Dopey Conservatives for Dope

Accuracy in Media ^ | March 29, 2010 | Cliff Kincaid

[AIM Freeper]

The conservative Townhall.com website, owned by the Salem Communications company, a Christian firm, is distributing a column by Steve Chapman claiming that the legalization of marijuana will somehow undermine the power of the Mexican drug trafficking organizations and usher in a new era of peace and tranquility north of the border. The silly column more appropriately belongs on a website associated with George Soros, the moneybags behind the drug legalization movement.

"Mexico is the biggest supplier of cannabis to the United States," he writes. "Control of that market is one of the things that Mexican drug cartels are willing to kill for. Legalizing weed in this country would be their worst nightmare. Why? Because it would offer Americans a legitimate supply of the stuff."

What he fails to realize is the fact that the Mexican drug cartels have already infiltrated the U.S. and are growing the "stuff" in the United States. Hence, legalization could have the effect of making these criminals into "legitimate" businessmen. "Big Marijuana" could join "Big Pharma" as another powerful special interest group. In order to be consistent, "Big Cocaine" and "Big Meth" would have to follow.

"Mexican DTOs [Drug Trafficking Organizations] have expanded their cultivation operations into the United States, an ongoing trend for the past decade," notes the recently released National Drug Threat Assessment for 2010. "Well-organized criminal groups and DTOs that produce domestic marijuana do so because of the high profitability of and demand for marijuana in the United States. These groups have realized the benefits of producing large quantities of marijuana in the United States, including having direct access to a large customer base, avoiding the risk of detection and seizure during transportation across the U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico borders, and increasing profits by reducing transportation costs."

[Gigantor]

and the ignorance of people astounds me. Remember Prohibition? Never learned about the functions of a black market?

[Pessimist]

There should be no laws regarding what a person can put in their own body.

Period.

[Ken H]

Good work. If your experience has been like mine, you either get ignored or they dodge the question with evasive answers. My favorite is "I'm not a legal scholar".

They have no principled constitutional argument against fedgov control of health care, education and a host of other areas that trample the Tenth Amendment.

[John-Irish]

Then as it pertains to the success of drug prohibition, what’s your standard for failure?

[John-Irish]

No less a conservative that William F. Buckley was for drug legalization. Was he a ‘’dope’’?

[John-Irish]

I agree. Over the mind and body the individual is sovereign.

[John-Irish]

Legalize those too or criminalize everything, tobacco and booze.

[Ol' Sparky]

You can be against the insane War on Drugs and not be “for dope”.

But one can't be for legalizing and not be a dope and for using dope.

[Ol' Sparky]

So why didn't this happen with beer/liquor/wine at the end of prohibition? :

You can't understand the difference between making something illegal that has been legal and legalizing something that is illegal?

When an act that has been illegal is legalized, the amount of the activity increases.

And, alcohol usage did drop during prohibition:

http://www.sarnia.com/GROUPS/ANTIDRUG/argument/myths.html

Prohibition was a solitary effort by this country while the rest of the world was essentially "wet." However, most drugs are illegal throughout much of the world. This makes enforcement much easier. History shows that prohibition curbed alcohol abuse. Alcohol use declined by 30 to 50 percent; deaths from cirrhosis of the liver fell from 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911 to 10.7 in 1929; and admissions to state mental hospitals for alcohol psychosis fell from 10.1 per 100,000 in 1919 to 4.7 in 1928.[53] Mark Moore, Harvard professor of criminal justice, wrote: "The real lesson of prohibition is that society can, indeed, make a dent in the consumption of drugs through laws."[54]

[Buckeye McFrog]

In fairness to Salem and Townhall, they are just the conduit. They are not, nor should they be in the business of regulating the speech of everybody who chooses to have a blog there. When you open up a marketplace of ideas you are invariably going to have the odd goofball turning up every now and then.

Who’s to say Tommy Chong could not have a blog on Townhall if he wanted one. (or for that matter, I think Pat Buchanan has already got one....)

[jimt]

No less a conservative that William F. Buckley was for drug legalization. Was he a ‘’dope’’?

Add in Milton Friedman - another "dope" I guess.

[RockyMtnMan]

Since when is it the job of government to tell a man he can’t destroy his own life. It’s not a matter of what’s morally right but what the constitution says the government is allowed to regulate. The commerce clause was and is still abused in the effort to reform individuals. Now the precident is set to “reform” all the other vices free individuals choose to participate in.

The cure is worse than the disease in my opinion.

[Buckeye McFrog]

As far as the substance of the column, I disagree. My personal experience with high school friends who used dope was that they never finished their education, never had any ambition, and basically ceased to be economic contributors to society. They shuffle from job to job in restaurant kitchens, construction and cab driving, milking unemployment and Government benes for more of the “high life” whenever possible. They have no retirement savings and will expect Medicare to buy their dime bags when they get old.

[jimt]

"The real lesson of prohibition is that society can, indeed, make a dent in the consumption of drugs through laws."

Yeah, never mind the huge increase in crime, the rise of organized crime that's still with us today. Never mind that unjust laws make folks question all other legitimate laws.

After all, it's your right to force others to live like you want them to.

Right ?

Comrade Obama has a place for you, I'm sure.

[John-Irish]

As well as George Shultz and Casper Wienberger.

[SUSSA]

According to its proponents, all the proposed benefits of Prohibition depended on, or were a function of, reducing the quantity of alcohol consumed. At first glance, the evidence seems to suggest that the quantity consumed did indeed decrease. That would be no surprise to an economist: making a product more difficult to supply will increase its price, and the quantity consumed will be less than it would have been otherwise.

Evidence of decreased consumption is provided by two important American economists, Irving Fisher and Clark Warburton.[3] It should be noted that annual per capita consumption and the percentage of annual per capita income spent on alcohol had been steadily falling before Prohibition and that annual spending on alcohol during Prohibition was greater than it had been before Prohibition.[4]

The decrease in quantity consumed needs at least four qualifications--qualifications that undermine any value that a prohibitionist might claim for reduced consumption. First, the decrease was not very significant. Warburton found that the quantity of alcohol purchased may have fallen 20 percent between the prewar years 1911-14 and 1927-30. Prohibition fell far short of eliminating the consumption of alcohol.[5]

Second, consumption of alcohol actually rose steadily after an initial drop. Annual per capita consumption had been declining since 1910, reached an all-time low during the depression of 1921, and then began to increase in 1922. Consumption would probably have surpassed pre-Prohibition levels even if Prohibition had not been repealed in 1933.[6] Illicit production and distribution continued to expand throughout Prohibition despite ever-increasing resources devoted to enforcement.[7] That pattern of consumption, shown in Figure 1, is to be expected after an entire industry is banned: new entrepreneurs in the underground economy improve techniques and expand output, while consumers begin to realize the folly of the ban.

Third, the resources devoted to enforcement of Prohibition increased along with consumption. Heightened enforcement did not curtail consumption. The annual budget of the Bureau of Prohibition went from $4.4 million to $13.4 milion during the 1920s, while Coast Guard spending on Prohibition averaged over $13 million per year.[8] To those amounts should be added the expenditures of state and local governments.

Figure 1

Per Capita Consumption of Alcoholic Beverages (Gallons of Pure Alcohol) 1910-1929. Source: Clark Warburton, The Economic Results of Prohibition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), pp. 23-26, 72.

[RockyMtnMan]

What metric was used to determine consumption of an illegal substance in 1921? People tend to be less forthcoming about such things if fines and jail are involved.

[SUSSA]

The number of violations of Prohibition laws and violent crimes against persons and property continued to in- crease throughout Prohibition. Figure 4 shows an undeniable relationship between Prohibition and an increase in the homicide rate. The homicide rate increased from 6 per 100,000 population in the pre-Prohibition period to nearly 10 per 100,000 in 1933. That rising trend was reversed by the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, and the rate continued to decline throughout the 1930s and early 1940s.[48]

Figure 4 Homicide Rate: 1910-44

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975), part 1, p. 414.

[SUSSA]

You can read the whole study: Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure
by Mark Thornton including the footnotes here;
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/images/pa-157d.gif

[calex59]

So why didn't this happen with beer/liquor/wine at the end of prohibition?

People like the guy writing this article simply can't bring themselves to admit the similarity between outlawing MJ and outlawing booze. Bootleggers made booze in the states also until it was legalized and then the vast majority of them went out of business and organized crime got out of the booze business and if MJ is legalized the Mexican pot growers will gradually die out. They don't want to become visible to the government, therefore they won't become legit. They will look for other illegal activities such as smuggling in cocaine or other drugs.

The fact is medical MJ has already eaten into the pushers business in CA.