Wasted Resources - John Stossel Takes on the Drug War

Source: The National Review [online] ^ | Friday, August 02 @ 10:16:36 MST | Editorial Staff

[vannrox]

Interviews: Wasted Resources - John Stossel Takes on the Drug War
=>Posted by: Stranger.
=>Friday, August 02 @ 10:16:36 MST

Stranger submits "
Source: The National Review [online]

ABC News correspondent John Stossel once again exposes the cost, folly, and failure of big government. He somehow always manages to do that. This time, his fat and lumbering target is the War on Drugs, a 30-year-old project that can show amazingly little for the billions of taxpayer dollars it has incinerated and the millions of nonviolent offenders it has incarcerated.

Airing tonight at 10:00 P.M. Eastern, 9:00 P.M. Central time, War on Drugs, A War On Ourselves spends an hour asking if government efforts to stamp out drug use are even worse than the drugs themselves. Stossel largely avoids the libertarian argument (which I embrace) that adults should have the cognitive liberty to alter their minds in whatever way they choose, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others or endanger them by, say, driving while stoned.

In fact, Stossel repeatedly says, "There's no question that drugs hurt people." He also shows highly unglamorous footage of sketchy-looking addicts injecting heroin between the tattoos on their arms and smoking crack in venues that clearly are not Malibu beach houses.

Still, Stossel's question remains: "Doesn't the drug war hurt far more?" Apparently so.

For starters, consider the highly visible hands that police use to fight this war. Stossel presents numerous shots of SWAT teams in Kevlar suits screaming as they batter down front doors in residential drug raids. He shows Detroit police seizing a drug suspect's house. Before putting it on the market and enjoying the revenues from its sale, cops hurl the home's TV set into a Dumpster and splinter its furniture with sledgehammers. Treating such private property with respect, apparently, is simply too much trouble.

Stossel shows us 50 Detroit cops who arrest several dozen people in a sting operation. Most of the police's victims tried to purchase less than $25 worth of pot each.

In 2000, according to the FBI, there were 734,498 marijuana-related arrests, 88 percent of them for mere possession. Stossel reports that drug-related arrests and federal antidrug spending both have increased nearly 50 percent in the last ten years while the number of users has remained the same. "We have flatlined," admits Drug Enforcement Agency director Asa Hutchinson.

Stossel nicely juxtaposes two pieces of footage. In one, Academy Award-nominated actor, Robert Downey Jr., is sentenced to prison for illegal drug abuse. Meanwhile, Betty Ford goes home after undergoing medical rehabilitation for alcohol abuse. Why no jail time for the former First Lady? Was she any less self-destructive than Downey appeared to be?

Detroit police chief Jerry Oliver bravely goes on camera to explain how all of this handcuffing and imprisonment diverts law-enforcement resources from worthier pursuits. "Up to three quarters of our budget somehow can be traced back to fighting this War on Drugs," he says.

"If we did not have this drug war going on, we could spend more time going after robbers and rapists and burglars and murderers. That's what we really should be geared up to do."

Of course, some cops have cashed in on this war. We see an April 24, 1999 surveillance tape of a crooked San Antonio police officer collecting a $3,000 bribe for delivering what he thought was 20 pounds of cocaine. One dealer says he made $20,000 per week with police assistance. "The cops are just another gang," he says.

Overseas, the War on Drugs has so elevated profits that new cocaine labs arise more quickly than U.S. and South American forces can destroy them. Coca plantations that have been shuttered in Bolivia simply shift to Colombia. When Colombian police killed cocaine bigwig Pablo Escobar on December 2, 1993, his death was supposed to drain the coke vial once and for all. Then the Cali cartel took over. Yet others stepped forward when their leaders were arrested. The local FARC narco-terrorists, meanwhile, are so fond of kidnapping and homicide that Colombia's president-elect has chosen to relax in Europe until his August inauguration.

Searching for a better way, Stossel travels to Europe where governments across the continent are relaxing drug laws. England, Spain, and Switzerland have decreased penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Portugal has decriminalized all drugs.

Holland, most famously, allows so-called "coffee shops" to offer consumers marijuana buds, joints, clumps of hashish, cannabis-laced baked goods and even psychoactive chocolates. These establishments — -as I discovered on an early June visit to clean, scenic, and friendly Amsterdam — are not sequestered in nasty parts of town. On the contrary, coffee shops thrive beside elegant restaurants and exclusive boutiques. One coffee shop on a fashionable thoroughfare called Nieuwezijds Voorburgwalsits just two blocks from the Royal Palace and directly across the street from a local police precinct. As its smiling patrons inhale and listen to electronic music, no one outside seems to care, or even notice.

Stossel missed Amsterdam's new "smart shops" that sell high-energy nutritional supplements, "herbal ecstasy" and crush-proof plastic boxes that contain individual servings of fresh, moist-to-the-touch psilocybin cubensisor "magic mushrooms." These attractive, brightly-lit establishments also operate legally and in the
open.

By bringing soft drugs, at least, into the sunshine, the Netherlands apparently has made such substances boring to their youth. While 38 percent of American adolescents have tried marijuana, Stossel says, just 20 percent of Dutch teens have done so.

One only can hope that Stossel's tough journalism finally will knock some sense into federal officials. Since the Constitution does not delegate to Washington the power to control psychoactive substances, the 10th Amendment holds that such powers should be "reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Why not let all 50 states experiment with a variety of drug policies, ranging from the status quo in some places to the Dutch decriminalization model in others and even Portuguese-style legalization in yet others?

Even better, why not follow the Ninth Amendment's instruction that "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people?" Just because the Constitution does not explicitly recognize a right for adults to get baked (just as there is no specific right to eat high-fat potato chips), that alone does not obviate such a freedom. Government should bear the burden of proving that a compelling public purpose trumps the basic human liberty to get inebriated.

John Stossel interviews someone who makes this case in a way that should confound any drug warrior: "There is no risk to the population when a person sits in their living room at the end of a long day's work and lights up a joint," says a professional, 30-something woman in a black suit, and pressed, white blouse.

"But it makes you stupid," Stossel replies. "It makes you lazy."

"I don't think I'm stupid, and I don't think I'm lazy," she confidently continues. "I'm a responsible adult. I'm an attorney. I pay my taxes. I live a good, clean life. And if I feel like smoking a joint when I feel like it, that's my business."

— Mr. Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service."

[vannrox]

I have mixed feelings about the war on drugs. part of it is fundamental. How can a Land of "Freedom" and "Liberty" permit federal government intrusion into individual lives? Yet, I recognize that many drugs have become root cause issues in types of major crimes. Where is the dividing line?

[RobRoy]

>>Yet, I recognize that many drugs have become
root cause issues in types of major crimes.<<

Actually, it's the very fact that they are illegal and expensive that makes them root causes. Kind of like alcohol was during prohibition. And all prohibition got us was organized crime, unlike the drug war. Wait a second...

I should point out that my take on drug use is that it is one of the stupidest things (yes, I do mean STUPID) that a human being can do. But this is SUPPOSED to be a free country so I say let them do it. If they then go out and break some other law, well, that's a separate issue.

I prefer hanging around people who do what I'd to because that's their choice, not because their mom, the government, makes them do it.

[FastCoyote]

I debate this subject often and find most Conservatives do not believe their own absolute anti-drug position. For example, they refuse to turn in their own family members, they smoke and drink when by congruent logic those substances should be banned as well. When confronted with these inconsistencies they will slander me as a libertine, though I neither smoke nor do drugs (not since a couple hits 30 years ago) and my yearly alcohol consumption is 3 glasses of wine and maybe a sixpack worth of Coronas.

What is particularly amusing is that now that tobacco taxes are through the roof, many Conservatives are bying smokes illegally from the indians or across state borders, making them criminal libertines:)

[RobRoy]

I see everything as black and white. If I see a thing as grey, it means I have not broken it down to it's foundational root concept. Once I did that with the drug thing, I becam a proponent of legalization.

It's like you said about your friends. The very arguments they use to support what they do can be used to support the legalization of drugs. And the very reasons they say drugs should stay illegal can be used to make many of their activities illegal.

Opinions that are not built upon foundational beliefs are eisily bludgeoned with logic. 8^>

[libertyman]

The dividing line should be the Constitution--in the way it seperates federal power from those retained by the states in the 9th & 10th Amendments, in addition to Article I, Section 8. The Constitution is clear on the crimes it gives Washington the power to punish: treason, bribery, counterfeiting the current coin & securities of the U.S., piracies & felonies committed on the high seas, offenses against the Law of Nations, preventing blacks & women from their right to vote (15th &19th Amendments, respectively), & possibly one or 2 more. THAT'S IT!

The 9th & 10th Amendments already assume that the states, or the people, have the right to govern themselves & are free to decide their own drug laws (remember, the Founders knew that our rights come from GOD, not government!). So if one state decides to make drugs legal, that is their right--while if another state chooses to prohibit & punish drug use severely, that is their right as well. We live under a FEDERAL system of government, not a national system where Congress knows what is best for us.

[gcruse]

 
I see everything as black and white.

I do, too.  I even took a hit on a job
performance review for "tending to
see things in black and white."
I felt like Galileo standing before
the Pope, saying, "I can do no other!"

[gcruse]

 
                                          Think of the War on Drugs and the many victimless
                                          lifestyle crimes.   By making so much private behavior
                                          illegal, we are in fact making scofflaw criminals of great
                                          swaths of the population.  This is corrosive to good
                                          citizenship, at the least, which leads to degradation
                                          of society.  Degradation of society is the prime
                                          rationale of those who support and demand
                                          more victimless crime penalties and lifestyle regulation.
                                          Think about it.

[goldstategop]

The basic problem in the WoD isn't that the police have their hands full. The basic problem is the police waste time and resources going after the user rather than the dealer and the distributor. As a result it isn't surprising our scarce prison cells are full of people who've simply used a few ounces of xxx drug. People like that should be treated not locked away in a cell that should be reserved for a rapist, robber or murderer. What's behind the WoD is denial by our officials of the reality that we're never going to arrest our way out of drug abuse. We've finally grasped it in California with the establishment of drug courts and it remains to be seen if the rest of the country and the Feds will catch up as well.

[teeman8r]

the Founders knew that our rights come from GOD, not government!

GOD is an acronym for Government of Demogogues... check the federalist papers... it is a well known fact.../sarcasm

[Orion]

The basic problem is the police waste time and resources going after the user rather than the dealer and the distributor.

Negative.
It is a supply/demand problem. As long as there is demand, there will be supply. That is absolute. No matter what, as long as Americans demand drugs, someone will take the risk to deliver the drugs. If there was no demand, you could have dealers on TV selling their wares, and no one would buy. The end result, no dealers.

If you make it where you chomp supply, the price goes up. With production costs being more-or-less the same, the incentive to supply the drugs goes up.

If you are going to have a WoD (and I believe it is silly and destructive) try to dry up demand. Being that you can't on an addictive substance, you need to take the profit out of supply, by increasing competition.

One of the realities is that people will get high. Our gov't is only cutting the suppliers to keep costs high.

Why? Many theories abound, but there is one that keeps resurfacing. The gov't imports drugs and sells them. You can read all about it in various FR posts. Clinton and Mena is one of them. Many believe that GHWB and Clinton both were part of the operation.

Welfare money is appropriated by Congress. The urbanites spend it on drugs (where do you think the money comes from?), some black-budget operations raise money with drugs sales, or so the theory goes. The end result is money is moved from the productive sector, to the unproductive sector, to some shadowy parts of our gov't.

[Buckwheats]

I've broken it down to it's simplest form (this is too easy....only one sentence). The WOsD is insane, illogical, un-winnable and un-American; yet it continues because the whores who profit from it in MONEY and POWER (ignorantly assisted by legions of dimwits acting against their own interests) are not about to voluntarily kill the goose laying the golden eggs.

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

My plan would have eliminated the demand for drugs 25 years ago as well as eliminated most of the hard-core drug abusers.

Poisoning the cocaine and heroin supply would have made it unwise to use the stuff. The stupid people who used might have had a 10% chance of a legal dose.

Is this any different than abortion on demand? The drug user has a choice. The unborn baby has none!

The money saved on police and prosecutors might have paid for universal free health care.

What is the moral choice?

I'm sure the police unions would scowl at a plan that would greatly reduce the need for members.

[Zon]

By making so much private behavior illegal, we are in fact making scofflaw criminals of great swaths of the population. 

I agree with all excerpt for one minor but important detail. Don't include me in that "we", nor do I think you should include yourself. The accurate identification is "they" are in fact making criminals of great swaths of the population.

Their underlying sop of foisting collectivist-groupthink status quo on the populace is to incorporate the unsuspecting-innocent citizen into their schemes creating/advancing an anti-civilization. I other words, "we" the collective do it.

With that said...

Complicit mainstream media, reporters, journalists and academia facilitate Jackson/Sharpton shakedown scammers and Green/Naderites sacrificing people and private property to the environment in exchange for usurped power and unearned paychecks. Perhaps the most pernicious parasites are tobacco/junk-food tort lawyers.

None of those parasites would exist if not facilitated by government. Aided by a complicit media that caters to self-serving politicians' and bureaucrats' political agendas. Reporters, journalists and interviewers don't find open doors to government officials when they intend to report on their frauds. And when one does report on a politician's or bureaucrat's fraud they're locked out. In short, it ensures the populace is fed propaganda/fabricated illusions.

 All of those are the antithesis of creating/advancing a civilization.

Their WOD has been an unmitigated failure wasting over a trillion dollars in what in reality is a war against people. Their wildfires are burning up the west. From west coast Washington to east coast D.C. they're extorting taxes from innocent citizens and using it to undermine their well-being, prosperity and job-creating businesses. If not for the life-supporting, job-creating entrepreneurs and working-class guardians of advancing a civilization  the anti-civilization creators/advancers would perish. Without those parasites on their backs and in their wallets the innocent yet unknowingly-incorporated citizens would be unfettered to boom the economy and create a civilization of limitless-prosperity and individual well-being.

"If drugs make you stupid what does that say about someone who declares war on them, inanimate objects that they are, and is losing?" Utterly losing, I might add.

That is typical parasitical mentality that in a nutshell amounts to this...

"When any propaganda-fabricated illusion is foisted on people it is destined to inevitably crash and burn as simultaneously the reality that was hidden beneath the illusion comes screaming into focus, ultimate justice is served up. ...Declaring the winners/citizens to prosecute the losers/politicians/bureaucrats."

"There will be no mere slap on the wrist. Instead, "we'll take over from here guys -- your fired." For a quick accounting of what their War on Drugs has cost, just the tax dollars to fund it is over a trillion dollars wasted, then there's the cost to each victim, their loved ones and lost productivity that would have benefited society. That massive amount of destruction warrants several orders magnitude more than a slap on the wrist to the guilty. Yet redemption is possible.

"Recall that any and all propaganda-fabricated illusions will inevitably meet similar ultimate justice. But know that there is one clear route the guilty prosperity destroyers can take to redeem themselves. That route is for them to consult in anyway necessary as directed by the team of Carl-Ichan corporate raiders they bring in to clean out government waste and abuse." 103

How Judges that Presided Over Jury Trials
for More than a Century Routinely Violate the Constitution --
Clearing the Way for Advancing a Leviathan Government

[gcruse]

Thanks for your reply. The 'we' in question is, of course, all American taxpayers. 'We' fund the WOD, which degrades 'our' society.

[Zon]

Well, the government extorted the money from me and I had zero control over the parasites creating their WOD -- war against people -- with my money. It's a war against people because it's impossible to lose a war against inanimate objects.