Tripped Up

Reason ^ | October 6, 2004 | Jeremy Lott

[neverdem]

Bad Trip kills the government's anti-drug buzz. A Reason interview

October 6, 2004 Tripped Up Joel Miller's Bad Trip kills the government's anti-drug buzz. A Reason interview Jeremy Lott Joel Miller's first book, Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America, is a devastating examination of government anti-drug policies. Publishers Weekly calls the book a "well-researched, bitingly written account," and "a formidable challenge to the reigning prohibitionist orthodoxy." Miller, a former aide for the California legislature, is a veteran of several now-defunct online startups (including the libertarian e-zine Real Mensch) and the former commentary editor at WorldNetDaily.com. He was senior editor at WND Books, a collaboration between the website and publisher Thomas Nelson, and is now senior editor at Nelson Current. Though Miller's personal tastes run more to home brewed beer and pipe tobacco, he started writing regularly about the war against drugs while working for WorldNetDaily. Bad Trip has been praised by ABC Radio host Larry Elder and Fox News legal correspondent Judge Andrew P. Napolitano. Miller spoke with former colleague Jeremy Lott on the ingenuity of drug smugglers, on why anti-drug laws are the terrorist's best friend, and on what this year's election means for the war against drugs. Reason: Several members of the Bush administration have pushed the line that if you buy illegal drugs, you're funding terrorism. Is that true? The answer is yes—partly—but it's their fault. The laws against drugs are what create the market in which drugs are so incredibly profitable. There's no other reason a coca bush should be worth more than a privet shrub. Without prohibition, terrorists could no more profit from drugs than from growing bananas. They'd have to turn to other sorts of funding. Reason: Such as? Well, FARC in Colombia has made a fair bit by kidnapping people, and before the Soviet Union fell, terrorist organizations were funding themselves through subsidies from Communist governments. But today nothing is so lucrative as drugs; kill prohibition and you hit their bottom line. Reason: How much do these groups depend on drug money? Well they're all in pretty deep. FARC in Columbia, ELN, and AUC—three factions that are at war either with themselves or the central government—rely on profits from either taxing the drug trade in the areas that they patrol, or from protection money, or from growing the drugs themselves. According to a confidential 2003 Columbia government report, it is impossible to tell the difference between the AUC groups and the traffickers. The same report claimed that AUC drew up to 80 percent of its money from trafficking. Before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban oversaw the production of 70 percent of the world's opium poppies. Osama bin Laden administered their profits, laundering them through the Russian mob. He pulled in about 10 or 15 percent of the total, which gave him an estimated annual income of $1 billion, and that kind of money can buy a lot of flight lessons. This has been going on for a while. In 1984, the U.S. Justice Department estimated that Yasser Arafat's PLO procured about 40 percent of its light weaponry by trading hash and heroin. Reason: You come down hard on the police for drugs-inspired corruption. What has modern prohibition done to law enforcement? Modern prohibition provides an incredible incentive for cops to go bad, in little ways and in big ways. The big are embodied in cops like Joseph Miedzianowski. People around the case referred to him as the most corrupt cop in the history of Chicago, which is quite an achievement considering the kind of corruption that comes out of Chicago. He was busted in 1998 after a long and fruitful career of dope pedaling, extortion, lying to obtain search warrants, torturing suspects, stealing money, stealing jewels, stealing guns, even ratting out the identity of an undercover cop to a gang member. Amazing amounts of corruption have come from the profits and the power that police are able to pull from their involvement in the drug trade. Reason: What if cops aren't so overtly corrupt? Are there other ways that drug prohibition effect them? There are subtle things. It's difficult to make drug arrests because people keep their drug use secret and quiet. One thing that comes up time and again are cops who basically lie about the facts regarding a search so that they can make the search legal on paper even if it wasn't legal in fact. Then there are cops who plant drugs on suspects because they want to make busts, sometimes for reasons that go beyond drug enforcement. Sometimes they are involved in the drug trade and they are busting a rival, or helping a partner deal with a competitor. There is an awful lot of opportunity for corruption, and police are in the difficult position of not only being very close to lawbreaking but often the only ones who know about it. So they're able to justify all kinds of ill behavior. Reason: What were some of the more surprising cases that you uncovered for the chapter on smuggling? Smuggling reflects the most profound thing about human nature, and that is that human beings will do anything if the payoff is big enough. And when I say anything, I mean anything: dig under the southern border with incredible tunnels, some of which have been open for years. I mention one in Bad Trip that was discovered just south of San Diego. Authorities estimated that it had been open for 10 or 20 years shuttling drugs through. This thing had lights, ventilation ducts, the whole thing. They found a quarter ton of pot in the tunnel when they got there, which means that the people who were operating it were probably alerted to the fact that there was a raid and all got out fine. That points to problems with enforcement but it also shows the incredible amount of ingenuity and craft that people will put into their smuggling. It includes things like building submarines, training pigeons how to carry packets of drugs across borders. It includes smuggling substances inside of things, disguising them as other things, including taking opium and soaking blankets with it and smuggling the blankets, taking cocaine and mixing it with plastic and fiberglass resin and creating things out of it like dog kennels and bathtubs, and then extracting the cocaine once it's across the border. There's no way to test for it without testing every single item: you can't smell it, can't see it. The only way cops can get it is if they're actually taking chips out of these products and testing them. Reason: What does the drug trade tell us about how markets work? It tells us that markets work really well. Faustino Ballvé, the economist, calls black markets the true market, because they're the only markets actually dealing with reality instead of pawing vigorously against it. When people have incentives, people are able to deliver, and there's really no way around that. It's a fact of human nature, and there's no beating human nature. Reason: Are government efforts making a dent in the supply of drugs? Not really. We've had drug prohibition in this country since 1914, and yet every administration since Nixon has had to jack up its enforcement budgets, and we're seeing very little in the way of results. Reason: In the '90s, what happened to the price of drugs? Consistently, they dropped. With cocaine, the downward slump was not huge, but with heroin it was pretty strong. Prices in general for drugs seem to be on the decline. Reason: This occurred at the same time as crime rates fell. Does that mean more drugs equal less crime? Dropping prices can definitely mean increased supply. It could mean other things too, but it's an interesting fact that the only type of crime that began rising in the late '90s while every other type of crime was going down, was gang crime—street crime. That's the crime most closely associated with the drug trade. It was responsible for half of the murders in Los Angeles. So I don't know that more drugs equals less crime in any causal way, but you could certainly make the argument that drug prohibition is increasing crime, and if you were to lighten up the thumbscrews on enforcement, you'd see crime drop. Reason: Bad Trip has been marketed to a mostly conservative audience. How have right-wingers received it? The response has been mixed. Some traditional conservatives see the overreach of government as a very ominous problem. They're ticked off about a number of overreaches of the state—recently from Republicans—and they fold this into their general disdain about the growth of government. Others simply argue that drugs are bad and drugs need to be gotten rid of. For some reason, they can argue that the government is a poor solution for things like retirement and welfare but it's the perfect solution for dealing with drugs, even though history and practical experience say otherwise. Reason: Why has drug legalization been such a dead letter politically? Nobody wants to go on record as being for drugs. There's just something about, you know, "I am running for office and I support the legalization of PCP" that does not register well with voters. Voters with little historical, economic, or political insight into the drug problem are not likely to cast ballots for someone who wants to change the status quo. Reason: How would a Kerry administration drug policy differ from Bush's, if at all? Well, last year, Kerry said that he would stop the federal drug raids on medical marijuana patients. That would be nice. It's about time state attorneys general got some stones anyway and threw down the gauntlet to the feds on that. Some federal cooperation in stopping the harassment would be helpful. But I don't think it would be a major switch. If there's anything that's been consistent among administrations—with the anomaly, maybe, of Carter—it's that drug prohibition is popular and well received. Kerry has already indicated support for administrative positions for people who are hardcore drug warriors. And it's really not in his best interest politically to go on the line and be against prohibition. The best we'd probably see is more of the same. More Reason interviews Jeremy Lott is the foreign press critic for GetReligion.org.

[Brellium]

If we legalize murder too, that would be a 1-2 punch which crime would never recover from.

[Cedar]

Anyone who thinks legalizing drugs will make the drug problems go away must be hallucinating.

[flashbunny]

anybody who thought prohibition in was a good thing had to be drunk.

Ain't it odd how they had to get a constitutional amendment to ban booze, but they can ban drugs just the same without one?

[agitator]

they didn't ban drugs, they prohibited the sale and possession of drugs that no tax had been paid on. The original "ban" on drugs was the Pure Food and Drug Act - the premise being that patent medicines containing "laudinum" (morphine) were impure and therefore dangerous and therefore controllable through taxation and tax related regulations. If you look through the law books, you'll find the states issued tax stamps for marijuana for example. Interestingly, in 1913, NY was offering (not requiring) people the opportunity to register their cars and pay a registration fee rather than pay the fuel excise tax. If requiring you to register your car was constitutional, why offer it as an alternative to paying an excise tax? What does that tell you about *that* racket? It's the same deal. Tax it, then get people to think through propaganda, lies, and presumptions that the activity is illegal because the so few people are familiar with complying with the tax. Same deal with machine guns. Everybody knows machineguns are illegal right? Nobody researches legal history so nobody knows how the racket works. Furthermore most people are sheep and don't care how often they get "serviced" by govt.

[neverdem]

The war on guns: Joel Miller explains how drug cops are killing 2nd Amendment.

You can also add the Fourth Amendment.

[Eagle Eye]

Brillian observation. Just brilliant.

Can you tell me when murder was ever legal or permissible?

Can you explain why booze is legal and pot is not?

[Cedar]

Sure, that's what we need...a country where it's legal to drop acid. Great suggestion. That will really make things run a lot more smoothly.

(yeah, right...)

[flashbunny]

amazing how the country didn't run off the rails before the current WOD.

Actually, it seems we were much better off as a country when the courts and lawmakers actually respected the constitution and didn't resort to disregarding it when they thought something was "so important we can't be bothere by the constitution"

The WOD belongs at the state level. There is nothing in the constitution giving the feds the authority to fight it or to prevent the states from fighting it if they so choose.

[Cedar]

Problem is drugs were practically no where to be found until the late 50's and then exploding in the 60's. (Okay, a few nightclubs in New York & L.A. might have been turned on in the 30's & 40's.)

So there really was no need for a war on drugs up to that point.

Now they are practically everywhere, including elementary schools. I just can't see how making it legal and very easy for 5th graders to smoke pot or trip out on acid is going to help the country. No way.

But I do agree with your thoughts on respecting the constitution.

[flashbunny]

two words: opium dens.

Cocaine was originally an ingredient in coca cola.

There are more and more examples. The difference is that today people are immune from personal responsibility. You want to waste your life doing drugs? Don't worry, there's some sort of government assitance for you. Get sick or injured? Don't worry, hospitals have to take you in - it's the law.

Remove the bogus safety nets, fully respect the 2nd amendment (so any drug addicts that need to steal to support their habbit have a natural deterrent from armed citizens) and then end the federal WOD that's draining tax dollars that could be spent killing terrorists and we'd be much better off.

The only place the feds have in the WOD is doing their part in securing the borders (which they aren't doing that well right now) and catching any unauthorized drug shipments from overseas.

[Cedar]

Two more words: elementary schools

Also could add middle schools and high schools.

Schools are bad enough now without throwing in a mix of (legal) LSD, heroin, coke, etc. Talk about attention-deficit!

[TKDietz]

I don't agree with legalizing hard drugs like cocaine, meth, and heroin, or even LSD. I think it would increase availability of all of these drugs. It would also decrease price considerably for the really addictive stuff like meth, cocaine and heroin, which in effect makes these drugs even more available because as it is they are so expensive. As it is teens especially are not likely to be able to afford these drugs or at least not likely to be able to afford to do them with any regularity which limits the likelihood that they'll become addicted.

I don't agree with you though on marijuana. It's already cheap and it's already available to anyone who wants it, especially young people. Teens have reported on government surveys for years that it is easier for them to obtain marijuana than alcohol. The last few years they have reported that it is easier for them to obtain marijuana than cigarettes. I do not think that legalizing marijuana for adults and allowing licensed retail outlets to sell it to adults who can produce proof that they are of age would increase availability for kids. It might possibly even make it more difficult for kids to obtain, although I kind of doubt that myself. But even though they'd still be able to get it, I'd rather them get it the same way they get their beer and cigarettes than for them to buy it from drug dealers who also sell the hard stuff.

[Cedar]

I guess the main point is this:

When you legalize something, it is considered all right.

If something is illegal, then it carries with it the value of something that is wrong, something not good.

It is important that drugs remain illegal--thus carrying with it the message that drugs are harmful, drugs are wrong (I know all you pot smokers on this thread will disagree with me....but as one who did drugs for years, I speak from experience too, so your disagreements won't carry much weight.)

Also, during those lost years of mine, I found that people who smoked pot were real likely to do other drugs too. (Always open to greater highs...!!) So there is a very good chance that many people would go on to try coke, etc.

I know it is easy as pie now to get pot. Nevertheless, the stigma of it being illegal should always remain as a deterrent.

I just can't see society functioning that well with everybody high (while the pot flows freely and legally).

[Wolfie]

For some reason, they can argue that the government is a poor solution for things like retirement and welfare but it's the perfect solution for dealing with drugs, even though history and practical experience say otherwise.

Cognitive Dissonance Ping.

[tacticalogic]

Also, during those lost years of mine, I found that people who smoked pot were real likely to do other drugs too. (Always open to greater highs...!!) So there is a very good chance that many people would go on to try coke, etc.

Assuming that tendency was a result of smoking the pot, and not something they had to start with. Are you sure that's a valid assumption?

[bassmaner]

Two more words: elementary schools

Also could add middle schools and high schools.

Ask your average high-school kid whether it's easier for him/her to obtain (legal for adults) alcohol or (illegal) marijuana. The answer may surprise you ... it's easier for them to get the weed than it is to get the booze. Ever wonder why? It's probably because alcohol purveyors need a state-issued license to ply their trade, which they would put in jeopardy if they illegally sold their wares to minors. Black-marketeers that sell a product that is prohibited by the government don't care about such niceties: they'd sell their stuff to a 4-year-old if the little kid had the money to pay for it.

So ... if you really want to protect the chillrun, legalize it.

[TKDietz]

I understand you point. I just don't believe that the stigma created by the laws against it is as powerful as you think it is. Also, I'm not at all convinced that pot makes people want to try other drugs. The people who are "always open to greater highs" were like that before they ever smoked pot. It's the same with drinking and smoking. According to SAMHSA, people who smoke are 8 times more likely to use illicit drugs. Seventy something percent of young people who are smokers and who drink five or more drinks five or more times a month are current illicit drug users while only around three percent of those who don't drink or smoke do. (See Index to PDF tables and under illicit drugs look up table on alcohol and tobacco in relation to drugs. I can't pull it up this morning for some reason, and I'm not dead sure of these stats although I've seen them before and believe I'm getting them right.. http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nhsda.htm# )

It seems to me that the "party people" who already at a young age are attracted to things like booze and cigarettes and marijuana are also going to be attracted to other drugs. I was pretty much in the same boat as a teen myself and after alcohol and cigarettes the first illicit substances I did were prescription drugs and I did those first because that was the first thing I came across, but I was intrigued by all of it, and probably would have been game for just about any drug at that age. That was the late seventies and I was a young teen who for whatever reason thought the whole "drugs, sex, and rock and roll" thing that was going on back then was cool.

One positive thing about legalizing marijuana might be that more people will stop with marijuana rather than taking other drugs that come along, if there is anything to what you say about stigma arising from the legal status of drugs. As it is young people are bombarded with the notion that pot is as bad as drugs like crack. Once they've gotten over whatever stigma the laws might create and smoked pot, stigma from laws won't be holding them back from using the really dangerous super addictive stuff.

More than that is something you probably saw yourself back in your party days and that is the fact that people who use one illegal drug are far more likely to find themselves in a position where they'll be offered other drugs or otherwise have the opportunity to try them. The people using or selling the harder stuff are far less likely to break it out in front of someone who doesn't even smoke pot. Smoking pot is illegal too, so it makes one a "member" of the illegal drug using crowd. People aren't afraid to break the other stuff out in front of someone who already uses one illegal drug because there is a perception that those who do one illegal drug are far less likely to tell on people for drug use or sales and far less likely to look down on people for using or selling other drugs than some straight-laced person who has never used an illegal drug.

If pot wasn't illegal, it wouldn't be a key to open the door into the illegal drug world like it is now. People that smoke pot would still be outsiders and wouldn't have nearly the same measure of built in trustworthiness that they are perceived as having by those who use other illegal drugs today. On top of that, they'd be buying their pot from a store instead of from the people that sell the other drugs and those minors who smoke it would be far more likely to obtain their supply the same ways they get beer and cigarettes today instead of through drug dealers who often sell the other stuff. This would be a good thing because it would further isolate those who use and sell the much more dangerous and addictive stuff and limit their corrupting influence.

[Quick1]

ROFL. So which is it, the government is a poor solution, or a good solution?

[TKDietz]

The SAMHSA site is back up. The table that shows the relationship between tobacco and alcohol use and illicit drug use is Table 7.113B. Look at the numbers for those heavy drinkers and binge drinkers, especialy among those who use cigarettes. Binge drinkers are those who will drink five or more drinks on one occassion. They are considered heavy drinkers if they do this five or more time per month.

http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nhsda/2k3tabs/PDF/Sect7peTabs113.pdf

On Table 7.13B you can see that past month cigarette users 12 and older were over 15 times as likely to have used cocaine in the past month in 2003 and over 13 times as likely in 2002 than non smokers.

http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nhsda/2k3tabs/PDF/Sect7peTabs13to16.pdf