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I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly: The domino effect of the Prohibition mentality
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We remember the Saint Valentine's Day massacre and the gangsters of Prohibition, but this is history we refuse to learn from. Yesterday morning in Baltimore, 16 people were shot, two fatally, in an incident involving rival drug gangs. The body count from this single incident is extreme, but such extreme anomalies prompt the predictable calls for adding gun prohibition on top of existing drug prohibitions. Of course most major cities, like Baltimore, have already implemented a de facto prohibition on gun ownership, as has the entire country of Mexico. In both cases, the result of gun prohibition policies has been complete failure in the goal of reducing violence.
As a nation, America seems incapable of having a rational discussion about root cause and effect when it comes to drugs and violence. The rationale against drugs is simple: using drugs destroys the lives of users, their children and others around them. True enough. But the ravages of prohibition are worse and have a multiplying effect: prohibition leads to huge drug profits, which leads to gangs, which leads to murders and terrorized neighborhoods, which leads to urban blight and rural despair. Drug use harms users, but jail time makes them permanently unemployable and traps them in its pervasive criminal culture. Prisons might as well give out diplomas for all the lessons learned in them; and many gangs wouldn't even exist if it weren't for their ability to exploit the prison system to recruit members.
But we already know this. We just refuse to act on our knowledge or to insist our politicians do so.
Our policies now exist for their own sake; we have lost track of what started the call for prohibition in the first place: a desire to improve and save lives.
Like obsessed gamblers, our response to failed policies so far has been to "double-down" by spending more on enforcement and incarceration, and gradually accepting more and more restrictions and intrusions on our private lives and personal liberties. Like the children’s rhyme of the old lady who swallowed the spider to catch the fly and on and on until she finally ate the horse and died (of course), our war on drugs has created one casualty of civil society after another. Our policies now exist for their own sake; we have lost track of what started the call for prohibition in the first place: a desire to improve and save lives.
Second Amendment advocates have special cause for concern. Ultimately, the impulse to regulate guns and the impulse to regulate what consenting adults ingest, inject or smoke comes from the same Utopian desire for an avuncular government exercising control over our daily decisions, including personal safety. Events like that in Baltimore inevitably bring out calls for increased gun prohibition and other restrictions on firearms ownership and carrying. The general public reads about killings and is easily swayed to agree there is a “gun problem” instead of a diverse range of more complex public policy problems, including prohibition. If we are serious about protecting our gun rights from those looking for a quick fix, we must to be proactive in informing the public about the real causes of violence. We also need to take the lead in promoting real solutions.
Let the farmers in Peru and Afghanistan (or Kentucky) grow whatever they want to--once drugs were legalized the price would collapse and the warlords of the Taliban and FARC would have to get real jobs.
Speaking of solutions, consider this alternative: take the money currently spent on drug interdiction, policing, and incarceration and spend it on education and drug treatment. Imagine America finally using its resources to ensure every child has a chance at a real education. Imagine the results from fighting drug addiction as what it is: a public health problem. Go a step further and apply the same principles internationally: let the farmers in Peru and Afghanistan (or Kentucky) grow whatever they want to--once drugs were legalized the price would collapse and the warlords of the Taliban and FARC would have to get real jobs. Domestically, once the link between drugs and violence is severed, the profit motive for murder would be gone and violence involving guns would also decline along with misguided calls for gun prohibition. The anti-gun forces would have lost one of their biggest bait-and-switch ploys to use against us.
Is this just a pipe dream or a real possibility? Are you willing to challenge the conventional thinking on prohibition in order to protect your Second Amendment rights?
Steve, regarding the price of currently illicit drugs, the "farm gate" price of drugs--what the growers of the plants get--is a fraction of the retail value. At every step of the trafficking process, the product is diluted and each middleman takes a substantial cut.
To give you an idea, the farm gate price of dried coca leaves in Colombia is $1.20/kilo; it takes 375 kg of coca leaves to produce 1 kilo of pure cocaine, so the farmer gets $450. Processing the leaves into cocaine adds to the price, of course, but only to $2,400 for a kilo of 100% pure. By the time the stuff retails in the U.S., that kilo of 100% pure has been cut to 64% purity, which sells at ~$78,000/kilo (so the original kilo of 100% pure fetches ~$122,000). That's almost a 5,000% mark-up, just to get it the cocaine from Colombia to the U.S., distribute and sell it.
The farm gate price of dry opium in Afghanistan is about $86; it takes 7 units of dry opium to produce 1 unit of 100% pure heroin, so the farmer gets ~$600. Processed into 100% pure heroin, 1 kilo costs $4,700 in Afghanistan (though Afghan heroin is generally only 60-85% pure, so 1 kilo of Afghan heroin will cost $2,800-$4,000). In the U.K., a kilo of 60% pure heroin sells for (the equivalent of) $143,400, which translates to $239,000 for a kilo of 100% pure. Again a 5,000% mark-up (a bit more, in fact).
If it were possible to cut out all the middlemen, it has to be possible to get the product to the consumer a lot more cheaply, and we could even pay the farmers a larger cut.
Interesting...
You're quite lucky in the USA you know. For all the problems you face in these difficult times, you do actually have a written legal document outlining what "We, the people" will let the government do in your name. Would that we were so lucky in the UK - they call us a "constitutional Monarchy" but there's no constitution! How bizarre, that nobody ever mentions that... however...
Long ago I saw a poster on the back of a bus that said "Drugs Destroy Communities". It made me think, and what I came up with after viewing that statement rationally and dispassionately, was that it's not the drugs that destroy the communities; it's the fact the drugs are illegal that destroys the community.
I believe you have drink driving laws in the USA? Just have the same laws for your drugs. There's that problem solved, along with a little warning; "Do not attempt to drive or operate machinery after taking this product"... don't they write that on cough syrup? I don't see any government trying to make cough syrup (or booze for that matter) illegal... except for the Islamists who apparently deliberately misinterpret the Qu'ran (undoubtedly to give themselves more power over their - normally - uneducated flock); the most relevant passage reads "Excess alcohol is to be avoided, as excess alcohol removes man's reason, and reason is the only thing that seperates man from animals". I've read 2 different translations and been told that's what it says by 4 different Muslim friends over the years. Nothing about it actually being against the will of Allah. Nothing about "you shouldn't drink at all" for that matter...
Aeveret; I do appreciate you being the only negative poster with stones enough to put a name down. Well done - nice to see anyone with the courage of their convictions. However the last thing the military wants right now are people with mindsets that ask questions to join their ranks! Same with the draft - Generals want people in their armies that want to be there.
Interesting also, that Police, Internal Security and military personnel are drug tested (because they're in Security), athletes are tested (because they're role models for the young) but nobody has ever said "Let's drug test our Members of Parliament and judiciary"... I guess for you guys that would be your Senators, Representatives and Court officials? I think that's probably another thing they'd regard as infringing their liberties and exhibiting a lack of trust in them. Ok to do it to Security people though, of course...
Although I'm not entirely sure your argument for the bottom dropping out of the market is entirely accurate; if I were a farmer in Afghanistan or Lebanon or Colombia, I'd know there's always a market for the foreign and exotic in any rich nation... and I'd be looking to get a premium price on my weed (or coca) because of it. Probably set up a co-op... which could well be one of the many reasons the vested interests worldwide have in keeping just the Hemp illegal; that it does happen to turn the mind towards cooperation rather than confrontation...
Just a wee thought or 2 there Zak. Good article, but unfortunately not saying much that a non-reactionary hasn't heard before...
Debaters debate the two wars as if Nixon’s civil war on Woodstock Nation didn’t yet run amok. One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights or to Cuba for political prisoners. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to ongoing persecution of hippies, radicals, and non-whites under banner of the war on drugs. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.
The drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as lives are flushed down expensive tubes. There’s trouble on the border. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. God didn’t screw up. Canadian Marc Emery sold seeds that enable American farmers to outcompete cartels with superior domestic herb. He is being extradited to prison, for doing what government wishes it could do, reduce demand for Mexican.
The constitutionality of the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) derives from an interstate commerce clause. Only by this authority does it reincarnate Al Capone, endanger homeland security, and throw good money after bad. Official policy is to eradicate, not tax, the number-one cash crop in the land. America rejected prohibition, but it’s back. Apparently, SWAT teams don’t need no stinking amendment. Father, forgive those who make it their business to know not what they do.
Nixon promised that the Schafer Commission would support the criminalization of his enemies, but it didn’t. No matter, the witch-hunt was on. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA halted all research and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use, period.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn’t need a specific church membership to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. Denial of entheogen sacrament to any American, for mediation of communion with his or her maker, precludes free exercise of religious liberty.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common-law must hold that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers decreed that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration.
Excellent post, sir! Keep up the good work. With the dissemination of correct information like this, we're bound to open some minds to what is really going on out there!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm a recovering addict, and I can say from experience how much easier it is to get illegal drugs as a minor. I didn't even have to leave my school! As such I hardly even touched alcohol or cigarettes.
Averett, how could anyone think that armed violent gangsters should be representing our nation abroad? Our soldiers are the only Americans people in Afghanistan and Iraq are likely to see, do you really want them to be making life and death decisions on the battlefield? I don't think we should be there at all, but at least we should have rational human beings wearing our uniform.
How will deporting illegal felons stop crime any better than locking them up? Isn't that like throwing the Brer Rabbit back into the thornbush?
Could we all please use a little bit more sense when we respond? The internet is an incredible tool for democracy, let's not blow it by posting stupid one-liners.
Zak,
Maybe you are right. I grant you that our present policies of prohibition are failing. I am looking at my own thinking on this subject and am considering a change toward your view. Your arguments are making more and more sense to me. Thanks.
"Many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that if drugs were legalized, something terrible would happen. Snap out of it - the terrible already has and continues to happen right now..."
Well put, Mike. We fear the worst but our current policies have already created it.
puy all drug users in military uniform & send them all to the front,they are using guns now illegally so lets tap this vast pool of resourses & if they survive they will haved learned to be "citizens" again!!!
deport all illegal FELONS.
cops are afraid to raid & enforce current laws.
Really?
You cannot seriously think legalizing drugs to be a good idea. It sounds like you have spent too much "quality time" with the pipe yourself!
Well said Zak. Sadly it's all been said before, but the politicians listen to the polls which reflect the hallucination most people have about drugs.
I'm reminded on the time I was riding the NYC subway at night and thinking that a concealed handgun might be a prudent investment. But then I told myself, if you can have one, all these scary thugs could also. Fool, I answered myself. They already have them - you're probably the only unarmed guy on the car.
Many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that if drugs were legalized, something terrible would happen. Snap out of it - the terrible already has and continues to happen right now, as you describe so well.
Maybe the bad economy will help. Add the savings (military, prisons, crime, etc.) and tax revenue and we're talking STIMULUS!
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