline tickets funds the FAA for the aerial “highways” — the navaids, the Victor airways, ATC, weather stations, and so on. The counter-counter argument is that there are a lot of “hidden subsidies.” If you are agrieved that Switzerland has nice trains and the U.S. doesn’t and you don’t want to be disrespected by the snobby shopkeepers in Switzerland, it is a matter of belief that the money Amtrak gets for its .1 percent share of total U.S. passenger miles is justified by all the hidden subsidies to the planes and automobiles part of the transportation equation.
One man purports to have identified a major hidden subsidy — the cost of police and ambulance and unreimbursed medical expense associated with highway accidents, and he comes up with the non-urban Interstates costing more than their gas tax revenue to the tune of over 12 cents per passenger mile. The Amtrak subsidy exceeds 20 cents per passenger mile, but this dude is so close to squaring the circle in coming up with an excuse to fund Amtrak that he can taste it.
The dude singles out rural Interstates because he thinks a high hidden cost of those roads could justify the high rate of subsidy to the Amtrak long-distance trains, you know, the really cool ones with multiple locomotive units, dining, lounge, and checked baggage car, and sleeping cars with private rooms. Now, the Interstate highways, generally, are among the safest roads because of the elimination of cross traffic, barriers against on-coming traffic, and other “engineering” features that also make them expensive to build. So, would their accident cost be higher than any other road?
Furthermore, if the cost of highway accidents in police, fire, EMT, and ER services is 12 cents/passenger mile, the over 4 trillion annual auto passenger miles should ring up a tab of 500 billion/year (half a trillion dollars), tenfold more than the direct Federal expenditure on highways.
If the War on Drugs costs 100 bil per year in cops, Customs Service Learjets, courts, jails, and prisons, could the War on the Highways cost anything close to 500 bil per year, or is the dude just making stuff up?
One man purports to have identified a major hidden subsidy — the cost of police and ambulance and unreimbursed medical expense associated with highway accidents, and he comes up with the non-urban Interstates costing more than their gas tax revenue to the tune of over 12 cents per passenger mile. The Amtrak subsidy exceeds 20 cents per passenger mile, but this dude is so close to squaring the circle in coming up with an excuse to fund Amtrak that he can taste it.
To do a proper accounting, he would need to make the calculation for both states of affairs. For example, just because we have a sophisticated HSR system doesn’t mean that we can get rid of our interstate system. And subsidizing three massive transportation systems when the original two (highway/airports) were working well, doesn’t look like an improvement to me.
And some of those alleged subsidies are fixed in cost so I think we would see a rise in subsidy per passenger mile of roads as people are diverted from highways to rail and they pay less gas taxes. For example, roads covered in snow still need to be plowed even if traffic has dropped by a factor of ten. At that point, by his argument we should subsidize high speed rail (or perhaps high speed dirigibles) even more.
Then there’s the matter of equivalent support subsidies for the rail system. For example, there’s the need for security screening of people getting on trains, medical coverage of train riders, and the occasional costs of accidents which would necessarily involve more people and more expensive vehicles.
Road and rail subsidies can be justified by libertarians by appeal to defense. The interstate system was explicitly a defense expenditure, originally. Roads were considered a more robust transport system than rail, less easily disrupted in a nuclear war. But that leaves plenty of space to complain about how the government goes about subsidizing them.
I’ve thought for a long time now that there are two potential solutions to the War on Some Drugs, neither of which is currently being used or even close to it.
The first is to get a great deal harsher. Six months in jail, starting with cold turkey withdrawal, for possession of “user” amounts of various hard drugs or being found with the stuff in your bloodstream. Ten years for the second offense, life for the third. Death penalty for possession of amounts of drugs commonly held by suppliers, or being concerned in the smuggling thereof, or laundering profits from same. All assets owned by such to be confiscated and most definitely not retained by the drug enforcement industry.
The second is to legalise everything, and let Darwin take care of the problem.
Personally, I don’t give a (insert expletive) how many addicts kill themselves with drugs; I am concerned about innocents getting caught in the crossfire of drug dealer turf wars.
Personally, I don’t give a (insert expletive) how many addicts kill themselves with drugs; I am concerned about innocents getting caught in the crossfire of drug dealer turf wars.
I don’t care about them either but I do care about the innocents who are killed by people driving under the influence and those robbed and killed by addicts looking for their next fix.
In some states, there are still dry counties where it is illegal to buy alcohol (far fewer than 30 years ago but still some). Whenever repeal comes up, there are often two factions who’re opposed, commonly the Baptists and the bootleggers. The Baptists oppose people drinking alcohol and the bootleggers don’t want to lose their income. For illegal drugs, both the police/prison complex and the dealers oppose legalization because of the lost income. In states with legal medicinal pot, those distributors oppose wider legalization because they’d lose their monopoly.
Sure. And why do the addicts do all that? Because the stuff they want is astronomically expensive – precisely because it’s illegal.
Heroin, morphine and cocaine are actually rather cheap to make.
One more thing; the death toll among even addicts is considerably higher than it would be, if they had access to clean implements and supplies of reliable strength and safety. AFAIK most overdose deaths are due to supplies that are stronger than the buyers expect. Certainly, many drug-related deaths are due to the extremely dubious substances that the drugs are “cut” with.
Something I’ve said in a few places: to get converts to privatizing the War on Some Drugs, one must appeal to the unconverted by making a cogent argument that nationalizing the war actually interferes with the goal of ameliorating the spread of recreational drug use.
I have wondered if criminalization serves as a deterrent to seeking rehab. If you do some bad stuff that’s legal and other bad stuff that’s illegal, you’re less likely to fess up about the latter.
Get tough on the dealers. Count rehab as “time served” if the addict takes getting clean seriously.
My hypothesis is that the futility of a War On Drugs is well known to the powers that be, and that is what they count on. It keeps the most brutal members of society busy, half committing drug “crimes” and the other half enforcing them. So occupied, they can’t brutalize their “betters.” Comments?
I was more thinking that the politicians are happy they don’t have to compete with real empire builders.
I’d like to hark back to the reason why it’s called the War on Some Drugs in the first place.
The drug that causes most deaths, by two or three orders of magnitude (mostly because of its mode of delivery) is nicotine. There is very little serious effort against that.
Second is probably alcohol. Well, we all know what happens when one tries to stamp that out.
And, in aggregate, the third is probably prescription drugs. I am speaking here specifically of mind-altering ones; although many other drugs, notably anti-inflammatories and such, cause a lot of problems that is a different argument. For example, falls in elderly people (some of which can be lethal) are very strongly linked to heavy use of sedatives and tranquillisers.
If the powers-that be really wanted to reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by drugs they would be gunning for the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries – and putting much more intrusive controls on primary-care physicians, many of whom are extremely cavalier about prescribing mind-altering drugs, sometimes for years on end.
Glad to see you adopting the nomenclature that the late Robert Anton Wilson used; I’ve always thought it a succinct way to draw attention to the hypocrisy of the drug warriors. And Wilson’s Sex and Drugs: A Journey Beyond Limits remains a fascinating treatise on that most hedonistic of intersections (he left off the rock and roll, though).
Making drugs illegal is essentially saying, “Everybody duck, we’ve decided to put criminals in charge of this segment of the economy. Good luck!”
Lessons of Prohibition were completely forgotten or ignored.
Well said.
This isn’t just a tautological statement, either. If your definition of “criminal” is anyone the state declares to be, then yeah, it is, but if you prefer a definition derived from common law then what you’re saying is that prohibition attracts the worst elements of society.
In a way, prohibition competes with government for that role. That’s a disturbing train of thought and deserves closer inspection.
Realistically, legalization won’t result in them being freely available as some ultra-Liberts seem to assume. Cannabis is one thing, but heroin and methamphetamine are another.
What’s more likely is that the FDA would be put in charge of regulating them, meaning Big Pharma would become the legal suppliers. People will still be able to get them illegitimately, as with oxycontin — but new “designer” variants won’t reach the market for years.
One of the better proposals I’ve seen is an intoxicant license, allowing the purchase and use of the milder drugs. Subject to suspension or revocation if you do something illegal in connection with said intoxicants or the stronger alternatives. This should not preclude employers demanding clean employees.
From the legal perspective, federal drug law goes far beyond what I read the Constitution allowing. Outside of border crossings (including state) and exclusive federal jurisdiction I don’t see where the feds have authority here. And it doesn’t help that drug enforcement is used as an excuse for unconstitutional forfeiture and other abuses.
It also doesn’t help that a growing number of people are seemingly oblivious to the harm drugs do.
George Schultz, who is someone I deeply admire and respect, puts a cost on the War on Drugs at 100 billion/year.
The reason I ask about this number is not because of drugs but because of trains, such as the Amtrak subsidy and the gazillion dollars to build the California train.
There is a gentleman commenting on a railroad-oriented Web site, that there is a hidden subsidy to “cars travelling on rural Interstates” in the amount of about 12 cents/passenger mile.
Now all you Libertarians, hear me out. One of the arguments in favor of Amtrak subsidy is “all modes of transportation (meaning planes, trains, and automobiles) get government subsidy so all you Right wingers who want to zero out Amtrak are fools” or something to that effect. Or maybe something like, “So much money is wasted on boondoggle highway projects, why can’t a pittance (1.5 billion per year compared to 30-50 Federal billions on highways) be wasted on trains.” No, the “train people” don’t say it that way, but you get the idea.
The counter to that is that much of the Federal money spent on highways comes from a “user fee”, the gas tax, and a similar tax on av-gas and av-jet funds and airline tickets funds the FAA for the aerial “highways” — the navaids, the Victor airways, ATC, weather stations, and so on. The counter-counter argument is that there are a lot of “hidden subsidies.” If you are agrieved that Switzerland has nice trains and the U.S. doesn’t and you don’t want to be disrespected by the snobby shopkeepers in Switzerland, it is a matter of belief that the money Amtrak gets for its .1 percent share of total U.S. passenger miles is justified by all the hidden subsidies to the planes and automobiles part of the transportation equation.
One man purports to have identified a major hidden subsidy — the cost of police and ambulance and unreimbursed medical expense associated with highway accidents, and he comes up with the non-urban Interstates costing more than their gas tax revenue to the tune of over 12 cents per passenger mile. The Amtrak subsidy exceeds 20 cents per passenger mile, but this dude is so close to squaring the circle in coming up with an excuse to fund Amtrak that he can taste it.
The dude singles out rural Interstates because he thinks a high hidden cost of those roads could justify the high rate of subsidy to the Amtrak long-distance trains, you know, the really cool ones with multiple locomotive units, dining, lounge, and checked baggage car, and sleeping cars with private rooms. Now, the Interstate highways, generally, are among the safest roads because of the elimination of cross traffic, barriers against on-coming traffic, and other “engineering” features that also make them expensive to build. So, would their accident cost be higher than any other road?
Furthermore, if the cost of highway accidents in police, fire, EMT, and ER services is 12 cents/passenger mile, the over 4 trillion annual auto passenger miles should ring up a tab of 500 billion/year (half a trillion dollars), tenfold more than the direct Federal expenditure on highways.
If the War on Drugs costs 100 bil per year in cops, Customs Service Learjets, courts, jails, and prisons, could the War on the Highways cost anything close to 500 bil per year, or is the dude just making stuff up?
One man purports to have identified a major hidden subsidy — the cost of police and ambulance and unreimbursed medical expense associated with highway accidents, and he comes up with the non-urban Interstates costing more than their gas tax revenue to the tune of over 12 cents per passenger mile. The Amtrak subsidy exceeds 20 cents per passenger mile, but this dude is so close to squaring the circle in coming up with an excuse to fund Amtrak that he can taste it.
To do a proper accounting, he would need to make the calculation for both states of affairs. For example, just because we have a sophisticated HSR system doesn’t mean that we can get rid of our interstate system. And subsidizing three massive transportation systems when the original two (highway/airports) were working well, doesn’t look like an improvement to me.
And some of those alleged subsidies are fixed in cost so I think we would see a rise in subsidy per passenger mile of roads as people are diverted from highways to rail and they pay less gas taxes. For example, roads covered in snow still need to be plowed even if traffic has dropped by a factor of ten. At that point, by his argument we should subsidize high speed rail (or perhaps high speed dirigibles) even more.
Then there’s the matter of equivalent support subsidies for the rail system. For example, there’s the need for security screening of people getting on trains, medical coverage of train riders, and the occasional costs of accidents which would necessarily involve more people and more expensive vehicles.
Road and rail subsidies can be justified by libertarians by appeal to defense. The interstate system was explicitly a defense expenditure, originally. Roads were considered a more robust transport system than rail, less easily disrupted in a nuclear war. But that leaves plenty of space to complain about how the government goes about subsidizing them.
I’ve thought for a long time now that there are two potential solutions to the War on Some Drugs, neither of which is currently being used or even close to it.
The first is to get a great deal harsher. Six months in jail, starting with cold turkey withdrawal, for possession of “user” amounts of various hard drugs or being found with the stuff in your bloodstream. Ten years for the second offense, life for the third. Death penalty for possession of amounts of drugs commonly held by suppliers, or being concerned in the smuggling thereof, or laundering profits from same. All assets owned by such to be confiscated and most definitely not retained by the drug enforcement industry.
The second is to legalise everything, and let Darwin take care of the problem.
Personally, I don’t give a (insert expletive) how many addicts kill themselves with drugs; I am concerned about innocents getting caught in the crossfire of drug dealer turf wars.
Personally, I don’t give a (insert expletive) how many addicts kill themselves with drugs; I am concerned about innocents getting caught in the crossfire of drug dealer turf wars.
I don’t care about them either but I do care about the innocents who are killed by people driving under the influence and those robbed and killed by addicts looking for their next fix.
In some states, there are still dry counties where it is illegal to buy alcohol (far fewer than 30 years ago but still some). Whenever repeal comes up, there are often two factions who’re opposed, commonly the Baptists and the bootleggers. The Baptists oppose people drinking alcohol and the bootleggers don’t want to lose their income. For illegal drugs, both the police/prison complex and the dealers oppose legalization because of the lost income. In states with legal medicinal pot, those distributors oppose wider legalization because they’d lose their monopoly.
Sure. And why do the addicts do all that? Because the stuff they want is astronomically expensive – precisely because it’s illegal.
Heroin, morphine and cocaine are actually rather cheap to make.
One more thing; the death toll among even addicts is considerably higher than it would be, if they had access to clean implements and supplies of reliable strength and safety. AFAIK most overdose deaths are due to supplies that are stronger than the buyers expect. Certainly, many drug-related deaths are due to the extremely dubious substances that the drugs are “cut” with.
Something I’ve said in a few places: to get converts to privatizing the War on Some Drugs, one must appeal to the unconverted by making a cogent argument that nationalizing the war actually interferes with the goal of ameliorating the spread of recreational drug use.
I have wondered if criminalization serves as a deterrent to seeking rehab. If you do some bad stuff that’s legal and other bad stuff that’s illegal, you’re less likely to fess up about the latter.
Get tough on the dealers. Count rehab as “time served” if the addict takes getting clean seriously.
My hypothesis is that the futility of a War On Drugs is well known to the powers that be, and that is what they count on. It keeps the most brutal members of society busy, half committing drug “crimes” and the other half enforcing them. So occupied, they can’t brutalize their “betters.” Comments?
I was more thinking that the politicians are happy they don’t have to compete with real empire builders.
I’d like to hark back to the reason why it’s called the War on Some Drugs in the first place.
The drug that causes most deaths, by two or three orders of magnitude (mostly because of its mode of delivery) is nicotine. There is very little serious effort against that.
Second is probably alcohol. Well, we all know what happens when one tries to stamp that out.
And, in aggregate, the third is probably prescription drugs. I am speaking here specifically of mind-altering ones; although many other drugs, notably anti-inflammatories and such, cause a lot of problems that is a different argument. For example, falls in elderly people (some of which can be lethal) are very strongly linked to heavy use of sedatives and tranquillisers.
If the powers-that be really wanted to reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by drugs they would be gunning for the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries – and putting much more intrusive controls on primary-care physicians, many of whom are extremely cavalier about prescribing mind-altering drugs, sometimes for years on end.