Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Rand, it is refreshing to find myself in total agreement with one of your posts.

The author of the linked piece seems to have a book coming out:

Misha Glenny is a former BBC correspondent and the author of "McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Underworld," to be published next year.

McMafia made me laugh.

Anyway, when the Taliban does stuff like this, they can counter our very expensive high-tech military at a tiny fraction of the costs we incur in our Afghan efforts. We cannot "win" unless we get better at countering this type of Psy-Ops:

(British army Capt. Leo) Docherty was quick to realize that the military push into northern Helmand province was going to run into serious trouble. The rumor was "that we were there to eradicate the poppy," he said. "The Taliban aren't stupid and so they said, 'These guys are here to destroy your livelihood, so let's take up arms against them.' And it's been a downward spiral since then."

Posted by Bill White at August 20, 2007 08:22 AM

Oh, Yes I remember Misha Glenny; he was always writng long drawn up polemics in the NY Times and the NYRB about how we had to intervene in Bosnia; because of the Serbian Academy of Arts &Science's recommendations for 'ethnic cleansing'; however when we did intervene in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999; he went all anti-war on those parties. Does
a Brit have to be reminded how torturous their century long experience in the North Western Frontier of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Posted by narciso at August 20, 2007 08:46 AM

Maybe we could just buy all their poppies. You can make some useful drugs out of them, too. But I'll bet the price of those drugs (lidocaine, morphine) is just too low to compete with crack and cocaine.

I used to be a lot more laissez-faire about illegal drugs, the whole Reason line and all, but about ten years ago I became friends with a woman whose entire life more or less went up in smoke because her husband felt into a coke addiction. (He was in a business where it was rampant, and you were kind of expected to toot a little from time to time, just to show you could, meaning you had the dough and you had the chutzpah. Not an excuse, but this is how it happened. He started out just trying to fit in so he could cut deals with the big players, and he was hooked before he quite knew it.)

Anyway, everything for which they'd worked twenty years crumbled. All the money they'd saved went up his nose, and the inevitable lying and betrayals ruined the marriage. She had to start completely over at age 50.

You could just look at this as evolution in action, and say tant pis for weaklings or idiots like him, and for the unlucky family and friends who don't abandon the guy before he drags them down, too.

But...I dunno, according to her -- and others -- the stuff really is an evil monkey on your back, and few ordinary wills are strong enough to quit, all by yourself, without help. Heck, considering my will has trouble getting my ass out of bed in the morning, or getting me out for a run three times a week to keep the ol' arteries in shape, I'm in no position to look down on people who can't just will themselves out of severe chemical dependencies.

Which is not to say I think flinging people in jail is a good answer. I don't have a good answer. And I recognize the "War on Drugs" is clearly not a good answer. But is a complete live 'n' let live (or rather, often enough, live 'n' let die) program a better answer, an equally bad answer, or a worse answer? I don't know.

Since seeing the horror of addiction from a little more personal angle, I have a hard time squaring a total hands-off policy with my conscience. It's not even that I necessarily want to save the addicts themselves, but watching the good and decent people go down with the ship, for no more reason than that they care about someone even when he's screwing up, is just wrenching. It's doesn't seem totally right to do nothing about that.

Posted by Carl Pham at August 20, 2007 11:08 AM

All the money they'd saved went up his nose, and the inevitable lying and betrayals ruined the marriage. She had to start completely over at age 50.

Carl, it's important to recognize that the reason their finances were wrecked is because it was illegal, and high priced for that reason, and that reason alone. While addiction does cause problems, any problems that drug addicts have are greatly exacerbated by the drug war itself. It's not at all obvious that a cocaine addiction, per se, is worse than an alcohol addiction. Freud seemed to manage, after all.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 20, 2007 12:14 PM

Alcoholism and gambling wrecks marriages and people's lives too.

But more to the current point -- the inflation adjusted prices for cocaine and opium are falling and have fallen over the last few decades. And, cocaine and opium production continues to fund terrorism. We are losing the War on Drugs and that fight undermines our other struggles.

Related, the Iranian mullahs are unhappy that we have failed to eradicate the Afghan opium crop.

Which creates an interesting set of odd bedfellows.

Posted by Bill White at August 20, 2007 12:38 PM

Carl, it's important to recognize that the reason their finances were wrecked is because it was illegal, and high priced for that reason, and that reason alone.

I don't think so. In the end, the real problem was that his judgment was whacked by the drugs and the obsession, plus the lying and hiding, and so he made massively screwed-up financial decisions. Buying drugs with the seed corn was only one of those bad decisions. There were plenty of others. (And, by the way, the lying and hiding weren't just because the drug was illegal; actually no one around him much cared about that, which is one reason arguably he got started. The lying and hiding were because of the dumbass and sometimes wicked things he did under its influence.)

If the drug were as cheap as aspirin, it would still have taken over his personality and his judgment, and they'd still have been ruined. I'm familiar with this line of argument -- and believed it for years myself -- but I no longer think the enormous cost of a drug habit is the real problem. I think the real problem is what they do to your judgment.

I mean, alcohol is damn cheap, and perfectly legal, but being an alcoholic will ruin you too. We're just lucky that alcohol isn't as viciously and speedily habituating for most people as the opiods are.

Posted by Carl Pham at August 20, 2007 01:10 PM

Does anyone have an estimate of the price to flat-out buy the poppies? Or we could subsidize (eeek!) a crop with similar needs by buying it at very elevated prices?

On the legalization issue, there's a similar thread running through how we treat a lot of the exisiting 'Sin Taxes'. They get taxed... and the money goes to fund things _other_ than flat-out abatement. Here in Washington State, the cigarette and alcohol taxes are treated like piggy-banks, and the powers-that-be are quoted as being unhappy when the cigarette tax revenue drops dramatically. (Because a pile of people have quit.)

If all the 'Sin Taxes' are devoted 100% to policing their particular vice, the money - at the very least - wouldn't be seen as something to try to encourage by the politicians involved.

Posted by Al at August 20, 2007 01:12 PM

In the end, the real problem was that his judgment was whacked by the drugs and the obsession, plus the lying and hiding, and so he made massively screwed-up financial decisions.

But as you point out, that can happen with alcohol as well. It can also happen that people use alcohol recreationally, and never have a problem. The fact that it was illegal had to have exacerbated the problem. It certainly didn't keep him from using drugs.

Most junkies mug and burglar (and sell drugs) not because they have poor judgment, but because it's the only way to support an (illegal) high-priced drug habit. If it were legal, they could probably afford their addiction on welfare, just as they do cigarettes and booze.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 20, 2007 01:30 PM

What would happen to the Afghan drug taxes if we just KILLED the Taliban tax collectors faster than they could enlist new recruits? Why not make it the kind of job nobody wants? We could hang recruiting posters all over the middle east.

Join the Taliban!! Get your Virgins!! Guaranteed trip to Allah in 30 days or less!

Uncle Achmed wants you for the Taliban!

Personally, I've long advocated drug legalization. Legalization, taxation and education / rehabilitation. Imagine tax revenue if every doobie or rock of crack carried a 50% tax. That's income, not outgo, for the feds and states. Making things illegal has never stopped addiction and I doubt drug interdiction slows it down. It's easier for most kids to get crack or "E" than it is a beer. That seems a little short sighted to me.

Besides anybody who thinks drugs are the be all and end all for addiction, better look into "World of Warcraft" or "Second Life".

I have drug history. I am a child of the late 60's and early 70's. I grew up with those infamous "drug years". Trust me, Hyde and Eric are pikers compared to kids we went to school with. I've seen plenty of destruction from drugs and alcohol over the last 35 years.

But nothing compares to the psychological addiction I've seen from those games. I was forced to study gaming addiction because of a family member who was hooked on "WoW". And the "detox" is not certain yet. Addiction is addiction, some people will find their drug of choice, others have none. Making coke, heroin or bytes illegal won't stop the flow to those looking to get 0nline or get high.

Buy the poppies, sell the opium to the pharmaceutical companies. Put the DEA in charge.

Posted by Steve at August 20, 2007 01:42 PM

But as you point out, that can happen with alcohol as well.

Not nearly as easily, for purely biochemical reasons. The opiods are quickly physically addicting. They're different from alcohol, or pot. I don't think we should think about them the same way.

It's like the fact that atomic bombs are qualitatively different from tanks and airplanes on the international level, and that's why we practise a tolerant live 'n' let live policy with respect to conventional weapons, but not with respect to atomic weapons.

The fact that it was illegal had to have exacerbated the problem.

That's speculation, in the absence of the ability to run his life over again, only this time allowing the drugs to be legal. I don't say you're wrong, but I do say you're just guessing. For all we know, it ameliorated or at least delayed the problem.

It certainly didn't keep him from using drugs.

True. But the fact that the illegality and expense and stigma didn't 100% stop the problem is no proof that it was entirely worthless. We don't know. Or at least, I surely don't feel I have the wisdom to say.

Furthermore, as a general rule, we do find empirically that legal prohibitions and high costs (taxes, fines, tariffs) discourage unwanted behaviour, and we do generally believe this is worthwhile, even when the behaviour isn't 100% eliminated. We don't drop the fines on parking in handicapped zones just because people routinely do it anyway. We don't drop laws against car theft, even though it's almost never successfully prosecuted. You can't write your laws based solely on utilitarianism, or you've given up on morality (not to mention your fellow man) altogether.

Most junkies mug and burglar (and sell drugs) not because they have poor judgment...

Well, in a sense they obviously do, because it's a dumfuk way to live your life. You're clearly better off getting yourself into treatment and getting off the hook. You can't separate the decision to steal from the decision to get in the hole where you need to steal in the first place. For one thing, both decisions recur, every day.

But this isn't what I meant anyway. The guy I'm talking about didn't do anything illegal (aside from the drug), didn't rob anyone except himself and his wife and his family. It's a bit comforting to think that the only people who get burned with drugs are psychotic bums, but that's not so. Drugs take down plenty of people who, but for the drugs, would be productive and happy people, folks who help the wheels go around and keep the lights of civilization on. It's not clear they should just be abandoned as a lost cause. We don't do that with people who are mentally ill in other ways.

Again, I'm not saying it makes any sense at all to throw these people in the slammer. I don't know what the right thing to do is. Maybe just giving up and letting people blow themselves (and their families) up if they choose is all we can do. I just don't like how that sits with my conscience. And I like it even less if its bolstered by smug social Darwinism from folks who've never wrestled this particular croc personally. (Not saying that's you, by the way, but there are others.)

Posted by Carl Pham at August 20, 2007 03:40 PM

Unfortunately, the drug warriors continue to allow their misbegotten war to take precedence over the real one.

The drug war is misbegotten, but it's not the drug warriors who allow it to take precedence over the real war. Overall priorities are the responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief.
********
OT: I don't know if meaningful statistics exist, but my personal acquaintances include abstinent addicts who have a libertarian attitude toward drugs (including alcohol).

Posted by gs at August 20, 2007 04:04 PM

Buying up poppies maintains the incentive to grow poppies. Better to legalize it so that the price falls and the farmers shift to other crops.

Posted by Jonathan at August 20, 2007 04:16 PM

The US is 5% of the world's population. What's your solution for changing the legal status of opium in the rest of the world? Gunboats?

Posted by Phil Fraering at August 20, 2007 04:30 PM

Legalising will also directly save about $20B per year in prison funding and law enforcement. Additionally, the marginal productivity increase from non-violent offenders placed in American jails on posession charges under the ludicrous zero tolerance laws could be ten to twenty times that figure.

Posted by Adrasteia at August 20, 2007 08:02 PM

Additionally, the marginal productivity increase from non-violent offenders placed in American jails on posession charges...could be ten to twenty times [$20 billion].

An extra 20 x $20 billion = $400 billion per year? So if each drug offender could earn $40,000/year (roughly a new college graduate's salary) were he not rotting in jail, you still need 400 billion / 40000 = 10 million non-violent offenders to be released. (Maybe every year? I'm not sure if you mean a one-time drug war peace dividend or imagine a recurring benefit.)

Honestly, do you just pull these figures randomly from your ass or what?

Posted by Carl Pham at August 20, 2007 08:25 PM

The US is 5% of the world's population. What's your solution for changing the legal status of opium in the rest of the world? Gunboats?

There are no solutions, only different sets of tradeoffs. To respond to your question, the USA is a wealthy country whose population can afford to bid up the prices of illegal drugs. Make the drugs legal and it seems likely drug prices would fall. People would still use drugs but because the drugs would cost less there would probably be 1) less crime committed by addicts and 2) less opium grown in places like Afghanistan, and consequently 3) less money flowing from western drug users to the Taleban and other bad people. On the margin, more people would probably use drugs because of lower prices, but I suspect that overall the positive effects of legalization would far outweigh the negatives.

Posted by Jonathan at August 20, 2007 08:26 PM

Time was that Afghanistan was known for cannabis. In fact, Afghan genetics are a major part of today's top grade hybrids. Then the drug warriors got involved, and the shift was as always to the more profitable and more criminal. My ideal solution would be to somehow shift the country back to hashish production.

Posted by triticale at August 20, 2007 08:48 PM

Has anyone thought to simply pay the farmers not to grow poppies and the like? Would it be cheaper than the current eradication effort? How much does an afgan farmer make from his crop each year?

Posted by Another Lurker at August 21, 2007 05:50 AM

Lurker,
that was tried with cocaine. The growers simply took our governments money and moved production and growing facilities so that the DEA had to just look harder and spend more money to find and stop it. Did I say stop it? Hah.

I don't want to speak for Jonathan, but he seems to see this as I do. Supply and demand.

What shut down the Capone gangs illegal booze trade in Chicago? The FBI or the 21st Amendment? There is a direct correlation between the bootleggers of those years and the drug runners now.

All smuggling depends on a huge markup. Remove the profits, and you remove the majority of the incentive. It will not move everyone out of drug running, but it will certainly remove the majority of the murders, thugs and miscreants now dealing.

And putting the "Doobie Man" brand joints and the "Dance Yourazoff" brand ecstasy tabs on an aisle between the Jack Daniels and Stolichnaya will make it harder for anyone under age to get ahold of it.

Legalization, Taxation, Education and Rehabilitation.

Posted by Steve at August 21, 2007 06:39 AM

Carl, here's the benefits of legalization as I see them. We free about 30% of the current prison population (IIRC that's crudely the portion that were convicted of drug possession but not other offenses) who can now work. We vastly lower the artificially high prices of these drugs and remove a huge economic drag on addicts. We remove a large demand on police services. Finally, we remove a pretext for greater government power and interference in citizens' lives. Given that any economic benefit is magnified by the economic activity it stimulates, I see Adrastreia's estimates as in the ballpark.

And as others have noticed, this would have helped your friend since he wouldn't have spent so much on cocaine nor have engaged in as much risky illegal behavior (if merely because more of it would be legal).

Posted by Karl Hallowell at August 21, 2007 06:44 AM

For a conservative look at the War on Drugs, look here. One interesting point is that most people who have tried illegal drugs don't get hooked and don't become dysfunctional.

For a look at a techie discussion on some consequences of the War on Drugs, look here.

I also think we need to look at the consequences of drugs and their prohibitions in a manner that considers the wider society. There is reason to believe that social pressures can literally drive people crazy. Consider, for example, what sleep deprivation can do to politicians and politics.

Posted by Chuck Divine at August 21, 2007 08:27 AM

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