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Legalize Drugs to End Border Violence – Miron

March 26, 2009

Harvard Lecturer: Legalize Drugs to End Border Violence

(Published 03/24/2009 by Talkleft)

Another voice in the small but growing crowd urging legalization of drugs to end the Mexico drug war violence: Harvard Senior Lecturer in Economics Jeffrey Miron.

Argument 1: Prohibition creates violence. It happened with alcohol and gambling. End the prohibition, end the violence. [More…]

Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.

Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after. Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it’s permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question. The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs (emphasis supplied.)

But, there are other reasons, according to Miron: Such as, legalize drugs, reduce bribery.

Prohibition of drugs corrupts politicians and law enforcement by putting police, prosecutors, judges and politicians in the position to threaten the profits of an illicit trade.

Criminalization of drugs erodes our constitutional rights:

Prohibition erodes protections against unreasonable search and seizure because neither party to a drug transaction has an incentive to report the activity to the police. Thus, enforcement requires intrusive tactics such as warrantless searches or undercover buys. The victimless nature of this so-called crime also encourages police to engage in racial profiling.

Prohibition is bad for national security:

Prohibition has disastrous implications for national security. By eradicating coca plants in Colombia or poppy fields in Afghanistan, prohibition breeds resentment of the United States. By enriching those who produce and supply drugs, prohibition supports terrorists who sell protection services to drug traffickers.

Prohibition harms the public health:

Patients suffering from cancer, glaucoma and other conditions cannot use marijuana under the laws of most states or the federal government despite abundant evidence of its efficacy. Terminally ill patients cannot always get adequate pain medication because doctors may fear prosecution by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Prohibition breeds disrespect for the rule of law:

Prohibitions breed disrespect for the law because despite draconian penalties and extensive enforcement, huge numbers of people still violate prohibition. This means those who break the law, and those who do not, learn that obeying laws is for suckers.

And the number one reason that may resonate with the public in these perilous economic times: Prohibition is a financial drain.

Federal, state and local governments spend roughly $44 billion per year to enforce drug prohibition. These same governments forego roughly $33 billion per year in tax revenue they could collect from legalized drugs, assuming these were taxed at rates similar to those on alcohol and tobacco. Under prohibition, these revenues accrue to traffickers as increased profits.

President Obama‘s new plan to spend $700 million for border security is the wrong approach. And that’s in addition to Merida:

The funds, meant to assist what administration officials described as an “anti-smuggling effort,” will complement ongoing U.S. aid to Mexico under the Merida initiative, a three-year $1.4 billion package aimed at helping Mexico fight the drug cartels with law enforcement training, military equipment and improved intelligence cooperation.

The war on drugs is a failure. Plan Mexico will crash and burn.

Drug Policy Rendered Down

December 19, 2008

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Posted in Harm reduction, Human Rights, Illegal drug trade, prohibition, United States, war on drugs | 2 Comments »

So what is there to understand?

October 9, 2008

Image by mmcrae01 via Flickr

“The last few years have seen an extraordinary shift in thinking about this issue with increasingly mainstream figures arguing we should consider legalisation as an alternative to what they regard as the failure of the law-enforcement strategy.” – BBC’s Mark Easton

“I think what was truly depressing about my time in the civil service was that the professionals I met from every sector held the same view: the illegality of drugs causes far more problems for society and the individual than it solves. Yet publicly, all those people were forced to repeat the mantra that the Government would be “tough on drugs”, even though they all knew that the policy was causing harm.” – Julian Critchley (Ex- director of the UK Anti-Drug Co-Ordination Unit)
“The only completely effective way to ameliorate the drug problem, and especially the crime which results from it, is to bring the industry into the open by legalising the distribution and consumption of all dangerous drugs, or at the very least by decriminalising their consumption.” – Alan Duncan MP, Conservative Former Cabinet Member
“If the UN is right and drugs account for 70 per cent of organised criminal activity,’ argues Glenny, ‘then the legalisation of drugs would administer by far the deadliest blow possible against transnational organised criminal networks.” – Misha Glenny
And here we come to the vital distinction between the advocacy of temperance and the advocacy of prohibition. Temperance and self-control are convertible terms. Prohibition, or that which it implies, is the direct negation of the term self-control. In order to save the small percentage of men who are too weak to resist their animal desires, it aims to put chains on every man, the weak and the strong alike. And if this is proper in one respect, why not in all respects? Yet, what would one think of a proposition to keep all men locked up because a certain number have a propensity to steal? – Felix Mendelsohn, 1915
Image via Wikipedia“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.” – Albert Einstein
“As long as the government can arbitrarily decide which substances are legal and which are illegal, then those who remain behind bars for illegal substances are political prisoners.” – Paul Krassner, 1999
Image via Wikipedia
“There is, in my opinion, no government policy that is as immoral as drug prohibition…” – Nobel Laureate, Milton Friedman
The government is good at job creation. Every arrest of a drug dealer creates a new high-paying job opening. – Peter Guither
“In the end, legalization of certain substances may be the only way to bring prices down, and doing so may be the only remedy to some of the worst aspects of the drug plague: violence, corruption, and the collapse of the rule of law.” – Jorge Costaneda – Mexican Foreign Minister
“No one is asking for some free-for-all for drugs. I want drugs to be controlled and regulated, but we do not want to allow what has happened over the past thirty years to continue, whereby, in an illegal market, criminals – irresponsible people – sell poisoned drugs that kill young people. We want to say to those irresponsible people that we will control them, take their market away and not allow young people to be their victims any more. I believe that the experience of Switzerland and the Netherlands, and now of other countries, is that the only way to do that effectively is to collapse the market by replacing it with one that can be regulated, licensed and controlled.” – Paul Flynn MP Labour

“The fundamental problem is the collision between the dramatic rise in the use of drugs and a policy that prohibits them. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that drug users impinge on the rights of other people only when they steal, and they have to do that only because of prohibition.” Liberal Democrat Baroness Walmsley
“I joined the unit more or less agnostic on drugs policy, being personally opposed to drug use, but open-minded about the best way to deal with the problem…However, during my time in the unit, as I saw more and more evidence of ‘what works’, to quote New Labour’s mantra of the time, it became apparent to me that … enforcement and supply-side interventions were largely pointless. They have no significant, lasting impact on the availability, affordability or use of drugs.” – Julian Critchley -Former director of the UK Anti-Drug Coordination Unit in the Cabinet Office
—
Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›

Spokesperson on Climate Change, Environment and Associate ‘Shadow’ Law And Order.
#6 ‘on the list’ http://www.republicans.org.nz/

Don Dies For Nought

September 24, 2008

Image via Wikipedia

“His life was taken as he was working hard and undercover to protect our families and the wider community from that nasty element we have all become so familiar with – illegal drug traffickers and drug users,” – Papakura Mayor Calum Penrose (Locals honour slain police officer, Papakura Courier, 24 September 2008)

Police undercover and Technical Specialist Don Wilkinson was an honorable man tasked with a hopeless cause and died protecting no-one, according to Judge Jerry Paradis and recent guest of Prof. Max Abbot for his Vice Chancellor AUT Winter lecture series (Judge Paradis – Board Member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)

Police and Media are still parroting the ‘suspected P-lab’ line – as if they haven’t checked the house yet.

The kind of prejudice expressed in Calum Penrose ill-informed rant serves only to entrench the worst attributes of our drug policy… that of prejudice and hatred. Their is no evidence yet produced that demonstrates that Don died from Methamphetamine or any other drug. He died of “Prohibition“.

Has no one read about Capone, Alcohol Prohibition and the Valentines Day Massacre?

We can best support and protect our Police by ridding ourselves of the dysfunctional prohibitionist paradigm that delivers us the very tragic outcomes – ‘the unintended consequences’ that politicians and public servants commissioned with ‘a duty of care’ set out to solve.

—
Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›

Social Ecologist ‘at large’
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com
http://blair4mayor.com
http://efsdp.org

ph (643) 389 4065 cell 027 265 7219

Review of Misuse of Drugs Act 1975

March 19, 2008

Review of Misuse of Drugs Act 1975

The Commission will review the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 and make proposals for a new legislative regime consistent with New Zealand’s international obligations concerning illegal and other drugs.

Published 19 Mar 2008

Blair Anderson
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
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Posted in 1975 Misuse of Drug Act, crime, Drug abuse, drugs, Health, prohibition | Leave a Comment »

British Cannabis Use Drops [NORML]

November 7, 2007

British Cannabis Use Drops Following Reclassification British cannabis use has declined sharply in the three years following the government’s decision to make possession to a non-arrestable offence, according to the latest figures from the UK Home Office’s annual Crime Survey. ‘With cannabis in the headlines here again, it’s important to acknowledge that moving away from prohibition is not associated with an increase in use,’ said NORML’s spokesperson Chris Fowlie.

more- Scoop: British Cannabis Use Drops:

Wednesday, 7 November 2007, 12:48 pm Press Release: NORML

Posted in cannabis, crime, prohibition | Leave a Comment »

Causation, Correlation, Nicotine, Alcohol & Pot.

October 28, 2007

Teenagers who smoke are five times more likely to drink and 13 times more likely to use marijuana than those who are not smokers, says a US report issued today.

The report by Columbia University’s National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse presented further evidence linking youth smoking to other substance abuse and spotlighted research on how nicotine affects the adolescent brain.

“Teenage smoking can signal the fire of alcohol and drug abuse or mental illness like depression and anxiety,” Joseph Califano, who heads the centre and is a former US health secretary, said in a telephone interview.

The report analysed surveys conducted by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and other data on youth smokers. Most smokers begin smoking before age 18.

Smokers aged 12 to 17 were more likely drink alcohol than nonsmokers – 59 per cent compared to 11 per cent, the report found. Those who become regular smokers by age 12 are more than three times more likely to report binge drinking than those who never smoked – 31 per cent compared to nine per cent.

Binge drinking was defined as having five drinks or more in a row.

Asked whether smoking is causing these other behaviours or is just another risky behaviour occurring alongside the others, Califano said, “There’s no question that early teenage smoking is linked to these other things. Now whether it’s causing it or not, I think the jury is probably still out on that.”

Smokers ages 12 to 17 are more apt to meet the diagnostic definition for drug abuse or dependence in the previous year – 26 per cent compared to two per cent, the researchers said.

The report noted that marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug among teenagers, with government data from 2005 showing seven per cent of those aged 12 to 17 used marijuana.

Of these, current cigarette smokers are 13 times more likely to use marijuana than those who do not smoke.

The younger a child starts smoking, the greater the risk, the Columbia team said.

Children who start smoking by age 12 are more than three times more likely to binge on alcohol, nearly 15 times more likely to smoke marijuana and almost seven times more likely to use other drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Teenagers who smoke also have a higher risk of depression and anxiety disorders, the study found.

The report cited scientific studies showing the nicotine in tobacco products can produce structural and chemical changes in the developing brain that make young people vulnerable to alcohol and other drug addiction and mental illness.

This includes effects on the brain chemicals dopamine and serotonin and changes to brain receptors associated with an increased desire for other addictive drugs.

Reuters

A poverty of reason.

Columbia University’s National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse have identified that naughty kids do naughty things…. (see MRC: Medical Rearch Council – News Antisocial behaviour in kids key to alcohol trouble in teens )

Like protecting the ‘vulnerable’ is the American way! Balderdash.
When we [NZ included] arrest someone for pot, we turn an otherwise normal person into a ‘victim’ purportedly to save them from themselves.

This study is evidence ‘pot laws’ protect and arguably, promote early entry into the ‘harmful’, albeit legal drug markets.

Worse, it avoids discussing the social ecology, the set and setting of poverty along with the toxic laws that create both the opportunity/incentive for early entry and rejection of social values/alienation and any subsequent ‘deviancy amplification’.

If pot wasn’t illegal, rather controlled by legal regulation, these kids would in all likelihood come to little or no harm. Isn’t that the desired ‘harm minimising’ outcome here?.

Consider; If ALL youth smoked pot and didn’t binge drink or inhale nicotine, the ‘life time’ prognosis would be entirely different.

As I have said on many occasions, prohibition couldn’t promote pot use to kids more efficiently than if pot was made compulsory.

The best advertising to prevent youth uptake would be to say cannabis is really good for rheumatism and other (over 50) age related stuff. It would turn them right off!

A bit of intellectual honesty is the ‘cure’. /Blair

Posted in addiction, alcohol, confusing messages, education, harm minimisation, health promotion, medpot, prohibition, social ecology, teens, youth | Leave a Comment »

Drugs strategy debate ‘is a sham’

October 21, 2007

“‘Prohibition’s failure is now widely understood and acknowledged among key stakeholders in the debate… the political benefits of pursuing prohibition are now waning and the political costs of its continuation are becoming unsustainable.”

other highlights that have high relevence to the current New Zealand drug policy ‘situation’ / Blair

current policy is fuelling a crime epidemic.

drug prohibition has allowed organised crime to control the market and criminalised millions of users, putting a huge strain on the justice system.

half of all property crime is linked to fundraising to buy illegal drugs.

police claim that drug markets are the main driver of the UK’s burgeoning gun culture.

Home Office survey, commissioned in 2000, which showed the social and economic costs … were costs to the victims of drug-related crime.

the consultation process has been a sham designed to stifle debate on drugs policy

Drugs strategy debate ‘is a sham’ Special reports Guardian Unlimited:

Posted in crime, drug policy, Govt Drug Policy, gun culture, politics, prohibition | 1 Comment »