Posted on 10/05/2007 7:17:45 AM PDT by cryptical
I've looked forward to interviewing the U.S. drug czar for years, and Tuesday afternoon I finally got the chance when current czar John Walters visited with the U-T editorial board. I'm happy to note that he took my libertarian griping seriously; many drug warriors seem amazed that anyone could suggest that the drug war is futile, costly, counterproductive and hypocritical, and often amounts to an assault on civil liberties.
I said to Walters that by any possible statistical reckoning of deaths, car wrecks, suicides, drownings, crimes of violence, etc., alcohol is vastly more destructive in the U.S. than all illegal drugs combined. I asked if he disputed this.
He didn't answer me directly even after I reposed the question. Basically, he said that while alcohol may be a big and destructive problem, the fact that alcohol is legal doesn't mean you don't try to reduce the use of other, illegal drugs. He said "the danger of marijuana today" is far greater than in the old days, thanks to its potency.
Did he in any way acknowledge the oddity of having a war on drugs that don't kill all that many people while tolerating drugs (alcohol, tobacco) which fill up graveyards 24-7?
Nope.
I said that many libertarians object to the drug war not just on the grounds that government shouldn't tell people what they can put in their bodies but on the grounds that the execution of the drug war routinely involves assaults on civil liberties. I cited past drug czars' eager touting of confiscation policies, in which a family could lose its only car without even a court hearing if one member were caught driving the car while in possession of pot. Did he see the drug war as diminishing civil liberties?
Walters offered a broad defense of asset-forfeiture tactics as being "designed to reduce the demand in a tangible way. ... I'm not going to say" that "laws sometimes aren't misapplied," but claims that civil liberties are a routine victim of the drug war are "great misrepresentations" and a "great mischaracterization."
He said the "magnitude of the injustice" suffered in some cases was exaggerated.
I wanted to get to other questions before our time ran out, so I didn't ask him the obvious follow-up about the fact that no one is actually ever charged with a crime in many asset forfeiture cases, and that there is plenty of evidence that giving police agencies a motive to seize property (they can sell it later and add to their budgets) is a horrible idea.
Then I got into Milton Friedman's critique of the drug war, noting the evidence that the drug war -- by making popular intoxicants illegal and only available via a highly lucrative black market -- was responsible for lots of crimes beyond buying and selling, and that it had led to police corruption, among many other unintended consequences. I asked what he would do to combat drugs if could start over from scratch.
He said "the problem is not that we make drugs a crime; it is that drugs are catalysts to crime." And he said what "the facts really say" is that Milton Friendman's criticisms of the drug war were "untrue -- demonstrably untrue."
Here's what Friedman had to say in Newsweek in 1972 as the drug war was first gearing up:
Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?
But, you may say, must we accept defeat? Why not simply end the drug traffic? That is where experience under Prohibition is most relevant. We cannot end the drug traffic. We may be able to cut off opium from Turkey but there are innumerable other places where the opium poppy grows. With French cooperation, we may be able to make Marseilles an unhealthy place to manufacture heroin but there are innumerable other places where the simple manufacturing operations involved can be carried out. So long as large sums of money are involved -- and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal -- it is literally hopeless to expect to end the traffic or even to reduce seriously its scope. In drugs, as in other areas, persuasion and example are likely to be far more effective than the use of force to shape others in our image.
Still looks "literally hopeless" to me. Walters offered stats showing declining use of certain illegal drugs, but so have past drug czars -- and guess what? New drug crazes emerged like clockwork (meth, oxycontin, etc.). Has the basic human interest in altered consciousness ever waned? Of course not.
Here's what Friedman wrote in 1992 as a follow-up to his 1972 Newsweek column:
Very few words in that column would have to be changed for it to be publishable today. The problem then was primarily heroin and the chief source of the heroin was Marseilles. Today, the problem is cocaine from Latin America. Aside from that, nothing would have to be changed.
Here it is almost twenty years later. What were then predictions are now observable results. As I predicted in that column, on the basis primarily of our experience with Prohibition, drug prohibition has not reduced the number of addicts appreciably if at all and has promoted crime and corruption.
Here's what Friedman wrote in 1991 about the vast toll the drug war took on the poor, especially minorities:
We can stop destroying the possibility of a decent family life among the underprivileged in this country. I do not agree with many people who would agree with me on that point about the role that government ought to play in the treatment of addiction. I do not agree either with those who say that the tragedy of the slums is really a social problem, that the underprivileged do not have enough jobs and therefore government has to provide them with jobs. I want to tell those people that government performance is no better in creating jobs and solving other social problems than it is in drug prohibition.
It is 2007, and nearly 30 percent of young African-American males in many cities are in jail, on probation or on parole, and the drug war is the main reason. It is 2007, and it is still common to hear black youths and young adults describe an urban lifestyle so barren that pro sports and drug dealing are the only way out. Is Milton Friedman "demonstrably untrue" in warning of the drug war's collateral damage in ghettos? Of course not.
Here's what Friedman wrote in 1988 about a huge problem with the drug war that's rarely mentioned:
Legalizing drugs would reduce enormously the number of victims of drug use who are not addicts: people who are mugged, people who are corrupted, the reduction of law and order because of the corruption of law enforcement, and the allocation of a very large fraction of law enforcement resources to this one particular activity.
Is he wrong again? Hardly. Especially after 9/11, our eagerness to spend billions a week to wage an unwinnable war on drugs is simultaneously wasteful, irrational and dangerous.
Walters didn't say what he would do to reduce destructive drug use if he could start from scratch. He seems to believe in the status quo.
Why? Because in fighting the drug war, ''There are clear signs of progress.''
No, that wasn't just the sort of thing Walters said Tuesday. That was President George H.W. Bush talking in 1990 on the first anniversary of his appointment of the first drug czar, Bill Bennett. Similar claims came out of the Clinton administration in 1997 after stepped-up cooperation with Mexico. Now we're hearing the same from this Bush administration.
This isn't even Orwellian; it's too simple-minded. We are making progress in the drug war, the government tells us, now and always.
Shouldn't perpetual progress at some point add up to something substantial and significant? Shouldn't perpetual progress mean at some point, a la the "defense dividend" after the end of the Cold War, that we can spend less on the drug war?
Why, of course not. Such questions aren't helpful. What's important, after all, is that we are making progress in the drug war. Just look at our charts and graphs.
The mind reels. The only thing "demonstrably untrue" about Milton Friedman's drug-war critique is the idea that it has been discredited.
Junk. BS. Knowing lies. Propaganda. You want to buy some Enron? I got charts!
You see, the author kind of threw me when he lamented the fact that alcohol was legal yet was the cause of all these deaths. Then he said these other drugs, which are illegal and cause fewer deaths, should be made legal. I concluded that he must want those deaths to increase to catch up to alcohol.
But you're saying it's because of police corruption, disintegration of the urban family and that other stuff. Which will all go away if we would legalize drugs.
Geez, ya promise?
Uh huh, and you know this because . . .?
The mere fact that we have less users means it's working.
How do you know how many users there are of any of the illegal drugs? Is there a list somewhere?
Unless you think that if we got rid of the DEA, legalized drugs, opened our borders to drug imports, drugs became cheaper and purer, and drug use would decrease, then you'd have to agree.
Purer? Is alcohol purer now than it was during prohibition?
I think you are confusing emotive responses with rational arguments.
Or, I could post graphs which show that drug use dropped 60% from its high point in 1979 and has remained relatively flat for the last 15 years.
Weren't drugs already illegal in 1979?
And again, how do you know drug use has dropped 60%? Because the DEA and DOJ said so?
Do you think that non-drug users deserve that?
That's kinda what conservatism is all about. Otherwise, you start treading into the "it takes a village" mentality.
Uhh, no. My point is that prohibition leads to high potency. Its a fact.
There won't be a black market at all because it will be a legal product!
You're right. Whenever I think of the ATF I never think of Waco or Ruby Ridge. Those DEA guys, on the other hand, shoot dogs!
Can you please cite what alcohol and/or tobacco violation led to the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents.
The thought that we would be the world's largest exporter of drugs obviously never occurred to you.
Oh really, so we're going to start growing poppies and coca leaves here in the United States? Is that botanically possible?
On the other hand, I think you may be on to something here. That would be a great way of putting the cartels in South America and Mexico out of business. Your suggestion is noted.
Anything is better than the current stupidity of the government's War on Drugs.
I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that Friedman was never a Libertarian.
Simple. If the numbers go up, DOJ/DEA need more money. IF the numbers go down that proves that the more money for the DOJ/DEA works. Until the numbers go up, in which case they'll need more money, until the numbers go down which proves the second budget increase worked. Rinse later repeat. The DOJ/DEA are surfing the numbers, at best. I don't know where people get there knowledge of human behavior, of bureaucratic behavior that they accept the numbers from the people supposedly doing the work?
The percent of people, 12 and older, who do drugs at least once per month.
In 1979 it was around 14%, it dropped to below 6%, then climbed to around 7% where it is today -- and has been for around 15 years.
"So that's what this is about; you're doing it "for the children".
And you're doing it for you. Oh. Hands down. Yours is the better and purer motive.
Sober drivers kill more people than drunk drivers do.
Shouldn’t we do something to combat sober drivers?
Picky, picky.
Addicts don't have that problem.
Answer, there are not any because there is noting to check them against.
Junk. Useless. Useless and then used, like putting fairly good Ford parts into a Honda engine. Why wouldn’t it work, they are pretty good parts?
Reminiscent of the Soviet Union, every year better and better!
Or because it's currently an expensive habit. Or because of the social stigma. Or because they don't wish to travel to the neighborhoods where the drugs are to buy them. Or because they could lose their job. Or because they don't trust the contents of what they're being sold.
Plenty of reasons.
Marijuana drops from $200 per ounce to $2 per ounce and teens won't take it up? Same for meth, coke and heroin? I'm sure you want me to believe that.
I believe what he is saying is that to claim that these drugs are illegal in order to facilitate public health and safety is demonstrably false given the destruction wraught by alcohol compared to the relatively benign effects of marijuana use for example.
But you're saying it's because of police corruption, disintegration of the urban family and that other stuff. Which will all go away if we would legalize drugs.
If drugs are legalized you will elimiate the culture of crime and corruption that currently surrounds the sale of these drugs. Just like the repeal of prohibition in 1933 eliminated the culture of crime and corruption that surround the production and sale of alcohol during the 20s and early 30s.
It's a war on drugs that fit certain criteria.
"Where's the war on alcohol (drug) and tobacco( drug)or caffeine (drug)?"
Alcohol, nicotine and caffeine are not in the same schedule as meth, crack, and heroin. Should they be? Are you saying a (drug) is a (drug) is a (drug)?
In 1979 it was around 14%, it dropped to below 6%, then climbed to around 7% where it is today -- and has been for around 15 years.
Its a bulls--t statistic. The numbers themselves are suspect, and even if they are accurate your reading of them is flawed. Brady gun prohibitionists used to use the same kind of logic to explain how the Assault Weapons Ban caused a drop in gun crime.
There are a million factors that could be at play, namely a better economy and cutting back on the welfare state. The Carter presidency alone was probably enough to make people want to dope up.
And you're doing it for you. Oh. Hands down. Yours is the better and purer motive.
I don't use alcohol or drugs, except for the occasional piece of nicotine gum or a caffeinated beverage. If you're insinuating that I'm doing it for my freedom, you are absolutely right.
What I am sure is that there is no, zero standard of accuracy in these numbers, charts, graphs. I know that for a fact.
Numbers, charts, graphs on human behavior are, frankly either a lie, or some sort of mass delusion like Soviet housing statistics.
Certainly harm is one factor. Not the only factor, since chemotherapy drugs are extremely harmful, lethal in fact, and we wouldn't want to ban them because of that.
The 1970 Controlled Substances Act lists 8 such factors.
You have not answered why numbers on social behavior are knowable.
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