Category Archives: War On Drugs

A few days ago, over at Crimlaw, Ken Lammers, whom I admire, had a few things to say about the idea of legalizing drugs. Ken starts by quoting Pope Francis, whom I admire somewhat less. (Hey, what can I say? I was raised a Lutheran, and the First Rule of Lutheran Club is the Catholics are wrong.) When it comes to drugs, the Pope is (no surprise) an old-school anti-drug conservative:

Let me state this in the clearest terms possible: the problem of drug use is not solved with drugs!

No, but that’s not really the point of legalization.

Drug addiction is an evil, and with evil there can be no yielding or compromise.

It appears that His Holiness hasn’t quite passed the word to the rest of the team. The Catholic Church, to its credit, runs rather a lot of addiction rehab facilities, and they take a different view. One of the first addiction recovery services I found, Catholic Charities, Diocese Trenton, has this to say about addiction: “No matter which kind of addiction, it is important to recognize that addiction has nothing to do with one’s morality or strength of character.”

In fact, the overwhelming sentiment toward addicts by the people who treat them is one of compassion. For the Pope to imply that they are evil goes against the basic principles of addiction treatment, including the addiction recovery services offered by his own church.

But perhaps I misunderstand. Perhaps the Pope is distinguishing between the addict and his or her addiction. Perhaps the latter is evil, and the former is only its victim. Hate the sin but love the sinner and all that. Fair enough. But under those terms, those of us who favor legalization are also trying to help the sinner.

To think that harm can be reduced by permitting drug addicts to use narcotics in no way resolves the problem. Attempts, however limited, to legalize so-called “recreational drugs”, are not only highly questionable from a legislative standpoint, but they fail to produce the desired effects.

If the Pope believes that, then the Pope has a limited understanding of the desired effects of drug legalization. If all currently illegal drugs were legalized tomorrow, I wouldn’t use any of them. I want drugs legalized because I want the police to stop sending armed SWAT teams to raid homes and shoot dogs. I want police to stop shackling people and hauling them off to be locked in cages for years. I don’t want legalization because I want drugs. I want legalization because I want the police to stop killing innocent pastors and setting babies on fire. That would be a “desired effect.”

Substitute drugs are not an adequate therapy but rather a veiled means of surrendering to the phenomenon.

I don’t know enough about addiction therapy to say whether methadone and other substitutes are an effective treatment for drug addictions. But I’m pretty sure the Pope’s plan to lock drug users in cages is not therapy either.

Here I would reaffirm what I have stated on another occasion: No to every type of drug use. It is as simple as that. No to any kind of drug use. But to say this “no”, one has to say “yes” to life, “yes” to love, “yes” to others, “yes” to education, “yes” to greater job opportunities. If we say “yes” to all these things, there will be no room for illicit drugs, for alcohol abuse, for other forms of addiction.

On this I personally agree with the Pope. I’ve said “no” to illegal drugs all my life, and I plan to continue to do so. I rarely even drink booze, and that’s legal. Where we differ is that I don’t want to force my lifestyle on other people.

Ken Lammers has some commentary of his own:

…I find this to be a distillation of my personal beliefs about drugs. Legalization is unlikely to do the user much good. It will just switch the dealer from some guy on a corner to some guy behind a 7-11 counter.

Ken apparently doesn’t see any contradiction between those last two sentences. Buying drugs of uncertain origin, purity, and composition from a guy whose real name you don’t know is a dangerous way to get high. A drug user would be much safer buying a carefully manufactured product from a storefront backed by a corporation that wants to preserve the value of its brand and which can be hit with a multimillion dollar class-action lawsuit if the product is defective. I’m guessing that will do drug users a lot of good.

Also, the guy behind the counter at 7-Eleven isn’t going to wrestle him to the ground, throw the cuffs on, and haul him off to jail. That’s also good.

And I doubt that any cocaine producing Columbian cartel could ever match the predatory nature and capabilities of Big Pharma. After all, the Medellin cartel can’t run ads during the super bowl or deliver its product to every single grocery store, pharmacy, and convenience store in America – Proctor & Gamble (pepto bismo) and Bayer (aspirin) already do.

Here we come to a more profound difference between my views and Ken’s (or the Pope’s). I think that having digestion aids and pain medication conveniently available just a few minutes away is one of the advantages of our modern civilization. The Walgreens down the block stocks thousands of items — canned soup, milk, batteries, shampoo, condoms, light bulbs, toys, memory cards, makeup, candy — and it’s open 24 hours, so I can get what I want, when I want it. I think making high-quality recreational drugs available on the same basis is a good thing. It’s certainly better than having the manufacture and distribution of recreational drugs controlled entirely by criminals.

Anyone who believes addiction will decline in such an atmosphere is either naive or choosing to turn a blind eye to reality.

One distinction that seems not to be recognized by the Pope, and maybe Ken Lammers, is that drug use is not the same as drug addiction. People can use drugs without becoming addicted or ruining their lives, and there are far more casual drug users than addicts, even for relatively scary drugs like meth and heroin. When it comes to a less dangerous drug like marijuana, millions of people have proven that safe use is possible. Plenty of marijuana smokers have gone on to have normal, successful lives, including the current President of the United States. And his predecessor. And the one before that.

The risk of arrest and prison is part of the cost that the drug user pays when deciding to consume illegal drugs, so legalizing drugs is the economic equivalent of lowering the price. In addition, everyone in the supply chain incurs a risk of arrest and prison just for handling the drugs, and they all demand compensation for the risk, which results in a high price for the final consumer. So legalizing drugs will also reduce the actual price charged to consumers. Economics 101 tells us that lowering the price will increase the consumption, so I fully expect drug use to go up if drugs are legalized.

Whether drug abuse or addiction will also go up is more complex question. If some percentage of drug users are destined to become drug addicts, then increasing the number of users will increase the number of addicts, assuming that the new users are just as likely as the original users to develop addiction problems.

On the other hand, industrialized production and distribution will reduce impurities and variations in quality, reducing health complications and making overdoses less likely. And I think that increased social acceptance will make it less likely that drug users will be excluded from their communities, less likely that they will have trouble finding jobs, and more likely that they will be able to get help when they need it, especially since they can ask for help without fear of being arrested. Even for those who are addicted, the low cost of recreational drugs will reduce the financial burden of addiction. Finally, legalized drugs will directly benefit both casual users and addicts by eliminating the risk of arrest and imprisonment, and the reduction in enforcement efforts is a benefit in itself — no more late night raids, no more innocent grandmothers getting shot, no more puppycide.

I believe that legalizing drugs will probably increase drug consumption, but I think it will also reduce the harm caused by drugs, including the harm caused by law enforcement agencies and the justice system. That’s why we sometimes call it harm reduction. I suppose it is a “compromise,” but it’s not a compromise with evil, it’s a compromise with reality.

The Pope, on the other hand, seems to be engaged in magical thinking: He apparently believes that if we say “No to every type of drug use” then people won’t abuse drugs. He doesn’t seem to realize that his version of saying no necessitates the creation of a massive government program of spying on citizens, violently assaulting them, and throwing them in cages.

Last month at Hercules and the Umpire, federal judge Richard Kopf posted an explanation of why he believes that (at least at the federal level) drug crimes are not victimless. Matt Brown at Tempe Criminal Defense has raised some objections, as has Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice. Given that a federal judge and a couple of experienced criminal defense lawyers have been discussing the issue, I’m not sure I have anything intelligent to add…but then what’s a blog for?

Let me address a few of the judge’s points:

When you distribute a substance that you know is poison to another person that is a violent act. Period. End of story.

I recently purchased a deadly concoction that goes by a variety of street names. It consists of a mixture of toluene, methyl tert-butyl ether, benzene and trimethylbenzene, and a little bit of naphthalene. This substance is toxic, carcinogenic, and flammable. When burnt, it gives off a poisonous gas. My dealer goes by the name “BP,” and he hangs out here:

If that’s not bad enough, I frequent Home Depot and Pep Boys, and the chemicals for sale in just one of either of those stores could probably kill a thousand people. Then there’s Walgreens, where my pharmacist sells many chemicals that are quite dangerous. Heck, there’s danger even out in the aisles: An over-the-counter bottle of 500 Extra Strength Tylenol capsules has enough acetaminophen to kill at least a dozen people.

Ethyl alcohol can cause mental impairment, erratic behavior, vomiting, coma, and death, but we’re allowed to buy it, flavored or unflavored, from thousands of stores in nearly unlimited quantities. In some states, the government itself will sell you ethyl alcohol for human consumption.

Then there’s nicotine, a chemical that occurs naturally in plants, probably to protect them from consumption by animals. In concentrated form, it is more toxic than cocaine or methamphetamine, and it has been used as an agricultural pesticide. It is also a legal recreational drug in tobacco smoking products, even though long-term inhalation of tobacco tar causes serious lung problems, including cancer. The military sells tobacco products to soldiers tax-free, and use of tobacco is a right of prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.

On the other hand, many illegal drugs are safer than you might think. Crystal meth is basically the same chemical as Adderall — except for the methyl group that gives meth its name — and in clinical trials both drugs produce similar effects. Ecstasy’s effects on serotonin levels are similar to dozens of prescription medications, and it takes a large amount to produce a fatal overdose. Even heroin is pretty safe as long as you don’t overdose, although withdrawal can be harsh. And marijuana is famously safe, with a total number of overdoses ranging between zero and one, depending who you ask.

What creates the public health risk of drug abuse is not just the chemicals themselves, but our relationship to them. Consequently, when it comes to evaluating the public health risk of certain chemicals, it’s not the most poisonous ones that present the greatest threat, because people don’t use those recreationally: No one injects gasoline or bleach into their veins to get high. The drugs that are likely to be abused are the ones that are actually pretty safe.

And so our society has made choices about which drugs to allow and which ones to criminalize, but because they are all mostly safe, our choices have been guided more by culture than by toxicology, which has made them somewhat arbitrary. Heroin used to be legal, but now it’s illegal. Alcohol was legal for thousands of years, then we made it illegal here, and then we made it legal again, although it remains illegal in some countries. Cocaine was legal for a while, then became illegal, although it still has medical uses. Tobacco was legal when Europeans first encountered it here, then it was made illegal in some states, then it became legal again, and now it seems to be drifting back toward illegality.

(My favorite drug, caffeine, has relatively few side effects, and has only ever been illegal in a few countries.)

Many of the problems we associate with illegal drugs have arisen because they are illegal. The drugs are manufactured at high concentration so they can be smuggled more easily. They’re supposed to be diluted as they get closer to the end users, but sometimes higher concentrations get through, leading to overdoses. Even when diluted properly, users tend to minimize the opportunities to get caught using the drugs, which means taking the drugs at longer intervals, but in much larger doses. Injectable drugs are not kept sterile, and they are adulterated with dangerous additives. Users of needle drugs have trouble getting clean needles, so they reuse them and share them.

We saw these kinds of problems with alcohol during prohibition. Hard liquor was easier to smuggle than beer and wine. Quality sucked, and improper distillation could accidentally produce products dangerously high in methanol. Things returned to normal when alcohol was re-legalized.

Moreover, the connection between guns and drugs is beyond dispute. Not every purveyor of drugs uses or carries a gun, but the world where they operate organizes around one thing and one thing only, guns.

In response, I’d like to point out that the connection between guns and Richard Kopf’s profession is also beyond dispute. As a federal judge, he spends every working day inside a secure compound, surrounded by more armed men and women than any drug dealer in the United States.

Not only do these armed employees of the state provide security for Kopf and his fellow judges, but they are ultimately responsible for carrying out his will. Convicted defendants may submit peaceably, but they do not do so willingly. No one would agree to spend a decade in a cage at Judge Kopf’s word without a small army to put them inside and another to keep them there. In fact, the only reason people even show up in Judge Kopf’s court for judgement is because men with guns have brought them there in chains, often after first assaulting them in their homes and dragging them out. (Less violent surrenders may be arranged, but always under the threat of violence.)

Of course, Judge Kopf plays a role in a system that is intended to improve social welfare by fairly applying laws created by democratically elected legislators, within the bounds described in a written constitution. For all its problems, it’s still a good idea, whether it’s avenging murders and catching thieves, or resolving torts and enforcing contracts.

Unfortunately, few of these services are available to people whose means of earning a living has been declared illegal. Drug dealers can’t call 911 when somebody rips them off. Nor, out of fear of getting caught, can they operate out of storefronts with security cameras, or deposit their daily income safely in a bank. So they need to provide their own security,  and that means men with guns, just as it does for Judge Kopf.

Of course, many of the people who sell drugs illegally are also willing to break other laws, and as with any business, there’s competition, so some of them are willing to use violence to drive out their competitors. If selling these drugs was legal, their competitors could go to the police for protection — maybe ask the city council for more protection for honest, hard working business people. Better yet, they could settle their differences with competitors in the courts rather than in the streets. But as long as drug dealing remains illegal, that’s not an option. Their only choices are to fight violence with violence or go out of business. Which is why drug dealing is so immersed in violence.

Well, illegal drug dealing is immersed in violence. Walgreens and CVS compete with price cuts, convenient locations, 24-hour service, web sites, and coupon deals. Liquor dealers stopped shooting at each other when prohibition ended, and now compete with better flavor, more convenient packaging, clever commercials, and busty spokesmodels. Medical marijuana stores compete with diverse inventories, friendly customer service, and pleasant shopping environments. Only criminals deal with competitors using violence (rent-seeking protected industries excepted).

(Law and economics professor David Friedman argues that one of the reasons organized crime exists is to act as a sort of court system for criminals. Crime bosses resolve conflicts between underlings and decide when it’s permissible to use violence, e.g when it’s okay to hit a made guy. This presumably reduces strife and increases profitability for everyone involved.)

I’m not saying that every defendant brought before Judge Kopf is just a businessman looking to make a living. In some sense, quite the opposite: Making a drug illegal drives out honest business people and gives violent thugs an advantage. This does not excuse them from their violent acts, but neither does it excuse the legislature from creating the environment which allows them to thrive.

Sometimes the police seem to forget they’re suppost to be stopping crime. For example, if the police discover that someone has stolen your car, you’d expect them to try to catch the thief and return your car to you.

That’s not what the DEA did when they discovered that someone was using Craig Patty’s truck to transport marijuana. Instead, they teamed-up with the thief:

Commandeered by one of his drivers, who was secretly working with federal agents, the truck had been hauling marijuana from the border as part of an undercover operation. And without Patty’s knowledge, the Drug Enforcement Administration was paying his driver, Lawrence Chapa, to use the truck to bust traffickers.

It didn’t work out so well for them, and it worked out even worse for Chapa:

Chapa was shot dead in front of more than a dozen law enforcement officers – all of them taken by surprise by hijackers trying to steal the red Kenworth T600 truck and its load of pot.

Not only did the DEA get an informant killed, but one of the cops on the scene was accidentally wounded by a shot from another cop.

Patty’s truck was also damaged in the attack, and since that truck was about half his business, he’s facing a lot of financial problems. His insurance company wasn’t much help:

Copies of letters and emails from Patty’s insurance company state that it won’t pay for repairs because the truck was part of a law-enforcement operation. Patty drew from his 401K retirement fund to repair the truck, which was out of operation for 100 days.

That doesn’t sound right. The truck wasn’t part of a law-enforcement operation. The truck was being used by a thief. That the thief was acting under the direction of the DEA is not Craig Patty’s fault.

In any case, Patty is now going after the DEA for the cost of repairing his truck.

In documents shared with the Houston Chronicle, he is demanding that the DEA pay $133,532 in repairs and lost wages over the bullet-sprayed truck, and $1.3 million more for the damage to himself and his family, who fear retaliation by a drug cartel over the bungled narcotics sting.

…

Houston lawyer Mark Bennett, who is advising Patty, said if Patty’s initial claim is not resolved, the next step would be to sue.

I don’t know much about tort law, but I’m guessing Patty is going to have a hard time getting anything out of the DEA. After all, the truck wasn’t damaged by the DEA but by a bunch of criminals, and it’s a drug cartel, not the DEA, that Patty’s family is afraid of. Of course, if you or I had stolen Patty’s truck, and some criminals had shot it up, I’m pretty sure we’d be held responsible for whatever damage it suffered as a result of our crime.

All of this happened because the DEA agents forgot they’re supposed to be fighting crime rather than abetting it. When the DEA discovered Chapa had misappropriated his employer’s truck to haul marijuana, they could have just arrested him for it and returned the truck to its rightful owner. Then Chapa would still be alive, the police officer wouldn’t have been shot, the truck wouldn’t have needed repairs, and Craig Patty’s family wouldn’t be looking for cartel goons around every corner.

Over 40,000 Americans die every year in traffic accidents. This is a terrible tragedy. But I have a simple plan that will completely prevent all 40,000 of these deaths.

The key to my plan is to note that these 40,000 accidents are a result of 40,000 careless people driving cars. So all we have to do to eliminate these accidents is to make sure these 40,000 people aren’t allowed to buy cars. Of course, the greedy auto makers insist on pushing their cars on everyone in the country, so some regulation will be required.

We need to impose strict production limits on U.S. auto manufacturing (and importing) to reduce the number of cars produced each year by just over 40,000, thus completely ensuring that irresponsible drivers are unable to obtain cars, which will completely eliminate all automobile deaths. This plan can’t possibly fail.

What’s that you say? You think my plan is completely stupid?

Well then, smartass, what does that mean for the DEA, which uses the exact same plan to prevent misuse of the prescription drug Adderall:

The DEA gets involved. It’s an arm of the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration. Its job is to make sure, to the extent you can, that drugs don’t get diverted into illicit use, drugs of abuse or potential abuse like amphetamines, the way these are.

And so it, every year, sets a ceiling on how much on the raw material, the active ingredient for a whole bunch of drugs, including these, can be made. So it’s an overall aggregate amount of raw material that the DEA regulates.

Sigh, naturally, the people who were diverting the drugs before are simply continuing to do so now. On the other hand, the people who actually need Adderall for their health and sanity are having trouble finding enough of the drug. And naturally, the price of this now-scarce drug is rising, pricing some patients out of the market, and forcing them to do without any medication for their condition or switch to less effective drugs.

(Hat tip: Radley Balko)