John McWhorter has a good column at Root urging African-Americans to make a priority of opposing the War on Drugs {[HT: here]:
The Reclaim the Dream March “recaptured the flavor” of the March on Washington. But it isn’t an accident that this brings to mind popping an old piece of gum from the underside of a desk into your mouth to see how much “flavor” might still be left in it.
The 1963 March on Washington, of course, was a signature and significant event. The question, however, is what the value is of trying to do it again. There comes a point when these marches are gestures rather than actions. And that point has come….
Every time I see one of these marches or forums covered as significant, what occurs to me is that there is one thing we should all be focused on instead. It is, of all things, the War on Drugs. The most meaningfully pro-black policy today would be a white-hot commitment to ending its idiocy.
The massive number of black men in prison, described on The Root site here, stands as a rebuke to all calls to “get past racism,” exhibit initiative or stress optimism. And the primary reason for this massive number of black men in jail is the War on Drugs.
The War on Drugs destroys black families. It has become a norm for black children to grow up with their fathers in prison and barely knowing them….
In this post, I discussed in greater detail how the War on Drugs undermines family values in poor black communities. As I noted there, some 60% of all incarcerated nonviolent drug offenders are black males, hundreds of thousands in all. This figure is not due solely or even primarily to racism. But even if conducted with the best of intentions, the War on Drugs has had a devastating impact on blacks even more than on other groups.
happycynic says:
Putting aside the moral issues of drug use for a moment, when a strategy has failed as utterly and completely as the war on drugs, it only makes sense to change tactics. In fact, I propose that we rename the War on Drugs to the Somme on Drugs, to reflect the fact that we keep sending people into a futile meat grinder while failing to grasp the futility of our current tactics.
September 3, 2010, 2:40 pmhelene edwards says:
You know what has a devastating impact on blacks? Expecting them to meet white standards. At a S.F. BART station one sunday in 2007 I told a black man he really ought not jump the turnstile. He told me I had to “take my medicine” and put up his fists. I maced him, he spit in my face, he walked off, and I called the cops. They stopped and ID’d him, and he goes, “why you always picking on the black man?” Then they arrested him because he had an outstanding warrant for fare-beating, which isn’t fair.
September 3, 2010, 2:42 pmKevin Austin says:
I’m not a lawyer, I’m an engineer. But regarding: “The War on Drugs destroys black families. It has become a norm for black children to grow up with their fathers in prison and barely knowing them….”
The War on Drugs didn’t make these people do drugs, crack doesn’t smoke itself.
September 3, 2010, 2:45 pmGreg says:
Is this true? I read in Rolling Stone a long time ago that Richard Nixon initiated the war on drugs for the express purpose of targeting blacks. I think the thesis was that it was determined there was too much criminal activity in the black communities and this would give law enforcement access they would not otherwise have. This thesis would not surprise me because any other reason for such a war would be equally dumb.
September 3, 2010, 2:47 pmwm13 says:
Young men who lack the skills desired by legitimate employers experience difficulty in finding legitimate employment. Many of them therefore find employment in the illicit sectors of the economy. This phenomenon has existed at least as long as there have been cities. (Artful Dodger, anyone?) To suggest that eliminating one particular source of illicit employment would reduce the criminality of these young men is just silly.
September 3, 2010, 2:48 pmLiam says:
Someone has clearly only ever bought the weak stuff.
September 3, 2010, 2:53 pmSmooth, like a Rhapsody says:
What evidence is there that if these black males were not incarcerated that they could/would choose to form stable families. I believe that the illegitimacy rate among American blacks is 65% or more.
September 3, 2010, 2:54 pmkrs says:
I’m kind of curious what “ending the War on Drugs” would entail. It seems that McWhorter wants to just legalize everything…
He’s admirably forthright in rejecting a lot of the awful arguments that have been raised against the drug laws… and he makes a strong presentation of the costs side of the war on drugs. But what does he have to say about the benefits side?
To respond to Kevin Austin, McWhorter’s column doesn’t seem to me to be repeating the anti-personal-responsibility arguments that I commonly hear on this topic. See this bit, for example:
September 3, 2010, 2:54 pmnot a hacker says:
Eliminating prison sentences for drug use is a good idea, but for a far different reason than anyone is likely to mention here. From the standpoint of overall social utility, any prospect of distracting young blacks from violence for the fun of it has to be tried. I have little doubt that most people who don’t see themselves as likely to get rich and to move into a gated community, would be perfectly happy to see some kind of heroin/xanax relaxant distributed freely.
September 3, 2010, 2:57 pmDG says:
{The War on Drugs didn’t make these people do drugs, crack doesn’t smoke itself. Kevin Austin(Quote)}
No, but they would have smoked crack whether it was legal or not. The only difference is whether they would be incarcerated for it.
The War on Drugs is completely ineffective. Given that, what possible reason is there to continue, considering the cost? We could use that money for on-demand drug treatment, which would probably be more effective.
The toughest thing for people to get their heads around is that drugs are freely available in our society. The war on drugs has not impacted this in a meaningful way.
September 3, 2010, 2:57 pmkrs says:
FRAUD!
September 3, 2010, 3:01 pmRedman says:
I’m not sure I follow the posted argument.
If a criminal statute impacts a particular race disproportionately, there is something wrong with the law?
September 3, 2010, 3:02 pmConstantin says:
Too bad Republicans couldn’t have fit the AIDS they created to kill black people into the mix. Two birds with one conspiratorial stone.
September 3, 2010, 3:04 pmKen Arromdee says:
You could equally well argue that drug abuse itself affects blacks more than whites, so all black people should support anti-drug laws.
Also, Republican/Democratic policies affect the poor, black people are more likely to be poor, therefore all black people should vote Democratic/Republican.
And proportionately more black fetuses are aborted than white ones–the baby killers are especially hurting blacks! Abortion is anti-black genocide!
Not.
An argument that “group X should support political position Y because Y is particularly bad for X” is illogical when the main dispute is over whether Y is bad at all. This “argument” that blacks should oppose the drug war entirely depends upon the argument that people in general should oppose the drug war. It’s just like claiming that blacks should oppose abortion, when the whole thing depends on arguing that abortion is bad for everyone, and only when you already with that will you then agree that it’s particularly bad for blacks.
September 3, 2010, 3:11 pmHouston Lawyer says:
We used to punish the illegitimate in this country, but the courts determined that that was unfair. Then we decided to give money to poor women for the benefit of their children, so long as they didn’t have a working man in the house. The traditional family structure has been broken in the black community with a lot of help from our government. A line from Humpty Dumpty comes to mind.
September 3, 2010, 3:16 pmChris Travers says:
The drug war needs to be ended. It needs to be ended because it destroys families, makes our nation less secure by funding hostile non-state armed groups on our Southern border, costs the tax payers way too much money, etc. There is no sense of acceptable risk in how it is prosecuted— opium poppies are less regulated than pot plants, and there are plenty of substitutes to any illegal drug that are legal if an individual wants to spend some time researching the subject. It’s a bad thing and needs to be ended. The primary beneficiaries of our war on drugs are the cartels and suppliers.
However, the question is “how?” I am not a fan of simply legalizing everything. I would instead propose:
1) Legalizing raw plant matter (opium resin, marijuana, hash, coca, etc)
2) Legalizing extracts of raw plant matter (laudanum, coca tincture, etc)
3) Legalizing drugs where the drugs themselves are less dangerous than the raw plant matter they are based on (LSD is safer than ergot)
4) Banning synthesis of other drugs (like meth)
5) Banning drugs in purified form (heroin, cocaine) except where there are legitimate industry uses (pure caffeine) and requiring a purchase license there.
The fact is, there are legal alternatives to cocaine, opium, and so forth. Every class of drug has legal members of it that anyone can obtain with no control measures in place. Nutmeg, for example, may be a harsh hallucinogen, but nobody will even think about controlling the sale of it.
September 3, 2010, 3:16 pmAllan Walstad says:
The war on drugs doesn’t eliminate drugs; it makes drugs vastly more expensive than they otherwise would be, while making the legal system unavailable for settling disputes (and enforcing the settlements) between those who market drugs. So you get violence among them. The upshot is a big payoff for those willing to engage in violence, to protect their turf and drive competitors out of theirs. Poor people, and particularly those still immersed in the self-destructive ghetto culture, are the ones who will reach for that payoff. The effect is to encourage violent, unproductive behavior and perpetuate the ghetto culture.
As I pointed out on another thread some time ago, Thomas Sowell’s “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” (the title of a chapter in his book by the same name) is essential reading for understanding the ghetto culture and how it originated. Many of the immigrants to the South in colonial times were from specific parts of the British Isles in which this very same culture existed–among whites. They brought it to the American South. It became the dominant cultural influence on many of the black slaves for generations. It lives on in black ghettos and in white hillbilly areas — violent, touchy, unproductive. It has since died out in its places of origin in the British Isles. It is, ironically, “cracker” culture — ironically in light of that New Black Panther member shouting at voters “you gonna have to kill some crackers.” His very manner of speaking derives from the original white “crackers.”
And again, the war on drugs is one of the things perpetuating this culture.
September 3, 2010, 3:24 pmgab says:
Houston lawyer said:
Did the gov’t only give money to the black community? If the government had helped to break the “traditional family structure,” clearly it would have happened to not only the black community, thus the logic doesn’t hold.
September 3, 2010, 3:25 pmJohnF says:
The argument that a criminal law should be repealed because it destroys the families of people who violate it is just stupid.
Is there a criminal law that doesn’t do this?
There are good reasons to alter the current war on drugs, but the fact that there are bad social and family consequences when one commits a crime is not one of them.
September 3, 2010, 3:25 pmGuy says:
Maybe not, but ever hear of the crack/powder disparity? An amount of crack is punishable by what 100 times that amount in powder cocaine would get.
September 3, 2010, 3:28 pmLiam says:
Ken Arromdee-
Not quite – one can be willing to tolerate the negative externalities of a given policy in general, but have a problem with how those externalities end up being distributed across the population.
Looking at the drug war, it seems pretty indisputable that current policy results in broken households that are more likely to foster criminal behavior. The specific numbers are contestable, but the general negative effect seems both intuitive and empirical. Everyone is going to have some theoretical tipping point at which they consider the number of broken families resulting from policy to outweigh the value of reducing drug use and its attendant harms. For argument’s sake, let’s say the average voter would stop tolerating current policy if 50,000 households were destroyed.
Now, let’s say that 30,000 black homes have been destroyed, and just 10,000 homes of people belonging to other races. The average voter’s tipping point hasn’t been reached, but when you break the numbers down that way, things suddenly look really unfair. Worse still, because of the concentration of these externalities, they are essentially compounded, as each broken household has a lower probability of being able to find another household on whom to lean, since neighbors are suffering the same problems.
If your original point was that broken homes aren’t a problem at all, then yea, this isn’t an issue, but you’re also living in a fairytale world under that scenario. In a world where people are actually willing to weigh costs and benefits rationally, rather than deal in irrational absolutes, the proportional distribution of those costs and benefits has to be a factor.
September 3, 2010, 3:28 pmSarcastro says:
Unless black people’s problems all come from the war on drugs, this is a dumb reason!
Disparate impact is the fault of the victims anyway.
September 3, 2010, 3:30 pmKamal says:
I completely agree Ilya. Does anyone understand why conservative pundits like Bill O’Reilly are so adamantly opposed to ending the drug war? When Barney Frank suggested that telling people they can’t smoke pot exemplifies the “nanny state” acting poorly, Bill O’Reilly thought he was insane and couldn’t follow Frank’s reasoning. Is there some facts or error of facts that is prevalent to keep so many people supporting the war on drugs? Do people still believe the reefer madness stories, or is it more about wanting productive workers?
September 3, 2010, 3:30 pmSarcastro says:
Though while the drug war isn’t solely responsible for black folks’s problems, the fact that we don’t punish poor women for whelping bastards is.
Have the compassion to punish single mothers instead of giving them the life of Riley, and you solve the black problem.
September 3, 2010, 3:33 pmKamal says:
Just a modest proposal; We could solve two problems by feeding the bastard children to the poor. That way we provide food, and eliminate unwanted children.
Sorry, I can never tell with a name like Sarcastro how serious you are being, considering many people probably support those ideas. It’s the same problem I have with Colbert and Beck, though the former we can be confident is being sarcastic and the later just probably.
September 3, 2010, 3:37 pmLiam says:
To restate part of my earlier argument, because I think this is a clearer explanation:
Imagine if 1 father in every neighborhood/community is incarcerated. It’s unfortunate, but not terribly damaging to the community, because all of the kids in that household still probably have a bevy of positive male role models to help pick up the slack: coaches, teachers, family, neighbors, etc.
Now redistribute the exact same amount of incarcerations into 1 community, so that every father is in prison. That support system completely disintegrates, and the entire community is likely to go to hell. The distribution of effects is pretty clearly a factor in how negatively or positively a policy impacts society. If you live in an area/community that is particularly negatively impacted, that’s a pretty good reason to oppose the policy, since that has a dramatic effect on your quality of life.
September 3, 2010, 3:41 pmChris Travers says:
That’s why Jeff Sessions wants to “do that crack cocaine thing” right? (I couldn’t believe it when I saw him say these words when I was watching the Sotomayor confirmation hearings on C-SPAN.)
September 3, 2010, 3:43 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Don’t know if that’s true or not, but it would be interesting to see what the comparable figure for whites would be, once you controlled for wealth, income, education, etc.
Historically, high poverty rates have generally gone hand in hand with high rates of illegitimacy. If you oppose support for income redistribution, you pretty much get to choose between high rates of illegitimacy, or taking your chances with draconian social policies. Note that the latter are going to be awfully hard to sustain in a democratic society if an upwardly skewed income distribution keeps adding to the support for relaxing the policies.
September 3, 2010, 3:46 pmSmooth, like a Rhapsody says:
Stephen Lathrop:
But blacks in the early 20th century were poorer both in absolute and in relative terms than they are today; yet the illegitimacy rate is much higher now than it was then (it’s higher for whites, too).
September 3, 2010, 3:53 pmRowerinVA says:
There’s some good and some bad in the post and the comments. I don’t have much to add except this: virtually no one is in prison or jail merely for “using” illegal drugs. Statistically, this isn’t a large enough population even to register in the data. Yes, some mere users get criminal records (although most don’t even get that) but incarceration? No. Not unless they were operating a motor vehicle at the time, or doing something similarly dangerous.
That point does nothing to detract from the argument above that goes, illegality => high rents / no legal dispute settling => violence & dealing => more people in jail for violence, dealing, etc.
September 3, 2010, 3:59 pmatheneum says:
If you oppose support for income redistribution, you pretty much get to choose between high rates of illegitimacy, or taking your chances with draconian social policies (Stephen Lathrop)
Is your socialist premise a moral or a gun-to-our-heads rationale for income redistribution, and is this what left Libertarianism advocates?
September 3, 2010, 4:05 pmRowerinVA says:
Liam, history proves that’s not correct. Humanity has done that experiment many times due to warfare taking away or killing off the males, for short periods or long ones. Often even more drastically that the current prison epidemic. What the experiment proves is that different nations/groups/times in history or whatever experience vastly different outcomes. Losing all the males has the inevitable effect of reducing wealth but does not inevitably lead to social disintegration, massive violence, etc. Sometimes it does, but more often it doesn’t. You need other, or at least additional, explanations to deal with what has happened since the 1960′s in the urban USA.
September 3, 2010, 4:07 pmStephen Lathrop says:
1. I wonder if the data exist to prove the assertion about black illegitimacy in the early 20th century.
2. I guess you weren’t paying attention when I mentioned draconian social policies.
September 3, 2010, 4:11 pmTed says:
What about possession? Is possession a greater social harm than “using?” Does it affect your analysis if the statistics showed that a great number of persons were incarcerated “solely” for possession of drugs?
September 3, 2010, 4:12 pmDudeman says:
IF the war on drugs were removing black males from their family (wife/children) this view could be more accurate. However, this is sadly not the case. While the war on drugs has a negative impact on the black community, it is ultimately the users and dealers who are to blame. See State v. Harris, 2010 WI 79 ¶¶7-20.
September 3, 2010, 4:21 pmStephen Lathrop says:
Don’t be surprised if the policies you choose this time produce results similar to the ones similar policies produced at other times. If that happens, and you don’t like the result, it’s you putting the gun to your own head. High illegitimacy rates go with poverty. Probably always will.
As for the “socialist” epithet, try another target, like someone who advocates socialism. It’s gotten to the point where some people seem to think Glen Beck is Noah Webster.
September 3, 2010, 4:24 pmerp says:
I wonder if the black community can survive any more “help” from the government.
September 3, 2010, 4:25 pmKamal says:
Maybe they should trust the “free market”; that’s worked out exceedingly well for them.
September 3, 2010, 4:30 pmatheneum says:
I’m for revamping sentencing laws, especially to equalize the penalties for crack and cocaine use (up or down, just get them more in line to account for offensive subcultural disparities.)
Legalizing drugs sounds like a pretty good fix, if you’ll pardon the expression, until one realizes the devil’s in the details. To legislate that any and all drugs are cool, to include new and increasingly addicting designer drugs, assuming the same or an increased number of people partake in them, means family members, employers and government will have to pay even more for lost productivity, treatment and health and accident consequences. And law enforcement and social programs presumably would still have to target under-age use and the illegal market catering to kids.
Legalizing only most or some classes of drugs still leaves law enforcement in the position of apprehending, prosecuting and incarcerating for the rest, and an illegal market intact. And there will always be new fad substances for mind expansion/ ruination on which the FDAA and Congress can take years to render judgment.
One upside, were huffing no longer deemed dangerous or illegal, spray paint will be able to be bought without an ID and those awful human-proof tops.
September 3, 2010, 4:35 pmGuy says:
You don’t understand; there is the free market, the Indians not taxed market, and the all other persons market. The mistake of African-Americans is that they’re trusting the invisible hand of the latter market, but it only yields three fifths of the return on investment as the free market.
September 3, 2010, 4:35 pmwm13 says:
I think you will find that very few people are in prison for “possession” of personal use quantities of any illegal drug. Obviously, some considerable number of drug dealers end up convicted of “possession” because the government can’t prove an actual sale.
September 3, 2010, 4:40 pmBrandon says:
Don’t quote me on this, but I believe that they “fixed” this recently by reducing the disparity to 18:1.
September 3, 2010, 4:42 pmerp says:
Kamal, why don’t you think black people can compete in the free market?
They can you know as has been proven by recent arrivals from Haiti and Africa who have no trouble integrating into American society, but then they haven’t been taught by the left that they’re too incompetent to ride a bike without the training wheels of government custodial care.
September 3, 2010, 4:42 pmJ.T. Wenting says:
hmm, so drug trafficking (and the other crimes associated with it, like muggings, murder, rape, human trafficking) is a family value in black families and we should respect that?
I know another one like that: chopping off the heads of infidels is a family value in fundamentalist Islamist families. Should we respect that too?
September 3, 2010, 4:44 pmJDW says:
So a dad at home smoking crack is better than a dad in jail? Is that the argument for legalizing drug use and the benefit that would come to the black community? And is there no thought to the fact that the drug trade and drug use is directly associated with violent crimes and other crimes that would still be attendant to a legalized drug regime (and no, the experience of other countries does not show this to be false).
September 3, 2010, 4:44 pmben says:
Those crimes are not any more “associated” with drugs than they were with prohibition and are with abuse of alcohol
September 3, 2010, 4:47 pmJDW says:
And did anyone actually hear why there is a disparity…because the crack form is associated with much more violent crime and a bigger negative impact on the community than the powder form. It doesn’t matter that they are the same drug when the activity you are trying to stop is different. It is like saying that premeditated intentional murder should be treated the same as an accidental killing. It makes no sense.
September 3, 2010, 4:47 pmatheneum says:
As for the “socialist” epithet, try another target, like someone who advocates socialism. It’s gotten to the point where some people seem to think Glen Beck is Noah Webster. (Stephen Lathrop)
What do YOU call advocacy for “income redistribution,” then? I’ve never listened to Glen(n?) Beck, so try another target. It’s gotten to the point where some people seem to think “Not Genius” Ezra Klein is Abe Lincoln.
September 3, 2010, 4:47 pmElemenope says:
I think you will find that the real long-term harm of drug illegality is not in the prison terms being served, but rather in the criminal record that prevents people even with simple possession charges from being gainfully employed in many circumstances. A fine and a drug rap can screw you almost as much as a stint in prison in that context.
September 3, 2010, 4:47 pmfalafalafocus says:
Wait, which draconian social policy helped to keep black illegitimacy rates down in the 1960s? I assume you are alluding to Jim Crow, but I just don’t see the connection you are making.
September 3, 2010, 4:48 pmBrandon says:
When’s the last time you saw liquor stores trading bullets? Happened frequently during prohibition in the U.S. of A, but no more thanks to the fact that their product is legal and competition can be resolved aboveground.
September 3, 2010, 4:48 pmKamal says:
You misunderstand. I don’t believe that lack of government influence creates a free market; for that to be true, people would need to have options available to them. Land and property is all claimed. Proper government influence is required to create a free market.
Yes, free markets are amazingly useful to protect existing property/economic distribution. It’s not debatable.. there is a way to measure this. It’s called income mobility. It measures the correlation between parent’s income and their child’s income over time. A high correlation means your future is dependent on your parent’s income, and a low correlation means your future income is not dependent on your parents. You can google it because it’s a very well studied concept (that isn’t given enough attention), but here’s one reference:
September 3, 2010, 4:49 pmhttp://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/research_desk_investigates_how.html
J.T. Wenting says:
I’m all for forcing dealers to ingest their entire stockpile in one dose as punishment when caught.
September 3, 2010, 4:52 pmNo more prison sentences needed, they’d all od on the spot, just a shallow grave required.
Kamal says:
How about when a large company is found doing something negligent for profit, we try a similar punishment? Like making the CEO of BP drink oil until he dies.
September 3, 2010, 5:01 pmBrent says:
If only evil oil went away and recreational drugs were legalized our poor and dispossessed wouldn’t suffer so. Think of the children!
September 3, 2010, 5:12 pmfalafalafocus says:
I don’t understand. Is BP selling oil for people to drink?
September 3, 2010, 5:14 pmA. Criminal says:
In this post, I discussed in greater detail how the War on Drugs undermines family values in poor black communities.
Only black communities? Or black communities and maybe some other communities … perhaps even “the” community (the country)?
Some factoids* from the Whitehouse and The Office of National Drug Control Policy:
(*Note the purposeful lack of relative proportions and the varying racial categories. The official gov’t stance on “Hispanics” is:
– Hispanics are white (FBI hate crimes perps)
– Hispanics are not white (FBI hate crimes victims)
– Hispanics are not a race (US Census))
Anyway…
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/drugfact/minorities/minorities_ff.html
According to the 2006 American Community Survey, the estimated the population of the United States was 299,398,485. The population breakdown was
73.9% white,
12.4% black/African American,
0.8% American Indian/Alaska Native,
4.4% Asian,
0.1% Native Hawaiian/other Pacific Islander,
6.3% some other race, 2.0% two or more races.
An estimated 14.8% of the population was of Hispanic/Latino origin (of any race).
…
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, there were a total of 1,382,783 state and local arrests for drug abuse violations in the United States during 2007 where the race of the offender was reported. Of these drug abuse violation arrests,
63.7% of those arrested were white,
35.1% were black,
0.6% were Asian or Pacific Islander, and
0.6% were American Indian or Alaskan Native.9
So should “Asian or Pacific Islander” people support drugs laws because they get arrested less often than people of other races?
That makes about as much sense as the premise of this (McWhorter’s) post.
More factoids…
During FY 2007, there were 25,457 Federal defendants charged with a drug offense whose race was reported to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Approximately one quarter
September 3, 2010, 5:18 pm24.3%) of these defendants were white,
29.5% were black, and
42.7% were Hispanic.
Individuals of another race made up 3.5% of these drug cases.
…
At yearend 2004, there were an approximate total of 1,274,600 sentenced State prison inmates, 249,400 of whom were incarcerated for drug offenses. The majority of drug offenders held in State prisons were black (112,500), followed by whites (65,900), and Hispanics (51,800).12
B.D. says:
So Ilya, that wasn’t your fiancee’s blog?
September 3, 2010, 5:21 pmB.D. says:
Oooh, actually I think I understand what probably happened. Forget I asked. You can delete my prior comment, of course.
September 3, 2010, 5:27 pmLiam says:
That comparison is not only laughably inapt, but historically inaccurate in the first place. Pretty much every society experiences massive social tumult after even relatively small wars. The degree of instability is heavily influenced by how stable the society was before the war, and thus how well-adapted it is to these sorts of shocks, and, SURPRISE, the black community in the United States has never exactly been given an opportunity to develop that sort of stability.
Not that the comparison would be terribly relevant even if it did rely on more than just a cursory glance at American history; the “lost generations” killed off in apocalyptic conflicts such as the World Wars were composed primarily of youths who hadn’t yet had children, leaving no broken homes behind, nor were they drawn so disproportionately from select communities as to leave everyone else completely unable to cope (socially, anyways).
September 3, 2010, 5:30 pmTravis says:
A corporation sells E.coli tainted burgers that kill 10 kids.
You’d be in favor of force-feeding the CEO his own tainted meat until he dies, correct?
September 3, 2010, 5:33 pmJDW says:
Not arguing the point that during prohibition bootleggers would commit violent crimes. Not even arguing that you may see a drop in some crimes if drugs were made legal. I’m arguing that making drugs legal is not a net benefit. I think that argument can even be made for alcohol. And I also think that equating alcohol with many of the hard drugs out there, such as crack cocaine, is ridiculous. Arguing for the legalization of marijuana is much different than arguing for the legalization of heroine and crack cocaine. I think everyone who thinks a blanket legalization of all drugs will make things rainbow and sunshine need to pull their heads out of the sand.
September 3, 2010, 5:35 pmBrent says:
Travis, is that corp trafficking in illegal E. Coli burgers, knowingly selling poison to kids or anyone, for that matter, and for profit?
oh come on
September 3, 2010, 5:37 pmLiam says:
For some reason, I missed this when reading the post. Obviously the social impact of fathers being incarcerated doesn’t account for all social imbalances, but the rest of the post struck me as contending that the incarcerations were basically irrelevant.
September 3, 2010, 5:37 pmManju says:
Your data demonstrates Denmark and Austria have a higher income mobility than the USA. We’re supposed to conclude that this is because of more economic freedom in the USA, which protect existing property distribution so the theory goes. But not only have you failed to isolate for other factors, but its unclear the correlation even exists in the first place.
After all, all these nations have relatively free markets. Denmark is ranked just below the US in economic freedom (heritage foundation list), so why would we assume that’s the factor? Austria, Sweden are less free than the US, but not by much.
Ditto for the UK and Italy, but they also rank lower in terms of mobility. So, taking your logic, which is aparently “not debatable” , someone could easily conclude that the reason there’s more mobility in the US is because of economic freedom.
September 3, 2010, 5:38 pmSarcastro says:
If eliminating it doesn’t completely solve the problem, it’s not causing the problem!
September 3, 2010, 5:39 pmJDW says:
What is with these guys that try these absurd comparisons? If the CEO knew for a fact how deadly it would be to his customers, then yes. But don’t equate meat that accidentally got infected with e.coli with a crack and the meat CEO with a crack dealer. Ridiculous how low people will stoop to make crack dealers seem okay.
September 3, 2010, 5:39 pmdistant says:
Is Helene Edwards a sock-puppet for David Bernstein?
September 3, 2010, 5:40 pmManju says:
http://www.heritage.org/index/Ranking.aspx
Heritage Foundation data on economic freedom to compare withthe the data Kamal links to on economic mobility.
September 3, 2010, 5:40 pmB.D. says:
Drug legalization is just the first stage of a sinister Koch brothers plan to corner the marijuana market. You see, after legalization Koch Industries will then get politically involved and use its undue influence to get regulations further loosened, thereby enabling them to squeeze and ultimately bankrupt small, quaint Mom-n-Pop marijuana farms. And then to enhance the addictive effect while also cutting costs, they’ll lace their product with high fructose corn syrup.
September 3, 2010, 5:40 pmTravis says:
There’s nothing ridiculous about equating alcohol and cocaine. Alcohol *is* a hard drug, viciously addictive and responsible for more societal harm than all the illegal drugs combined.
However, we figured out long ago that the societal harms created by the “cure” — prohibiting alcohol use — were far worse than the disease itself. So we regulate it in an effort to reduce those harms, educate potential users and provide treatment programs for those who have gone from use to abuse.
September 3, 2010, 5:42 pmTravis says:
Tobacco CEOs knew long ago that their product was deadly, and yet kept selling it — even modified it to make it more powerfully addictive.
I await your condemnation of RJ Reynolds’ entire board of directors to death by lung cancer.
September 3, 2010, 5:46 pmJDW says:
We differ on whether alcohol is a hard drug or viciously addictive, which is why I would say it is ridiculous to treat the two of them as analogous for legalization purposes. As I said, I would say that much of what could be said about the hard drugs can be said about alcohol. But you are completely mistaken that the reason alcohol is legal is because we figured out the societal harms were better addressed through treatment programs and education. I think you need to delve into the history of prohibition, the period before, during, and after.
September 3, 2010, 5:47 pmJDW says:
Okay, I condemn them to lung cancer. Happy?
September 3, 2010, 5:49 pmElemenope says:
oh come on
I think when people are idly discussing extrajudicially killing people they don’t like due to their vocation, this phrase is somewhat underused.
September 3, 2010, 5:49 pmJDW says:
Probably so, and I think people who make absurd comparisons should be able to also recognize farcical absurdities that are meant to point out that absurdity of their comparisons.
September 3, 2010, 5:55 pmThorley Winston says:
A comparison that is utterly meaningless when one considers that an increasing portion of the compensation of American workers is non-cash benefits, which don’t register as “income.”
September 3, 2010, 5:59 pmM. Gross says:
employers and government will have to pay even more for lost productivity, treatment and health and accident consequences.
Those aren’t as severe as most people would imagine. If you desire to spend your life in a drugged haze, alcohol is already plentiful and legal. That segment of the population that spends their lives as junkies is unlikely to expand much at all due to legalization (as is empirically supported by legalization in other countries, see the Netherlands.)
September 3, 2010, 6:00 pmTravis says:
You’re entitled to your own opinion, JDW, but not your own facts. The medical community disagrees with you re: the addictiveness of alcohol.
A 2007 Lancet study rated alcohol only slightly lower than cocaine, and ahead of amphetamines, marijuana, LSD and ecstasy, in its addictive power. In fact, alcohol was ranked more physically addictive than cocaine, if less psychologically addictive.
Incidentally, tobacco was even closer to cocaine in its addictiveness.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60464-4/
September 3, 2010, 6:00 pmBrent says:
Okaay. To be clear, I PROMISE that I have never flipped burgers, tainted or otherwise. Have waited and bused a few tables in my day. Or is that bussed? At least I’ve never been paid to kiss a fine Chippendale or Noguchi table.
September 3, 2010, 6:03 pmBrandon says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence.png
September 3, 2010, 6:03 pmAlcohol is in the top third of commonly used drugs as far as dependence potential goes, and has a smaller difference between an effective dose and a lethal dose than morphine, cocaine, and ecstasy.
LarryA says:
Not really. Most state laws have been twisted so that possession of more than a small amount is considered proof that you’re dealing. You get the much higher sentence even if everyone involved knows you never made a single sale. It’s like if they catch you carrying more than a little cash they can presume it’s crime profits or money laundering and seize it, even if they have zero probable cause to charge you with anything.
If the WoD was legitimate these shenanigans wouldn’t be necessary.
Historically prohibition leads to a black market leads to violence leads to repression leads to corruption leads to escalating violence leads to escalating repression leads to escalating corruption leads to… rinse, repeat.
The war on drugs should be ended because the cure is worse than the disease. I’d like to hope policy makers could learn that before we get to the level of social unrest Mexico is experiencing.
September 3, 2010, 6:05 pmAlessandra says:
According to the 2004 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, approximately 7.8 million Americans ages 12 and older reported trying crack cocaine at least once during their lifetimes, representing 3.3% of the population ages 12 and older. Approximately 1.3 million (0.5%) reported past year crack cocaine use and 467, 000 reported past month crack cocaine use. Among students surveyed as part of the 2004 Monitoring the Future study, 2.4% of eighth graders, 2.6% of tenth graders, and 3.9% of twelfth graders reported using crack cocaine at least once during their lifetimes. In 2003, these percentages were 2.5%, 2.7%, and 3.6%, respectively.
According to data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program, a median of 30.1% of adult male arrestees and 35.3% of adult female arrestees tested positive for crack cocaine when arrested in 2003.
=============
For cocaine:
Adults aged 18 to 25 years have a higher rate of current cocaine use
than any other age group, with 1.7 percent of young adults reporting
past month cocaine use. Overall, men report higher rates of current
cocaine use than women. Ethnic/racial differences also occur—with
the highest rates in those reporting two or more races (1.1 percent),
followed by Hispanics (1.0 percent), Whites (0.9 percent), and AfricanAmericans
(0.8 percent).
Further, data from the 2005 Drug Abuse Warning Network
(DAWN) report showed that cocaine was involved in 448,481 of the
total 1,449,154 visits to emergency departments for drug misuse or
abuse. This translates to almost one in three drug misuse or abuse
emergency department visits (31 percent) that involved cocaine.
And lastly:
In 1988, about 300,000 infants were born addicted to cocaine.
I’m sure the people wanting to legalize crack and cocaine are very concerned with the above…
(rolls eyes)
September 3, 2010, 6:09 pmElemenope says:
My comment was in reaction to this gem:
I’m all for forcing dealers to ingest their entire stockpile in one dose as punishment when caught.No more prison sentences needed, they’d all od on the spot, just a shallow grave required.
I’m fully aware the commentary about oil executives and tainted meat following it was sarcastic.
September 3, 2010, 6:13 pmGuy says:
I think you’re misunderstanding his argument, he’s not saying “free markets = lack of mobility” he’s saying that unequal distributions of ownership lead to different levels of opportunity based on parental wealth. Things like government-provided college tuition would go a long way to changing this situation. I don’t know what your heritage rankings are supposed to prove, setting aside the general rule that rankings made by political think tanks should be taken with a grain of salt, some of their indicators seem not to be well-calibrated. For example, the high military spending of the United States is a significant portion of our overall government spending, and causes us to take a hit in the rankings, but it’s not obvious to me that taxes collected for a public good like defense should be seen as an indication of lack of economic freedom, or an absence of free markets.
September 3, 2010, 6:14 pmElemenope says:
In 1988, about 300,000 infants were born addicted to cocaine.
Sounds like a job for an abortion doctor!
No, but seriously, most of the 1980s crack baby panic turned out to be misdiagnosed fetal alcohol syndrome. You see, they forgot to check for co-morbidity between crack users and alcohol use. Whoops.
September 3, 2010, 6:15 pmAlessandra says:
In 1999, the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study resurveyed colleges. Responses to mail questionnaires from more than 14 000 students at 119 nationally representative 4-year colleges in 39 states were compared. Two of 5 students (44%) were binge drinkers. binge drinkers, and particularly frequent binge drinkers, were more likely than other students to experience alcohol-related problems. At colleges with high binge-drinking rates, students who did not binge drink continued to be at higher risk of encountering the secondhand effects of others’ heavy drinking. The continuing high level of binge drinking is discussed in the context of the heightened attention and increased actions at colleges. Although it may take more time for interventions to take effect, the actions college health providers have undertaken thus far may not be a sufficient response.
In 2001, a sharp rise in frequent binge drinking was noted among students attending all-women’s colleges. Other significant changes included increases in immoderate drinking and harm among drinkers.
Between 1993 and 2001, the total number of binge-drinking episodes among US adults increased from approximately 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion; during this time, binge-drinking episodes per person per year increased by 17% (from 6.3 to 7.4, P for trend = .03). Between 1995 and 2001, binge-drinking episodes per person per year increased by 35% (P for trend = .005). Men accounted for 81% of binge-drinking episodes in the study years. Although rates of binge-drinking episodes were highest among those aged 18 to 25 years, 69% of binge-drinking episodes during the study period occurred among those aged 26 years or older. Overall, 47% of binge-drinking episodes occurred among otherwise moderate (ie, non-heavy) drinkers, and 73% of all binge drinkers were moderate drinkers. Binge drinkers were 14 times more likely to drive while impaired by alcohol compared with non–binge drinkers. There were substantial state and regional differences in per capita binge-drinking episodes.
Conclusions: Binge drinking is common among most strata of US adults, including among those aged 26 years or older. Per capita binge-drinking episodes have increased, particularly since 1995. Binge drinking is strongly associated with alcohol-impaired driving. Effective interventions to prevent the mortality and morbidity associated with binge drinking should be widely adopted, including screening patients for alcohol abuse in accordance with national guidelines.
Excessive consumption of alcohol was responsible for approximately 75 000 deaths and 2.3 million years of potential life lost (about 30 years of life lost per death) in the United States in 2001.1–2 Binge drinking, typically defined as the consumption of 5 or more alcoholic drinks on 1 occasion for a man or 4 or more drinks on a single occasion for a woman,3 accounted for more than half of these deaths and for approximately two thirds of the years of potential life lost.1 Binge drinking is also associated with a wide range of serious health and social problems, including sexually transmitted disease, unintended pregnancy, sudden infant death syndrome, acute myocardial infarction, and motor vehicle crashes.4–5 The World Health Organization estimates that use of alcohol, including binge drinking, is responsible for 4% of the global burden of disease.
September 3, 2010, 6:15 pmSarcastro says:
Repeal the 21st Amendment!
September 3, 2010, 6:21 pmJDW says:
Nice graph, but I don’t think dependence potential matches with addictiveness. Dependence potential is separate and I’m amazed that alcohol isn’t higher given its ready accessibility, which contributes to its dependence potential.
September 3, 2010, 6:21 pmTravis says:
Yes, that’s correct, Alessandra.
And yet as history has proven, making the production, distribution and consumption of alcohol illegal creates even worse societal harm. Under Prohibition, all those modalities were driven into an underground economy that eroded respect for the law, funded worldwide criminal activity and corrupted governmental authority.
You know, sort of like what’s happening with the War on Some Drugs.
September 3, 2010, 6:21 pmJDW says:
And the legalization of drugs across the board will do no better in preventing the societal harms that such substances have. And apparently we haven’t been able to educate people enough and put out enough treatment centers that were the reasons we thought it would be better to repeal prohibition.
September 3, 2010, 6:23 pmJDW says:
Apparently you are an expert on what it was like during prohibition. Sounds like you must have been a young adult at that time.
September 3, 2010, 6:24 pmBrandon says:
Plus the quality of alcohol on the black market suffered greatly, which caused more alcohol-related illness. Similar to the modern scare-stories of cocaine laced with what-have-you that causes illness and death.
September 3, 2010, 6:25 pmDrink Koolaid says:
Smooth, like a Rhapsody: Stephen Lathrop:But blacks in the early 20th century were poorer both in absolute and in relative terms than they are today; yet the illegitimacy rate is much higher now than it was then (it’s higher for whites, too).
furthermore, what is the illegitimacy rate of African American fathers not in jail???? Not much better.
September 3, 2010, 6:25 pmTravis says:
Some people are going to smoke, drink and do drugs, no matter what laws we pass. We can no more stop them from doing so than we can stop hurricanes from hitting major American cities.
So the choice is, how do we deal with those who so choose? Do we consider them addicts or criminals? Do we treat them or throw them in prison?
So far, we’ve been considering them criminals and throwing them in prison. It doesn’t seem to be working very well, does it?
September 3, 2010, 6:30 pmdesmond says:
I agree that the panacea of “legalization” will end up being more of a pandora’s box due to the continuing illegal underage market and new drugs coming onto the market. We’ll have big pharma and incorporated cartels competing for market share. The government will not easily be able to keep up with the authorization, monitoring and taxation of so many additional drugs’ manufacture, distribution, sales and consumption related problems without vastly expanding the bureaucracy, budget and inefficiency.
And why is everyone assuming today’s pills, snortables and injectibles will be the only monkeys on people’s backs? More’s to come– hipper, more potent, more addictive and more lucrative drugs will be available because profits, innovation and technology are co-dependents.
Dropping out and turning on is better than dropping in and turning off, I suppose, but I don’t see any real cost or societal savings.
September 3, 2010, 6:30 pmTravis says:
Apparently JDW has never heard of historical research.
September 3, 2010, 6:31 pmAlessandra says:
The issue is that alcohol consumption is visibly increasing. I don’t know much about the subject, but there’s been a huge increase in alcohol consumption for women (especially if we go back to the 1920′s). This is largely due to changes in cultural norms for women. Then, I don’t know how college culture was in the 20s, but I doubt that young men engaged in as much binge drinking as they do now. At least the stats, which do not go all the way back, show a marked recent increase. There are several countries which did not have a tradition of such heavy alcohol drinking where we are currently seeing a large number of young people consuming dangerous quantities of alcohol and incorporating that into a normal, accepted, and even admired part of their culture.
So while one can debate whether it would be feasible or advisable to outlaw alcohol, I also think it would be quite productive to examine why alcohol consumption is at an all time high increase rate now. Why this marked increase now?
September 3, 2010, 6:34 pmBrandon says:
My (completely unqualified, of course) theory is that it’s because of increased policing of the WoD. Even illegal use of alcohol (read: public intoxication, minor comsumption, etc) carries less legal risk than possession of most illicit drugs.
September 3, 2010, 6:40 pmJDW says:
I have, and as I said earlier, you should do more.
September 3, 2010, 6:40 pmMAM says:
McWhorter regularly starts an argument from a false premise. One important premise of his piece is that black Americans are focused on this ephemeral goal of marching for rights. That is so 1980s. Black people are not fighting for rights anymore at the heights McWhorter suggests.
I would counter that black people, at least those that are not in abject poverty, are trying to pay their mortgage, keep or find a job, improve their lot and seek self-reliance.
Reading pieces like this and the comments, one might think most black people have a protest sign behind their front door ready to march on Al Sharpton’s command.
LOL! No justice! No peace!
September 3, 2010, 6:43 pmTravis says:
Alessandra, I think there’s a good case to be made that alcohol manufacturers have driven demand through aggressive advertising and marketing, creating a cultural image of drinking and being drunk as “cool.”
Speaking as a recent graduate of a state flagship university in a college town environment, there is a real culture that says there’s something wrong with you if you’re not out pounding beers in the bars at least on Friday nights, if not every night. Students bring home cases and kegs of cheap, terrible beer (Keystone, Natural Light, PBR, et al.) just to get drunk. It’s a social lubricant and a dangerous drug. The death toll from that is real.
The fact that I believe a substance should be generally legal does not suggest that I believe it should be available on an unrestricted basis, nor does it suggest that I am opposed to restrictions on how that substance may be promoted, marketed and advertised.
September 3, 2010, 6:45 pmFub says:
In 1988 there were 3,913,000 in the USA, according to Infoplease, a secondary source which cites DHHS as primary source.
That means that about 7.6% of all 1988 live births in the USA were “addicted to cocaine”, an assertion so preposterous that it should cause any rational person to “roll eyes”.
September 3, 2010, 6:47 pmJDW says:
I guess that assumes our goal is to stop them from using. I don’t particularly care to stop them from using. I don’t particularly care to treat them either. If they want to use drugs, don’t ask me to pay to clean them up. What I am interested in doing is stopping the harm they cause to the community. I think that is the point of the debate about whether to legalize or not, and whether the community is better off with drug legalization or not. So is it better to legalize and have them in the community, or criminalize and get them out of the community? (Since you often don’t get the tone of what I say, that is a rhetorical question, and I’m not seeking a response from you Travis. I know your position, which is based on countless hours of research into the prohibition era.)
September 3, 2010, 6:47 pmFub says:
3,913,000 live births in the USA, that is.
September 3, 2010, 6:49 pmTravis says:
I eagerly await JDW’s groundbreaking revisionist treatise demonstrating that Prohibition was not the compete and utter disaster that mainstream historical thought considers it to be.
As Daniel Okrent wrote in “Last Call,” his recently published history of The Noble Experiment, Prohibition “encouraged criminality and institutionalized hypocrisy. It deprived the government of revenue, stripped the gears of the political system and imposed profound limitations on individual rights.”
September 3, 2010, 6:55 pmkenny d. says:
Perhaps we should try legalizing pot, crack and cocaine and see if America can just stick to the big three without bringing down society. I doubt that’ll work, though, since people seem to always want something more illicit or dangerous.
If we legalize anything and everything, the only moral economic rejoinder would be to remove all money redistributions and safety nets that more responsible others have to pay for. Yes, we already pay for people’s destructive behavior through government assistance and private insurance. But the devastation of degree and scale in such an “anything goes” experiment most certainly will get us, and likely eviscerate vulnerable urban black communities. I’m not at all convinced I should vote for or subsidize a bigger hazy hell for others.
September 3, 2010, 7:00 pmManju says:
Well, he said; “free markets are amazingly useful to protect existing property/economic distribution. It’s not debatable.. there is a way to measure this. It’s called income mobility.”
Kamal links to data demonstrating the US ranks below others in terms of mobility. I assume he thought this would make his case because the countries ranked above have reputations for being more socialistic, but actual data demonstrating this isn’t supplied. In order for him to complete his argument we need to know where those countries actually register on the economic freedom front. Ergo, economic freedom data.
Perhaps, but in this case Heritage is unaware of the mobility rankings, so they have no way of massaging the data to effect the outcome. So all these countries ranking within the most free category was at least unaffected by any motive to problematize Kamal’s theory.
September 3, 2010, 7:02 pmTed says:
What was the average legal drinking age before 1984?
September 3, 2010, 7:03 pmTed says:
May I ask you to provide for them in minimum to medium security prisons?
September 3, 2010, 7:07 pmJDW says:
Travis, you always seem a little off point to me, and I assume it is because I’m not clear. So I’ll try to be more clear. I’m not trying to defend prohibition or say that it wasn’t a failure. I’m saying that using prohibition as the foundation for your position on the legalization of illegal drugs is misguided for a number of reasons. You are taking something out of context and trying to apply it to a completely different context. I don’t think it works. You can disagree with me, which you have, but in this odd way of trying to pull me into this argument about prohibition that is irrelevant. But to address your post, prohibition was a failure not because it encouraged criminality or caused criminality or anything of the sort. It was a failure because, before it was even enacted, it wasn’t supported by the vast majority of the public.
September 3, 2010, 7:11 pmJDW says:
Yes, I am much more happy to pay to keep them out of the community (where they will similarly be detoxed) than to clean them up while keeping them in the community. In fact, I’ll pay double to lock up them up.
Added note: This is partially premised on my contention that there is some deterrence effect of prison and partially on my personal feelings that I hate to give a free hand out to people who don’t deserve it and prison is not a free hand out.
September 3, 2010, 7:14 pmTed says:
Is there a way to “legalize” drugs such that they are regulated well enough to prevent the worst direct effects of drugs, but unregulated enough to atrophy the the secondary effects? You know, allow enough “responsible” users to use legitimate sources to squeeze the illegitimate sources out of the market. There isn’t a big black market for tobacco or alcohol that I am aware of (or would bother to waste my energy finding). It would be nice if I could just walk down to Freddy’s and pick up a joint or a couple of Vicodin, too. And if you find me sleeping in the parking lot, then maybe you could revoke my license to obtain such things?
I kind of like the idea of making certain actions under the influence of drugs illegal, e.g., driving, stealing, etc., but generally illegality seems to be a bit overreaching. Would this be objectionable to most people?
September 3, 2010, 7:17 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Threads like this are useful in illustrating that most conservatives/right-wingers/Republicans (in VCspeak, “libertarians”) are freedom-hating nanny-staters whenever that aligns with their platform, many with a thinly veiled, associated racism.
They can’t proclaim their love of freedom loudly enough, however, when it coincides, by happenstance, with right-wing ideology, or when they just are looking for a chance to show how patriotic they are.
Carry on, wingnuts. The drug war, like racism and homophobia, is one more reason I am optimistic about the future, because young people seem disinclined to be as bigoted and dopey as their predecessors have been.
September 3, 2010, 7:22 pmTed says:
Is the drinking age a failure too then? What about 55 mph speed limits?
September 3, 2010, 7:24 pmBrandon says:
Somewhat off-topic, but interesting nonetheless: there is a developing black market in cigarettes in high-tax states (NY, among others). People buy cigarettes in bulk from a lower-tax area then smuggle them in and sell them to vendors.
September 3, 2010, 7:28 pmJDW says:
I love how only hypocritical right wingers can have qualms about legalizing drugs, and then it is only because they are racist homophobes. Why don’t we also try to link it to being anti-environment because we know those issues are related somehow. And the appeal to the young as our saviors is also great because these days they are experts on everything. For the most part, I like coming to the comments on VC posts because you can actually learn quite a bit. Then there are a large number of posters that just try to make partisan ad hominem attacks that are off topic and serve no purpose.
September 3, 2010, 7:28 pmJDW says:
I wasn’t aware that the vast majority of the population did not support the drinking age when it was enacted?
Based on the number of people I know that go 55, I would say it is a failure. And you should support raising it not only for that reason, but that there are fewer accidents at higher speeds (although the fewer accidents are more deadly, so it is a trade off, like everything). Now how this is related to prohibition, or the current topic, you’ve got me.
September 3, 2010, 7:31 pmTravis says:
Detoxed in prison? Are you serious? Illegal drug use is rampant inside the nation’s prisons. It’s just more expensive in there, that’s all. Another example of how prohibition corrupts government: it’s easy enough to pay off an underpaid prison guard to smuggle in some dope for you.
September 3, 2010, 7:32 pmJDW says:
Ted, I support your efforts to find this solution, but I think you will have your difficulties in getting there. My opinion is that treating drugs like alcohol or cigarettes won’t be enough, but that any more regulation is likely to create that black market you are trying to avoid. But there may be a middle ground there somewhere.
September 3, 2010, 7:32 pmBrandon says:
Another fun fact: alcohol is the only drug that the authorities will send you to the hospital for detoxification
September 3, 2010, 7:34 pmJDW says:
Travis – true enough, but that drug use is a relapse after their detox when entering prison. And if their drug use in prison becomes serious enough to get noticed (and someone actually cares) they will go back into detox.
September 3, 2010, 7:34 pmlibby says:
a. Real Libertarian: Individual rights to do whatsoever with whatever and whenever
b. Realist Libertarian: Legalize (all?) drugs with the concomitant build-up of bureaucracy and regulation for the government to certify, monitor, tax and enforce safety standards and prohibitions against underage sales (at a net loss probably due to existing Medicare/aid, SS, public pension funding, and declining productivity)
c. Leftist Libertarian: same as b. plus more treatment programs and subsidized/ universal healthcare (a real economic loser but Socially Just by giving people legal access to their poisons, on top of alcohol, nicotine, gambling and blog-commenting)
September 3, 2010, 7:35 pmTed says:
I am aware of this. I assume this level of black market activity is acceptable to most people. I mean, if someone gets caught, yay, but no one really cares all that much, on a moral level, about tobacco smuggling.
September 3, 2010, 7:37 pmJDW says:
On a related note Travis, I’m not interested in having any more back and forth with you, so I won’t bother to respond directly to you. It’s been fun, but I think at this point it is diminishing returns for both of us.
September 3, 2010, 7:39 pmAlessandra says:
=======================
I found the first stat (300,000) on various drug information sites. I didn’t see a source, so I am not claiming it must be true.
However, the paper below talks about one in twelve drug users for all women, the stats I first posted contrasted to your total yields one in ten.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1807926/pdf/bullnyacadmed00008-0012.pdf
DRUG ABUSE: A NATIONAL
POLICY PERSPECTIVE*
MATHEA FALCO, J.D.
Visiting Fellow
New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical College
New York, New York
Presented as part of a Symposium on Pregnancy and Substance Abuse: Perspectives and Directions held by the Committee on Public Health of the New York Academy of Medicine, the Medical and Health Research Association of New York City, Columbia University of Public Health, the Maternal and Child Health Program of the New York County Medical Society, the Greater New York March of Dimes, and
Agenda for Children Tomorrow March 22, 1990 at the New York Academy of Medicine.
======================
The most recent surveys report that more than half of the nation’s high
school seniors have tried illicit drugs and that 28 million Americans used
drugs at least once in the past year.’ Nonetheless, overall drug use has
declined significantly during the past decade. Current cocaine use (once
during the past month) dropped by half from 1985 to 1988; marijuana use
declined by a third. Heroin use has remained relatively constant at about half
a million addicts. However, intensive use of cocaine and crack (weekly or
daily) increased, involving an estimated 862,000 Americans compared to
647,000 in 1985. Cocaine use is highest among unemployed young adults
aged 18 to 25. Most significantly for this conference on pregnancy and substance abuse, more than five million of the 60 million women of childbearing
age reported using an illicit drug the month prior to the survey.
After the passage of the Harrison Narcotic Act in 1914 and subsequent laws
prohibiting these drugs, many women turned to psychoactive prescription
drugs to avoid the public stigma of illegal use. Consequently, women have
been underrepresented in national drug surveys. At the height of the heroin
epidemic in the early 1970s, fewer than one fifth of all addicts were female.
Unlike earlier illegal drugs, crack has proved particularly popular with
women. Rapidly addictive and very cheap, crack has the reputation of being
“cleaner” than heroin and other street drugs, perhaps because it can be
smoked rather than injected. The numbers of women seeking treatment for
cocaine/crack have jumped dramatically. At Phoenix House in New York
City, they almost tripled from 1985 to 1989. About 40% of crack abusers
admitted to publicly funded treatment in New York in 1989 were women.
This surge in crack abuse by women has had devastating consequences for the
women themselves, their unborn infants, and their families.
Bull.
Child abuse and neglect cases have risen dramatically since crack appeared
on the streets. Substance abuse is the dominant characteristic in child abuse
cases in 22 states and the District of Columbia according to a recent study by
the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse.3 Nationwide, the
number of children in foster care has increased by almost a third since 1988: in
New York City the foster care population jumped 90% from 1987 to 1989
(from about 27,000 to 52,000).4 Foster care agencies have difficulty finding
families willing to take children who might have drug-related problems,
including the possibility of AIDS. Once these children are placed, there are
often not enough resources to pursue permanent placement options such as
supportive services to the mother or adoption.
The cumulative impact of these trends has destabilized many inner city
communities, long dependent on its women to provide the backbone of its
families. Recent national surveys estimate that 375,000 drug exposed babies
are born annually.5 The 1989 National Drug Control Strategy reported that
one fifth of the pregnant women at some major hospitals test positive for
cocaine and that 100,000 cocaine addicted babies are born each year.6
The human and economic costs continue to mount. Nationally $2.5 billion
was spent last year for intensive care for crack babies, and an additional $15
billion will be required to prepare them for kindergarten. The longer term
prospects are not encouraging. Research on babies exposed to cocaine before
birth has found that they can be severely damaged even with very little
cocaine use by the mother. These babies show a wide range of ill effects,
including retarded growth, neurological abnormalities, and even strokes.
They also tend to be smaller and have smaller heads and brains than normal
babies.
The relative neglect of demand reduction during the past decade has been
September 3, 2010, 7:40 pmparticularly acute for drug abusing pregnant women. For those who cannot
obtain private care, treatment has been extremely limited. The New York
State Division of Substance Abuse Services reported that in 1988 New York
City provided about 42,000 treatment slots -30,000 for methadone maintenance
and the balance for drug-free residential and nonresidential programs
as well as detoxification beds within hospitals. Current levels of methadone
maintenance treatment can reach only 15% of the city’s estimated 200,000
heroin addicts at one time. For all other drug abusers, including heroin
addicts who want to become drug free, treatment is currently available for
only 3%.
Travis says:
Suit yourself.
September 3, 2010, 7:40 pmTravis says:
Suit yourself.
September 3, 2010, 7:40 pmTravis says:
Suit yourself.
September 3, 2010, 7:40 pmTed says:
Schizo.
September 3, 2010, 7:46 pmTravis says:
Bah, the back button is not my friend.
September 3, 2010, 7:48 pmElemenope says:
Is the drinking age a failure too then?
Yes. Not only a complete failure at achieving policy goals, but also probably the most scofflawed piece of regulation in existence…
What about 55 mph speed limits?
Except this one, which is also a failure, and managed to have the lateral consequence of badly eroding civil liberties (with speed stops being an excellent pretext to rifle through your vehicle). Designing speed limits with a car from 1970 in mind isn’t exactly a ticket to success, in any case.
September 3, 2010, 7:48 pmStephen Lathrop says:
My theory: we’re trying to get back to the staggering rate of alcohol consumption that apparently prevailed at the time the country was founded. Alcoholic originalism. Greatness awaits.
September 3, 2010, 7:51 pmLiam says:
If you would bother to explain why you think the historical example is so distinct as to be useless, then there might be the possibility of productive discussion.
September 3, 2010, 7:57 pmHarold Day says:
Am I the only one not seeing the illegal markets going away and a one-for-one prison population decline if certain or all drugs are legalized?
Part of the drug culture in poor urban areas is about street cred and the opportunity to beat the system. White-collar drug culture is about selling and using to be sophisticated and distributing and money laundering for off-the-books profiteering. Legalize drugs and there’ll be new games in town and at the bank, same amount of crime, and still more black market drugs, guns and human trafficking.
People is wicked.
Speaking of, one of these days we’ll be hearing about the white Libertarian plot to subjegate our urban poor (blacks) with legal drugs, dependency, treatment incarceration, health problems, more AIDS, death, and “regressive” taxes on the legal trade.
September 3, 2010, 8:06 pmwhit says:
i have to agree. and not only is it routinely ignored by those under 21, it’s routinely ignored by law enforcement – in all 3 agencies i have worked for, at least. a 19 yr old with alcohol on his breath or a can of beer UNLESS he is otherwise causing a problem will be issued a warning
if an 18 yr old can fight for his friggin’ country, he can certainly drink a beer.
increasing evidence from the medical community shows that alcohol used in moderation is HEALTHIER than abstention.
i was fwiw provided occasionally with alcohol at dinner (wine, sometimes diluted with water) from my early teens, which was entirely legal btw since the providers were my parents.
the 21 yr old drinking age is a complete joke
September 3, 2010, 8:08 pmAlessandra says:
Well, I think it’s part of a liberal culture that is becoming increasingly dominant which stipulates that people must get their kicks, no matter if these are drug-related, or sexual, or consumerist, that is, no matter how destructive or harmful the kicks or the process is.
For women, the increase in alcohol consumption answer is easy. Liberal men have constantly promoted their irresponsible attitudes and behaviors to women, after the women’s movement took hold of society. So women, in increasingly large numbers, began smoking (remember the “you’ve come a long way, baby” ad?), drinking, and having loveless sex and adopting sexually promiscuous behaviors, always getting a mountain of praise and validation from liberal men. Given that these attitudes are often shaped in teen years, they remain, for men as well. Even though, for binge drinking, there is a peak at the college years for a number of people, then they “settle down” and drink less, but still drink.
Now for men (maybe you guys can add your view), I would say it’s mostly peer pressure and copy-cat behavior that is validated by group status rewards that is encouraging young men to drink more. And there is still the old traditional hook concerning masculinity and alcohol consumption (a man who drinks heavy liquor and doesn’t cough is a “real” man, so many young men need to prove something there). In many circles it’s also much more socially accepted for men to use alcohol to cope with life problems than other drugs.
I don’t know if American culture ever had an attitude of moderation towards drinking, for example, like French culture, which is also changing but is nowhere nearly as alcoholic as the US. But I certainly never saw a moderate drinking culture in the US while I have been alive.
September 3, 2010, 8:15 pmAlessandra says:
it’s all the fault of the British who came over, you know… those bloody whiskey guzzling chaps :-)
September 3, 2010, 8:20 pmManju says:
If I recall, your previous complaint (on another thread) was about “conservatives-in-drag organizations” ie prominent libertarians like the Kochs who conveniently are only libertarian on right-wing issues (like taxes) but go all non-libertarian or silent on lefty issues (like abortion and gay rights).
So here a prominent libertarian goes all lefty and instead of rejoicing, you focus on the lesser important commentators; complaining most are still righty…although its unclear that the majority even are.
sounds like you’re afraid of people agreeing with you.
September 3, 2010, 8:20 pmFub says:
Since it is demonstrably false, I won’t be “very concerned” about it when I consider the question of whether to “legalize crack and cocaine”.
September 3, 2010, 8:21 pmerp says:
Kamal, the fact that millions of blacks are part of mainstream America belies your beliefs.
September 3, 2010, 8:22 pmwhit says:
the national review, the conservative FLAGSHIP has been pro-decrim (especially MJ) etc. for decades, long before it has become trendy.
and god knows democrats are at least as bad on the war on drugs as repubs. clinton certainly was a major drug warrior.
the war on drugs is ultimately statist.
statist members of the left and right support it
September 3, 2010, 8:33 pmJohn A. Fleming says:
Libby says:
d. Federalist Libertarian: Federal government does its job and aggressively enforces the illegal importation of drugs; and per the Commerce Clause powers, sets the rules by which a State that legalizes recreational drugs, must prevent them from crossing States lines into another State where the same drugs are not legal (e.g. California, toke all you want, but it’s your job to keep it out of Nevada and Utah, or Utah will have the power to bring suit and shut you down).
September 3, 2010, 8:35 pmwhit says:
i like this. the medical mj commerce clause case is where scalia lost me fwiw.
even if one thinks medical mj is a joke or a path to legalization of mj in general (and of course the latter IS true, it’s just tangential to the utility of medical mj) or whatever, it is still clearly a STATE RIGHTS ISSUE and any self respecting libertarian who thinks the federal govt should have any control over whether state A wants to legalize any drug (recreational or medical) is not a real libertarian.
it is entirely rational to think medical mj is a complete joke and still think the feds should have no authority over it
September 3, 2010, 8:40 pmBob (from Ohio) says:
Libertarians are just liberals who like low taxes and/or guns. Here on VC and in real life.
September 3, 2010, 8:44 pmJohn A. Fleming says:
For example, a Federal rule: legalized States have to sell it in tamper-proof vacuum-packed bags with tracking tags (you know, tax stamps like on whiskey bottles). That way, if you are caught with possession in prohibition states, the amount and quantity of unopened and opened packages, or repackaged or loose product, allows a determination of whether you are an end-user or a re-seller.
Another example: if it costs the Federals too much on importation enforcement, legalization States have to pay up from their treasuries (i.e. transfer of product tax revenues from State to Federal).
September 3, 2010, 8:52 pmAlessandra says:
Does it matter which type of drug it is? And why concern yourself in finding out how many crack/cocaine drug addicted babies there are today and there were then? You sound like you prefer to find an excuse not to be concerned. And in that case, any excuse will do.
==============
Most significantly for this conference on pregnancy and substance abuse, more than five million of the 60 million women of childbearing age reported using an illicit drug the month prior to the survey.
If you divide 3,913,000 by 12, this is the result: 326,083.
So preposterous, is it?
September 3, 2010, 8:58 pmArthur Kirkland says:
A libertarian doesn’t go “lefty” by ridiculing the drug war. Libertarians oppose the drug war. Libertarians who support the drug war — and place conservatism over libertarianism on same-sex marriage, abortion, immigration, erotic entertainment, government surveillance, government secrecy and other issues — are not libertarians, the claims of conservatives in general and frequenters of this site in particular notwithstanding.
It is easy to become confused because libertarians and liberals have so much in common. But there is a difference.
September 3, 2010, 9:10 pmBruce Hayden says:
This needs to be emphasized. The drug use and drug imprisonments are primarily a symptom, and not a cause of the underlying problem.
The basic problem is that too many kids in the lower economic classes are raised in families where there are few males around in fathering roles. Young males need to be socialized, and most women cannot do it. It has traditionally been done by the males in the immediate family. If the males are not properly socialized, they run in male packs. And the best way to keep males from doing that is to saddle them with wives and kids.
Running in juvenile male packs is what the gang culture is all about. Street Cred? Ditto. Males getting status from their position in the juvenile male pack, and not from their position as a husband and father.
The easiest way to drive males into marriage and fatherhood is to limit sex to marriage. And that was what was traditionally done, esp. by the women withholding the sex, until they got the needed support to raise their kids.
What happened? Two things. First, the legitimization of bastardy. But, I think, much more important is that our society started to support women who had kids out of wedlock. And more egregious, started incentivizing them to make sure that the father was not in the house.
So, my solution to the problem of disfunctional families in the lower economic classes, and the resulting violence? Take the kids away from women who have them and cannot support them on their own, and put them in orphanages. Maybe also give tax breaks for raising kids in intact households.
BTW – I do support most drug legalization, but not to solve inter-city family problems, but rather because of the cost in both dollars and in personal liberties (esp. the militarization of the police).
September 3, 2010, 9:14 pmwhit says:
i think you are wrong about the abortion issue
i happen to be pro-choice, but being pro-life is not anti-libertarian
it can be justified as for protection of an innocent third party whereas anti-drug , pornography laws are to protect us “from ourselves’ and are thus inherently anti-libertarian
it all comes to whether the woman’s right to abort trumps the fetus’ right to exist. i believe it does (at least without question in the 1st trimester). but there is nothing inconsistent with libertarianism in weighing those factors differently.
one of my best friends is a strongly libertarian atheist, who also happens to be pro-life. go figure
September 3, 2010, 9:21 pmTSJ says:
It would be nice if people like McWhorter would spend less time making excuses, and more time telling African Americans that drug use is stupid, worthless, puts money in terrorists’ pockets, and contributes to the downfall of society. Anyone who is stupid enough to use drugs, black, white or otherwise, deserves to rot in prison until they get a clue. Quit blaming the War on Drugs and start blaming parents who are too stupid to avoid using drugs in the first place.
September 3, 2010, 9:24 pmwhit says:
except drug use isn’t stupid
excessive drug use/.abuse IS.
it is entirely possible and quite common for people to use drugs REASONABLY. nothing wrong with that. it’s a way to , among other things, seek a transcendental experience, or just good feeling,etc.
that’s true of alcohol as well, which i am lumping in with illegal drugs
it’s certainly hard to argue that a drug like PCP can be used responsibly, etc. but the majority of illegal drugs, just like alcohol can be used responsibly. the danger comes not from the drug, but from the illegality.
the “stupid” aspect of it is that one risks legal penalties. that’s aproblem of the drug war, not drugs
and i speak as somebody who spent a loooong time undercover buying drugs and hanging out with drug users and sellers.
September 3, 2010, 9:31 pmMaureen001 says:
This is no black issue, it’s an American issue. Why do you suppose those drug cartels are most violent right now on the US-Mexican border? We’re the market, and as long as we are, drugs will destroy families, incentive, and our society. Since we haven’t been wise enough to devise a method or methods of dealing with drug use and abuse, we’re victims of it.
I’m so very tired of everything being made out to be an issue for one race or another. This is a human issue, as most of our issues are. Cloaking it in racial terms merely allows us to be distracted from the real problem and allows it to continue unchecked.
Take the blinders off, America. We’re being manipulated.
September 3, 2010, 9:32 pmManju says:
Fine. I don’t really care for arguments over definitions, so lets just go with that.
A prominent self-described libertarian goes all…well..libertarian, but you’re still hyperventilating about random commentators dressed in drag, while neglecting all those partying in a proper tux.
Why does a man resist an opportunity to sip a martini, is my question?
September 3, 2010, 9:35 pmAlessandra says:
For a woman, the answer is easy. Freshly squeezed orange juice tastes infinitely better.
September 3, 2010, 9:42 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Which drugs? All drugs — such as caffeine, mushrooms, alcohol, peyote, prescription drugs, nitrous oxide, cocaine, tobacco, marijuana, guarana, etc. — or just the ones currently disliked by nanny-staters, prudes, the superstitious, the ideologically right-wing, etc?
How often do you argue that Rush Limbaugh should be shunned, should rot in prison, is an immoral scum, etc.? What about George W. Bush? President Obama? Or more than half of the country’s college students?
I think the position on the War on Drugs is one of the most reliable barometers of whether a person is a jerk. Of course, I am partial to people who like freedom.
September 3, 2010, 9:45 pmJack Marshall says:
Somin’s argument, in all its forms and from other mouths, never makes sense. There is a form of conduct that is destructive to society, and has no significant positive effects to counter-balance that destruction. The conduct is designated as unlawful as a cultural statement of right and wrong, and the vast majority of the public, respecting their duties as law-abiding citizens and as productive members of society, obey the law. One group within that public, already suffering disproportionately from self-destructive conduct that has proliferated since society watered down its traditional stigma against it(illegitimate offspring)engages in the prohibited conduct to a dramatic extent, seriously harming the group and its prospects for success. And the solution is…to remove society’s strong disapproval of and sanctions for that conduct?
Absurd.
How about persuading black leaders to aggressively place the responsibility and accountability on the drug users and sellers, rather than to argue that the way to reduce the number of black lawbreakers compared to white is to legalize(sanction, approve, encourage)the most popular forms of destructive black conduct?
I’ve never used illegal drugs. Had lots of opportunities; in college: everyone I knew was using something. Didn’t even consider it—it was against the law, and good citizens don’t break laws. It’s wrong. I knew that because my nation’s laws said so. I see no reason why this concept couldn’t take hold in the African-American community, if there weren’t such a loud chorus of supposed intellectuals arguing that making drugs illegal is akin to banning witchcraft. Drugs, all by themselves,without arrests or prison, destroy lives, families and communities….especially poor communities…and they are far from “victimless.” The War on Drugs isn’t the real problem; the apologists for drug users are a far bigger one.
September 3, 2010, 9:45 pmArthur Kirkland says:
McWhorter’s position and arguments are outstanding.
The “random commenters” are worthy of comment because their freedom-hating, conservative position places many good people in jail, which I find immoral and anti-libertarian. Any American who cares about liberty should be speaking out against this outrage.
September 3, 2010, 9:49 pmwhit says:
except drugs don’t do this. people who abuse them do. RESPONSIBLE use of drugs does not destroy lives. the VAST majority of those who use drugs (legal or illegal) do not ruin their lives with them
i’ve seen no evidence that more lives aren’t ruined by the war on drugs, than the drugs themselves.
and i’ve seen it from several sides -undercover drug purchaser, college student, fire/medic etc.
September 3, 2010, 9:51 pmArthur Kirkland says:
What do you think about fast food, soft drinks, religious indoctrination of children, caffeine, alcohol, warmongering, drivers who stay at 50 on an interstate, a church that systematically facilitates and conceals child abuse, corporal punishment, parents who teach their children racism, employment discrimination, tobacco, and innumerable other things that fit the definition of “bad?”
September 3, 2010, 9:55 pmFub says:
326,083 is the average number of live births per month in 1988.
There were 3,913,000 live births in all of 1988. You asserted that 300,000 of those born were “addicted to cocaine”. That means that about 7.6% of all infants born in 1988 were born “addicted to cocaine”. That’s preposterous.
It’s also coincidentally about 1/12 of all live births.
To defend the proposition that there were “300,000 cocaine addicted infants” born in 1988, you assert that “five million of the 60 million women of childbearing age reported using an illicit drug the month prior to the survey.”
That says nothing about how many of those women “five million women of childbearing age” were using cocaine (instead of, for example, marijuana), or whether those who used cocaine were using sufficient quantity and frequency to cause “addiction” in themselves, much less in the babies they delivered if they were pregnant. It also says nothing about how many of the “five million” drug users actually bore children during the period.
The numbers you quote don’t mean what you think they mean.
September 3, 2010, 10:41 pmAlessandra says:
As I said, I quoted a number found on many websites about drug use. Then I explained that I did not have the source and that I made no claim these numbers were absolutely correct. Then I quoted another study that explicitly says one in 12 women reported illicit drug use (not just cocaine), and which puts a number of women drug users around that ballpark.
To which you replied:
That says nothing about how many of those women “five million women of childbearing age” were using cocaine
Exactly. So thanks for not reading what I wrote. I was replying to your claim that 1 in 12 addicted babies is an absurd, completely wrong, preposterous claim. If there were 1 in 12 drug addicted babies, the 300,000 number for cocaine doesn’t seem so absurd to me.
Then I found another stat, specifically related to the number of drug exposed babies:
Recent national surveys estimate that 375,000 drug exposed babies are born annually.
Survey by National Association for Perinatal
Addiction Research, reported in
Brody, J.: Widespread abuse of drugs by
pregnant women is found. N.Y. Times,
August 30, 1988, p. 1.
which says there were 375,000 drug exposed babies born annually. Which is a number having 75,000 more babies than the one 300,000 just for cocaine. And this certainly does not seem preposterous to me. The issue is you were claiming these number seemed to be completely false and “preposterous.” I don’t see a reason to think they are that off-base. But until you post absolutely correct numbers here, you aren’t saying much.
Did you completely ignore this study? Why was that?
The numbers reported by the Survey by National Association for Perinatal Addiction Research mean what exactly?
Just how preposterous are you claiming the numbers are? Do you have any numbers for the current decade?
Apparently not. And that’s a bit preposterous in itself. Which is why you gave me the impression that you were just looking for an excuse to trivialize the harm of crack/cocaine use and its impact on women and babies.
September 3, 2010, 11:17 pmAllan Walstad says:
Whit: Right on, man, comment after comment.
Since the question of what’s “libertarian” has come up, speaking as a self-aware libertarian from back before some of the commenters here were probably born, may I offer what I take to be the minimal libertarian position? It is that the burden of demonstration always lies with those who advocate coercion or punishment against individuals for actions which do not of themselves constitute aggression against others.
The burden of proof does not lie with those who demand an end to the wholesale coercion that is drug prohibition, to demonstrate the positive benefits that would flow from repeal — although there are good reasons to suppose that the long-term benefits would be significant. After decades of this war, with its stimulation of gang violence, higher potency/concealability, and ramped-up police powers at the expense of the Bill of Rights, illegal drug use is if anything MORE widespread. The entire burden lies with the advocates of prohibition, somehow to demonstrate that it has made us better off and/or will do so.
Good luck with that.
September 3, 2010, 11:19 pmBob says:
What does the potential existence of such drugs have to do with laws regarding existing drugs?
September 4, 2010, 12:06 amBob says:
I don’t know about a marked increase, but there’s an obvious reason for a gradual one: people can afford more luxury goods as they get richer. Presumably that will be the case with all such drugs.
September 4, 2010, 12:12 amwhit says:
i think that’s well put. tit for tat :)
September 4, 2010, 12:33 amMorat20 says:
Legalize pot and E, for starters. There’s no sane argument for banning them but not booze. (Which is the cue, I suppose, for someone to scream GATEWAY DRUG and THINK OF THE CHILDREN).
Heroin, cocaine, various opiates…I’m willing to have it studied. I’m more worried about the easy of overdosing on those, rather than their social harm. At the moment, I’d lean towards changing jail time and a felony for successful rehab completion and a period of probation, but no felony record if you make it through both. Treatment’s always worked better, but that got thrown to the wayside when it came time to show how ‘tough on crime’ you are. Optics were more important than results.
Meth, PCP — I’d keep them illegal. *shrug*.
Not that it’ll happen. Maybe pot and E, simply because WAY too many Americans have smoked joints to get that exercised about it, and E because it’s showing signs of being a very, very, VERY helpful drug for dealing with PTSD and as a general aid to therapy. (E, in a theraputic sense, allows a subject to open up and discuss painful and highly personal issues more openly and honestly, without causing emotional trauma. It’s darn useful in a lot of therapy situations. In terms of ‘recreational use’ E is basically the inhibition-lowering of booze, without the hangover, liver damage, urges to start fights, hangovers, and liklihood of crashing you car. It can be a bit dehydrating, but to even make yourself slightly ill that way takes a certain amount of hard work and dedication. Booze is much riskier).
September 4, 2010, 1:02 amStephen Lathrop says:
I’m not going to argue for banning pot, but if there were a pot-abolishing button somewhere, I couldn’t push it fast enough. Alcohol in the right amount makes people interesting. You go to a party with brilliant people, they all toke up, and the rest of the evening is a tedious giggle fest. Pot makes people boring. Most dangerous drug around.
September 4, 2010, 2:41 amKirk Lazarus says:
If you weren’t so boring you would have enjoyed yourself.
September 4, 2010, 3:14 amAlessandra says:
That’s an excellent point, and I totally agree that it is a fundamental part of the explanation. Higher income results in mass level changes for leisure habits and attitudes. Thus, it’s certainly true that, in many Western countries, the population, and young people in particular, had a much more modest (read restrictive) level of income. I doubt that the same number of young people who spend hours and hours wasting their time on video games today could do so in the beginning of the century. In other words, they had to start work a lot earlier, and work a lot more. The same goes for restriction in affording all drugs, including alcohol. As you nicely pointed out, as soon as this restriction is lifted from a financial perspective, and there are also other cultural forces pushing people to consume more and more drugs, a visible and mass level change ensues. So that’s the difference from the 20s to now. But more recently, there hasn’t been a huge increase in income levels, so I would say the explanations to increased alcohol consumption are more cultural.
Did you know that big pharma companies are investing in R&D to develop drugs that substitute consuming alcohol for those with alcohol addiction?
Why prevent alcoholism in the first place if you can produce millions of alcoholics in society and then have them (and taxpayers) pay the pharma companies instead of the liquor industry?
One “ethical” industry versus another.
September 4, 2010, 4:41 amBen says:
You just made the same basic arguments that were made in support of prohibition. Prohibition was wrong, it failed utterly, and the disastrous effects are historical record.
The vast majority of civil society enjoys alcoholic drinks without any problems. The majority of people are being locked up for using drugs that are about as dangerous or safer than alcohol.
This is just Prohibition 2.0, and it’s wrong for all the same reasons.
September 4, 2010, 5:34 amA. Zarkov says:
Americans like to consume mind altering substances. In 1830 they drank 7 gallons of pure alcohol per person per year, which is the equivalent of 1.7 bottles of 80 proof liquor every week. This includes the people who didn’t drink, so those that did consumed much more. To put it another way, drinking was three times greater then than now. The effects were devastating then as now, and that gave rise to a temperance movement. Hard drugs are of course much worse than liquor, and we have the equivalent of a temperance movement for that in the form of the war on drugs. The more things change the more they stay the same.
As Lenin said, “What is to be done?” Probably nothing. Drug law enforcement is now an industry and the cops and the DEA are not about to stand for a budget cut. We are pretty much stuck with the status quo unless a persistent bad economy forces us to cut back on enforcement. That bad economy will also cause a reduction in hard drug consumption too, and the druggies will switch back to alcohol giving rise to another temperance movement. And so on.
September 4, 2010, 6:17 amAlessandra says:
In 1830 they drank 7 gallons of pure alcohol per person per year, which is the equivalent of 1.7 bottles of 80 proof liquor every week.
==============
Is this number taken from alcohol sales records? Or government stats at the time?
Thanks to your comment, I came upon some very interesting info on France, from an article written in 2000:
Nearly 43,000 French people die each year from alcohol-related causes, the proportional equivalent of 200,000 Americans – double the number who currently die annually of alcohol-related causes in the United States.
According to the World Health Organization’s Global Status Report on Alcohol, the French drink 54 percent more alcohol than Americans, and die of liver cirrhosis 57 percent more often.
The world view that the French are able to control their drinking habits is untrue, according to Pierre Kopp, professor of economics at the Sorbonne. Kopp recently released the first French study estimating the cost of legal (alcohol and tobacco) and illegal drugs. Kopp estimates that alcohol costs France $18.5 billion (U.S.) each year. Drinking is responsible for nearly 53 percent of overall social costs of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs, he reports. (Annual cost to the state is $14.3 billion for tobacco and $2 billion for illegal drugs.)
The high premature death rate of French men is largely due to alcohol abuse. It is nearly double the premature death rate of French women, and the magnitude of the difference is the highest in Europe, according to the French government’s most recent report on health.
French youth, who can legally drink at age 16, prefer beer and distilled spirits to wine and have increased their consumption fivefold since 1996, in part because 12- to 14-year-olds are drinking and binge drinking. This has led to a new government “War Against Drugs” that includes alcohol.
http://www.marininstitute.org/alcohol_policy/french_drinking.htm
September 4, 2010, 7:12 amAlessandra says:
Levels of recorded alcohol consumption vary considerably across Europe2. Data from 2003, the most recent comparable year, show that the amount of recorded alcohol consumption ranges from 0.4 litres (Tajikistan) to 18.0 litres (Luxembourg) per adult per year. There is a wide regional spread of countries with an above average level of alcohol consumption, including Northern (Estonia), Western (Ireland and Germany), Southern (France and Spain), Central (Czech Republic and Hungary) and Eastern (Republic of Moldova) countries.
[Luxembourg is not that far off from your 1830 figure (26 litres), although that was pure alcohol]
Levels of alcohol consumption are falling in many Northern, Southern and Western European countries but rising in a few. For example alcohol consumption in Portugal, France and Germany fell by 24%, 18% and 12% respectively between 1994 and 2003, but rose by 21% in Ireland. In Central and Eastern European countries alcohol consumption generally fell rapidly in the mid-to-late 1980s but has risen markedly again since then. Between 1994 and 2003 alcohol consumption in Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania and the Russian Federation rose by 16%, 94% and 21% respectively.
=============
If alcohol consumption has risen in Russia, you know things are bad.
http://www.heartstats.org/datapage.asp?id=4597
September 4, 2010, 7:18 amA. Zarkov says:
That number appears in the book: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. The author gives a through review during his interview. You can listen to the author (Daniel Okent) (for free) on the EconTalk podcast here. The website also provides a detailed summary of the interview. Here is the full quote:
If you are interested in the stuff then I recommend both the podcast and the book which is available in a Kindle edition.
Yes indeed. And it was very bad in the Soviet era. In those days the government encouraged people to drink by making it hard to reseal vodka bottles. The government wanted the revenue. According to Okent, revenue was a major factor in the repeal of Prohibition. The Depression had reduced income tax revenues and the federal government wanted the liquor tax. Before Prohibition, the liquor and beer industry was about a fifth of the American economy.
September 4, 2010, 9:06 amAlessandra says:
thanks for going through the trouble of posting this. But does the book quote the original source for these numbers?
September 4, 2010, 10:38 amArthur Kirkland says:
Professor: You see this as a problem? The scolds of all flavors don’t mind it a bit, because it gives them more people to regard with contempt for lack of righteousness, and a larger base on which to perch their feelings of superiority. It is understandable that you wouldn’t understand, however, because you appear to be a rare breed, a self-proclaimed libertarian who isn’t lying to himself or others.
September 4, 2010, 10:57 amChris Travers says:
It’s an interesting number. I know however that in Anglo-Saxon England, consumption of alcohol was quite high. The ration for a monk was:
1) 1 gallon of “strong beer” per day plus
2) 1 gallon of “weak ale” per day.
There are questions about how strong the beer was. However contemporary sources say it was significantly lighter than water which would suggest an alcohol concentration of at least about 15%. This might suggest that the “weak ale” was equivalent to today’s strong beer.
That’s approx a 2 750 ml bottles of 100 proof alcohol every DAY.
We are pikers by those standards.
Of course it’s possible (maybe even likely) that this was a maximum and few people drank that much, but it’s still an incredible amount.
September 4, 2010, 12:06 pmChris Travers says:
At one time, our nation’s laws classified those people working on the underground railroad as thieves. Presumably they were wrong too in your view. After all, they were usually (at least at first) motivated primarily by religion (the Underground Railroad began along Quaker communities) and therefore must have been religious nuts by this line of thinking.
The fact is that what is right or wrong and what is legal and illegal are entirely separate questions. IMNSHO, a good citizen is one who thinks for himself or herself, and doesn’t take the government’s word at what is right or wrong. The government at least in theory, in a Republic, belongs to the people (Latin “res publica,” i.e., a public thing, -> “republica,” or republic). We are the owners of that government as citizens, and it is up to us to question the relative wisdom and worth of policies. If we want to break the rules, we should see that as breaking the rules, not necessarily as a question of right or wrong.
I haven’t used illegal drugs for over 15 years for a couple of reasons including the availability of legal alternatives, and the fact that most are not conducive to my sense of general health (I find cannabis to be, quite frankly, boring to use), and those that are, are ones which depend on being used rarely. Against that background there is no case that it is “worth it” to break the law. On those rare occasions, I can use non-criminalized plants and everyone is happy. I have some old recipes for jimson weed ale I am considering trying (cautiously of course!), however, now that I have located the plant growing wild around here.
At the same time, if I want something that’s like opium, wild lettuce is easy enough to come by and failing that I could grow garden lettuce and let it go to seed. Other sedatives I have used include mistletoe and bittersweet nightshade (though the latter gives me an unusual kind of headache, the former works pretty well at proper dosages). Mandrake should work as well, but I haven’t had reason to try it yet. There are plenty of good stimulants out there and some legal stimulants (pure caffeine for example) are actually quite dangerous. Hallucinogens? ergot (more than occasional use causes severe circulatory problems!), morning glory, jimson weed (acutely dangerous), nutmeg (long a favorite of prisoners since it’s very hard to make it contraband), and so forth. I suspect that sagebrush is probably hallucinogenic but don’t know for sure.
The moral of the story is that our drug policies are broken. Citing the statute as a simple thing that says “it’s wrong to do this” is bad, and the FDA has a rather strange track record of trying to even regulate foods as drugs even where the drugs merely require a prescription and aren’t even mind altering (the FDA tried to ban all red yeast rice cultures and foods for a while after Lovostatin was approved on the basis that this traditional Chinese dish, which was the original source of the cholesterol lowering drug, was the same as the drug itself).
September 4, 2010, 12:34 pmChris Travers says:
Pot will be the first to be legalized. The DEA has done a stellar job of dispelling their credibility there by opposing medical marijuana research on the theory that people might think the stuff was OK that only folks who believe the government is the moral authority listen to them anymore. Medical marijuana reform in many states is the beginning. The next step will be full legalization. I think this is a great thing even though I am not likely to ever use the stuff again.
One thing folks need to realize is that cannabis is more heavily regulated than opium. You can grow opium poppies in your garden and not violate any federal laws (just don’t cut the flowers and put them on your kitchen table or else you violate laws there). However, if you do the same with cannabis, you do. This makes no sense. The opium poppy is a far more dangerous plant than cannabis is and I don’t see anyone as saying otherwise, but it is also far less regulated.
15 years ago, my parents were dead-set against cannabis legalization but now they are for it. That tells you something there. There is a sea-change going on. It will continue.
September 4, 2010, 12:49 pmElliot says:
The war on drugs is stupid and should come to an end. But we shouldn’t be doing it becaus it has an greater impact on blacks. Blacks should be held to the same standards as everyone else, and we should expect the same responsibility from blacks as we do from everyone else. I’d note murder laws also have a greater impact on blacks.
September 4, 2010, 12:58 pmElliot says:
Hope that includes underage consumption of beer. That would have been against state law.
September 4, 2010, 1:00 pmAlessandra says:
But you know why? I’m not sure it applies to the specific example you mention, but I have been told the consumption of alcohol was high at the time because this prevented people from drinking water that was somehow contaminated. Or maybe the water pollution issue was a secondary issue, or an issue that only affected some people in some areas. But this is what I have been told as an explanation to the high alcohol consumption. I also believe since life was very brutal, and as long as alcohol was readily available, it functioned as an important cheap (emotional and physical) pain reliever. The latter is what happens in a lot of third world countries today, which unfortunately then often degenerates into alcoholism.
September 4, 2010, 1:20 pmAlessandra says:
http://www.finfacts.com/Private/bestprice/alcoholdrinkconsumptionpriceseurope.htm
This is very interesting.
They explain why Luxembourg appears with such a high rate, it’s because of the tourists.
However, for the Irish, it’s the real thing.
September 4, 2010, 1:25 pmAlessandra says:
Travers, you might find this paper interesting. It gives an overview of drinking in Russia, also detailing what Zarkov mentioned.
http://alcalc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/34/6/824
September 4, 2010, 1:34 pmAlessandra says:
If only the majority of people here could think of the children, like once in their lives, but no…
September 4, 2010, 1:49 pmAlessandra says:
Now to check at what’s happening in Europe with cocaine:
A UN report says cocaine use in Europe has reached record levels with an estimated 3.5 million people taking the drug – a quarter of worldwide users.
Too many professional and educated people are using it and often denying their addiction, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says.
It complains that young people are confused by the uncritical way in which the media reports celebrity drug abuse.
The report also warns of a continuing rise in cannabis use around the world.
===============
North America is the largest regional cocaine market, with close to 40% (some 6.2 million annual users) of the global cocaine-using population, with the report stating: “In 2008, it appears that 196 metric tons of pure cocaine were required to satisfy North American demand.”
http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2010/1.3_The_globa_cocaine_market.pdf
Global impact
The use of cocaine constitutes, first of all, a major health
problem. Cocaine use results in tens of thousands of
deaths each year worldwide. After the opiates, cocaine is
the most problematic drug globally, and it is indisputably
the main problem drug in the Americas.
Out of the 5.3 million people who used cocaine at least once in the
United States during 2008, 1.9 million also used cocaine
in the previous month, of which almost 1 million were
found to have been dependent on cocaine.10 In other words, out of the people who used cocaine in the previous year at least once, 18% were dependent on it. This
is a higher proportion than for any other drug except
heroin. Figures for the year 2007 showed that out of
1,000 people who used crack cocaine in the previous 12
months, 116 entered treatment for substance abuse, a
slightly higher proportion than for methamphetamine
(102) and a significantly higher proportion than for
drug use in general (30) or for the use of alcohol (6).
While the share has declined, almost half of all people
September 4, 2010, 2:08 pmentering drug treatment in the Americas do so due to
cocaine (46%), and the share in Europe increased from
3% in 1997/1998 to 10% in 2008. In West Europe, the
share is almost 15%.
J.T. Wenting says:
If deliberate, yes.
September 4, 2010, 3:55 pmOf course no company deliberately sells poisoned products in order to kill others, unlike drugs dealers who knowingly and deliberately sell things that kill people.
markm says:
Alessandra, do you truly not understand the difference between exposed to “illicit drugs” and addicted to them?
September 4, 2010, 4:24 pmElemenope says:
…unlike drugs dealers who knowingly and deliberately sell things that kill people.
Like car dealerships and gun salesmen.
Unless you mean they deliberately kill people through their product, i.e. with homicidal intent; that would make them officially the stupidest businessmen ever, having no customers left to sell to. But somehow I think you meant it the first way, and are busy ignoring all the other products that either kill lots of people or are intended to do so.
September 4, 2010, 4:34 pmElemenope says:
Alessandra, do you truly not understand the difference between exposed to “illicit drugs” and addicted to them?
But you’ll ruin her torrent of inapplicable research quotations! Killjoy.
September 4, 2010, 4:36 pmAlessandra says:
How many were addicted out of the total of exposed? Do you truly not understand that you don’t have any idea what that number is? It could be 20, 50, or 90%, or any number…
And are you suggesting women should take illicit drugs while pregnant, even if they are not addicted? Is that what your wife’s doctor recommended?
September 4, 2010, 4:42 pmAlessandra says:
One more that was desperately looking for an excuse to dismiss studies they hate to consider…
September 4, 2010, 5:03 pmA. Zarkov says:
I don’t know because so far I only have a free sample I downloaded from Amazon to my Kindle for the Mac application (you don’t need the Kindle reader, you can use anything that runs the Kindle app).
September 4, 2010, 5:08 pmA. Zarkov says:
Why do I keep getting “preview error message?” Anyone else have this problem?
September 4, 2010, 5:10 pmAlessandra says:
Preview is also not working for me…
September 4, 2010, 5:14 pmerp says:
Author: A. Zarkov
Comment:
Why do I keep getting “preview error message?” Anyone else have this problem?
I have and I’m assuming it’s Firefox misbehaving again.
September 4, 2010, 5:24 pmElemenope says:
Preview is also not working for me…
It stopped working for me late yesterday afternoon.
September 4, 2010, 5:25 pmElemenope says:
One more that was desperately looking for an excuse to dismiss studies they hate to consider…
What on Earth…? I considered what you posted. It’s just that the data you quoted did not support the conclusions you came to; there were leaps of logic and elision of crucial distinctions (like, for example, between use and abuse, between exposure and addiction) that you used to disguise (consciously or not) the fact that your data doesn’t support your arguments.
September 4, 2010, 5:33 pmA. Zarkov says:
From a pharmacological standpoint, alcohol is nothing like marijuana, cocaine, and the opioids. Unlike marijuana, which is fat soluble, alcohol is water soluble and metabolizes fairly rapidly. The THC in marijuana remains in your tissues a long time.
Free-based or “crack” cocaine is highly addictive and enters the brain within about 15 seconds. One can become fully addicted very quickly. It’s far more potent than cocaine powder which gets absorbed through the mucus membranes instead of the lungs. As such cocaine is very dangerous and should be controlled. A large dose can bust your heart muscle.
This whole idea that that we should legalize marijuana, cocaine, and the opioids because we gave up on prohibition is leftover prattle from the 1960s.
September 4, 2010, 5:36 pmAlessandra says:
Five strawmen in one paragraph… you must be desperate indeed…
September 4, 2010, 5:40 pmA. Zarkov says:
Preview does not work using the Safari browser, Firefox is not the problem.
September 4, 2010, 5:41 pmerp says:
Thanks Z.
Firefox has been such a problem lately, I just assume every glitch is its fault.
September 4, 2010, 5:51 pmAlessandra says:
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who prefer to kid themselves about all the problems that result from this, especially concerning women, babies, and children. When I read several of the pro-drug comments here, it often looks like the attitude of nothing but overgrown adolescents.
September 4, 2010, 5:53 pmDrink Koolaid says:
JDW, I don’t know you ,but I love you already.
JDW: I love how only hypocritical right wingers can have qualms about legalizing drugs, and then it is only because they are racist homophobes.Why don’t we also try to link it to being anti-environment because we know those issues are related somehow.And the appeal to the young as our saviors is also great because these days they are experts on everything.For the most part, I like coming to the comments on VC posts because you can actually learn quite a bit.Then there are a large number of posters that just try to make partisan ad hominem attacks that are off topic and serve no purpose.
September 4, 2010, 6:00 pmElemenope says:
Firefox has been such a problem lately, I just assume every glitch is its fault.
Personally I’ve had decent luck with Google Chrome, though I am still stuck with Firefox at work.
September 4, 2010, 6:11 pmElemenope says:
From a pharmacological standpoint, alcohol is nothing like marijuana, cocaine, and the opioids. Unlike marijuana, which is fat soluble, alcohol is water soluble and metabolizes fairly rapidly. The THC in marijuana remains in your tissues a long time.
From a pharmacological standpoint, THC does not remain in your tissues very long at all; the metabolic pathway (delta-9-THC -> 11-hydroxy-THC -> 11-Nor-9-carboxy-THC) is quicker for an amount generating a comparable level of psychoactivity than the dehydrogenase pathways for ethyl alcohol. The main stable metabolite of THC is 11-Nor-9-carboxy-THC, and this is what gets stored in fatty tissue. It does not interact with CB1 or CB2 receptors, and has no observed physiological effects.
September 4, 2010, 6:23 pmAJK says:
I have never used any illegal drugs. I have no interest in ever using any of the drugs that are currently illegal, regardless of whether or not their legal status changes in the future. I think that we would almost certainly be a happier society if use of those drugs decreased significantly. I also think it’s clear that the costs of our current drug policy exceed the benefits by several orders of magnitude.
September 4, 2010, 6:36 pmerp says:
Drink Koolaid says:
… Then there are a large number of posters that just try to make partisan ad hominem attacks that are off topic and serve no purpose. …
You mean like these:
I love how only hypocritical right wingers can have qualms about legalizing drugs, and then it is only because they are racist homophobes.
September 4, 2010, 6:41 pmArthur Kirkland says:
or fast food purveyors, neocons, tobacco merchants, arms dealers, ATV manufacturers, pushers of certain religions, scuba shops, soft drink bottlers, peanut butter producers . . .
September 4, 2010, 6:55 pmA. Criminal says:
I think the main difference is that people actually *knew* the effects of alcohol and so it wasn’t demonized to the ignorant with nonsense like “300,000 crack babies a year”, or the now largely debunked “crack baby” panic itself. For example: “Fetal Nicotine or Cocaine Exposure: Which One is Worse?” I’ve smoked crack a few times (statute-of-limitation+1 years ago) and know that the “instant addiction” line is complete and total BS. Mencken’s “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed…” is quite apropos. WOD ’tis barbarism.
“The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.” – A. Einstein, “My First Impression of the U.S.A.”
September 4, 2010, 7:43 pmElemenope says:
Free-based or “crack” cocaine is highly addictive and enters the brain within about 15 seconds. One can become fully addicted very quickly.
Morgan, John P.; Zimmer, Lynn (1997). “Social Pharmacology of Smokeable Cocaine”.:
————-
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who prefer to kid themselves about all the problems that result from this, especially concerning women, babies, and children. When I read several of the pro-drug comments here, it often looks like the attitude of nothing but overgrown adolescents.
It would help so very, very much if drug warriors were to stop blatantly making sh*t up. Then indeed we could have a rational, evidence-based conversation about the social and individual costs of many drugs. Also, a great idea would be to stop pretending you are paragons of virtue and assuming your interlocutors are debased reprobates. That might also help things along.
Eight ball says: Signs point to not bloody likely.
September 4, 2010, 7:57 pmFub says:
Precisely. Thanks.
Rational discourse is impossible when words have no meaning.
The myth of “300,000 cocaine addicted babies born in 1988″ (which was initially quoted as 375,000 in 1988) is one of those false stories that has never gone away in the minds of some, despite being soundly debunked many times over.
In 1988, Dr. Ira Chasnoff, a Chicago pediatrician, made a study of 154,856 births in 36 Chicago hospitals for the National Association for Perinatal Addiction Research and Education. Through intake interview and clinical test records he found that about 11% of live births in those city hospitals had been in some way “drug exposed”. That is, the mother had admitted to, or had tested positive for, use of some illegal drug.
The only criterion was “drug exposure”. Chasnoff did not distinguish between a mother who had metabolites from a single puff of cannabis in the previous month, and a mother who was severely addicted to cocaine or other addictive drug.
From Chasnoff’s initial estimate of “drug exposed” babies in 36 Chicago hospitals, he extrapolated that 375,000 “drug exposed” babies were born in the entire USA in 1988. His extrapolation itself is suspect, because city hospitals, and especially some inner city hospitals, serve a much greater proportion of drug using population than rural or smaller metropolitan area hospitals.
But 1988 “Drug Czar” Bill Bennett, never one to avoid spreading dubious statistics to promote his personal political agenda, promptly trumpeted the (false) alarm that “375,000 crack addicted babies” were born in the USA in 1988. The story grew legs, and has never quite gone away.
There are still true believers. Disputing the assertion will lead to accusations that “You sound like you prefer to find an excuse not to be concerned.”
There is, of course, no reason to be concerned that 375,000 (or 300,000 as the figure has now morphed) cocaine addicted babies were born in the USA in any year. It simply didn’t happen. Even Dr. Chasnoff, upon whose study the false figure was based, didn’t claim that it happened.
September 4, 2010, 8:17 pmA. Criminal says:
You’re right, from a pharmacological standpoint alcohol is much worse. FWIW, cocaine and heroin (hydrochloride=street) are both water soluble. Cocaine has a half-life of about an hour and heroin only about 10 minutes, and both metabolize easily. What’s the half-life of alcohol? Alcohol causes the worst physical damage of the three (brain and liver) and by far – very far – the worst birth-effects (not necessarily defects).
As someone else already pointed out: no it doesn’t.
September 4, 2010, 8:19 pmA. Criminal says:
If you dig around you’ll find that the natal effects first ascribed to crack were mostly caused by nicotine, alcohol and poor diet (in that order, IIRC).
September 4, 2010, 8:33 pmChris Travers says:
Well, there are some funny things. One interesting thing about Northern Europe is that tooth decay increased drastically after the conversion to Christianity (carious and missing tooth rates at death went from around 2% to about 10%) and life expectancy dropped (from about 45 to 20 years on average from birth, with life expectancy of those reaching age 20 being another 15 years). Note even in the 10th century, the Vikings were more likely to live to the age of 30 or 40 than their Continental cousins. It’s not clear why. However water was drunk frequently by itself and in fact people had a common law right to use other peoples’ wells as long as they were not taking water home with them (“water not in a container” meaning drunk on the spot).
My own suspicion is that alcoholism may have had something to do with the conversion as would various dietary changes (more cereal grains etc). In pagan Northern Europe, drinking was largely a social, ritual affair— otherwise folks would drink water or whey. After the conversion, monks were doing a lot more brewing than anybody had before.
Given the drop in life expectancy during the conversion, I’m inclined to blame bad nutrition and excess of alcohol.
September 4, 2010, 9:56 pmChris Travers says:
It might be irrelevant but I’m finding it fascinating nonetheless.
September 4, 2010, 10:02 pmChris Travers says:
Question: Why should it make a difference whether the drugs are illicit? I mean is alcohol or tobacco better than pot in this regard? When a woman is pregnant, it isn’t a good idea for her to take ANY drugs, mind altering or not, that are not rather necessary.
September 4, 2010, 10:05 pmElemenope says:
I mean is alcohol or tobacco better than pot in this regard? When a woman is pregnant, it isn’t a good idea for her to take ANY drugs, mind altering or not, that are not rather necessary.
Funny thing, (very) recent research shows that a tiny bit of alcohol is actually better for the fetus than total abstention, but moderate intake is catastrophic. Nicotine is known to be hazardous to fetal health at pretty much any recreational level.
In contrast, pretty much nothing definitive is known about the effects of THC on fetal development, though it is confirmed that THC crosses the placental barrier, and it is quite likely the effects are not positive (though if they were as catastrophically negative as that of alcohol and tobacco, we’d probably have noticed by now). Caffeine, theophylline, and theobromine aren’t so hot for a fetus, either, due to the fetus’ much lower capacity for metabolic elimination, but their effects are likewise mild.
September 4, 2010, 10:33 pmChris Travers says:
We also need a discussion about where exactly to draw a line which is defensible long-term. Banning opium doesn’t do much if I choose to plant lettuce in my garden, let it go to seed, and harvest the latex.
September 4, 2010, 10:37 pmElemenope says:
We also need a discussion about where exactly to draw a line which is defensible long-term. Banning opium doesn’t do much if I choose to plant lettuce in my garden, let it go to seed, and harvest the latex.
The practical limits of enforceability should always be a primary part of the calculus of rule-making. Unfortunately, they rarely are.
September 4, 2010, 10:56 pmElliot says:
Thought experiment #1:
Suppose we had a substance that gave the same subjective effects when ingested as herion, opium, MJ, crack, or cocaine. (OK, not all at once.) It also showed no evidence being physically or mentally addictive, no evidence of being physically or mentally harmful, no evidence of having any effect on a fetus. Who would object to the legal sale and use of such a substance? If so, why?
Thought experiment #2:
September 5, 2010, 12:11 amSuppose some very simple meditation exercise which could be quickly mastered by anyone gave the same results as outlined above. (The same, not different or necessarily similar to meditation today.)Any problem with spreading the knowledge and engaging in such practice?
Alessandra says:
No, it was because of how stupid the comments by Elem and Fub were. First there was the question that the number of 300,000 cocaine addicted babies is incorrect. If it is incorrect, then what is the correct figure?
I asked Fub what the correct figure was and there was no answer, from either of them. Why?
At the same time, Fub stated that this 300,000 drug addicted babies is a preposterous claim THEREFORE there is no reason to be concerned about the issue.
But what is the correct number? Or is he just happy in pointing out that the 300,000 figure is incorrect while remaining completely silent (ignorant?) regarding the correct figure?
I find it a bit too ridiculous that Fub and Elem know the answer but refuse to discuss it, so that we could evaluate Fub’s claim that there is no reason to be concerned about what Fub claims is a preposterous number. Suppose the correct number is in the ballpark of 150,000 cocaine-addicted babies, or suppose it is 60,000. Is this something not to be considered a grave consequence because it’s not 300,000? Is there something magical about the number 300,000 that makes it the only number people can concern themselves with?
Unless you are looking for a serious excuse not to be concerned about the effect of illicit drugs, no.
So then the question turned to the report that one in twelve pregnant women used illicit drugs while pregnant. And Fub and Elem were still harping that we can’t know exactly how many were addicted. As if it was only a problem if the woman was addicted. So if a certain percentage of these women took illicit drugs, but were not addicted, was this good for them and their babies?
I was pointing out how stupid it was for them to harp on the question of the exact percentage of baby cocaine addiction, when the practice of the woman using cocaine while pregnant, even if not addicted, is harmful to the baby.
See how stupid his little morph strawman is?
The first was the claim about the number of drug addicted babies and the second of the drug exposed babies.
So if 375,000 babies were exposed to drugs, should anyone be concerned?
According to Fub and Elem, again, no.
It would also be helpful if pro-drug people would not behave like overgrown adolescents, who desperately look for any excuse not to concern themselves with the grave consequences of drug use and abuse. Why waste so much back and forth saying that a certain number was wrong (300,000), when you could have posted the correct number right away?
Elem, do you know the total number of cocaine-addicted babies? Or how much it costs to treat them? If you aren’t ignorant on the subject, can you post the numbers and their sources for the last three decades?
“2008- almost 1 million (Americans) were found to have been dependent on cocaine.”
Is this preposterous? What’s the correct figure?
Is it? So what is the right figure for the above?
Is this not true as well? What is the truth then?
This is all a torrent of wrong information as well? What correct information do you claim to have then?
And why shouldn’t we be concerned about inner city hospitals? Are we only to concern ourselves with what happens in rural hospitals where the number of women using cocaine is negligible? It is exactly in the areas where there is a lot of crack/cocaine use by women that we need to focus our attention to evaluate the consequences of drug use.
September 5, 2010, 1:36 amAlessandra says:
Once you get past being an emotionally frustrated overgrown adolescent, there is a lot of fascinating information to consider about drugs. Of course, if one’s objective in life is to harp about this 300,000 cocaine-addicted babies number, nothing else beats that.
They just dig and dig and dig…
September 5, 2010, 2:13 amAlessandra says:
10% is still extremely low, isn’t it? I mean compared to groups who eat processed sugar etc like we do? Do you know if they did anything to regularly cleanse their teeth somehow?
Was there a lot of continuous warfare in Northern Europe that would impact the life expectancy? Or is the low life expectancy mostly cut short by disease or nutrition or other such factors? Did they have nutrition problems, did many people go hungry or eat poorly? (The vague image I have of the Vikings is that they were strong. Did you know archeologists have found a remarkably accurate depiction of Vikings? :-) I mean you need to eat good nutrients to grow those flowing, long blond tresses, don’t you?
Do you have any information on suicides? I once read that for women, in continental Europe, the suicide rates were high.
September 5, 2010, 3:02 amAlessandra says:
Israel:
World Health Organization study reveals a near-100% increase in number of Israeli teens abusing alcohol in past 12 years. ‘Most teenagers view drinking as a fun pastime,’ says Israeli head of study
Tamar Trabelsi-Hadad
Published: 01.03.08, 12:32 / Israel Culture
A new study published recently by the World Health Organization revealed worrying data: Forty-five percent of 10th graders in Israel consume alcohol excessively, at least once a month; making Israeli teen’s consumption of alcohol second only to Ukraine, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Thursday.
The 2006 study spanned 207,703 students, 6,500 of them Israeli students studying in the sixth, eighth and 10th grade. Its results indicate an almost 100% increase in teenage drinking in the last 12 years.
“There is a rising increase in excessive drinking occurrences, which is part of a global phenomenon, and it correlates directly with instances of violence and injury and teen dropouts.
================
Alcohol consumption in Israel has been on the rise for two decades now. The especially worrisome trend is the fact that the age of people who consume alcohol is gradually declining – 75% percent of boys and 25% of girls in elementary school drink over the weekend at home, or during the week while celebrating outside the house.
The world leader in this respect is Russia, where per capita consumption is estimated at 40 vodka bottles per year.
If we take into account the fact that drinking is much less prevalent among women, it means the average Russian man drinks about 70 vodka bottles per year.
About 4% of the men are chronic alcoholics, and alcoholism is considered one of the reasons for the low life expectancy of Russian men (about 60) compared to Russian women (about 72.)
[So you see, Travers, maybe the same modern phenomenon that you are thinking concerning the effects of conversion in Northern Europe]
Meanwhile, Britain, Australia, the United States and Japan are “drinking superpowers,” with average consumption of 20 to 30 whiskey bottles per year, and an alcoholism rate of about 1.5%.
In these countries too, liver disease, liver cancer, dementia, and mental disorders related to alcohol are common and constitute a grave health problem. In addition, about 20% of road accidents and many workplace accidents are attributed to alcohol.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3802814,00.html
September 5, 2010, 3:32 amAlessandra says:
Alcohol – Latin America:
Over the last decade alcohol consumption has become
an increasing concern as a public health issue.
Alcohol is one of the major causes of global disease,
with men bearing most of the burden of alcohol related
diseases. In developing nations, alcohol
ranks as the fourth cause of disability among men.
Alcohol consumption is particularly problematic in
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). While the
proportion of all deaths worldwide that can be attributed
to alcohol use is 1.5%, that figure is 4.5%
for the LAC nations.
====================
Other drugs:
an increase in illicit drug use in Latin America has become increasingly apparent during the 1990s as traffickers create markets at home for inexpensive and abundant drugs.
Although the region has long cultivated and exported illicit drugs, local consumption is rising. Now, in big cities such as Buenos Aires, where about 4 percent of the population acknowledges having used drugs, the percentage of users has begun to rival that in the United States.
For Latin America, which historically has considered illicit drug use a problem for far-off places such as New York, Washington and Los Angeles, the hike in domestic consumption is bringing the issue home as never before. Nations here are facing not only increased drug-related violence, but also higher transmission rates for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, among intravenous drug users, as well as the disintegration of families forced to cope with addiction.
Governments are scrambling to launch new prevention and law enforcement programs as drug use takes a toll on public health and public coffers. One report from Brazil estimates the cost of medical care for drug addiction soared from $902 million 1993 to $2.9 billion in 1997. At the same time, the percentage of AIDS cases from intravenous drug use moved from 2.5 percent in 1985 to 25 percent in 1998.
Latin Americans take drugs for many of the same reasons North Americans and Europeans do. But traffickers are also making illicit drugs more affordable domestically, pushing the excess product they can’t sell abroad.
Larger supplies have driven prices down in the relatively affluent southern part of South America, too. In Buenos Aires, cocaine powder sells for $5 to $20 a gram, about half its price in the 1980s and a major bargain compared with $80 to $150 on the streets of Washington, drug enforcement authorities say.
“It’s like nobody really thinks it’s something bad anymore,” said Anibal, father of two, whose wife left him last year because of his addiction. “When I used to smoke marijuana at school, it was a scandal among the other kids. You know, everyone was very traditional, very Catholic. But more recently, when I did coke at parties – even openly at work – nobody ever said a thing. Unless they asked for a line.”
====================
Because when you have stupid, pro-drug attitudes, that’s what happens. A growth in consumption entails a growth in addiction, and so much money wasted on all the horrible consequences, not to mention all the individual and social harmful consequences.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/125.html
September 5, 2010, 3:49 amAlessandra says:
CIA:
cocaine: worldwide coca leaf cultivation in 2007 amounted to 232,500 hectares; Colombia produced slightly more than two-thirds of the worldwide crop, followed by Peru and Bolivia; potential pure cocaine production decreased 7% to 865 metric tons in 2007; Colombia conducts an aggressive coca eradication campaign, but both Peruvian and Bolivian Governments are hesitant to eradicate coca in key growing areas; 551 metric tons of export-quality cocaine (85% pure) is documented to have been seized or destroyed in 2005; US consumption of export quality cocaine is estimated to have been in excess of 380 metric tons
opiates: worldwide illicit opium poppy cultivation continued to increase in 2007, with a potential opium production of 8,400 metric tons, reaching the highest levels recorded since estimates began in mid-1980s; Afghanistan is world’s primary opium producer, accounting for 95% of the global supply; Southeast Asia – responsible for 9% of global opium – saw marginal increases in production; Latin America produced 1% of global opium, but most was refined into heroin destined for the US market; if all potential opium was processed into pure heroin, the potential global production would be 1,000 metric tons of heroin in 2007
===================
This is interesting:
Brazil – second-largest consumer of cocaine in the world
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2086.html
September 5, 2010, 4:04 amAlessandra says:
Israel:
Drug abuse is spread among all social strata in Israel. The main drugs of abuse are cannabis and heroin, heroin has become more prominent in the recent years. In 1996 reports, Israeli authorities reported a rise in the consumption of cocaine and a sharp increase in the use of LSD and amphetamines. In addition, the authorities are concerned about the widespread abuse of tranquilizers. The drug-related crimes are reported to represent 75% of the total crimes committed in Israel.
There is concern that developments in Israel may lead to a drug control situation similar to that in Western Europe and North America. A further reason for concern is the fact that the age of first use of illicit drugs is constantly falling. This is a particularly worrying development as the Israeli society has comparatively young age structure. Disproportionately large segments of the society are therefore in the age group most vulnerable to drug abuse. This may increase both the speed of spread and the absolute quantity of drug abuse in Israel.
According to a U.S. State Department White Paper on Global Narcotics, issued in 1998, the Jewish State is “a drug-consuming country with serious marijuana, hashish and heroin use, and a growing problem of cocaine, LSD, and amphetamine consumption.” But perhaps more striking, the report found that Israel is “no longer just a user nation, but like Colombia, Thailand and Afghanistan, it has also now become a trafficking power.” Authorities say Israeli crime groups have for several years had a virtual monopoly on global distribution of Ecstasy (though police say Russians are also major players, and Colombian and Dominican groups, realizing the potential for profits, are gaining ground.)
The Ecstasy profits are enormous. It costs 15 to 25 cents to produce one Ecstasy tablet, which wholesalers will sell for $2 a pill. Distributors sell it for $10 to $15 a pill, and by the time a drug dealer sells it at a disco or on a college campus, it can fetch between $25 and $40. Thus, a $100,000 investment by an organized crime group can, in a matter of weeks, earn more than $5 million. Labs can manufacture some 100,000 tablets in a few days. Ecstasy is produced primarily in Dutch and Belgian labs-ranging from industrial-sized plants and mobile labs hidden inside trucks or on floating barges, to basements underneath farms and factories. In the past year, about 50 labs were dismantled by police in Holland and Belgium, but they keep springing up in new locations, DEA agents in Belgium say.
http://haroonhaider.com/2009/09/30/israeli-drug-smugglers-global-monopoly-on-ecstasy-the-love-drug/
September 5, 2010, 4:16 amwhit says:
i realize this is just a thought experiment, but everything else aside, ANYTHING that is enjoyable (especially as enjoyable as the highs you are describing) is going to be mentally addictive. that’s necessarily true
September 5, 2010, 4:20 amwhit says:
ime, and i say this as somebody strongly opposed to the WOD- BOTH sides make shit up , distort, etc.
NORML can be just as bad as the drug warriors, for instance
regardless, imo the FACTS aren’t that hard to find, and imo they make a compelling case certainly at least for decrim of MJ *at a minimum*
interestingly, most of the cops i’ve spoken to agree
September 5, 2010, 4:22 amwhit says:
not that i think E is that bad at all, but just for the record, E *is* a methamphetamine analog
the reason it doesn’t carry most of the risks associated with abuse (not use- ABUSE) of meth is that people don’t do E like they do meth. iow, they don’t go on for days on end and neglect their health – eating, sleep, etc.
E is done sporadically, not compulsively.
but, as a form of speed, it has speed like risks and benefits
off the top of my head 3,4 methyl-ene dioxymethamphetamine is MDMA is E
i’ve got it boilerplated in my memory from so many search warrants
September 5, 2010, 4:25 amElemenope says:
BOTH sides make shit up , distort, etc.; NORML can be just as bad as the drug warriors, for instance
It is true that neither side is a paragon of honesty, but I refuse to endorse an equivalence in the flagrancy and perniciousness of the lies offered by each side. Pro-prohibitionists lay some stinkers that are hard to top, and more generally, they traffic in baseless fear as a tactic of social control, which is something that really can’t be said of the other side.
off the top of my head 3,4 methyl-ene dioxymethamphetamine is MDMA is E
Yup. MDMA is a compound closely related to methamphetamine, and has some similarities in the category of physiological effects, though its psychological effects profile is entirely different.
imo they make a compelling case certainly at least for decrim of MJ *at a minimum*…interestingly, most of the cops i’ve spoken to agree
Hence organizations like LEAP. FWIW, they tend to be more scrupulous with the truth than college advocacy organizations like NORML and SSDP.
September 5, 2010, 5:28 amwhit says:
yea, if there are two things i have noticed in cop viewpoints that differ strikingly from public perception of what cops think (and usually because the media cites IACP – an organization of police CHIEFS iow cop-o-crat politicians as somehow representative of cops, which would be like quoting auto industry CEO’s to get the opinion of an assemblyline worker
1) most i have spoken to support either decrim, legalization, or a general laissez faire (keep it illegal, but don’t give it any emphasis) stance towards mj
2) most cops support concealed carry
i will agree that i might have exaggerated :l
iow, you are right, NORML is not AS bad as some of the worst drug warriors when it comes to distortions. in retrospect, they aren’t nearly AS bad.
it’s a fair cop
September 5, 2010, 5:33 amslvnn34ehi says:
They can’t decriminalize drugs. If all those people weren’t in jail the unemployment rate would go sky high. It would make todays extreme recessionary unemployment rates look low.
September 5, 2010, 6:06 amAlessandra says:
“Then indeed we could have a rational, evidence-based conversation about the social and individual costs of many drugs.”
Newsflash: Wallowing in useless comments about a magical 300,000 number of cocaine-addicted babies, instead of posting accurate information on what the correct figure actually is, and how much it costs in terms of treatment, is not rational nor evidence-based.
“Also, a great idea would be to stop pretending you are paragons of virtue and assuming your interlocutors are debased reprobates. That might also help things along.”
Yawn. I don’t know about debased reprobates, but emotionally frustrated overgrown adolescents certainly fits with the tone and content of your comments…
“No, but seriously, most of the 1980s crack baby panic turned out to be misdiagnosed fetal alcohol syndrome. You see, they forgot to check for co-morbidity between crack users and alcohol use. Whoops. ”
Like alcohol, that legal drug? So if you legalize crack/cocaine, instead of having the baby damaged by either one legal or one illegal drug (or damaged by both), we could have the baby damaged by two “legal” drugs. That’s a clever improvement. And it certainly is very convincing as to why legalizing crack/cocaine is such a good idea.
September 5, 2010, 9:06 amStephen Lathrop says:
Nonsense. A free market system makes selling products that kill your customers just an everyday part of doing business. Even if you were going to kill your LAST customer with your next sale, the free market incentivizes going ahead. If you don’t, someone else will make the sale, get the profit, and kill your customer. You will be worse off for not having killed him yourself.
September 5, 2010, 9:14 amA. Criminal says:
Quite the opposite: that’s what happens when you have stupid anti-freedom laws (assuming your unreferenced mysterious report in a 10 year-old newspaper article is accurate, which it no doubt isn’t).
In case you didn’t know, cocaine’s been used in S. America for…hundreds of years? Thousands? Pot and cocaine were legal in Mexico and most or all other C. and S. American countries before the U.S. started bribing the politicians to pass stupid laws (there’s no violence associated with smuggling now, is there? Of course not). Before prohibition: no problem (literally); after prohibition: plenty of problems (so you claim).
The fascistas here who’re fantasizing about killing other people for minding their own business should read up on how prohibition encourages stronger drugs because they’re easier to smuggle; why smuggle beer rather than whiskey?.
September 5, 2010, 10:14 amArthur Kirkland says:
This is true. Police should stop enforcing “driving while black,” for example, and well-connected drug-users shouldn’t be permitted to wriggle off the hook with parents’ help.
September 5, 2010, 12:51 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Why is freedom “stupid?”
Every argument against marijuana is applicable, and stronger, against organized religion, by the way. Not to mention fast food, conservative foreigh policy and soft drink bottlers.
September 5, 2010, 12:55 pmChris Travers says:
One thing to note about Bolivia is that the Native Americans in the country use coca (as the raw plant matter) for a variety of uses. The Bolivian government has granted these groups exceptions to the rule and there is simply no way to cut down on coca production in Bolivia without confronting these groups. Coca isn’t a bad plant, any more than tea or coffee is. The only issue is that people have discovered cocaine as a street drug. I wonder what we will do when folks discover pure caffeine as an inexpensive, legal alternative. Certainly we aren’t going to try to eradicate coffee production…..
I actually favor allowing the import of raw coca leaves. There really isn’t much of a problem there. This would cause the price of coca to crash, and it would injure the drug cartels.
There is a HUGE difference between raw plant matter and purified, refined drugs, both in dangers (purified drugs are usually though not always much more dangerous—the only counter-example I can think of is LSD where the fungus it is derived from also has really nasty vasoconstrictive agents, so long-term use causes the limbs to go gangrenous) and effects (raw plant matter is, of course, much more mild). This isn’t just the case with mind altering drugs either. If we look at the history of aspirin we find that while willow bark was safe and used traditionally, salicin had more side effects but was still fairly safe. However when salicylic acid was first introduced, it was withdrawn from the market due to a wide range of very severe side effects including those affecting the digestive system and nervous system.
One thing we need to do IMO is establish a strong line between raw plant matter and purified or synthesized drugs.
September 5, 2010, 2:17 pmChris Travers says:
One interesting rising form of tourism in South America is the idea of tourism to Native American reservations where people can partake of traditional, mind altering substances that the Native Americans are allowed to use but nobody else is. Interestingly in at least two of the major countries I have looked at in this regard, Ecuador and Bolivia, on-reservation use of most of these is entirely allowed, so people from the US can go to these countries, and try coca-leaf tea, or various hallucinogenic substances in a more traditional environment.
September 5, 2010, 2:20 pmAlessandra says:
Yes, but it’s been used there in a totally different cultural context. I don’t think your comparison is valid, because, correct me if I wrong, these indigenous groups in S America, when continuing with their traditional drug consumption habits, did not have a bunch of junkies among them. Neither did they get AIDS from sharing needles, nor have deformed babies from alcohol syndrome or crack babies. (at least, that’s my impression). Look at the devastation that alcohol causes in Native American communities, for a comparison of drug use that is destructive.
What is happening all around the world, in our modern societies, is that the culture about drugs is changing (including alcohol), and the results aren’t pretty.
We don’t have the same society and the same type of drug use that the traditional indians in SA had (or still have).
September 5, 2010, 2:30 pmAlessandra says:
I think the problem lies in our culture with this profound demand for drugs, which is always accompanied by a significant demand of abuse of drugs.
As long as that’s there, if you import leaves, I think sooner or later people will figure out how to abuse it, but I have no idea what one can do with the leaves.
It’s surprising Americans have not yet figured out a way to smoke banana peels or orange rind… Really, what doesn’t get abused?
And have you read about how poor kids sniff glue in LAmerica because that’s what they can get their hands on, especially as an (emotional) pain reliever? Completely heart breaking.
September 5, 2010, 2:39 pmAlessandra says:
Good grief, Arthur. Did some religious group kidnap you and keep you locked in a basement for several years? :-)
Hey, if anyone wants to outlaw soft drinks and McDonalds hamburgers, I’ll vote for them. (We can keep the McD desserts, though)
Seriously, I think the problem lies with our cultural attitudes about drugs. So, from there, people who want to get their kicks don’t want to acknowledge all the destruction that we obligatorily have concerning this exacerbated drug consumption rate and abuse. It’s always the same story.
BTW, this “semi-outlawing” of cigarettes did a lot of good, IMO. What do you think?
September 5, 2010, 2:52 pmChris Travers says:
People get HIV from sharing needles they use to inject cocaine? Here I was thinking it was heroin that was associated with that.
September 5, 2010, 3:07 pmAlessandra says:
OK, so I mixed in my example some of the worst drug abuse problems that first came to mind :-)
Substitute it by all the bad cocaine abuse consequences…
September 5, 2010, 3:12 pmChris Travers says:
The same way people abuse coffee or tea, right?
The counter-argument might be that it would be easier for someone to make cocaine here, but we already allow people to grow their own opium poppies and the seeds of these plants can be legally bought and sold in the US. In fact, I have never heard of anyone in the US ever prosecuted for growing opium for personal use (I have heard of people prosecuted for selling flower arrangements including the cut flowers, and that is stupid IMO, but it’s also different).
If leaves could be legally imported but had to be declared customs-wise, it would be a reasonably simple matter to enforce anti-cocaine-production laws against anyone trying to bring them in for large-scale drug manufacturing.
But the major effect it would have is it would starve the major organized crime rings of important sources of capital. All else being equal I’d rather have our law enforcement have to deal with this than outsource that problem to a corrupt government like that of Mexico or Colombia.
September 5, 2010, 3:12 pmwhit says:
my belief (and i think this is generally supported) is that when a drug is outlawed, that more potent forms/analogs of the drug are incentivized to be created and abused.
coca leaves are not that abusable. cocaine (powder) is more so. crack even moreso
opium tea etc. from poppies not that bad. the derivatives are moreso
September 5, 2010, 3:22 pmwhit says:
“Alessandra: Because when you have stupid, pro-drug attitudes”
let’s please distinguish between being anti-WOD and being pro-drug
mj , for example
generally speaking, i think marijuana is lame. i wouldn’t use it if it was legal. i am NOT pro mj. i am anti-mj criminalization.
that’s a policy thang. i think the war on MJ is profoundly worse than mj use and/or abuse is.
and again, as somebody else posted, the general libertarian belief (which i hold) is that the burden is on the govt etc. , and it’s a very high burden, when they want to restrict liberties. when it comes to something that is a behavior that affects only the individual (putting mj into their bloodstream), the govt. would need a very high burden as to why it shouldn’t be legal
and the scientific data doesn’t even come close.
a drug like PCP should (imo) be illegal. mj? no
September 5, 2010, 3:25 pmElemenope says:
There is certainly a stronger policy argument to make PCP, cocaine, and alcohol illegal, than there is to make marijuana, LSD, and MDMA illegal. The first three share in common the potential to produce black-outs and psychotic rages in their users, and are thus directly implicated in violent crime. The second three do not induce violent behavior (indeed, quite the opposite) nor any other illegal behavior apart from their use.
But we already have experience with attempting to prohibit use or sale of the most ubiquitous and dangerous of the first three (alcohol), ending with abject failure. Are there any signs whatsoever that indicate that the prohibition of the other two are any more successful? Not only is there a serious ideological burden for the state to justify reducing liberty, but there also is a serious practical burden to show that the solution does not include consequences as or more severe than the problem it is attempting to solve.
Alessandra, you laughed off the suggestion of banning McD’s or other fatty foods, but it would be instructive if you were to give a serious answer. If something is identified as harmful, even at a society-wide level, is that alone sufficient grounds to ban it?
September 5, 2010, 3:34 pmChris Travers says:
I’ve lived in Indonesia (which has similar problems) for about six months, and spent about three months in Ecuador.
The question, as always, is what needs to be done. Free education through high school is a good start (and one thing that Ecuador does right, though this is a recent change, and Indonesia does wrong).
As for banana peels and orange peels, they are actually edible though unpalatable, so I am not sure how readily they could be abused any more than green beans could be. People do use banana peels in some home-made banana wine recipes, though.
September 5, 2010, 3:38 pmwhit says:
among other things, the whole thing about banning mcd’s (and there are some things at mcd’s that are not fatty, but i digress) has class issues as much as anything. there are lots of expensive/haute cuisine dishes that are less nutrititious than some of the stuff at mcd’s, but apart from foei gras (for cruelty reasons), nobody talks about banning haute cuisine dishes that are “bad for you”, only cheap stuff that is bad for you.
much like the whole “saturday night special” hysteria, it’s hypocritical and makes no sense.
and let’s remember that any individual unhealthy food, if eaten in moderation, will not cause harm. harm comes from bad diets (the sum total of what we do AND don’t eat), not from an occasional big mac.
September 5, 2010, 3:44 pmwhit says:
are you seriously claiming that alcohol is more dangerous than PCP?
really?
and before you start trotting out stats to try to prove your point, let’s remember that scores of millions of people use alcohol RESPONSIBLY, but given its widespread use, even if only 10% used it irresponsibly, that would still be millions of examples
do you honestly think that if PCP was as widely available as alcohol and as widely used that it would cause less harm?
September 5, 2010, 3:48 pmseriously?
whit says:
nutmeg is edible and is still abusable as a drug. i am not sure what sort of logical point you are trying to make
September 5, 2010, 3:53 pmwhit says:
nutmeg is edible and is still abusable as a drug. i am not sure what sort of logical point you are trying to make
September 5, 2010, 3:54 pmChris Travers says:
Banana peels and orange peels can be eaten in quantity with no ill effects, but you can’t say the same thing about nutmeg (it makes you sick at hallucinogenic doses). In some parts of the world, young banana peels are actually cooked and eaten as a vegetable.
Now, chili peppers OTOH…….
September 5, 2010, 4:24 pmArthur Kirkland says:
We agree on that. The nanny-state prudes ignore the science, the consequences, and the morality of their War on Drugs because of their fear that someone, somewhere, somehow, someone might be having fun. And their Puritanical, repressed, freedom-hating cultural worldview can not tolerate that.
When any anti-liberty drug warrior provides a reasoned argument for banning marijuana use but not caffeine-loaded soft drinks, fat- and calorie-rich (but nutrient-lacking) fast foods, alcohol beverages and organized religion, it might be possible to accept the argument as something other than superstition-fueled authoritarianism.
September 5, 2010, 4:24 pmChris Travers says:
Personally, I’d like to see a personal use exception for growing your own opium.
Right now the exception seems to be limited to the plant in the ground, and if you cut the plant to make anything out of it, the CSA comes into the picture.
September 5, 2010, 4:28 pmElemenope says:
are you seriously claiming that alcohol is more dangerous than PCP?
really?
Well, you actually in your refutation already stumbled exactly into why I would claim that. Alcohol is widely available, attractive for abuse, and physiologically tends to be much more destructive than PCP. As far as behaviorally, person-for-person PCP possibly causes more reliably anti-social behavior (although, taking a look at more recent research, it seems that the propensity for PCP violence is overblown, and there is now doubt in the literature whether it causes dissociative violence at all in people who are not otherwise predisposed to be violent without intoxication). PCP is wildly unpopular, having been replaced by most people looking for that specific high with the much, much safer dextromethorphan. It is also, unlike alcohol, not addictive.
do you honestly think that if PCP was as widely available as alcohol and as widely used that it would cause less harm?
seriously?
If PCP were as widely available as alcohol, it is unbelievably unlikely that it would see much greater usage than it does now, as it is fairly unattractive drug for abuse and much safer substitutes exist. It is concomitantly nearly certain that it would cause less harm than alcohol under a similar legal regime as alcohol. If by some strange alignment PCP did become a popular drug (as popular as alcohol, just for the sake of argument), the social and health costs would still likely be much less than that of alcoholism.
September 5, 2010, 4:41 pmElemenope says:
among other things, the whole thing about banning mcd’s (and there are some things at mcd’s that are not fatty, but i digress) has class issues as much as anything. there are lots of expensive/haute cuisine dishes that are less nutrititious than some of the stuff at mcd’s, but apart from foei gras (for cruelty reasons), nobody talks about banning haute cuisine dishes that are “bad for you”, only cheap stuff that is bad for you.
Quite so.
I see a similar dynamic at work with alcohol and marijuana; alcohol is what we do, so it’s OK, whereas marijuana is what *other* people (and “undesirable” people at that) do, so it should be banned.
September 5, 2010, 4:44 pmAlessandra says:
It’s sort of what we did with cigarettes. As you know, certain types of bans were imposed and a huge education campaign was implemented. If you travel to other countries where none of this was done, or where only flimsy bans of smoking in public places were stipulated without re-education, you have an enormously greater number of smokers, and especially of young smokers, that is, the ones starting.
So this cigarette semi-ban was magnificent from my point of view. And I would favor something analogous for soda. I really haven’t thought of other foods.
I think though that without re-education, most ideas for bans are futile. If you don’t succeed in having a mass level impact on the attitudes that produce the demand, it won’t work.
For drugs this is much more complicated for the group of people who take drugs as a result of having other serious life problems. It’s a different group than the affluent idiot taking recreational drugs, who may or may not develop an addiction, and who is consuming drugs because of trends in leisure habits and cultural attitudes about drugs.
Then there is the question of trafficking. You stop trafficking, there are a lot less drugs. Mao did it, although his methods were not very democratic.
I don’t know about the question of marijuana. I think overall we need less, not more drugs. It’s like do we need more junk food? How much crap will the food industry still come up with?
To me, it is always going to return to the question of why such a gigantic demand for drugs in the first place.
September 5, 2010, 4:54 pmElemenope says:
To me, it is always going to return to the question of why such a gigantic demand for drugs in the first place.
Considering that it crops up in all societies at pretty much all times in history, could it be as simple as people like to alter their consciousness? They find it enjoyable and entertaining?
September 5, 2010, 5:04 pmElemenope says:
I think overall we need less, not more drugs. It’s like do we need more junk food? How much crap will the food industry still come up with?
“Drugs” aren’t an undifferentiated mass of things. Each drug has easily defined effects, addiction profiles, and so forth. Classifying marijuana with heroin is approximately as sane as classifying Tylenol with heroin. (Actually, that would be a better classification, since Tylenol actually kills a decent number of people.)
As far as the food analogy, is “We shouldn’t have snickerdoodles on account of already having twinkies” really a sound argument?
September 5, 2010, 5:08 pmwhit says:
again, i don’t disagree. i just don’t get the underlying point
September 5, 2010, 5:34 pmAlessandra says:
Given that there are plenty of societies that did not have a huge number of addicts and all the health and social problems related to drug abuse that we observe today, this statement is outright ludicrous.
September 5, 2010, 5:36 pmChris Travers says:
Something which can be eaten as a food staple is not likely to be subject to abuse, unlike a seasoning.
For example, I think it would be extremely hard to abuse lettuce you buy at the grocery store, despite sedative components in the plant.
September 5, 2010, 5:39 pmAlessandra says:
Why have a bunch of people wanting to eat Twinkies in the first place? It’s gross. And contrary to what you might think, people aren’t born with a genetically determined eating orientation towards Twinkies. Or Coca-Cola or eating live insects.
September 5, 2010, 5:40 pmChris Travers says:
I’d agree with that statement. However, there are so many legal things that are possible to abuse, from chili peppers to lettuce plants that have gone to seed. I get high somewhat infrequently by accident from eating too spicy food. Yet I don’t see a call for limiting the spiciness of food because getting high is bad.
September 5, 2010, 5:48 pmwhit says:
for the record… :l
i have been to scores of attempted suicides via pill. Granted, many of these “attempted suicides” are more of a cry for help, than a bona fide attempt. (note: most of the attempt suicide by pills are by women, overwhelmingly so. they are very rarely effective. guns, hanging, etc. are effective.)
i have responded to attempts via SSRI’s, Alcohol, all sorts of other depressants, opioids, etc. etc.
the ONLY successful suicide by drug cases i have ever seen were via tylenol (APAP).
it is also a very gruesome way to die.
September 5, 2010, 5:49 pmwhit says:
but it doesn’t follow that people seeking a transcendent experience (whether through drugs, meditation, religion, etc.) are going to become addicts. it depends largely on the types of drugs used.
it also depends, to an extent – on culture, i agree.
people seeking such experiences via drugs like LSD, etc. stand no risk of becoming physically addicted (since these drugs are not addictive) and generally speaking, it’s not the kind of experience one would want to do several times a week, as opposed to…
drugs like cocaine, etc. that offer such a nice high, that people seek to keep that feeling going.
we’ve all heard of those studies where mice will choose cocaine lever over the food lever.
i know many many people who, for example, tried and recreationally used – cocaine, all sorts of pills, etc. and never became addicts.
September 5, 2010, 5:54 pmElemenope says:
And contrary to what you might think, people aren’t born with a genetically determined eating orientation towards Twinkies. Or Coca-Cola or eating live insects.
Er, most people are hardwired to find eating sweet and/or fatty things pleasurable. So, while they might not be genetically determined to like, specifically, Twinkies or Coca-Cola, our genetic heritage pretty much guarantees that foods like Twinkies and Coke are going to be tasty to many people.
September 5, 2010, 5:56 pmwhit says:
but do we need less mj use? i’m not convinced we do.
seriously, what is the negative effect on society (or the individual) for the guy who comes home from a productive day at work and has a joint? i’m not aware there is any.
the science is getting clearer and clearer that moderate use of alcohol is BENEFICIAL not merely benign. iow, one is BETTER off by moderate use of alcohol than by abstaining
i am not at all sure that is true of mj. i just don’t see any major negative effects from moderate use.
September 5, 2010, 5:58 pmElemenope says:
Given that there are plenty of societies that did not have a huge number of addicts and all the health and social problems related to drug abuse that we observe today, this statement is outright ludicrous.
Again, with you conflating use with abuse. There has never been a culture on Earth that had access to chemicals that could alter consciousness and didn’t use them. (Remember too, Alessandra, alcohol and nicotine are drugs.) Some controlled the use of these substances under the rubric of religion, or other ad hoc social controls. And you would be hard-pressed indeed to find a society with a similar constellation of political values as ours (e.g. freedom, individual autonomy, property and privacy rights, etc.) that didn’t have widespread drug use, including the abuse issues you allude to.
September 5, 2010, 6:05 pmElemenope says:
the ONLY successful suicide by drug cases i have ever seen were via tylenol (APAP).
it is also a very gruesome way to die.
QFT. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
September 5, 2010, 6:08 pmwhit says:
bingo. and here’s my take (it’s the classic libertarian line)
people are predisposed to do all sorts of behaviors that are harmful. men, for example especially, evolved to want to schtup every hawt wimmins they see. we have laws against sexual assault because that is behavior (based on innate drives) that negatively affects OTHERS’ rights to go about their lives. we do not have laws against excessive masturbation, watching porn, etc. because these are self regarding acts.
people are generally predisposed to like fatty, sweet, calorically dense foods. these foods are somewhat rare in nature, especially for a basic hunter/gatherer. it encourages people to stock up internally when food is plentiful, because it wasn’t always so. in modern society, where we can make such concentrated foods easily – like refined sugar, and where it just takes a quick walk to the refrigerator to eat anything we want – our genetics will work against us. it’s still a PERSONAL choice, even if destructive, and govt. has no place trying to prohibit, for example, the sale of sweet or fattening nutrient sparse foods. the burden is on the individual to avoid same.
in the case of drugs, especially those that tap our pleasure centers, i think there are drugs that are strong/dangerous enough to warrant govt. prohibition. but like anything else, the burden should be pretty high.
ultimately imo, people have themselves to blame when they abuse food or drugs, not the “pusherman” or mcd’s.
September 5, 2010, 6:09 pmChris Travers says:
To be fair, most of the cultures didn’t use them as simple recreational drugs.
Getting drunk at a sumbel isn’t the same thing as getting drunk at a bar. Smoking pot at home for “fun” isn’t the same thing as using it in a religious ceremony.
Again, I’m not saying this is bad. I’m just saying the entertainment hypothesis doesn’t seem accurate to me based on my studies.
September 5, 2010, 6:13 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Why not? Why would one person be free to enjoy himself, another not?
Smoking at home — no need to drive — seems safer, too.
September 5, 2010, 6:17 pmElemenope says:
Getting drunk at a sumbel isn’t the same thing as getting drunk at a bar. Smoking pot at home for “fun” isn’t the same thing as using it in a religious ceremony.
Again, I’m not saying this is bad. I’m just saying the entertainment hypothesis doesn’t seem accurate to me based on my studies.
A fair point. I would hypothesize, though, that after discovery, entertainment would precede religious use, at least briefly, since religions by-and-large are not as sociologically flexible as is generally necessary to play the role of first-adopters. In any event, constructing a religious or cultural ritual in order to contain or redirect the entertainment potential has spotty efficacy at best; view the myriad of social protocols that surround drinking alcohol in different cultures, and their general abject failure to control alcohol abuse.
September 5, 2010, 6:26 pmElemenope says:
@Arthur Kirkland
The context of the comment was in a discussion about the sociological origins of drug use and abuse, not so much about permissiveness or moral judgments about different usage contexts.
September 5, 2010, 6:29 pmChrisTS says:
Chris T:
Are you sure, Chris? I suppose there have been the special substances reserved for religious observance, but haven’t most cultures also had their purely recreational ‘drugs’?
Arthur:
While I agree with your general perspective, AK, I think Chris’s point is that people who seek altered states for [loosely] spiritual/ritual purposes are not doing so to enjoy themselves. The idea is that a higher purpose than enjoyment makes the use different and, indeed, acceptable.
Personally, I do not accept the [further] conclusion that those who are ‘merely’ seeking enjoyment should not be allowed to do so.
Also, as many mind-altering substances cause experiences that would not be regarded as pleasant by many people, I think we cannot say that those who have a personal purpose, as distinguished from a formal ritual one, categorically have no ‘higher’ aims of their own.
Does this make sense? I’m in a bit of an altered state, myself, thanks to painkillers. :-) Of course, according to Epicurus, the absence of pain is pleasure; so, maybe I’m having a great time.(Quick! Someone arrest me!)
September 5, 2010, 6:36 pmChrisTS says:
whit:
Hey, You. You wrote: ultimately imo, people have themselves to blame when they abuse food or drugs, not the “pusherman” or mcd’s
I think this makes a lot of sense in the abstract. But, when we have pushers and ad companies ‘promoting’ their wares – especially to kids, I wonder how far the free will meme can be carried. For me, the persuasive power/position of pushers in some communities is one of the reasons that we should legalize (but not advertise) many recreational drugs.
September 5, 2010, 6:43 pmwhit says:
i think the “free will meme” is the whole reason why i *am* a libertarian and what makes me never want to be a liberal( who seem predisposed to always find fault from anybody but the actual person at fault (society, etc.))
Don’t get me wrong, I have little problem with criminalizing drug DEALING, but i still think the decision to use drugs (*or abuse food) is ultimately the users. It’s kind of similar to how i think it’s absurd that liquor establishments like bars face so much civil and even criminal pressure from “overserving” when one of those overserved ends up driving DUI.
As for the ad companies, I have ZERO problem with McD’s targeting advertising to kids. Among other things, it is up to the parents to treat McD’s like a TREAT, not as a substitute for healthy(er) food. McD’s has also repeatedly tried to offer healthy(er) alternatives, but most simply didn’t sell e.g. the McLean.
September 5, 2010, 7:06 pmwhit says:
right
from a legal standpoint, i don;’t think the distinction matter. iow, i don’t think the usage should be legally limited only to religious ritual, but i agree with (at least i think part of the point) the idea that when mind altering substances are used as part of religious ritual, that there is a natural limiter so to speak, that works against abuse of the substance. iow, when a substance is viewed as sacred, or at least part of a sacred ritual, it is less likely ot be abused and used to excess.
September 5, 2010, 7:11 pmChris Travers says:
Hmmm…. Most of the examples I can find in traditional cultures are communal rituals while personal trade in alcohol seems to be more common in places like Greece, Rome, and Sumeria (places where writing has been pretty well used). The major question then becomes whether this is an artifact of what records survive or whether it is just a matter that we know more about the Greeks and Romans than we do about the Norse. It’s really hard to say. The social structures aren’t really well comparable. I think this would be a fascinating topic for a PhD thesis :-)
September 5, 2010, 8:50 pmChris Travers says:
I thought I specifically said I wasn’t saying one was better. However, if binge drinking is done as an occasional social ritual, that is very different from drinking at home by yourself. It poses different problems.
The larger question is how far we project current views about how people are onto the ancient world.
September 5, 2010, 8:54 pmElemenope says:
I think this would be a fascinating topic for a PhD thesis :-)
Totally agree!
September 5, 2010, 9:11 pmManju says:
We think so too, Alessandra. But until Bond orders OJ shaken not stirred, Martinis it is. I don’t even drink Manhattans anymore…too easily mistaken for Cosmopolitans.
September 5, 2010, 9:16 pmChris Travers says:
I think Illya’s point is that blacks should be opposed to the war on drugs because of the effects on their community, not that the war on drugs is bad because of effects it has on blacks.
However, I initially read that sentence as “black, white or otherwise” as modifying drugs rather than anyone. I wondered what the difference between a white drug and a black drug was.
September 5, 2010, 9:27 pmElemenope says:
On a somewhat similar note, it occurs to me that the blog article is entitled “African-Americans and the War on Drugs”. I wonder how many commenters here on this thread are either/or/both:
1. African-Americans
2. Drug Warriors
It would be interesting to know, at the very least.
September 5, 2010, 9:42 pmArthur Kirkland says:
And I do not accept that spiritual/ritual use differs substantively from use in a dorm room with blinds closed and a towel under the door, or that either use involves a “higher purpose.” The idea that a moral belief, or use of a mind-altering substance, is somehow nobler or more important in the context of organized religion strikes me as silly.
September 5, 2010, 11:36 pmArthur Kirkland says:
VCers continue to take this “I am a libertarian” elasticity among conservatives to remarkable stretches.
September 5, 2010, 11:39 pmArthur Kirkland says:
One great way to address the severe (and disparate) impact of drug-law enforcement on blacks would be to enact statutes requiring that all drug defendants be treated equally, as has become the case with respect to drunken driving in some jurisdictions (which forbid law enforcement personnel, from police to prosecutors, from undercharging or plea bargaining, while removing most discretion from sentencing). That not only would promote justice but also likely accelerate the end of drug warring.
September 6, 2010, 12:04 amwhit says:
which means what exactly. besides bein’ all cryptic and stuff do you have a point?
September 6, 2010, 12:27 amwhit says:
what do you mean “all drug defendants” and equally?
equally in regards to what?
equal in regards to schedule? iow, possessing 50 dosage units of a schedule II drug should get the same penalty?
or regards to weight?
or regardless of schedule?
or what exactly?
meth is treated particularly harshly where i live, for example, compared to many other drugs. it’s also almost exclusively a “white person’s drug”. i’ve been in dozens of meth labs etc.
most of this controversy comes from the whole powder vs. crack cocaine disparity.
in many jurisdictions, crack is punished more harshly than powder. however. is this what you are referring to or are you saying that, for example, a schedule IV drug should be treated equally to a schedule II or what exactly?
September 6, 2010, 12:30 amwhit says:
the difference is that when the drug use is “sacred” and part of a ritual etc. it is less likely to be abused iow used chronically and/or in high doses.
that should be tangential to how the law treats it, though.
September 6, 2010, 12:33 amChrisTS says:
@Chris Travers,
I was responding to “To be fair, most of the cultures didn’t use them as simple recreational drugs.”
I did not think you were claiming that one kind of usage was ‘better’ than another (I think that was Arthur’s question). I was asking if you think that most cultures broadly restrict mind-altering substances to ritual purposes – as distinguished from restricting certain such substances to those uses.
September 6, 2010, 12:45 amArthur Kirkland says:
It is difficult to believe that someone who supports drug criminalization is a libertarian.
September 6, 2010, 12:45 amChrisTS says:
Arthur:
Yes, I agree with you. I find the “but, it’s religious” line pretty thin. I was just trying to capture what [I think] Chris Travers was saying.
September 6, 2010, 12:48 amArthur Kirkland says:
For a particular circumstance — possession of a certain amount of a particular substance — the wheels of justice grind equally. No passes for the well-connected. No plea bargains. No “disorderly conduct” charge or other undercharge. Minimum sentences established by a schedule. If a police officer or prosecutor or magistrate fails to charge as the circumstances warrant, that law enforcement officer has engaged in statutory misconduct. Again, the model is drunken driving legislation that mandates compliance with a relatively tight schedule of charges and punishments.
September 6, 2010, 12:52 amChris Travers says:
The traditional (oral) cultures I am aware of tended to use such substances (AFAICS) in ritual manners only. Of course, again, it’s not entirely clear if this is the nature of the evidence or if it is the nature of society. Certainly recreational use of alcohol increased in Northern Europe following the conversion to Christianity.
September 6, 2010, 3:35 amwhit says:
how does that address the main issue of contention for many which is that crack cocaine (a disproportionately black person drug) gets so much more severe penalties than powder cocaine (more popular proportionally speaking amongst whites)?
September 6, 2010, 4:13 amwhit says:
who are you referring to?
not me, because i don’t
do you have an issue with reading comprehension?
this is why it is so boring sometimes to post here, because you have to spell everything out.
i will spell it out
I…DO… NOT… SUPPORT … DRUG … CRIMINALIZATION
if you are referring to my earlier comment about having “little problem with criminalizing drug DEALING” … read it again.
saying you have little problem with X does not mean you support X.
it’s just that i don’t lose any sleep over drug dealers getting criminal penalties vs. drug users. it does not therefore follow that i think criminalizing drug dealing is optimal.
so, if that is what you are hanging your hat on, i suggest more reading comprehension, less wanking
and if not, what ARE you referring to?
September 6, 2010, 4:14 amChrisTS says:
That makes sense.
I’m struck by Chris Travers’ claim about certain ancient cultures. I wonder why those cultures would be less likely to permit/tolerate/whatever non-ritual, just-for-fun substance use. I guess that is where the interesting Ph.D. project comes in.
September 6, 2010, 12:44 pmChrisTS says:
Maybe the increase was due to the newly forbidden nature of the activity. Or, perhaps Christianity was just depressing for them. :-)
September 6, 2010, 12:46 pmChrisTS says:
Whit:
I don’t know what liberals think, generally, about personal fault. I do worry about the effects of modern advertising – even on adults. But, you are correct about parenting: my kids almost never ate fast food and now find it pretty disgusting.
The pusher thing is different. The kids see the one or few guys around who have money; the pushers are eager to please, initially, and seem easygoing to the kids; and so on. Unlike McD’s food, drugs are hard to give up once you’re into them.
September 6, 2010, 1:00 pmChris Travers says:
I always thought it was because monasteries used brewing beer as a way of making money.
September 6, 2010, 1:15 pmAlessandra says:
Junkies do not crop up in all societies at pretty much all times.
That is what we have. Your insistence to deny this most basic fact is completely ludicrous.
On the contrary, we are not hard wired to eat a bunch of junk food and feel good. In fact, we are biologically built to feel excellent if we feed our bodies the healthiest diet. Of course, if someone is using food as a pain reliever, or because of being conditioned to eating in a really bad way, then they will feel better after binging, but that is only true because the context is totally problematic to begin with.
=========
How do you know? You have no clue what all cultures on Earth were like. But that’s besides the point.
It is pointless to talk about cultures that did not have abuse of drugs when that is exactly the devastating problem we have on epidemic levels.
September 6, 2010, 1:25 pmAlessandra says:
Actually, you interpreted my comment in a different way than was intended. It looks like you certainly missed a thread where I said that McD hamburgers tasted gross. It was tongue-in-cheek to say that they should be banned–because they taste so bad.
I wasn’t even thinking of the fat issue.
September 6, 2010, 1:33 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Having ‘little problem’ with incarcerating people for selling a recreational substance — putting a college student in prison for splitting a pound of dope into nickel bags for his friends, for example — seems severely inconsistent with just about any strain of libertarianism.
It’s too bad there are exceedingly few libertarians around here who could help us clear this up.
September 6, 2010, 1:47 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Good point. A reasonable treatment of the powdered-vs.-crack issue would be an important and sensible part of any regulatory system designed to treat all like-situated offenders equally.
September 6, 2010, 1:50 pmElemenope says:
It’s too bad there are exceedingly few libertarians around here who could help us clear this up.
The average Libertarian’s enthusiasm for reading otherwise sympathetic people out of the movement for lack of purity has ensured that, I think.
All movements have principles, and those principles, being abstract, have but an imperfect correspondence with the real world we live in, and the lived experience of being human. Hence, it is to be expected that perfect application of good principles will occasionally lead to absolutely asinine conclusions in some cases. Failure to bear cognizance of that fact separates the ideologue from everyone else, and it is not a praiseworthy separation.
In this case, a person admits to the perfectly human feeling of not really being emotionally invested in drug dealers serving prison terms. Admitting that feeling has no bearing on policy questions such as whether it is better on balance to send drug dealers to prison. It does not conflict with libertarianism in any way to have contempt for a wide variety of actions or people, so long as that feeling doesn’t translate into actual policy prescriptions that limit the freedom of those people or proscribe those acts.
September 6, 2010, 3:15 pmElemenope says:
Junkies do not crop up in all societies at pretty much all times.
That is what we have. Your insistence to deny this most basic fact is completely ludicrous.
Nor is that what I claimed. You need to work on your reading skills. You asked: why is there such a demand for drugs in the first place? I answered, well, people like using drugs; it is entertaining. There is ample evidence for this simple fact throughout history and across a broad cross section of cultures. It is not an unwarranted interpolation to guess that drug *use* has occurred pretty much everywhere where it is possible to have occurred due to access. Your intentional continuation of eliding the distinction between use and abuse makes your continued comments in this area off-point, at the very least.
Now, if you wanted to extend the argument to why so much abuse, the answer to that probably has to do with what I said immediately following your second comment on the matter; namely, that the values inherent in Western civilization (freedom, individual autonomy, private property, privacy) probably exacerbate drug use into abuse in those societies, due to tearing down the control systems that were put in place by religion and what-have-you. I would further posit that capitalism probably provides an excellent mechanism for incentivizing the supply side of such a change.
If you wanted to unmake Western civilzation, it is probably possible to return drug use to levels seen in other civilizations. Short of that, I think we’re out of luck, and pouring on additional negative externalities (empowering gangs, jailing millions of citizens) isn’t really gonna help.
On the contrary, we are not hard wired to eat a bunch of junk food and feel good. In fact, we are biologically built to feel excellent if we feed our bodies the healthiest diet. Of course, if someone is using food as a pain reliever, or because of being conditioned to eating in a really bad way, then they will feel better after binging, but that is only true because the context is totally problematic to begin with.
Over the long-term, certainly, and only in the sense of feeling of general well-being. But the pleasure response doesn’t happen over the long-term, it happens in situ. And shortly after the moment of consumption, it is an established medical fact that sugar and fat causes a spike in dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, generating the experience of pleasure. Some people are not accustomed to large amounts of animal fat, particularly, in their diets, and so separate from the pleasure response can cause nausea, which in those people generally causes a learned avoidance response.
Actually, you interpreted my comment in a different way than was intended. It looks like you certainly missed a thread where I said that McD hamburgers tasted gross. It was tongue-in-cheek to say that they should be banned–because they taste so bad.
Fair enough.
September 6, 2010, 3:36 pmAlessandra says:
Yawn. The day you want to start addressing all the drug abuse problems that happen in the world, I think you will have something more useful to say.
If only you had a little mirror at home… if you can’t understand what I have been repeatedly pointing out, you are arguing mostly with yourself.
That’s just a shoddy claim. We can make a comparison to food and other practices. Different cultures have had access to different foods and have created profoundly different attitudes and behaviors towards food and eating. Assuming that every culture in the world has been the same concerning sex, food, drugs, religion, politics, is the most ludicrous, non-sensical claim ever.
It’s obvious that the reason for pointing out your negligence in dealing with the drug abuse issue escapes you.
September 6, 2010, 4:28 pmAlessandra says:
Yes, but the brain is so much more complex than the nucleus accumbens, and we are not just a walking brain either. We are an entire system of complex signals. You can eat sugar and fat and feel immediate, clear displeasure. Your description of the experience of eating sugar and fat as mostly being one of pleasure is very wrong. Although it can happen that some people may have the experience you describe, or have it at some moments during the day, it can be a completely different experience for other people, or for even the same person at other moments.
September 6, 2010, 4:38 pmElemenope says:
Yes, but the brain is so much more complex than the nucleus accumbens, and we are not just a walking brain either. We are an entire system of complex signals. You can eat sugar and fat and feel immediate, clear displeasure. Your description of the experience of eating sugar and fat as mostly being one of pleasure is very wrong. Although it can happen that some people may have the experience you describe, or have it at some moments during the day, it can be a completely different experience for other people, or for even the same person at other moments.
Geez, Alessandra, that’s true. When a person isn’t hungry, for example, no food is likely to be pleasurable. Or if they’re nauseous. I thought we were talking about, you know, when people are hungry, they eat, and what they eat can trigger a pleasure response in a pretty reliable way. It’s like if I were to say “the sky is blue” you’d immediately come back with “but not *all* the time, therefore the sky is not blue and you are an idiot!”.
Different cultures have had access to different foods and have created profoundly different attitudes and behaviors towards food and eating. Assuming that every culture in the world has been the same concerning sex, food, drugs, religion, politics, is the most ludicrous, nonsensical claim ever.
Again, not *at all* what I claimed, especially that second sentence; don’t know where the heck you are getting this stuff from. Read more carefully. That there has been drug use in most if not all cultures is a pretty uncontroversial claim. Reading into that an “[assumption] that every culture in the world has been the same concerning sex, food, drugs, religion, politics” requires an astounding imagination and a complete lack of reading comprehension.
September 6, 2010, 5:00 pmAlessandra says:
Certainly not for Twinkies and a lot of junk food. You are hungry, you eat the crap, and you feel a lot of displeasure, clearly and immediately. Maybe if your entire life experience has been of feeling pleasure at eating garbage of food, the very idea that this does not happen to other people might seem outrageous to you, but it does not change other people’s reality.
September 6, 2010, 5:30 pmElemenope says:
Maybe if your entire life experience has been of feeling pleasure at eating garbage of food, the very idea that this does not happen to other people might seem outrageous to you, but it does not change other people’s reality.
There certainly are exceptions, but the mean is well-established. You seem, continuously, to want to use deviations from the mean as an argument that the mean isn’t the mean. Good luck with that.
September 6, 2010, 5:42 pmAlessandra says:
Geez, Alessandra, that’s true. When a person isn’t hungry, for example, no food is likely to be pleasurable.
=============
And this is another careless comment. If this wasn’t the case for an increasingly number of people, we wouldn’t have the horrible obesity rates that we do now.
Our brain is much more complex and complicated than what you described.
September 6, 2010, 5:42 pmElemenope says:
And this is another careless comment.
No it isn’t, actually. Hunger is a subjective sense prompted by a complex set of chemical triggers (from the hypothalamus, mostly), usually ultimately triggered by feedback from the insulin receptor system, signifying low blood sugar. Those triggers change in sensitivity depending upon average calorie intake and change even more dramatically after repeated exposure to sugars. Hence, people who become obese, when they eat, generally do feel hungry, because their body’s sense of when it needs food is thrown out-of-whack. This, BTW, is why many diabetics are overweight.
If this wasn’t the case for an increasingly number of people, we wouldn’t have the horrible obesity rates that we do now.
As per the above, this opinion is suborned by nothing more or less than an ignorance of the biological mechanisms underlying the hunger response.
Our brain is much more complex and complicated than what you described.
Oh? Where did I describe the brain as simple?
September 6, 2010, 6:02 pmAlessandra says:
And your reply denotes ignorance or denial concerning the fact that many people eat when they are not feeling any hunger at all. And feeling pleasure is only one of a myriad different feelings that may or may not be experienced when eating while not being hungry.
September 6, 2010, 6:27 pmwhit says:
and it’s too bad you still have no reading comprehension.
you said i SUPPORT (that was your word) drug criminalization, when in fact i said nothing of the kind. intellectual honesty would require you apologize. you were wrong. i do not support it.
not that i expect intellectual honesty on the internet, but sometimes i am pleasantly surprised.
September 6, 2010, 6:27 pmwhit says:
but the question is – ARE they “like situated”
they are the same schedule (although the law could always change that), but are they the same drug and do they deserve the same penalties. (realizing there doesn’t have to be penalties at all)
if we, for example, had stricter penalties for a dosage unit of meth vs. a dosage unit of crack that would be “biased” against whites. the reverse would be biased against blacks. do we accept that and try to make penalties consistent with harm REGARDLESS of disparate impact or not? many people are not comfortable with disparate impact. many are.
in most cases, it is not racist in INTENT, just in result, but so are laws against robbery sexist in result (more men commit robbery)
September 6, 2010, 6:31 pmElemenope says:
And your reply denotes ignorance or denial concerning the fact that many people eat when they are not feeling any hunger at all. And feeling pleasure is only one of a myriad different feelings that may or may not be experienced when eating while not being hungry.
Where did I say either of those things? All I said was, rather derisively of your nitpickery, that if we are discussing the normal case of a hungry person eating, sugar and fat reliably produce a pleasure response. Obviously people sometimes eat for other reasons, and the gustatory experience is obviously richer than the pleasure response or any other single sensation.
As an aside, I wonder: do you engage in discussion because it is edifying and occasionally informative, or do you do it to “score points” and “win”?
September 6, 2010, 6:36 pmAlessandra says:
Take a look at my posts here–do you see global information about drug and alcohol issues, plus a certain number of my views of these problems?
And then take a look at how I’ve debated some points which I think are wrong. If I “scored,” it’s because I showed some things to be incorrect.
There are always multiple intellectual, emotional, and psychological dynamics happening when we are debating, and their individual salience varies tremendously, depending on what is being debated and with whom.
Anyways, it’s an interesting question coming from someone who describes himself as a jerk.
One of the things I find fascinating in participating in such a forum is to see these unique personalities show through for each of the people who comment here a lot (or the ones I read more anyways, because there is a lot that I don’t read). I can never not be fascinated enough. And this is a result of just bits and blurbs of text, not that much really, but the personality is so strong. (Or that partial slice of personality that we get to see anyways). Obviously there is so much more to each individual here off the Net… well, for some of us, at least, others, I’m not so sure…
September 6, 2010, 7:10 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I find it difficult to believe anyone qualified in the field would endorse that criticism. Do we have anyone qualified handy?
September 6, 2010, 7:43 pmElemenope says:
Alessandra –
While that’s nice and all, it really isn’t indicated by your continuous need to distort arguments and insert points into other people’s mouths (keyboards?). I agree that discussing with others online is fascinating, but fascination gives way to annoyance pretty fast when it becomes clear that the other person is more interested in sounding right than in reading and responding to what was actually typed.
September 6, 2010, 7:48 pmChrisTS says:
But they priced it just right, I suppose. :-)
September 6, 2010, 8:12 pmFub says:
As one familiar with usenet before it was usenet, I consider myself qualified to recognize the phenomenon at play in this particular case. My opinion: DNFTT.
September 6, 2010, 8:44 pmArthur Kirkland says:
You indicated you had little problem with criminalization of the sale of drugs. The experience of a libertarian who sees people rotting in jail for involvement with drugs (“petty morals,” in Keith Richards’ apt terminology) ranges from disapproval to outrage; “I see little problem with it” is not part of the mix.
A reasonable person may take that position — that there is “little problem” in putting someone in prison for cutting a half-pound of marijuana down to dime bags in a dorm room — but it has nothing to do with libertarianism, at least not as I understand it.
September 6, 2010, 8:53 pmElemenope says:
You indicated you had little problem with criminalization of the sale of drugs. The experience of a libertarian who sees people rotting in jail for involvement with drugs (“petty morals,” in Keith Richards’ apt terminology) ranges from disapproval to outrage; “I see little problem with it” is not part of the mix.
It’s entirely possible to not give a damn about the particular victims of a policy and still want the policy changed. The emotions invoked have nothing to do with libertarianism as an ideology with policy prescriptions, though if one thought of libertarianism as dispositional it might make slightly more sense to focus on the emotions and concerns involved.
In this case, one could in the abstract think that criminalization of the sale of drugs is wrong, but still be cognizant of the fact that most people engaged in the supply side of a black market tend to do things that are harmful to others, quite aside the actual drug dealing, and consequently not really care on a gut level when one of them is removed from society.
September 6, 2010, 9:11 pmChrisTS says:
Fub:DNFTT
Exactly.
September 6, 2010, 9:12 pmwhit says:
keep evading and backpedaling. yawn
you said i support it. i do not.
i made that clear and you have no evidence to think otherwise.
September 6, 2010, 9:58 pmAlessandra says:
Is anyone who points out a problem concerning misinformation, lack of logic, or problematic attitude in your comments distorting arguments or putting words in your “keyboard?”
Do you always think that the little snippets that you write communicate in a absolutely clear way, and so you blame other commenters if they interpret something differently than was intended?
What you sound pretty annoyed at is to have someone who has a different point view express and debate their arguments sustaining their view and expose where yours are weak (or completely ludicrous).
And the latter can be very edifying, and it’s one of the major reasons why people debate issues in the first place.
Now, in my view, it would be even more edifying for you to post the stats on crack babies in the last 30 years. Correct information is important when evaluating problems in society. As I said, I can’t think of a good reason why you and Fub are withholding that information in this discussion. It’s not edifying at all.
Finally, I have to say that your behavior online has given me much to think about. Not that you’d ever guess. :-)
September 7, 2010, 3:20 amAJ says:
How do Libertarians continue to get twisted up with this drug legalization business?
September 7, 2010, 6:59 pmWhen you do some sort of drug legalization/decriminalization you reduce the “price” of doing drugs by: (1) reducing the monetary cost, (2) reducing the criminal justice or evasion cost, and (3) reducing the unacceptable behavior cost. In all other economic matters, Libertarians come to the correct conclusion that reducing all of these costs will lead to more consumption. Mustn’t Libertarians then say simply “so what?” and allow the transient uptick to eventually subside to some steady-state level. Unfortunately we all know what follows the uptick in ODs, domestic batteries, car deaths, and addictions: government will step in and re-regulate. Then Libertarians lose the benefit of a low-price market and the black market re-emerges. Criminal justice must once again patrol the black market. At this point, the Libertarian become the central planner attempting to figure the right price for drugs to keep the anti-social negatives at bay and the policing overhead at a minimum. Libertarians, I thought, were against exercising such micro-management of the market place. Please Libertarians, explain the error of my way (or repent)!
Elliot says:
OK. If mental addiction comes from things like watching TV, sunsets, the Metropolitan Opera, or marx Brothers movies, then mental addiction is not a factor in discussing substance usage.
September 7, 2010, 7:12 pm