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.
It isn't. So much for the doper position.
And assassins that miss their target should go free. By doper logic at least.
Ah, so you pose it as the doper vs @sshole debate, huh?
Sorry, I’m not a doper but you’re fitting the other role royally.
Beer accounts for more traffic deaths and on the job injuries than does marijuana.
There was once a time when marijuana was legal and a time when beer was illegal.
It is pretty hard to make the case that one should be legal and the other one not.
In reality, you have a hard time making the case that it is government’s role to ban or legalize anything a free man should consume.
Or else quit pretending that you’re an advocate for freedom.
Thank god for people like me who can help educate people like you on the difference between someone driving while impaired and an assassin attempting murder. That is Drug Warrior logic at work, isn’t it?
I’ll bet that you’re also the type that can’t differentiate between spanking and beating a child.
Your type needs and craves a strong government to keep you line.
My type is self governing.
Admittedly, self government requires more common sense, more maturity, and more self control that does being governed or ruled.
As you demonstrate, self government isn’t for everyone.
Try doper = @sshole.
Go ahead.
Quite true.
-- Some time ago FR's socialistic prohibitionists [Mojave and his sycophant among them] tried to defend drug and gun prohibition on the thread cited below..
They were abject failures, and embarrassed themselves:
FR Poll Thread: Does the Interstate Commerce Clause authorize prohibition of drugs and firearms?
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1515174/posts?q=1&;page=3020
Since I’m not a doper I guess you earned both titles.
Really sad that you seem to think that those who advocate individual freedom and responsibility must abuse drugs.
Says a lot for your disregard for freedom and responsibility.
Nope. I think that those contend that uncontrolled drug abuse defines what freedom must be are dishonest and irrational.
The War on Drugs is working!
Self government defines freedom.
Each instance of the govenrment telling a citizen what they can or cannot read, eat, drink, grow or possess is another encroachment on individual freedom.
It is not government’s role, ESPECIALLY the federal government, to “allow” citizens to carry large sums of cash, self medicate, carry weapons, read books of questionable redeeming social value, associate with whomever one chooses, or retain privacy in one’s life.
Of course. That is the basis of a free society. Anything else is totalitarianism.
Like DWI.
Ridiculous hyperbole. Driving while under the influence of a mind-altering substance has obvious implications that directly impinge on the rights of others.
Totalitarians and fascists seek to regulate intent. Drugs are proscribed because the user might try to drive a car or sell them to children. The rational solution to that is to make the penalties for the behavior that does impinge on others' rights swift, harsh, and consistent. It is rational to have laws preventing the sale of drugs (including alcohol) to children. Such action impinges on the rights of parents to raise their offspring. It is rational to have laws with harsh penalties for driving while intoxicated. Such behavior carries a demonstrably high risk, approaching even a certainty, of injury and death for other drivers, thereby impinging on their right to live.
And finally, drug laws are about control. The fundamental basis for them is that one group of people is engaging in activity that another group of people find objectionable. Once a system is in place that allows such control, tyranny is the inevitable result.
NCSteve: I see, so what, exactly makes alcohol different than any other drug?
Ooh! Ooh! I know!
*ahem* robertpaulsen uses alcohol and doesn't use the other drugs.
Why is it some bureaucrat's business if I decide to carry around my life savings in a suitcase and I travel outside of the country?
Where is that power delegated to the federal government?
I agree. If the person driving while intoxicated injures another or their property, make the penalty swift, harsh, and consistent.
"It is rational to have laws with harsh penalties for driving while intoxicated"
Because of what may happen? You want to take away a person's property and their freedom because of something they might do? And here you're complaining about our asset forfeiture laws. Look at you!
If you're comfortable with that (and you obviously are), then why are you objecting to penalizing drug users for something they might do? A little hypocritical, huh?
"The fundamental basis for them is that one group of people is engaging in activity that another group of people find objectionable. Once a system is in place that allows such control, tyranny is the inevitable result."
Tyranny? How does tyranny result when one group of people objects to another group of people. Tyranny results when one man (a dictator) objects to the actions of a group of people.
You've decribed a democracy.
It isn't, if your life savings is under $10K. Over $10K, they want to make sure you aren't laundering money. If that bothers you, USE A BANK"
Way to sidestep and avoid the question. :thumbsup:
Sidestep what?
Please, show me the post where I said anything about asset forfeiture laws. As well, this has nothing to do with what a person might do. The language we use has meaning, assigning arbitrary meaning to what is said is a pointless exercise. There is a demonstrably high risk that a person who drives while intoxicated will cause property loss, injury, or death, just as there is a demonstrably high risk that someone who fires a pistol randomly into a crowd will kill someone. The rational solution is to make swift, harsh and consistent penalties for these two acts. The irrational solution is to blame the guns or the drugs and make laws prohibiting them.
Tyranny? How does tyranny result when one group of people objects to another group of people.
I said no such thing. I said it results when the objection occurs and one of the groups enforces its will on the other. Important distinction.
Tyranny results when one man (a dictator) objects to the actions of a group of people.
Incorrect. Tyranny results when any person or group of persons enforces their will on the populace by force or coercion. The Soviet Union practiced tyranny on a regular basis. The tyranny was imposed on the populace by the communist party. There was no dictator, there was an oligarchy.
You've decribed a democracy.
See above. If you don't believe a democracy can practice tyranny, you have a lot of reading to do. In point of fact, a democracy will always result in tyranny. Recall that i suggested you do a google search on "tyranny of the majority." I will make that suggestion once again.
Then I must have you confused with someone else. I'll just go ahead and put you down as supporting the current asset forfeiture laws.
"There is a demonstrably high risk that a person who drives while intoxicated will cause ..."
Fine. Then we both agree with the concept that laws may be written which prohibit activities that don't harm others. We simply disagree on where that line should be drawn.
"The Soviet Union practiced tyranny on a regular basis."
And you equate that with voters telling their representatives to pass legislation regulating some recreational drugs? Just a little hysterical, maybe?
"If you don't believe a democracy can practice tyranny"
Who cares? We don't have a democracy. All I said was you described one.
The closest we have to a pure democracy is the referendum. I'm guessing you oppose those since it represents "mob rule" which is essentially "tyranny of the majority".
Which means you oppose the medical marijuana laws passed in 10 states by referendum. To be consistent.
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