Comments on: War on drugs: Definition of insanity

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Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:51:13 +0000

[...] War on drugs: Definition of insanity [...]

By: John Williams

John Williams — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:20:08 +0000

How about easing up on non-violent drug addicts so that child molesters and rapists can stay in jail until the day they die and other violent criminals can serve longer terms that keep them locked up until they are too feeble to be a danger to anyone! That would be a much better use of limited resources especially when non-violent drug addicts could be treated through harm reduction methods for much less than the current costs of housing them in prison plus the exorbitant cost of the justice system, potential lost tax revenue of addicts in harm reduction who go back to work, foreign drug wars, local drug wars, imprisoning marijuana users not to mention the fact that limiting supply of drugs drives up prices paradoxically creating more crime because addicts rob to feed their addiction due to the increased price of street drugs. I have to say I do not believe in the nanny state that says an individual cannot do drugs because they cause crime when what is actually causing high crime rates is the jacked up drug prices which are created by law enforcement and the war on drugs. To me this is a slippery slope because the underlying idea is government regulating something because it is unhealthy. Since the war on drugs is in large part actually responsible for higher crime rates the only logical basis to regulate drugs is because it is unhealthy and could cost society through lost productivity, the target is not crime because “the drug war” itself exacerbates crime. The idea underlying the nanny state could be used to regulate many unhealthy things people take for granted such as alcohol,sugar,caffeine,fatty foods,etc. Outlawing drugs is not much different than the nanny state outlawing anything dangerous, unhealthy, or potentially costly to society because of potential lost productivity and/or increased health costs. To me this constraint on liberty is not worth the safety it supposedly imparts and reminds me of something Benjamin Franklin said:

“Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither and will lose both.”

The “war on drugs” is also a perfect example of circular logic and if the policy makers were really against high crime rates they would have to be extremely stupid to not realize that their war on drugs was the cause of much of the high crime rates. If they were really against crime, were rational people, and self-consistent they would realize that they and their drug war are the cause of much of the existent crime and decide to find better alternatives to the drug war which would actually save tax payers money while at the same time lowering crime, giving addicts a little bit of their dignity back, remove addicts from the criminal subculture that exists in jails and perpetuates the self destructive beliefs and behaviors of addicts, disassemble the loose confederation of cartels, traffickers, pushers and their infrastructure which is used to create new customers by targeting children. By supplying drugs to addicts through harm reduction and driving prices down due to an increased supply controlled by government for treatment using a disease model and then using the freed up justice system and law enforcement resources to aggressively target pushers and other violent offenders there would be multiple benefits.

1) A tightly regulated supply that treated addicts under a disease model that involved gradually changing lifestyle from an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy lifestyle would drive down the cost of drugs due to supply being controlled by government. This harm reduction system could be equated to heart disease and diet, there are genetic components that create a predisposition to both heart disease and addiction but lifestyle choices and therefore personal responsibility are just as important as the genetic component in both. Also just like a person with heart disease may not change his diet overnight but instead would change diet and lifestyle gradually and in parallel with changing understanding of the problem,changing beliefs, and changing paradigms the same could be said of a drug addict. Basically lifestyle changes do not generally happen all at once but overtime with new understanding due to a changed worldview.

2) The lower cost of drugs could be combined with long sentences for traffickers and the stronger focus on traffickers by law enforcement. This could be done using the prison, justice system, and law enforcement resources that would be freed up because these resources would no longer be wasted on non-violent addicts and marijuana users. The lower cost of drugs combined with much longer jail time for pushers and traffickers, streamlined court system and stronger focus of law enforcement on targeting traffickers would quickly destroy the drug trafficking industry since no one would risk many years in jail to sell drugs that had no profit potential. Instead of creating higher prices by targeting supply creating ever more violent competition and gangs due to higher profits the goal should be to completely take control of supply and drive down costs then create extreme disincentives such as long prison sentences for traffickers that when combined with low profit potential destroys the entire industry of selling drugs.

3) The treatment of addiction as a disease with a genetic component that increases predisposition for addiction along with personal responsibility for lifestyle choices similar to heart disease.would serve to separate addiction from any tendency to romanticize drug use. Some movies, mass media, cult classics, books etc create an idyllic impression of drugs especially in the minds of impressionable youth, by equating drug addiction to disease or mental health problems any inclination of impressionable youth to think along these romanticized lines will be destroyed due to the stigma of disease especially if addiction is framed as a problem involving mental health which in many cases it has been shown to be. Drug addiction education that painted drug addiction in a disease model or mental health model would very quickly reduce drug use and abuse by adolescents as long as it did not attempt to pigeonhole marijuana into the same category, many young people who have had experience(s) with marijuana would disregard the whole campaign if it targeted marijuana believing it to be untrustworthy about marijuana based on their own experiences and therefore untrustworthy in all respects about addiction.

As I said above I do not really think the nanny state approach to drugs is worth the liberties that are traded in exchange for the little security it supposedly creates especially when it is realized that the nanny state entails an underlying assumption that is inherent in the system and completely taken for granted or not even considered by most people. The underlying assumption that is inherent in the nanny state system presupposes that the state is better at choosing what is beneficial for each individual than individuals choosing for themselves. To be a self consistent presumption there are many unhealthy choices that individuals make that should or could be removed from individual control and decided by the government. Examples of these would be alcohol, sugar,caffeine, coffee, tobacco, fatty foods, and many other vices that are addictive, mind altering and cost society due to health costs and lost productivity. If any one of these vices were made illegal crime would rise as people continued making individual choices due to the continuing desire to consume these mind altering substances irregardless of whether they are legal or not. This is the problem with prohibition. People will generally do whatever they want to do whether there are laws or not. Alcohol prohibition did not stop drinking and likely barely reduced it but it did create violent gangs who did not contribute taxes and only served to increase crime and multiply the problems prohibition was trying to stop, much like todays drug prohibition. Today it is also very hard to believe that drug use would increase if drugs were decriminalized or legalized as long as there was no marketing and truthful rational addiction education and campaigns that framed addiction as a mental health issue or disease were created. If many people wanted to do drugs they would do them today whether they were legal or not just like drinking alcohol during prohibition. Today drug use is not rampant not because laws stop drug use but because most people have no interest in doing drugs knowing the harms they cause. The only people who would ignore the negative consequences of drug use are those who are uneducated about the harms of drugs or people who believe the benefits they gain from drug use are greater than the harm it causes them. This would indicate either someone who is self medicating due to a mental health condition or someone with a predisposition to addiction who made bad choices or a lack of education about the harms of drug use. As long as the addict or marijuana user is not violent punishing them and using the limited resources that could be used to punish sexual predators, child molesters, and violent criminals makes no sense. Considering America has 25 percent of the worlds prisoners but only 5 percent of the worlds population it would seem that anyone who does not want this unbalanced, unsustainable use of resources to continue would realize that the best way to create change that would cost less and also lower crime would be an overhaul of the current abysmal failure called “the war on drugs”. The main people who benefit from the status-quo are rapists,molesters, and violent criminals who get lighter sentences than they would if resources were not being wasted on non-violent drug offenders including marijuana users. The current war on drugs does not work, it actually increases crime while imprisoning non-violent addicts who only harm themselves and has created a situation where the prison population is growing in an unbalanced way at an unsustainable rate that only serves to create criminal networks which are paid for by taxpayers that criminals use to network with each other, disseminate new criminal techniques while consolidating the self reinforcing criminal subculture and the self defeating beliefs that subculture entails.

By: Sage

Sage — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:37:09 +0000

Cathy, why don’t you show us some actual numbers on how much money is spent on the war on drugs and how much revenue is generated from drug seizures instead of just pulling numbers out of your butt?

I find it humorous that people who only know what they have read in a few article think I don’t have enough experience to talk about this stuff because I’ve only been doing for about a decade now.

Treatment is there for people who want it. The sad fact is, most people don’t want it. They’d rather continue to be leaches on society and make us all less safe and victims of their crimes to support the pathetic addiction. I’m sick and tired of hearing, “We need more education.” Bull. How many times do you have to be told not to do meth?? Anyone with half a brain would see a picture of one meth junky’s meth mouth and decide, “I’m never doing meth.” If you aren’t smart enough after that to avoid the stuff, I don’t have sympathy for you. No one holds a gun to your head to make you a junky. It’s time to stop making these people out to be victims. They are not. It was THEIR CHOICE. They chose to be junkies. If they truly want help, help them. Otherwise, lock ‘em up!

By: Chester Felds

Chester Felds — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:12:40 +0000

Look up on google, obama, japanese and verb. See what you find. She’s doing an obama on us here.

By: Cathy

Cathy — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:29:20 +0000

Sage:

You are only seeing things from your own view, not at all correct either. You mention what tax payers are paying for, how about BILLIONS EACH YEAR for the War on Drugs, why is it that you don’t mention this enormous tax payers waste? So let me get this straight, you think using tax dollars to help sick and addicted people become members of society again is a wasteful expense, yet you see no problem in the tax payers paying BILLIONS so you can confiscate other peoples homes and money which you also get to use to buy yourself new toys for the department. So helping people who need help is a waste, but helping you is completely OK? This is exactly why you with all your experience are not a good candidate to dictate drug policy. You sound like a greedy self deserving person who has no compassion for other people. I guess that’s the kind they breed in the DEA, heartless people with a hunger for financial forfeiture. So let me ask you, when you arrest a family for growing marijuana, do you guys high five each other as if you just did something cool or good? I bet you feel you guys did society a good service, but if you look further down the road you may see your actions are pushing our people toward a more harmful substance in alcohol to avoid legal trouble, which is further harming our peoples health and society as a whole. Your actions may seem productive in the moment, but outside of your world their is a country full of people that are being affected negatively by your actions when it comes to marijuana. People know its safer than alcohol and know it does not cause violence or the health problems as are caused by alcohol and tobacco, this in turn creates a disrespect for drug enforcement agencies.

By: john

john — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:47:35 +0000

Sage,

It is a proven fact that allowing addicts to purchase their drugs at affordable prices in a secure setting allows the addict to stabilize their life and even maintain gainful employment. We already do that in this country. Ever heard of a methadone clinic?? Other country’s do this with heroin maintenance clinics. Addicts are allowed to purchase reasonably priced heroin in a steady supply and are able to then get and keep jobs, houses, and maintain family responsibilities. Every study that has looked at the effectiveness of methadone and heroin maintence have found them to be tremenously effective at reducing crime and improving the health of addicts and others in the community. Unfortunatly many, like yourself, view drug use as somehow immoral in and of itself and therefore the goal is not to reduce harm and improve health but rather to attempt to eliminate the use of about 10 or 12 drugs, regardless of the associated costs and futility of such an effort. You cannot deny the scientific fact that drug maintenance programs have all been much more successful at reducing crime and other harms than drug prohibition could ever hope to be.

By: John Williams

John Williams — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:16:39 +0000

What you fail to realize is that addicts become criminals because their unending quest for drugs is expensive and is not amenable to a job that pays every 2nd week. A job requires some stability which is completely missing from the criminal subculture addicts are drawn to in order to feed their addictions on a daily basis. Satiating a never ending addiction is expensive and creates a chaotic lifestyle that is too far removed from mainstream society for most addicts to even consider getting a job. The impression I get from your reply is that you have managed to cynically dehumanize your perception of addicts believing they are criminal scum first, drug addicts second and humans last, if at all. This is not true most addicts become criminals after becoming addicts. This is obviously their own fault but that does not mean that they would not eventually become contributing members of society if they had a stable lifestyle that was amenable to becoming a part of mainstream society because they were no longer scamming and stealing to feed their never ending quest for drugs. The never ending quest for drugs and the criminal subculture that goes hand and hand with that drug seeking behavior is the biggest roadblock to addicts becoming productive members of society; not some innate desire to rob and pillage but an innate desire to get drugs. The cost of clothes, food and shelter is not the same as hundreds of dollars a day for drugs and acquiring necessities is compatible with a job since acquiring clothing, food and shelter does not induce the compulsive self-defeating behavior that drug seeking does. The cost of living could easily be as low as $700-$800 month and is agreeable with day jobs and pay periods, whereas the cost of an addiction could be anywhere from $1500 up to obscene amounts per month plus living costs and is in no way is agreeable to working since the lifestyle is far to chaotic. Your assertion that addicts would steal to pay for food and shelter is unfounded and based only on your obvious cognitive bias. Even if you are right though the amount of crime would still be drastically reduced since the necessities of life would be less than the cost of living plus the cost of whatever crimes the addict commits to support his habit. But the truth is that when the chaotic lifestyle of seeking drugs is mitigated addicts do tend to be more apt to become self sufficient and abstain from drugs. Their is evidence that backs this up and the reason I know this is because harm reduction is not MY plan . That you would suggest that indicates you are not very wordly or educated on the drug policies of other nations. The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Switzerland,Denmark,Switzerland, Germany all practice harm reduction by supplying heroin to addicts with Canada and Belgium starting trials. Why an arbitrary line has been drawn at giving methadone to addicts while heroin or potential pharmaceutical alternatives to stimulants is unacceptable is an inconsistent part of the illogical American drug policy. There is also Portugal which abolished criminal punishment for possession of drugs in 2001. Scientific reports on the efficacy of harm reduction are all favorable and even Portugals’ decriminalization of drugs has reduced the use of heroin, while other drugs have remained relatively the same except marijuana which increased but is still much lower than U.S. and its hardline approach which has led to America having %25 of the worlds prison population even though it only has %5 of the worlds population. Marijuana use in Portugal for 15 and over is %10 while in the U.S. 12 and over is %40. The money Portugal has saved prosecuting addicts with personal amounts of drugs has gone to treatment and much more resources for targeting traffickers without any additional revenue needed. Portugal is at least on the right track since they are targeting both supply and demand. Supply is targeted through the extra law enforcement and legal resources being focused on traffickers while demand is targeted through decriminalizations which entails treatment for drug possession, people going to treatment has doubled even though it is basically voluntary.
Even if none of that were true it is obvious that targeting supply while jailing users is an ineffective and expensive way of dealing with drugs. You complain that with a harm reduction system that people would need to be taxed to pay for addicts food. The ironic thing about that statement is that taxpayers already are paying for their food and shelter through welfare and imprisonment and all the many other costs associated with addiction, crime and the war on drugs. Harm reduction would be much cheaper and more effective at reducing crime if it treated addiction as a mental or genetic disease, which as I have wrote before has been shown to be true, while not excusing the individuals personal responsibility for bad choices. Any drug policy that does not focus on curbing demand will not work unless prison sentences become much more extreme than they are now which would make the drug war even more insanely expensive. A two pronged strategy that effectively targets demand through different treatment options such as harm reduction and therapy for users while redoubling the criminal resources that would be freed up to target trafficking would be cheaper and more effective than the current war on drugs. There is scientific evidence that harm reduction lowers criminal behavior, increases abstinence, and turns some of the most incorrigible addicts into productive members of society. Even if you were right and all addicts continued doing crime for food and shelter, which I think is crazy, the crime rate would still be drastically reduced since the money gained through crime and spent on drugs plus necessities would far outweigh the money spent on necessities alone. Maybe you are satisfied with the status-quo but alot of people are beginning to realize what a hugely inefficient use of resources the current “war on drugs” is especially with the current economic problems.

By: Sage

Sage — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:08:50 +0000

John, my opinions are based on years of first hand experience. You can try to dismiss it as “anecdotal” because that’s all you have. You just read about stuff. I do it for real.

So let me get this straight, just so I understand you: you are suggesting that we would have LESS problems in this world with junkies is the cost of daily meth use dropped fro about $30 a day to $.45??

See, what you fail to understand is that junkies don’t just need their fix. They need clothes, food, an shelter too. Their drugs aren’t expensive. You keep trying to make the argument that they are, but you’re just wrong. Sorry. Quote all of the articles you want. I deal with it for real. If I want a book review, I’ll let you know! But back to my point, you think everything will be just fine and dandy if the junkies can get their poison cheap. What you’re failing to realize is you have only reduced ONE of their costs. Since most junkies can’t keep a job, where are they going to get money to eat? To live? To buy clothes?? Oh, they’re going to commit robberies and burglaries like they are not!!! Under YOUR plan, I guess they’ll just steal $20 to $30 less, since their drugs will be sooooo much cheaper. Hey, I have a better idea!! Since you want to make it easier to create junkies, why don’t you buy their clothes and food for them too!! What a great idea!! We can just tax hard working people more to put clothes on the backs of people who do nothing but smoke crack and meth all day!! And we can tax hard working people more to pay for food for these junkies!! Why should the junkies have to pay for anything at all!?!

By: John Williams

John Williams — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:32:16 +0000

Quick note: the John who posted above is another John.

Sage, I know you think you know everything because you believe your anecdotal evidence, which is notoriously known to be faulty due to the influence of Cognitive bias, back up your beliefs, which appear to be part of a very close minded self-centered worldview. The fact that you would say “The National Drug Threat Assessment” (the only article I mentioned) which is written by the National Drug Intelligence Center (a part of the U.S. Department of Justice) is “a few anti-war on drug sound bytes” is hard to understand. I am not sure why you think “The National Drug Threat Assessment” is “anti-war on drug(s)” but my first guess would be that anything that does not agree with your preconceived notions would always automatically be considered anti-drug war in your opinion. This obvious prejudice, which leads to you calling the USDOJ’s NDIC article anti-drug war, is a strong indication that your personal anecdotal evidence is strongly influenced by a cognitive bias. Due to this you should seriously consider reevaluating your worldview and questioning your prejudices which are probably due to the hard to avoid cynicism that is part and parcel of working in a stressful job that brings out the most negative, manipulative traits of individuals but which also unfortunately encourages skewed beliefs, in law enforcement and addicts, which are not necessarily reflective of reality. My guess is that this cynical worldview helps you to do your job well enabling you to justify sacrificing the liberties and freedom of individuals in reverence of the state and society at large but because of this you are not a good candidate for formulating a logical policy that is beneficial to individuals, addicts, and society at large. Actually to the contrary reverence of individual liberty, not of the state, according to the historical traditions of the U.S., and as exemplified by the founding fathers (whose fight for individual liberty is one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind), and which is immortalized in the spirit of the constitution is the best indicator of a good candidate for formulating policy beneficial to both society at large and its individual members. Therefore your anecdotal evidence based on the experience of seeing “multiple kilos of cocaine” and “thousands of pounds of marijuana” is irrelevant. Until you decide to back up your beliefs with non-anecdotal objective evidence with a basis in logic, not emotional reactivity, you are “taking sand to the beach”.

As far as the drug prices you should reread the post where I said even if the price is doubled or trebled due to middlemen and transportation costs the difference is still staggering. To give you an example here is a comparison of the price of 30mg morphine sulphate from an online pharmacy vs online answers about street prices:

Morphine Sulphate Cost per pill Total cost
30mg 120 tablets 50 cents each $59.96
30mg 120 tablets $10-$20 each $1200-$2400

So the blackmarket charges about 20-40 times more than the legal pharmaceutical market. Also pharmaceutical drugs would have much lower markup since it involves diversion within the country which would be much cheaper than the cost of international smuggling since diversion requires less middlemen and risk. So the markup is at least 20-40 times and almost definitely more even after accounting for your middlemen and their individual profits.

By: David from WI

David from WI — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:34:57 +0000

Your solution to solving alcohosm would be to buy em all a six pack each. It makes as much sense.

Face it the far left want to solve social and polital problems?!?!?! THEY ARE THE ROOT OF SO MANY OF THE PROBLEMS.

Has it ever occurred to you that the far left make things WORSE?????

Who just LOVED drugs in the 60s and now they want lecture ANYONE the VERY PROBLEM THEY HAD A BIG HAND IN CREATING.

The far left are have made things WORSE and KEEP DOING IT.

They are the root of so many of our social conflicts for a long time and are out of ther minds when THEY lecture others.

Tell us who is a coward.
Who are racists.
Who are Nazis
Who helps police race relations by
a. having a kegger (national embarrasmet)
b. saying the police acting stupidly when knowing zero facts and saying so FIRST
c. showing how being rich and powerful is more important than the truth
d. it really IS about your skin color NOT the TRUTH.
Who MAKES THINGS WORSE?????

Tell me Cyintia WHO MAKES THINGS MUCH MUCH WORSE.

The far left are living in their own fantasy worlds and meanwhile PEOPLE STILL SUFFER AND THEY BLAME EVERYONE BUT THEMSELVES.

The far left need collective therapy.