Flying Pig Moment...

...wherein I agree with Barney Frank.

I never thought I'd write that sentence!

The subject is drug legalization.  He and I are on the same page. 

Scary, isn't it?

What a Waste!

Here's a graph that paints a clear view of something I find profoundly sad – the fact that our prison population is dominated by people convicted of illicit drug use.

But the dominance of drug-related “crime” is actually much worse than this chart depicts.  Why?  Because a significant fraction of the non-drugs crimes at right were committed by drug users to fund their habit.  Depending on whose numbers you want to believe, something between 25% and 60% of all property crimes committed in the U.S. are indirectly drug-related.  The main reason drug users commit crimes to fund their habit is because of the extraordinarily high price of the drugs they crave.  Those drug prices are high only because they are illegal.  Precisely the same thing happened with alcohol during Prohibition.  It's happening here, too.

Many people aren't aware that drug regulations are a relatively recent “innovation”.  The very first law of any kind regulating drugs in the U.S. was passed in 1892, to regulate opium use (restricting it to designated “opium dens”.  This was aimed mainly at Chinese immigrants, and driven by widespread American disdain for Chinese culture.  Very little else happened in the way of regulation until the 1920s – before that, any American who wanted any drug – coffee, alcohol, opium, cocaine, heroin, hashhish, marijuana – was free to purchase and use it.  Drug stores kept opium, cocaine, and heroin on the shelf.  Marijuana was readily available, especially in the American south.  Alcohol and coffee were available nearly anywhere.  There were users of these drugs all across the U.S.  Some abused those drugs (like some abuse alcohol today).  Most did not.  American society didn't fall apart.  In fact, one could make persuasive arguments that our high incarceration rates today (10 times what they were 100 years ago) are more damaging to our society than drug abusers were when drugs were completely unregulated.

I'd sure like to see us going back to our former libertarian approach to drugs: let the use of them be by personal choice, and punish only those that through their irresponsible use of drugs cause harm to others.  In other words, let's treat all drug use the way we treat alcohol use today.  If we did so, we'd “repatriate” tens of thousands of productive citizens, and likely cut our prison populations by two thirds (some think more!).

This is one topic where I'm 100% in agreement with the libertarians (and there aren't many like that!)...

Warning Labels on Alcohol Containers...

According to my mom, the following warning labels have been accepted by liquor manufacturers:

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may leave you wondering what the hell happened to your bra and panties.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when you are not.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like a spineless goofball.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell your friends over and over again that you love them.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause you to think you can sing.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe that ex-lovers are really dying for you to telephone them at four in the morning.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may make you think you can logically converse with members of the opposite sex without spitting.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may create the illusion that you are tougher, smarter, faster and better looking than most people.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may lead you to think people are laughing WITH you.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may cause pregnancy.

WARNING: The consumption of alcohol may be a major factor in getting your ass kicked.

WARNING: the crumsumpten of alcohol may mack you tink you kan tpye reel gode.

Cocaine Prices vs. Crime Rates...

An interesting piece by Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones explores the idea that lower cocaine prices on the street are the cause for the declining rate of violent crime in the U.S. over the past 15 years or so.

I have no idea whether that notion has any merit.  However, inadvertently the article makes many points that bolster the case for legalizing drugs like cocaine.  One of the consequences of making such a high-demand item (as evidenced by the price people are willing to pay for it) illegal is that people will finance their desire by committing crimes – property crimes and violent crimes.  This country saw that during Prohibition, and rolled it back.  I, along with many others, believe we should do the same thing with other illegal drugs.  There's nothing special about alcohol, which manifestly has the same sorts of undesirable impacts on people and society that the illegal drugs do...

Drug Problem...

Click the thumbnail at right to read this newspaper clipping.  It's probably not what you're expecting!  Via my cousin Mike D.

I had this kind of drug problem when I was a kid...

Drugs Harmfulness: the Source...

Reader Doug S. sends in an online page (free registration required) with the source study for the interesting chart on drugs harmfulness I posted about the other day.  It's a legitimate, published study; their methods are fully described.  After reading it, I'd call this study very interesting support for the proposition that drugs legalization is unlikely to be any more dangerous to society than (the already legal substances) alcohol and tobacco already are...

Drugs Harmfulness...

There are some surprises in this study.  I know nothing about the researchers, how they were funded, or what other biases they might have.  What they've attempted to do is to quantify the harm done by various commonly-used drugs (including alcohol and tobacco).  They've attempted to separately measure harm to the using individual and harm to society.

The chart at right (click to enlarge) shows the various drugs ranked by harm to the user (most harmful first).  Alcohol tops the rankings both by harm to users and to society. 

First question that occurs to me: is the overall “harm score” normalized to per capita, or is it an aggregate score?  If the latter, then alcohol's position at the top is hardly surprising.  If the former, then these results are certainly surprising to me!

This study's results support the position of many drug legalization advocates (including me): the drugs prohibited today aren't any more harmful than the perfectly legal alcohol and tobacco.  The illegal drugs have been demonized, much as alcohol was before Prohibition...

Decriminalizing Drugs...

What he said.

People who know me are often surprised that I support legalizing drugs.  Judge Jim Gray does a better job of articulating my position that I could do myself.

FWIW, I've been to the Netherlands.  It's obvious that what many fear would happen here (us turning into a nation of drooling stoners) has not happened there...

Columbian Drug-Smuggling Submarines...

These have turned into a big business, with the main challenge being finding good crews.  The Columbian drug lords are considering automating the subs, eliminating the need for a crew – doesn't really sound all that difficult, technically, so I suspect they'll succeed in this venture.

We spend billions of dollars every year on the “war on drugs” – and those unfortunates who want the drugs get them despite our DEA's best efforts.  Personally, I'd much rather see the drug trade legalized (and taxed).  Think of the resulting benefits: new tax revenues for the government to waste, less tax dollars needed for the DEA (zero, hopefully), and less tax dollars spent on the totally useless prosecution and incarceration of drug users.  Who loses from drug legalization?  As far as I can tell, only the DEA and the illicit drug trade.  The rest of us win, including the drug users who would pay less for their habit. 

You know, we've seen this movie before: alcohol and Prohibition.  The parallel is rather precise, even including addition (an alcoholic is, after all, an alcohol addict)...

An Atmosphere of Violence...

Mexico is a very unsafe place these days.  These stories rarely makes the news here, despite the number of casualties (over 3,000 so far this year).  Many Americans have been injured or killed as well.  Along our border, the Border Patrol has seen a huge increase in the number of incidents involving gunfire, and especially those involving automatic weapons.  Naturally, this has made the Border Patrol – mainly armed with pistols – quite nervous.  So I'm not surprised to read this:

Four people were injured and the busiest border crossing in the U.S. was closed to northbound vehicle traffic for hours Tuesday after federal agents fired shots across nine lanes of traffic to stop three vans suspected of smuggling illegal immigrants from Mexico, authorities said.

But I sure don't like it.

So far as I've been able to discover, the violence in Mexico is 100% driven by the illegal drug trade with the U.S.  And there's a very simple and instantaneous cure for that: legalize these drugs.  Overnight the drug cartels will be out of business, much to the benefit of both Mexico and the U.S...

Drug Use...

The chart at right summarizes the findings of a study recently published at the Public Library of Science (PLoS). As usual, click to enlarge it.

There are lots of interesting findings in here, but I'm going to focus on just one: marijuana use in the U.S. vs. the Netherlands. I'm picking on that one because here in the U.S., marijuana use is illegal (though enforcement in many areas is almost non-existent), and in the Netherlands it is legal (you can walk into a coffee shop and buy the stuff). The study found that 42% of Americans surveyed claimed to have at least tried marijuana, versus just 20% of the Dutch.

That “war on drugs” sure has been successful, hasn't it?

People who know me are often surprised that I believe drug use should be legalized here – because I don't use any illegal drugs (I do drink a glass of wine many evenings, but that's about the extent of my mind-altering drug use). So why do I advocate legalizing drugs? Most fundamentally, it's because I believe people should be free to make choices that harm themselves, if that's what they want to do. As a society, we're very inconsistent about which risky choices we allow. For example, in most areas one can gamble (even if it's just the lottery) legally – even though that's a demonstrably risky choice. It's legal for us to participate in risky sports. It's legal for us to smoke. It's legal for us to drink alcohol, if we're old enough. But for reasons that seem quite arbitrary and capricious to me, we don't allow people to use certain drugs that we've deemed illegal.

This study looks at drug use from a different perspective: what drugs are actually being used, and by what number of people? This is fascinating data, for many reasons, but for me most especially for its illumination of the grand failure of the war on drugs. All those people in jail, all those crimes committed to pay the price of drugs that is artificially stratospheric simply because they are illegal, and all that time, money, and energy wasted on a completely ineffective interdiction effort.

This data suggests that the most effective way to reduce drugs use might be to make them all legal – perhaps then our usage rates would drop to the low levels experienced by the Netherlands!

One Breath

In as little as a single inhalation, humans can become addicted:

A new study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows that 10 percent of youth who become hooked on cigarettes are addicted within two days of first inhaling from a cigarette, and 25 percent are addicted within a month.

To tobacco.

This jibes with the results of several studies over the years. The plain fact is that nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man – more addictive than heroin or crack cocaine.

It seems to me that the entirely arbitrary way that our society has legalized (and failed to stigmatize the use of) alcohol and tobacco, as opposed to the way it treats drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, is entirely indefensible on any logical basis. We've simply declared, as a society, that alcohol and tobacco are ok, and marijuana (for example) is not – with no rational basis at all. There are two scenarios that one could lay a rational foundation for: make all such addictive and psychoactive drugs illegal, or make none of them illegal.

The former approach suffers badly from a slippery-slope problem – surely caffeine (which is both addictive and psychoactive) wouldn't be far behind, then chocolate, and eventually ... basic foods like sugar. If you think I"M being ridiculous, consider the recent nanny-state actions in New York (trans-fats, paté, etc.).

The latter approach (legalize all such substances) has my vote, consistent with my libertarian leanings. So long as one doesn't harm anyone else, I think people should be free to ingest whatever they want – whether it harms them or not. If their choice sends them to their reward sooner, I'll call that evolution at work...