Here’s an amazing testament to the power of creative capitalism/a disturbing portrait of a burgeoning illegal drug trade.

Well, I don’t know how we missed posting on this yesterday, but Obama has done something very, very right by calling off the Feds in states where medicinal marijuana use is permitted.  In terms of states’ rights, patient rights, and just sane, rational domestic policy, Obama made the right move. And according to Gallup, he’s joining the rest of the United States in an upward trend toward support for legalization.  In fact, Americans now favor legalization at 44% – a new U.S. high.  (No pun intended.)

Public opinion is virtually the same on a question that relates to a public policy debate brewing in California — whether marijuana should be legalized and taxed as a way of raising revenue for state governments. Just over 4 in 10 Americans (42%) say they would favor this in their own state; 56% are opposed. Support is markedly higher among residents of the West — where an outright majority favor the proposal — than in the South and Midwest. The views of Eastern residents fall about in the middle.

The new findings come as the U.S. Justice Department has reportedly decided to loosen its enforcement of federal anti-marijuana laws by not pursuing individuals who buy or sell small amounts of the drug in conformity with their own states’ medical marijuana laws. This seems likely to meet with U.S. public approval, as previous Gallup polling has found Americans generally sympathetic to legalizing marijuana for medical purposes. In 2003, 75% of Americans favored allowing doctors to legally prescribe marijuana to patients in order to reduce pain and suffering.

This is also an economic issue.  In California, not only are normal suburbanites turning to pot-farming for extra cash – selling legally to dispensaries – but local governments are shoring up lost revenue during the recession with new cannabis taxes. [Read more →]

Mother Jones has a series of articles on the doomed-from-the-start War on Drugs well worth checking out.  Oh, and you can take the quiz, too!  See how much you know!  (I missed two questions…) By the way, my OG brothers, would one of these pieces maybe spark a series?

Via Brad Warbiany at the Liberty Papers. Doug Bandow,David Rittgers, Cato@Liberty:

As I have said before, the quickest way to create an insurgent is to burn a man’s livelihood. This may be a competent counternarcotics tactic, but it is an epic failure as a counterinsurgency strategy. We can fight a war against the Taliban or we can fight the war on drugs, but we can’t do both in the same place at the same time.

UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that I attributed this quote to the wrong Cato scholar.  I apologize for the error.

Thanks to John, I am pointed to these two rather strange arguments in favor of the Drug War and against libertarian use of statistics on race against the Drug War from Jonah Goldberg.  John does a pretty good job explaining why Goldberg’s arguments are so strange.  The only thing I’d really add is that the notion that libertarians don’t normally give a crap about race and poverty is a notion that is borne out of the coalition of libertarians with conservatives - libertarian and classical liberal philosophy, when divorced from coalition politics, actually have quite a bit to say about the problems of poverty and laws that disproportionately single out politically less powerful groups. 

Goldberg also makes this odd statement:

A justly convicted murderer should be punished regardless of his race. A justly convicted drug dealer should be punished, regardless of his race as well. If we’re punishing a disproportionately high number of blacks, that’s a sign we should crack down on more guilty whites, not give up on punishing crimes.

This is particularly puzzling because Goldberg has argued that anti-statism is at the core of conservatism and is also why libertarians should continue to coalition with conservatives.  Obviously, increasing drug prosecutions is not only inconsistent with any conception of limited government, it’s also an expansion of the size of government.  And not an insignicant expansion either, given that this can definitionally only be achieved by pursuing people with enough resources to put up a tough fight against drug prosecutions (a fact that at least partly explains the socioeconomic discrepancies in such prosecutions in the first place). 

Goldberg’s statement does indirectly suggest one point worth exploring, though – that human liberty is increased when laws are enforced more uniformly; unfortunately, he takes this point to be a justification for the expansion of drug prosecutions. 

Much has been written of late about the difference between small and limited government – specifically, small government refers only to the fiscal “size” of the government, whereas limited government refers to the government’s actual powers.  If you accept that the State must exist, as even most libertarians do, then one must have a desire that the Stated do well that which it is authorized to do.  If the State does its job poorly, then it will actually have a more negative impact on individual liberty than if it does its job well, because at that point enforcement of the laws becomes arbitrary and based on one’s ability to curry favor with the State in some other non-germane arena. 

If, on the other hand, the State does its job well, then people may act in reliance upon the law being enforced equally without regards to other issues.  So there may be a marginal decrease in liberty due to the existence of the law in the first place, but this is mitigated by the fact that uniform enforcement ensures that people may act in reliance upon the law and without having to curry favor with the State in some other arena.  This means less State corruption, less connection between wealth and power, and less fear of interference from the State more generally. 

The trouble is that very often uniform enforcement is simply not possible due to the State’s limited resources.  Put another way, in the words of the inestimable Wirkman Virkkala, “regulation is not scalable.” 

In the case of the War on Drugs, this problem is particularly apparent.  For any given drug, there are going to be potentially millions of users spread out over a vast country.  The only way to have uniform enforcement of the drug laws in such a situation is to have an incomprehensibly large budget far bigger than the already-incomprehensibly large Drug War budget we have.  Other programs, some of which may or may not be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion will need to be  scaled back (and thus enforced more arbitrarily).  Short of that, given the nature of prohibitions on the possession of banned personal items, the only way to truly enforce the law uniformly would be to turn our neighbors and friends into de facto secret police.

Still, under some circumstances, I suppose it’s possible to enforce such prohibitions in a more or less uniform fashion without creating a de facto secret police force – whatever Singapore’s flaws (and it has many), drug use is not something that flourishes there.  Part of that, though, is that Singapore is a tiny nation geographically, and another part of it is that it spends very little on many other types of restrictions, such as economic regulation. 

Which brings me to my final point – even regulations that are not outright prohibitions can be uniformly enforced only if they govern a sufficiently small number of actors or if the enforcing agency has the very substantial amount of resources necessary to enforce the regulations uniformly over a large number of actors.  Again, they are not scalable.  If the regulations are to apply to more actors than the agency has the resources to oversee, then the only solution an agency may follow will be to make the regulations so restrictive as to ensure the reduction of the number of actors over whom they have jurisdiction.  In other words, regulatory capture doesn’t just benefit the capturing business – it also benefits the captured regulator.

There is, I think, a solution to this problem: terminate any set of laws or regulations that cannot be uniformly enforced without an unrealistic budgetary expansion, and fully fund those laws or regulations that can be enforced in a relatively uniform fashion.   Unfortunately, this is impossible in a two-party system where the Executive is increasingly viewed by both supporters and detractors as omnipotent and where few are willing to admit the unrealistic nature of their pet programs.

Cross-posted at Donklephant.

I can’t but heartily agree with Andrew Sullivan on this whole “pictures of Michael Phelps smoking pot” bruhaha. Sullivan notes,

What I love about the harrumphing is its total incoherence. The argument, so far as I can tell, is: a) marijuana destroys people, renders them incapable of productive and worthwhile lives; b) yes, the new president and the greatest Olympic swimmer of all time have smoked pot; c) but that means we have to punish them all the more!

Because they disprove the lies required to sustain the Prohibition. The more the myths of the anti-cannabis brigade are exposed, the more they have to be enforced.

I mean, I’m not in possession of any statistics on this, but does anyone seriously still consider marijuana to be a troubling gateway drug? It strikes me that those for whom this is true have a much more deeply entrenched addiction problem that could manifest just as easily with alcohol.

Maybe my head shaking has something to do with location. I was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, broadly considered the pot capital of North America (if not the world), so the whole drama of people smoking pot has long since worn off on me. Hell, I’ll admit to having walked by a police officer smoking a joint and not really gotten all that worried about what the consequences were going to be.

Which is to say that, yes, I have smoked pot. In fact, I had my “pothead” phase. But I don’t smoke anymore. Why? It’s not because I think it’s evil and it’s not because I realized one day that if I kept it up I was going to ruin my life.

I stopped smoking pot because it just got boring.

That’s right, my estimation is that pot is an a completely and utterly boring drug that functions as an overblown muscle relaxant ad isn’t worth including in your “war on drugs” nor harassing some poor twenty-three year old superstar who engaged in completely predictable behaviour.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Michael Phelps is a role model who kids across America and the world look up to and role models shouldn’t do drugs and other illegal things. Well, brace yourself, odds are your kid is going to smoke pot at some point. And odds are they’ll get a minimal effect from it but keeping doing it to some degree or another because her/his friends are all doing it. And then, at some point, he/she will mostly give it up and cultivate a life for themselves that you will tear up and be proud of. Slightly less likely may be that they continue to smoke pot on an occasional basis, but still cultivate that life you’re busy buying tissues for.

Honestly, there are a lot of troubling issues that permeate our world and we waste time and energy when we get all worked up about something that in the grand scheme of things doesn’t really matter. So go plant a tree, or volunteer at a soup kitchen or as a big brother or sister, or join your local community association and organize more community activities, pay more attention to your kid’s schooling or their life in general, write you elected official about the war in Iraq/Afghanistan/other place you have troops stationed, do whatever floats your boat.

But for god’s sake (dangerous term to use around these parts of late), do something on an issue that maters and actually stands to effect your life.

Update: I forgot to mention that while I am most certainly in favour of decriminalizing marijuana, I remain somewhat undecided on full blown legalization. The reason for my indecision stems from one of the most interesting anti-legalization arguments I have ever run across that was delivered to me by an avid pot smoker. Her argument was that if marijuana was legalized it would inevitably lead to government involvement in regulation, sale, and taxation.

My post smoing friend said with all due indignation, “Idon’t want the government having anything to do with the pot I smoke. I’m one hundred percent convinced that my smoking of pot is beter off without the government having anything to do with it ad all I’m really looking for is to ensure government doesn’t have anything to say about it, either.”

Given some of the gripes that people like John Schwenkler have noted about government over-involvement in good old fashioned capitalism of a variety of forms, I find this line of argument compelling enouh to make me think twice about marijuana legalization.

While I’m largely of the same mind as Freddie on the subject of drug legalization, which may indeed be the best way to defeat the cartels and avoid the sort of civil war (a la Anbar Awakening) that Chris warns of, I do have some concerns about the implementation. Freddie’s concern over the militarization of the police, and the use of the military as a police-force, is not even hypothetical anymore, as the National Guard has indeed been called to the borders, and Democrats and Republicans alike have called for increased use of the military to help stop up leaky borders, fight increasingly powerful drug cartels, and so forth.

However, I do wonder two things: First, is a call for the legalization of drugs en masse really politically pragmatic?  Obviously pragmatism is not the only consideration, but is this option even remotely likely to succeed?  And second, is there not a more conservative, cautious approach that could be taken?

I am not completely sold on the idea that legalization of all drugs is even necessary to cut the cartels off at the knees, or to free up sufficient resources to actually make a decent effort at halting much of the drug trade.  Marijuana, for instance, accounts for the vast majority of all drug-related arrests, and the legalization of marijuana only would free up a great deal of money, prison space, as well as add a steady stream of tax revenue on marijuana sales to supplement the effort against harder, more dangerous substances.

A third consideration is whether or not we, as a nation, could condone the legal sale of a drug such as crystal methamphetamine.  If the free market did, indeed, step in to provide meth for purposes of recreational use, could we as a society reconcile the sale of such a destructive substance with our ethical and moral framework?

The argument could be made that similar questions could revolve around the sale of alcohol, also arguably a very dangerous substance–indeed, quite a lot more dangerous than marijuana, and responsible for far more deaths.  Still, alcohol can be used in moderation, and when a clerk at a grocery store sells a six-pack to a shopper, they don’t necessarily worry that that person is going to go out and get wasted and overdose.  Could the same clerk exchange meth or heroin for money and do so with a clean conscience?  This is due in part to our long history as an alcohol-consuming society, and partly due to the fact that alcohol can indeed be used responsibly.  The same simply cannot be said for drugs like heroin or crack or crystal meth.

This is a major stumbling block in the War to End the War on Drugs, and inevitably circles into the region of pragmatism vs. principle.  Even if we knew, conclusively, that legalizing these substances would end the militarization of our police, destroy the cartels, and free a good number of non-violent offenders, could we reconcile that with consequences of societal acceptance of the sale of these substances?

I do believe it’s time to stop treating drug users, no matter the substance, as criminals.  But I have yet to be convinced that legalizing the hardest of our illegal drugs will serve to make this nation any safer, healthier, or prevent people from destroying their lives with poisons that simply have no place in any society.

C. Augustin Dierkes post on the Mexican drug war to me highlighted one of the many downsides to the drug war, one which happens to be among the more distressing changes in American life from the past century: the increasing use of the American military in civilian contexts and settings.

The point of using the war analogy in the war on drugs is to demonstrate that, when it comes to the fight against the trafficking of illegal drugs, “the gloves are off” and all equipment and tactics are on the table. And, while I echo many others in finding a great deal of empty rhetoric in the war on drugs terminology, it is true that the last several decades of American efforts at eliminating drug use has seen the introduction of weaponry and tactics previously unheard of in crime prevention. What’s more, the American military and intelligence apparati have been used regularly to limit the inflow of drugs into the United States, since the great Reaganite expansion of the drug war. The fact that our standard metrics for determining the efficacy of our drug prohibition has shown no consistent or meaningful reduction in the use of illegal drugs would be enough to question this use of military personnel in the drug war. But there are legitimate reasons to oppose this militarization independent of effect.

The founding politicians of our country had a disdain for standing armies that would have them relegated to the status of lunatic peaceniks today. But distrust of standing armies, and the uses of military personnel and equipment on domestic soil, has justifications that have nothing to do with pacifism. The American revolutionaries had seen first hand the chilling effects of military garrisons among domestic populations. We of course have military bases dotted around the United States, but in my experience the military takes pains not to have too obvious a footprint in local communities. More importantly, they don’t have military personnel deployed in official capacity within the population, unlike, say, the British redcoats stationed in American population centers before the revolution. But I’ve noticed in recent years a trend upward in the use of the National Guard, a military organization, on domestic soil– not just in assisting in the war on drugs but in providing security for events deemed high profile targets, such as today’s Inauguration, during which time we’ve seen packs of National Guardsmen wandering around. During Katrina, of course, we talked endlessly about why it took so long for the National Guard to be deployed to help. While I do support the use of the National Guard in that level of emergency, I think we need to take great care when deciding to deploy them.

My fear is that many Americans seem not to understand that the use of military personnel for crime prevention and domestic security, whether fighting against Colombian cartels (directly or by proxy) or providing security at a political event, is a major change from the traditional distrust of the military that has long been a part of the American character. This could, over time, lead to a gradual normalization of the projection of American military power within our borders, a change that I don’t think helps anyone, no matter which party is in power.

At worst, this sort of domestic use of military power can have consequences similar to the one Dierkes describes– a situation that really does deserve the appelation war. You might say that the cartels in Mexico have forced the hand of the Mexican government in provoking a military response. But as Dierkes mentions, the military does a pretty poor job of performing the central mission of any police force, which is balancing enforcement of the law with respect for individual rights and limits on police power. And there can’t help but be a kind of cycle of escalation when more and more military grade hardware is brought onto the scene. Civil rights will inevitably be eroded in this kind of action; the question is whether that tradeoff will actually bring with it the sought increases in security and law enforcement. I don’t know how best to solve the problems in this growing war between the Mexican government and cartels, but I am largely persuaded that drug legalization is the only long-term method to undercut the economic power of the cartels and handicap their ability to wage war.

My namesake, the great detective C. Auguste Dupin, who was himself an extraordinary gentlemen (I a member of the ordinary type) deployed a process termed “ratiocination”. It involved among other things Dupin’s remarkable ability to enter into the mind of the criminal he was investigating.  To imagine the world from the perspective of the criminal.

On that note….a look into the rampant criminality and increasing chaos-violence in Mexico.  This BBC story tells us of mass arrest of 21 police in Tijuana, accused of being in cahoots with criminal drug cartels.

The rise of the narco-insurgency in Mexico has yet to gain a great deal of press in the US but according to outgoing CIA Dir. Michael Hayden, it way be a bigger problem for Pres. Obama than the Iraqi insurgency.

Since local police throughout the country are on the payroll of the cartels, the government has had to initiate the use of federal police, aka militarized police.  As in Brazil, they are attempting to deploy a modified form of counterinsurgency (COIN) along the lines laid out by Gen. Petraeus & others in the New Army COIN manual.  The problem is that the militarized war model of policing can cause just as many problems, and be just as brutal (these police-military groups are often accused of political rights violations), as the drug lords themselves.

[Little remembered US prez election sidenote:  John McCain argued that US police forces in US ghettos should themselves employ (deploy?) COIN model.  It didn't get much play in the midst of so much else, but that kinda freaked me out.  When police become militarized, then tend not to worry about little things like warrants.]

In the latest twist to this macabre mexican tale, vigilante groups may now be  appearing targeting the drug criminals.  Criminal gangs have been fighting each other as well as government forces for years now.  But these new potentially irregular non-state sponsored and businessmen-financed/backed militias/vigilante groups may it sound indeed more and more like Iraq.

These various gangs can often be seriously weakened but only with the creation of an indigenous militia force (a la The Anbar Awakening).   However for the government to pay off such groups and admit to their legitimacy (and give up on their own military proxy police as the primary fighters) is a loss of authority and prestige to the state.  It potentially de-centralizes power and breaks the state’s monopoly on the means of (legitimate) violence in the country.  The state appears to lose face either way–whether the vigilantes or the narcos win out.

Almost 6,000 people were killed last year in the Mexican Drug War, which is more than the entire amount of US soldiers killed in the (2nd) Iraq War to date.  It’s basically equivalent to all US military deaths in both Iraq and Afghanistan.