Addiction, Crystal Meth and White Collar Crime
Glad to have both Douglas and Mark in on the conversation now because both make separate, solid points about legalization and sentencing. To Mark: when I wrote that “legal drugs such as alcohol and cigarettes arguably cause more harm than most illegal substances” this was not meant as an argument for the legalization of illicit drugs. In fact, as I wrote in the very next sentence “If illegal drugs are legalized, what sort of harms will that present (emphasis mine), given the harms caused by alcohol and cigarettes?” In other words, let’s acknowledge that alcohol and cigarettes are perhaps uniquely harmful but let’s also ask about the harms and effects that legalizing illegal drugs might have. I don’t know the answer to this question and that’s why I wanted to bring Mark back into the conversation. I’m also very glad that Mark brought up the question of addiction. One fascinating—and much under-discussed, I think—facet of our drug policy is that we seem to know very little about addiction or even the effects of individual drugs themselves.
In 2002, I wrote an investigative piece for New York Magazine about the growing use of crystal meth among gay men in New York City and as I was researching the piece I was stunned to discover that public health officials had little understanding of the drug, from its effects to what sort of treatment might work for addicts. Crystal use among gay men, sadly, ended up reaching epidemic proportions in New York while spiking the number of HIV infections in the process. It was a public health disaster—so why were we so unprepared to deal with it particularly given that meth was hardly a “new” drug? Which brings me back to a point I’ve mentioned numerous times: why is just about every drug epidemic (from crack to Ecstasy) accompanied by horrible science? (I’m thinking about “crack babies” and certain studies stating—wrongly—that a single hit of Ecstasy can cause permanent brain damage.) If we’re so interested in treating addiction—and treating addicts can do a lot to curb demand—then why don’t we demand better studies about the effects of illicit drugs and what we can do to treat addicts? And why do we have to go to websites like www.erowid.org to get accurate information about illicit drugs?
Douglas asks what I think of the fact that the snitch dynamics present in drug cases are now being applied to white collar prosecutions. Good question: As I worked on “Snitch” I remember reading a piece from the New York Times in 2006 headlined “Tough Justice for Executives in Enron Era” that described how the feds were squeezing defendants in white collar cases via cooperators just as they typically do in drug and organized crime cases. Here are my thoughts: 1) As I written repeatedly, there’s no arguing with the fact that cooperators and informants are key law enforcement tools in prosecuting cases from drug conspiracy to public corruption 2) However, my problem with the 5k process is that is characterized by secrecy, unfettered prosecutorial discretion, uncorroborated evidence and, perhaps most importantly, as I’ve written here, 5K has “created a system in which cooperators induce suspects to sell them specific amounts of a drug in order to trigger the longest sentence for the suspect and therefore, the sharpest sentence reduction for themselves” thus turning drug enforcement on its head (dealers do not go “up the ladder”; they simply turn on other retail dealers). I can’t say it strongly enough: “Snitch” is not about my dislike of snitches nor it is a call to ‘Stop Snitchin’! It’s simply an examination of the very flawed 5K process and, more broadly, the sentencing guidelines themselves. OK, finally, to Douglas’ question: generally speaking, I wouldn’t decry the use of cooperators in white collar prosecutions but I would be concerned with some of the same abuses cropping up there that have been seen in drug cases in the past two decades. Let me quote from the “Tough Justice for Executives in Enron Era” piece that I mentioned above. This section refers to the prosecution of accounting firm KPMG:
“…the government told the firm if it continued to pay for outside lawyers for its executives, the government would look on that as an ‘act of treason or noncooperation,’ said Joel Androphy, a criminal defense lawyer in Houston… The neutralizing of certain crucial witnesses by the government's use of a threat of prosecution has prevented defense lawyers from pursuing more corroboration for accused top executives.”
So yes, as in drug cases, I would have a problem with a lack of corroboration in white collar prosecutions as well as treating non-cooperators with extraordinary harshness simply because they decided not to cooperate with the government.
why is just about every drug epidemic (from crack to Ecstasy) accompanied by horrible science?
One piece of this... As a peon at a research institute that does drug/alcohol/tobacco related stuff, a bit of advice I often hear passed between folks applying for grants is "Never, ever use the words 'harm reduction' in your grant application."
Some research orientations are much more likely to get funded than others.
December 12, 2007 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the education on this.
This and other comments just corroberate my belief that the former professions of law, medicine and science have been seriously corrupted by the excesess of business model.
It is all cyclical and we are VERY close to a correction.
Dr. Rick Lippin
http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com
December 12, 2007 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
One thing we do know is that small amounts of marijuana will cause almost instant death, after which the crazed dope-fiends rape, pillage, destroy property and blaspheme.
Do not let this scourge consume your children!
Collegiate binge drinking is the universally recommended antidote. It is effective in almost all cases.
December 12, 2007 2:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe it's not so much drugs as behavior. Like some so-called deviant sexual behaviors that people get seriously into, society "writ large" may be addicted to the punishment-safety polarity. There must be a better reason Americans put so many of each other in jail than rampant criminality.
December 12, 2007 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bad science is a function of the marketplace.
Illicit drugs are by definition illicit. Addicts, sufferers or those who are occasional or recreational users are by nature covert in their use. They don't disclose, they don't allow tracking or monitoring, as a result there are massive information deficits as to patterns of use, introduction to use, effects of occasional or recreationaly use, development or progress of addictions, etc. etc.
Those cases that do make it into the health care system are usually catastrophic cases of particular vulnerability or chronic long term use. They're in the health care system and under monitoring because they can no longer avoid it. This biases the the state of knowledge... it's as if our only formal knowledge of alcohol or alcoholism came from skid row winos in the final stages of cirrhosis.
Add to this the self-selection of research into illegal drugs. There's plenty of funding for 'scare research' into the horrible effects, and the scariest research results are promoted by political and law enforcement authorities as part of the criminalization/criminality. There's no market in government or police circles for the proposition that crack cocaine, or pcp, or whatever may not be that bad, or that it may not be so bad taken in moderation, etc.
You wonder why the science is so bad? It's a feature of the system, not a bug.
This is the 'we can't let go of the balloon or we'll fall' theory. The idea is that while the present option is bad, there are no other options apart from just throwing the doors open and letting cats and dogs live together.
Bullshit. The one defining incontrovertible factor of the current approach is that it has failed, failed and failed again. It has failed standing up, and it has failed lying down. It has failed in terms of preventing harm, respecting civil liberties, restraining proliferation, maintaining public health. It has failed in the morning, failed in the afternoon, and failed through the evening. And if you put a hat on it, it would fail wearing a hat. Give it a cat, and it would fail holding a cat.
It's not an excuse for failure to refuse to look at alternatives.
It strikes me that the Public Health approach has been tried elsewhere and has worked a lot better than the criminal law approach.
It strikes me that we never legalized alcohol. Rather,we changed our approach to dealing with it. Instead of criminalizing it, we regulated it, where it could be sold, who could sell it, where and when it could or could not be used. We've restricted it to bars, events with liquor licenses and private homes. We've put rules and controls on bars and liquor licenses. We've regulated retailers. We prohibit and arrest drunk drivers, and public intoxication. We prohibit minors from drinking alcohol. We support objective research, with cooperating subjects. We support AA and Al Anon, etc.
It strikes me that this has produced better results than prohibition. And it strikes me that it has produced better results than the pre-prohibition era, when alcohol produced massive social and personal damage.
December 12, 2007 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow, you pretty much said everything I would've said and then some, better than I would have said it.
It never fails to amuse/exasperate/annoy me that otherwise intelligent people will make remarks about the harms decriminalization would do, while being nearly oblivious to the massive harms that the current approach in the US do.
December 12, 2007 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you.
The only way to justify a bad option is to pretend no other options exist.
December 12, 2007 5:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very interesting.
I read the original article, and wrote my comment below before reading yours. It looks like we largely agree in both the causes of the drug trade problems and the failure of the current approaches.
My one (minor) disagreement with your post is that I think the current ways of controlling alcohol are as much of a failure as criminalizing alcohol and drugs were. The difference is that with alcohol legalized, we can make efforts to prevent minors from drinking (universally a failed effort) and limit access to other vulnerable populations like pregnant mothers. We have also taken out most of the violence and public corruption that accompanies the logistics and marketing of the the illegal product. Budweiser and Old Hickory can get their contracts enforced by the courts instead of having to kill competitors and product thieves and break knees to collect debts. They also don't have to bribe local Sheriffs to move their product (as is done on the Mexican border - both sides - and in Southeastern Oklahoma where the largest cash crop is Marijuana.) As any trip to a strip club will demonstrate, we have not broken the connection between alcohol and prostitution. That may be worse than during prohibition.
I read somewhere that the rate of alcoholism dropped significantly during Prohibition and then jumped back up when Prohibition was ended. Can't find the reference now, though.
So the problems of violence and corruption that lead to social instability are minimized by legalization. The cost is an increase in the number of addicts (greater rate of addiction) and a much more widespread set of alcohol related health problem than would have existed if alcohol were still not legal. We've traded lower social damage for much greater personal damage.
That's sort of a case of five one way and half a dozen the other, and I won't say which way is which. Both solutions are failures.
December 13, 2007 2:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let me know if you ever do. I'm frankly dubious about that particular statistic.
Keep in mind that when prohibition came in, Alcoholism became essentially a covert and non-reported activity. It stands to reason that 'reported' or 'observed' alcoholism would drop during the depression, when such activities or such a state would open the door to criminal investigation. And it stands to reason that 'reported' or 'observed' acoholism would increase when it wasn't illegal and would not trigger penalties.
Also, Alcoholism in that age was not understood as a disease, as it was later. And in particular, society had no real conception of 'functioning alcoholics.'
As to your contention that less punitive legal restrictions, and a public health approach aren't that useful, I refer to your own words:
True, youth still get illicit access to alcohol, but I'd argue that it is still a meaningful barrier. I'd also argue that strip clubs are not synonymous with prostitution.
Finally, I'd note that the social regulation of alcohol is an evolving topic. The notion that pregnant mothers should not drink, and the effects of fetal alcohol syndrome have come up only in the last couple of decades.
December 13, 2007 5:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
The key issue is that you simply cannot move the same total volume of anything through illegal methods against active enforcement as you can with a legal product. That would be particularly true for alcohol, since it is mostly water. Water is both bulky and heavy.
Under actively enforced prohibition, the total amount of alcohol to drink would only be a fraction of what is currently available. That fact all by itself will reduce the possible alcoholism.
Clearly the same logistics problems for illegal suppliers will not reduce the amount of drug addiction as much as it does for illegal alcohol, but the need to consume drugs in secrecy almost certainly does hold the total number of addicts down to some extent.
Those issues are measurable, however, and they should be if any form of legalization is attempted. As I understand the Dutch solution, drug use is still illegal, but enforcement against individual users who use drugs in specific locations is quite limited. That kind of "illegal but somewhat tolerated use" was developed after I left Germany in 1970. At that time the MP's told our battalion officers that the level of drug use (just outside Frankfurt) were beyond anything that enforcement could deal with.
[ Slightly OT - Since I learned to love good beer in Germany and found upon my return to "The World" that the colored flavorless water Americans drink instead of beer is ridiculous, I suspect that the beer makers made a deal to only sell horse pee after prohibition so that their main customers would be alcoholics. Had prohibition not eliminated all the good local beers, the garbage pilsners sold by Budweiser and its competitors did not have to be good beer. And it wasn't, even before they watered their product, called it Lite, and sold it at higher than premium prices. They got away with it because most Americans never drank good beer after prohibition and didn't know what good beer tasted like. Conspiracy? Or was it just cheaper to sell horse pee instead of decent beer?
In a case study I read on Budweiser when teaching a business strategy course it was pointed out that 5% of Bud's customers drink 50% of their product. The beer brewers don't have to make quality products for that market.]
December 13, 2007 7:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'd also like to see your information on alcoholism decreasing during prohibition. What information I've seen (again, with data limitations of the period) show the reverse, such as this chart of alcohol deaths and alcoholism in Cook County that was presented at the Senate hearings on prohibition.
Your assertion about the difficulty of moving large volumes of alcohol during prohibition is... interesting, but does not suggest decreased risk. In fact, prohibition caused the increase in higher proof alcohol being made for that very reason -- whisky was sold instead of beer, because it allowed more potency for the volume that needed to be transported. Prohibition always causes this (same today with illicit drugs -- drug with increased potency or substitution to higher-potency drugs). The prohibition-imposed need for reducing the volume of product transported is not a feature of prohibition to reduce harm -- it is, in fact, one of its significant dangers.
December 13, 2007 7:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
I had thought it jumped during prohibition too - that's partially because it wasn't as profitable to smuggle wine or beer - people were motivated soley by alchohol content. Then when people drank they got hammered rather than drinking 'socially' - not unlike underage binge drinking today. Teens in Europe don't do that for that most part.
In the same way, Marijuanna has soared in strength and price over the past 20 years.
I often scoff when the latest American outrage is offered as evidence of an American 'loss of innocence' but in a sense our stricly binary 'morality' is still as Puritan as ever.
We have off/on buttons for everything 'moral' - but seemingly are too naive to believe in dialing in the right tune.
December 13, 2007 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, the standards used to measure alcoholism did change before, during and after prohibition. They evolved continuously over time.
Even assuming a consistent standard immediately before and after the end of prohibition, the existence of prohibition had a major bias effect. Essentially, because alcohol was illegal, alcoholism was concealed. The only alcoholics diagnosed or identified during the depression were those who simply could not conceal it for one reason or another. After alcohol became legal, it became much easier to identify alcoholics since it was no longer concealed.
The notion that you could have an objective baseline of alcoholics so sick that they required medical attention and could not conceal also falls. The truth is that baseline was established by reporting. People and doctors could and did and had compelling reasons during prohibition to avoid reporting diseases as alcohol related.
Another commenter has made the observation that this bottleneck resulted in a sort of conservation of effect. The potency and addictive qualities of the product increased to facilitate transmission and distribution.
For myself, I think you've got a good argument in theory, but life is often counterintuitive. I find myself wondering how you would be able to measure the amount of illicit alcohol flowing through at all. There's a pronounced tendency not to report that information to government or academic sources.
Indeed, there's some evidence that you're completely wrong about this, at least in respect of some cases. England, for instance, had a public health approach to heroin with managed addiction care and a relatively small number of addicts. They moved to a prohibition based punitive system and the number of addicts skyrocketed.
One might assume that the profile of licit and illicit would be different. Illicit might have much greater toxicity, much greater cost and much less in terms of harm reduction.
Prohibitions may actually produce more addiction, and more supply, quixotic as that may sound. For instance, in my little town up in the obscure reaches of northern Manitoba, near the polar bears, crack cocaine is easily obtainable in sufficient supply to satisfy a growing population of addicts. Crack cocaine came in through distribution channels established by marijuana. Meanwhile Crystal Meth is coming in. I notice no scarcity in supply. I don't see anything holding down the number of addicts.
The existence of a bedrock illicit supply network opens the door for new drugs to come into the market, to move from niches to general addiction on large scale. The trend is always towards increasing potency and addictiveness.
My own view as an observer of the situation is that we wouldn't have crystal meth or crack cocaine around here, if the illicit distribution channels for marijuana had not been existing. Had marijuana been legal ten years ago, we wouldn't have crack today.
December 13, 2007 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting and illuminating discussion. Thanks to all of you.
If I find a good study on the subject, I might know enough to critique it. I'd like to see some good statistics. I don't need much to be convinced that the current system is an utter failure, but I still don't think that "legalization" is the answer.
But the term "legalization" may be politically inoperative. A medical model would need some other term applied and sold.
December 13, 2007 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
My son told an anecdote that illustrated his high school's situation re drugs/alcohol:
Some teenagers sharing a joint, and one says "Hey, man, we need some beer." "Uh, you know someone?" "Uh, no." "Shit."
He told me that there was a bathroom one went to for pot, but beer was really hard, requiring a cooperative older person.
On social regulation, the campaign against driving was already working in the 90s when I'd offer my daughter the car for the night, and she would answer "I'm not driving, I want to drink!" A similar campaign of sneering has been pretty successful on tobacco---I quit after forty years.
But one can't apply the social sanction if the behavior is secret.
December 13, 2007 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rick & Valdron, While recuperating from a long and painful visit to the dentist, I did some checking on Prohibition research today.
It is generally agreed that alcohol consumption decreased, at least for awhile and really only by some, usually in the rural parts of the country.
For many reasons, actual consumption numbers are scarce and confusing. Based on a Dept of Commerce Stat Abstract, there is one claim that individual per capita consumption of hard liquor went from 1.46 proof gallons in 1910-14 to 1.63 during Prohibition. However, that is probably due to the decrease in beer and wine drinking and the greatly increased uptick in hard liquor drinking.
Alcoholism rates.
Where things get slightly sticky again, is that the highest death rates from alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver occurred in the years 1910-1917, although some attribute this to what the NY Medical Examiner observed, "In making out death certificates (which are basic to Census Reports) private or family physicians commonly avoid entry of alcoholism as a cause of death whenever possible. This practice was more prevalent under the National Dry Law than it was in preprohibition time".
The Servers. By 1927 there were an estimated 30,000 speakeasies alone, twice the amount of legal bars in 1919. Cleveland outdid itself:
The Flow. More than anyone could apparently count flowed across the borders and oceans. But at least one member of The Wickersham Commission Report on Alcohol Prohibition noted the production increase of corn sugar from 157,276,442 pounds in 1919 to 896,121,276 pounds in 1929 "without adequate explanation in ascertainable legitimate use".
Crime. No doubts on this one. Huge increases in arrests, homicides and corruption.
With the exception of a government website, The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), most studies consider Prohibition a failure and not something that should be repeated. Many consider the "War on Drugs" as repeating a failed history.
They were optimistic back in 1920, though.
...the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. Bill Moyers
December 13, 2007 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I might differ that there's plenty of funding for bad science. At both state and US federal levels, there's legislation that doesn't consult science at all.
There are also legal commercial interests that do things based on market considerations rather than good or bad science. For example, I have a friend in BC with mixed connective tissue disorder, which can be quite painful. Some of what she had been prescribed, or is available over the counter in Canada but not the US, is not as effective as other, thoroughly tested drugs.
Simplifying a little, there is a pain relief step chart for musculoskeletal pain. One widely accepted midrange medication is tramadol. To my surprise, immediate-release tramadol was, at the time, not available in Canada. I had a very nice -- surprisingly frank -- conversation with someone in Health Canada, who agreed completely with this being an indication for tramadol. Unfortunately, as in the US, the drug licensing people cannot act until a drug company submits what, in the US, is called a New Drug Application.
Apparently, there was such an application pending in Canada, but only for the patentable extended-release form. I'm actually a little surprised that Canadian and US clinical trials aren't more mutually accepted, but my contact told me that immediate-release tramadol was not going to be available in Canada, because whoever put it through the expense of clinical trials would then have generic manufacturers ride free on its tests. Generic immediate-release tramadol is available in the US, because a manufacturer had been able to get patent protection for a while.
Tramadol is an odd drug, in that it has structural relationships to some opioids, but has never been shown to cause habituation or euphoria. Many pharmacologists would say it gives better pain relief, with fewer side effects, than codeine or dextro-propoxyphene.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
December 13, 2007 2:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, what was that part about Bayer inventing heroin, again? Oh, and the amphetamine thing,
that was a war product too, wasn't it? Sooo...
the drug companies like -caines and -ines,
just not from independent vendors? If I remember
the story right, the pilot that killed those
canadian guys in Afghanistan was on crank or
something... I don't care what it is, if
you're taking something and it's not by doctor's
prescription with you flat on your back in bed,
I have questions...my personal experience with
potheads is that they're not a threat to anyone
except republicans, but now that there's all
the drug war stuff about pot, there's all
the international smuggling and all that crap.
I think, to win the drug war, drugs should be
made available BY the government. No profit in
it=no motive. I think you should be able to get
a 'pot card' in exchange for your driver's
license, if you wanna go through life higher
than Jesus on stilts, so be it, just no
driving etc. But, that's just my view.
December 12, 2007 7:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm just trying to figure out how this book club flew off the rails.
The initial discussion, which dealt with informant testimony, has fell to the wayside to drug legalization and alcohol addiction.
I can see where legalization could create a sub-argument, but now we are debating the ills of booze.
The author, whose premise I agree with, seems virtually MIA in the threads.
Sorry about the bitching, and I am a fan of letting the conversation move in various directions, the primary argument could stand on its own.
December 12, 2007 8:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've read that making opiates and alcohol illegal in the early twentieth century simply created international criminal organizations to profit from the unfilled demand. Legalizing alcohol eliminated a lot of those organizations, but the drug organizations remained and in fact remain today.
The problem with the drug organizations is the violence and corruption they spread. As long as the actual drug use can be held in the minority ghettos and a small number of respectable people, the medical problems are minor. The major problems are the social ones caused by criminal activities.
It is interesting to notice that the international drug organizations have created large parts of Colombia, Eastern Peru, and Afghanistan that are under their control, and I think the Golden Triangle area of Southeast Asia provides much of the international funding that keeps the Burmese military in control of that country.
The criminal activities, violence an corruption, are to be expected. Since the drug organizations have no way of having contracts enforced by government and courts, the organizations have to do it themselves. So they use violence and the threats of violence. But their leaders know that they cannot let the violence get too far out of hand, or they run the risk of a war against them. That's what stops gang wars in organized crime. They can operate and profit as long as they don't threaten social stability.
Another effect of forcing those organizations to operate outside the law is that government has no way to influence or limit them from getting children and other vulnerable populations addicted.
It's interesting that Meth has been a mom-and-pop business until the police began putting major efforts into shutting those operations down. The result has been larger criminal organizations and more centralized Meth production, a lot outside the U.S. I don't know if there are new, large criminal organizations marketing meth or if existing Heroin and cocaine organizations have just branched out into a new market using their existing organizational experience and contacts. But the larger organizations have more sophisticated marketing methods than the old mom-and-pop operations did. It's primarily logistics, applied human behavior and marketing to them, not much science.
The governmental response to the danger that organized crime will create social instability has been to create large police organizations and to run a major propaganda operation to try to convince potential buyers that the drugs are the greatest horrors in the world. Science interferes with that propaganda effort, so science is repressed by the government. It is always easier for a politician to sell repression of hated behavior to the public than to sell a bet on some unknown discovery that has no known discovery date or effectiveness. Better to go with propaganda and force, and as it fails, ramp up the effort to more extreme levels.
The government does not want reliable scientific information available to the general population. Nor do they want effective wide-spread programs to get people off drugs because that would reduce the terror that is the goal of the propaganda effort. Much better that everyone know someone who has fried their brain on meth or Od'd on Heroin.
The solution is not legalization. The large police organizations are run largely by ex-sports jocks, lawyers and people with a strong attraction to authoritarian government methods. They are all much more enamored with force than with science, as is demonstrated by the culture of their organizations. At the same time I think the experiment of the last three decades of ever increasing prison terms - sending drug users to institutions that are universities of crime for long periods of time - has also failed.
We need to start working smart instead of working tough. I think any resolution will come out of good science, probably neurological, but it won't be any time soon. If there is some way to take the profit out of drug sales, that would reduce the extent of the problem, but legalization would also give the drug peddlers greater access to vulnerable people who had personal problems and want a quick fix or access to drugs by thrill seekers.
While I recognize that the solution is not legalization, if I knew what the solution really is I'd have somehow answered a problem that is over a century old and one no one else has yet solved. Hey! That would make me famous, and fame is an addictive substance too, isn't it? Isn't that what the recent mall assassin, Hawkins, suggested in his suicide note?
December 13, 2007 1:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you've fallen into a trap that the only options are 'legalization' and 'illegalizization.'
Your view of 'legalization' is that we simply take off all the restrictions and allow crack to be sold legally to elementary school children or whoever wants to buy it without any conditions, regulations or whatnot.
Your view of 'illegalization' is simply the war on drugs and criminalizing everything about it.
Frankly, that's not a productive way to approach the topic. It's as if you've decided that the only approaches to child rearing is to (a) lock them in a box until 18; or (b) let them play on the freeway and drink whatever detergent they find under the kitchen sink.
My own argument is more nuanced. There are a variety of different ways to approach a problem.
Criminalization and prohibition have failed utterly.
I advocate looking at it as a public health problem, and imposing the same sorts of social controls and pressure, legal controls and restrictions, and harm reduction strategies that we use for all sorts of things, from fast cars and bungee jumping to alcohol and tobacco.
Elements of this have been tried elsewhere, and they tend to work better.
December 13, 2007 8:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with StaleNYC in finding this to have gone "off the rails" a bit. Although it's fascinating to discuss the best way to cure America of whatever drug habits it has, and Howard B. keeps teaching me more every day, I'd hate to lose the focus on prosecution abuse of testimony whose falsehood can fairly say to be encouraged. This is also apart from questions of whether a refusal to cooperate with police should be encouraged (of course not) or whether to rely on any witnesses in court (of course, so long as laziness isn't seeking convictions at the expense of solving crimes and as long as juries are given a fair chance to judge witness credibility).
But it's perhaps also a bit "off the rails" to frame the debate in terms of whether legalization would be a potential "fix." That's adopting McWhorter's frame, and I think it's a straw man to justify a reactionary position. My mind is not made up on what drugs, if any, to legalize. I agree, too, with the comment that one shouldn't have an either/or, with legalization taken apart from concurrent strategies for tackling the problem. But for me the frame is troublesome because it seems to make the end of Prohibition about finding a cure for alcoholism, or perhaps making it America's way of deciding that it craved booze so much it was willing to live with alcoholism, so we should learn the same lack of a fix now and weigh the same balance.
Huh? Americans decided Prohibition was a huge error, and the only less one can learn from it is that a similar approach to drugs might, I say might, also be a mistake. And they so decided because it was creating the equivalent of today's drug wars. I don't say that legalizing drugs would eliminate gangs and violent crime, but how could in all these posts there have been only one comment that mentioned crime (the witty one about Al Capone)?
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
December 13, 2007 10:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've already expressed the opinion elsewhere that 'jailhouse informants', ie, people incarcerated who receive confessions from their fellow inmates is so fraught with abuse and of such dubious probative value that it should be simply discarded.
With respect to the testimony of other informants, there has to be a legitimate balancing act. There aren't hard solutions. Almost certainly some of this evidence is tainted and valueless. But hopefully, the disclosure and the trial process, if its working properly, should deal with that.
December 13, 2007 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Meth Rocks. A line of it is equivalent to 8 hours of sleep and three square meals. Corporate America should put it the workers water supply. Productivity, productivity, productivity!
Better living through chemistry!
Hoo hah. I'm off to have my smoke and my Irish coffee.
CSPAN junkies visit http://spannerbackup.ipbhost.com
December 13, 2007 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Keep the dose oral, low, and intermittent, like every other day, and it's great stuff. But good coffee tastes better.
December 13, 2007 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Due to the electronic nature of the aforementioned particles, a "force field" is present throughout the space around them. Interactions between these "force fields" from one particle to the next give rise to the term intermolecular forces. Dependent on distance, these intermolecular forces influence the motion of these particles and hence their thermodynamic properties. At the temperatures and pressures characteristic of many applications, these particles are normally greatly separated. This separation corresponds to a very weak attractive force. As a result, for many applications, this intermolecular force becomes negligible.
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manoj
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Alcoholism Information-Alcoholism Information
February 11, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Due to the electronic nature of the aforementioned particles, a "force field" is present throughout the space around them. Interactions between these "force fields" from one particle to the next give rise to the term intermolecular forces. Dependent on distance, these intermolecular forces influence the motion of these particles and hence their thermodynamic properties. At the temperatures and pressures characteristic of many applications, these particles are normally greatly separated. This separation corresponds to a very weak attractive force. As a result, for many applications, this intermolecular force becomes negligible.
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manoj
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Alcoholism Information-Alcoholism Information
February 11, 2009 3:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Due to the electronic nature of the aforementioned particles, a "force field" is present throughout the space around them. Interactions between these "force fields" from one particle to the next give rise to the term intermolecular forces. Dependent on distance, these intermolecular forces influence the motion of these particles and hence their thermodynamic properties. At the temperatures and pressures characteristic of many applications, these particles are normally greatly separated. This separation corresponds to a very weak attractive force. As a result, for many applications, this intermolecular force becomes negligible.
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manoj
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Alcoholism Information-Alcoholism Information
February 11, 2009 3:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Due to the electronic nature of the aforementioned particles, a "force field" is present throughout the space around them. Interactions between these "force fields" from one particle to the next give rise to the term intermolecular forces. Dependent on distance, these intermolecular forces influence the motion of these particles and hence their thermodynamic properties. At the temperatures and pressures characteristic of many applications, these particles are normally greatly separated. This separation corresponds to a very weak attractive force. As a result, for many applications, this intermolecular force becomes negligible.
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manoj
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Alcoholism Information-Alcoholism Information
February 11, 2009 4:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Due to the electronic nature of the aforementioned particles, a "force field" is present throughout the space around them. Interactions between these "force fields" from one particle to the next give rise to the term intermolecular forces. Dependent on distance, these intermolecular forces influence the motion of these particles and hence their thermodynamic properties. At the temperatures and pressures characteristic of many applications, these particles are normally greatly separated. This separation corresponds to a very weak attractive force. As a result, for many applications, this intermolecular force becomes negligible.
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manoj
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Alcoholism Information-Alcoholism Information
February 11, 2009 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink