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.
"If true, it's a lousy way to do it. If people stopped doing recreational drugs, the state would have no power."
They'd just pull an ATF, and figure out something else to regulate.
Bingo.
As difficult as it may be for you since you are a self-described 'maroon',please re-read the article and try to comprehend the obvious point it's making.
As difficult as it may be for you since you are a self-described 'maroon', please re-read the article and try to comprehend the obvious point it's making.
"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.
You articulate your position a lot better when you don't feel the need to insult other posters.
That's a Lib tactic for defending the indefensible - certainly you don't need to stoop to it.
What kind of intoxicant are you on today, legal or illegal?
Are you saying that meth, heroin, and cocaine are as readily available to the average American as a sixpack of Bud? Personally, I wouldn't know where to begin looking for heroin that wouldn't kill me.
What proof do you have that YOU are rational? A rational person would know that rational people disagree often and that on any subject people would disagree. So now, have you proved yourself irrational? Or sloppy? Or, both? Since most social statistics are junk on either side, have been junk numbers, and I doubt will get any better because we are dealing with the entire spectrum of humanity, I feel it can only be said that we don't know the true numbers one way or the other. Statements either way are gratuitous assertions.
You really believe what you just wrote? That making drugs legal will magically end crime from drugs. You think addicts will quit stealing because now they have to get their drugs from a different source? You think kids won’t get drugs from people who can buy from another source.
You are really way off in this fantasy belief. Drug addiction hurts more than just the addict.
The current way may not be the best way but what you wrote is pure fantasy.
No, more so. You can get drugs delivered 24/7. Heroin is cheaper than a 6 pack.
Pot wasn't illegal during the depression.
The jazz music of that time is full of pot references in songs such as Reefer Man, The Jumpin' Jive etc by Cab Calloway and his contemporaries such as Don Redman and Louis Armstrong.
I'll take that one:
Caffeine (tea)
Nicotine (Commit Lozenge)
Loratadine (generic Claritin)
Come get me Bloomberg!!
Thats why we need to keep it illegal. All those jazz men seducing our white women!
Just the fat ones.
Just because you don't know where to look, Robert, doesn't mean these things aren't readily available. It just means you don't know where to look.
And you're nuts if you think out of sight equals out of mind. Once you find your way in---yes, it's just as easy as going to the store for a six-pack of Bud.
They can and they do all the time. Boats, cars, houses, cash. No trial. No criminal prosecution. You have to sue in order to get them back, and that rarely works. You are an idiot if you didn’t know this.
“Am I making too much sense?”
No. No danger of any sense creeping into your posts.
The author of this article disagrees. He says these drug users are committing crimes to get the money to feed their habit.
Now what do you say?
"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."
Almost everyone in prison on a drug conviction is there because they were either dealing drugs or trafficking in them. A pot smoker in state prison? Puh-leeze.
"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."
I see. People dying from meth sold by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals would be better.
"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."
And you think the power of the state is reduced if the state regulates, licenses and enforces the manufacture, distribution and sales of drugs and taxes the hell out of them?
That being three meals a day and free healthcare in a hospital? Free psychiatric care plus room and board? Welfare, foodstamps and subidized housing?
I don't think drug users deserve that.
“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.”
They can and they do all the time. Boats, cars, houses, cash. No trial. No criminal prosecution. You have to sue in order to get them back, and that rarely works. You are an idiot if you didn’t know this.
monday's right (although the personal attack was unwarranted).
If you're going to defend civil forfeiture laws, robertpaulsen, you might do well to learn how they actually work. The burden of proof is often placed upon those whose property has been seized to demonstrate that it ought to be returned.
It is a perversion of the justice system.
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