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.
Some people are just to damn dumb for words to describe. Drunk driving harms other people, dying from an overdose only hurts the user, this includes an overdose of alcohol, which is called alcohol poisoning.
Prohibition should have taught us all that we make a problem worse when we outlaw substances. What a person chooses to put into their body is their business. I don't do drugs and I never will, but I do drink alcohol(which is a type of drug)and I spit on any government attempts to try to take that right to drink it away from me.
We need LESS government not more. Outlawing drugs has caused the culture we see now, it has made drugs very profitable and they will continue to be profitable, financing the gangs and illegal activities of drug loads. As far as confiscating a citizens property without due process, this is unconstitutional and should be stopped immediately. They have started confiscating cars in one state for smoking cigarettes bought across the line in another state and brought back into the home state, why? Because they have vilified cigs to the point where many people view them as worse than heroin or cocaine, so they figure they can get away with it, because it is "for the children"(or put your own slogan here)don't you know.
Legalizing drugs, as they use to be in this country, would cause no higher incident of drug use than we have now, it would eliminate it from being sold to children because the money would go out of it. Drug induced crime would virtually stop overnight. Believe it or not, I don't care, but if you continue in your present beliefs you need to seriously have something done about your brain, it has a leak somewhere.
..and how do you propose forcing everyone to work? Government labor camps? Are you Communist or Fascist? The reason I ask is if you are Communist, then we could call your labor camps ‘Gulags’, but if fascist, then the only correct name would be ‘Concentration Camps’.
If the keep-up-the-drug-war alternative included unavailable, you'd be absolutely right. But for all the property they've seized and people they've thrown in jail, there isn't one place in America these drugs aren't readily available to anyone who wants to pay for them.
Liberty combined with taking responsibility for one’s actions works in solving problems each time it is tried.
Making it legal to put what one wants in ones own body could reduce drug use if this increase in liberty is combined with an increase in liberty for those of us who must interact with the drug users. What do I mean? I suggest the following.
1) Any employer has the liberty to require drug testing at his pleasure and expense on any employee and does not have to keep employed anyone using something he does not like.
2) Any insurance company has the liberty to require drug testing at its pleasure and expense on any customer and can adjust rates accordingly as it likes.
Just these 2 things in combination with legalizing any drug would dramatically reduce drug use, crime, violence and corruption of government.
Think not?
In the 1970’s and 1980’s when I was an independent trucker there was a serious problem with truckers going over hours on their legal hours of service. This was often the result of illegal amphetamine use and sometimes other drugs. The result of all this irresponsible activity was an increase in accidents and deaths.
While I was still in that business, government tried mightily with all its power to solve this problem. They failed miserably. Yet, today truck drivers going over their hours of service is much less of a problem than it use to be. Government did not reduce this problem. Private industry did the most to reduce this problem.
Specifically, accident insurance companies just made it way too expensive for truck companies to continue to have these accidents. Then the truck companies used innovative technology and better management to control their drivers.
The drug problem can also be attacked by private industry while the government saves a ton of money (and lives) by not engaging in a futile effort.
All that it would take is for when you give drug users the liberty to do what they want, give employers and insurance companies the liberty to do what they must.
They can seize YOU and throw you in jail without a trial. I would think that would be of greater concern.
Yes, they can seize assets. They can't keep them without a trial, so I have no idea what point you're trying to make.
"Constitutional protections like presumption of innocence until proved guilty, and trial by a jury of your peers have been destroyed by the drug war."
Not at all. And you cannot give me one example of what you're talking about.
It's neither lost nor won. It just is. And it's working. If you don't think it's working, then you'd have to believe that if we ended it drug use would not increase.
Do you believe that?
You don't see any hands because meth, heroin and cocaine are already cheap and readily available.
Let me see a show of hands of all those who want the drug trade controlled by the Central and South American cartels and street gangs, as it is now.
Let me see a show of hands of all those who want the drug trade to continue to be a lucrative, unregulated black market that increases the power of the state.
Let me see a show of hands of people who support throwing pot smokers and drug addicts in prison with mandatory minimums and sentences that equal those of rapists and child molesters.
Other than you and a few resident authoritarians and statists, I don't see many hands.
Who said anything about forcing anyone to do something? I said getting a job is an alternative solution to selling drugs.
What is your problem? Am I making too much sense?
“...so those drugs can kill more people”
Drugs don’t kill people.
Guns don’t kill people.
Peoples actions kill people.
If you’re stupid enough to repetitively ingest toxic things into your body...you deserve exactly what you get. Thinning the herd.
I’ve had a 38 cal next to my bed for 7 years. Out of guilt I take it out of the holster every few years and clean it. Other than that...it hasn’t moved a millimeter. It hasn’t killed anyone.
Slurs are a poor way to hide the obvious flaws in the drug Nazi arguments.
Saved for later.
Do you believe that?
I think there would be an initial increase followed by an overall decrease. There would be a huge decrease in crime as the trade was taken out of the hands of street gangs and violent thugs, and an overall decline in the wanton power of the federal government.
Freedom is tough; it requires enormous amounts of personal responsibility and hard work. If regulating the way people live their lives is the best way to promote a healthy society, you should join Mayor Bloomberg's staff so you can go after trans-fats and smoking in bars, followed by the banning of talking on cell phones in cars.
The sky's the limit for the amount of bad and destructive behaviors you can start cracking down on, all while the bureaucrats' budgets and pension plans skyrocket as we drift further into the nanny state.
“It’s neither lost nor won. It just is. And it’s working. If you don’t think it’s working, then you’d have to believe that if we ended it drug use would not increase.
Do you believe that?”
____________________________________________________________
So basically what you are saying is that the average human being is so completely helpless and gullible.... that if the asinine WOD was stopped tomorrow....millions of them would immediately run out and buy a shoe box full of coke and snort it until their heads explode?
Please explain where personal responsibility fits in to your life...if it does at all.
Would YOU run out and buy some heroin with today’s paycheck if you knew it was legal?
Get a clue...ok?
Do you believe that?
“Freedom is tough; it requires enormous amounts of personal responsibility....”
Thank you.
It is like my dogs argument. Every day they tell me I should give them cookies and treats because they have been hard at work keeping polar bears out of the kitchen. Whom am I to say they are lying?
What??? Drunk driving harms no one.
Granted, drunk driving MAY harm others. Then again, drug users MAY harm others, too.
"Prohibition should have taught us all that we make a problem worse when we outlaw substances."
And it should also have taught us that the way to end it is for the people to speak out against it. Based on the polls I've seen, only about 5% of the people want to legalize all drugs.
"Legalizing drugs, as they use to be in this country, would cause no higher incident of drug use than we have now"
I disagree. As would any rational person.
J.
O.
B.
S.
and free pot.
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