Reason Magazine - Topics > Overseas/Interdiction

John Walters Just Got an Erection

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 09:07:00 EDT

The United Arab Emirates has figured out how to win the drug war:

A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.
Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai's main airport.
A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.
[...]
One man has even been jailed for possession of three poppy seeds left over from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow Airport. Painkiller codeine is also banned.
If suspicious of a traveller, customs officials can use high-tech equipment to uncover even the slightest trace of drugs.
Mr Brown was detained and arrested in September last year and has been held in a cell with three other men in the city prison ever since.
This week the youth worker, who has two young children and a partner at home in Smethwick, West Midlands, was sentenced to four years in prison.
A 25-year-old Briton who was found with a similar speck in one pocket as he arrived on holiday has been awaiting sentence since November.
Meanwhile a Big Brother TV executive has so far been held without charge for five days after being arrested for possessing the health supplement melatonin.
The authorities claim to have discovered 0.01g of hashish in his luggage.

MORE: Looks like this particular drug offender has since been released.

The Flow (and Ebb) of Meth-Tainted Urine

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 12:51:00 EDT

An A.P. story notes a recent reduction in methamphetamine use detected by workplace drug testing and attributes it to the federal crackdown on pseudoephedrine, a meth precursor:

Methamphetamine use continued to decline in nearly every part of the country last year as the government sharpened its crackdown on precursor chemicals used to make the illegal drug.
Overall, the number of workplace employees who tested positive for meth dropped 22 percent last year, according to a study released Wednesday by New Jersey-based Quest Diagnostics Inc., the nation's largest drug-testing company. Meth use in the Northeast, however, remained steady.
At the same time, the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a report showing the number of illegal meth lab seizures plunged 31 percent last year, from 7,347 to 5,080.
White House drug policy director John Walters said laws restricting the sale of cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient used to cook meth, and efforts to thwart drug trafficking from Mexico have disrupted the market for meth...
As the number of meth labs began shrinking in the United States, they have been replaced by "superlabs" in Mexico and Mexican-run labs in some U.S. border states. DEA Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart said interdiction efforts, coupled with U.S. pressure on the Mexican government to reduce imports of pseudoephedrine into that country, have helped cut down meth trafficking across the border.

The thing is, methamphetamine use, as measured by Quest's data, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, and the Monitoring the Future Study, has been declining at least since 2004. The Combat Meth Act, which restricted retail access to pseudoephedrine and made it such a hassle to buy effective cold and allergy remedies, did not become law until March 2006 and did not take full effect until September 2006. Several states passed their own laws restricting pseudoephedrine before Congress acted. But the only effect on the methamphetamine supply seemed to be a shift from mom-and-pop domestic producers to those Mexican superlabs. In January 2006, for example, The New York Times reported that "the drop in home-cooked methamphetamine has been met by a new flood of crystal methamphetamine coming largely from Mexico." That May, CBS News noted the same phenomenon. Since then, maybe interdiction and pressure on the Mexican government has, as John Walters claims, made a dent in the foreign supply. But the Quest data do not show that.

In fact, a closer look at the national survey data indicates that the decline in meth use probably started around 2000, years before the states passed their anti-pseudoephedrine laws. In the Monitoring the Future Study, both lifetime and past-year meth use by high school seniors fell steadily from 1999 through 2003. Past-year use rose slightly in 2004 before resuming the downward trend. The trend for past-month use was similar, with a more gradual decline. In the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, past-year and past-month meth use have been pretty much flat since the survey began in 2002. Lifetime use fell steadily from then until 2006 (the most recent year for which data are available), when it went up.

We are probably seeing the usual flow and ebb of drug fashions, in which a drug gains popularity and then loses it after enough people run into problems with it to discourage others. It's doubtful that the government's recent supply control effort has had much of an impact on these trends, and it certainly can't be credited with reductions in drug use that predated it.

In the March issue of reason, Greg Beato wondered how Americans learned to stop worrying and love workplace drug testing. Back in 2002, I took a deeper look at the subject.

Catch of the Day

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 07:35:00 EST

Fascinating piece on a native village in Nicaragua that's been the serendipitous beneficiary of the confluence of ocean currents, geography, and the U.S. drug war. Seems that when drug runners' boats get accosted by the U.S. Coast Guard and they pitch their contraband overboard, it tends to wash up on the beaches of this village. Floating bales of "white lobster" wash ashore at the rate of one or more per week.

"We know there are small shop owners who do this," says Yorlene Orozco, the local judge. "We are talking about people without a profession, no home, no job. One day later they have a new car, go to the casino and are building a home that costs I don't know how many thousands of dollars."
Law enforcement in Bluefields is practically invisible "I just had a Swiss tourist tell me that when she went to the supermarket they tried to sell her cocaine," says Orozco.
The police and Navy have few resources and less trust from the local public. Bluefields is effectively an anarchist nation - no Government, no organised institutions and the rules are made by community groups.
Given the massive amount of cocaine in town, violence is surprisingly rare. Gunfights are nearly unheard of and most of the town seems to lounge around or play baseball all day and then erupt into a frenzy of energy by late afternoon, fuelled by Flor de Cana, a Nicaraguan rum, fresh fish, an endless supply of native oysters, and "the white lobster".

The "catch" has made the town enormously wealthy.

At a local price of $3500 per kg, the typical 35kg sack nets a cash sale price of $122,500, which by all accounts is spent immediately.
"Last time bags and bags washed up, everyone [felt like] a millionaire, but that money does not last." explains Helen, who runs a university research institute in Bluefields. Asked how the locals unload their cash, she said: "Beer, beer, beer. You should see the amount they drink here. Go to the pier and see how much alcohol goes out to the islands."
"When the drugs come in, everyone is happy, the banks, the stores, everyone has cash."
Arana, the former mayor, recalled one month when the village bought 28,000 cases of beer.

Actually, it doesn't all go for beer...

The cocaine business is reshaping the face of these Indian communities. Tasbapauni Beach is now nicknamed "Little Miami", because so much cocaine washes up on its long shoreline that it has fuelled a construction boom. Luxurious oceanfront condos protected by security guards now sit side by side with wooden fishing shacks.
"If shit washes up on your shore it belongs to that family. Every family owns their turf," said a Miskito fisherman.
But when a fisherman finds white lobster the entire village shares the treasure, with a percentage going to the community, a smaller percentage to the church and the majority split among the crew of the small boat that found the loot.
"It is like a municipal tax," says Sergio Leon, a local reporter who has been writing about the drug situation in Bluefields for many years. "The schools and churches are not built by the Government, that money comes from the fishermen and their finds."
Drug money has been used to build a school and replace the church roof. "The pastors here get mad when they don't get their cut from the find," says Francisco a court official. "If a member of the congregation has found 15kg, the church calculates 15 times $3500, that's $52,500, and at 10 per cent they are saying: where's the $5250?"

World Not Drug-Free Yet. Check Again in Another 10 Years.

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 12:17:00 EST

The U.N. expects another bumper crop of opium in Afghanistan this year, close to last year's all-time record of about 9,000 tons:

Cultivation is still increasing in the insurgency-hit south and west of the country, the report said, and taxes on the crop have become a major source of revenue for the Taliban insurgency.
"This is a windfall for antigovernment forces, further evidence of the dangerous link between opium and insurgency," Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, wrote in the report's preface.

Since Costa, an economist, knows better, I assume someone else in his office accidentally excised the word prohibition after opium in that sentence. This is the year, incidentally, by which the U.N. planned to achieve "a drastic simultaneous reduction of both illicit supply and demand for drugs." When that goal was set, Costa's predecessor, Pino Arlacchi, confidently declared "there is no reason [worldwide opium and coca production] cannot be eliminated."

The U.N. report is here. My columns on the last two record-setting Afghan opium crops are here and here.

John Walters' Drug Message: Buy Canadian

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:07:00 EST

A few weeks ago, when U.S. drug czar John P. Walters warned that Canadian drug traffickers were flooding our country with methamphetamine-laced "Extreme Ecstasy," it came as news to drug warriors in Canada. Paul Nadeau, head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's national drug branch, recently told the Canadian Press he did not understand why Walters would say such a thing:

"I shook my head when I read the release that they put out," said Nadeau, adding he's never heard of extreme ecstasy.
"That term is unknown to us, certainly in Canada, and I can tell you that I've spoken to law enforcement people in the U.S. and they've never heard of it either so it would appear that it's a term that somebody came up with in a boardroom in Washington, D.C."...
Nadeau said there's nothing new about ecstasy—the so-called love drug that gained popularity during the 1990s rave scene—being laced with methamphetamine or other stimulants and that it's been happening for the last decade.
"According to our stats the presence of methamphetamines in ecstasy is dropping," he said, adding tests by the RCMP indicate that currently, about 35 per cent of ecstasy pills contain meth, down from 75 per cent several years ago.
"Why now do they feel the need to announce this to the world?" Nadeau said of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

I don't know. Maybe to justify their budget by keeping the public in a constant state of alarm about drugs? Walters' press release made it sound as if putting meth in MDMA tablets was a new, growing, scary yet exciting phenomenon linked specifically to Canada:

Alarmingly, more than 55 percent of the Ecstasy samples seized in the United States last year contained methamphetamine. Cutting their product with less-expensive methamphetamine boosts profits for Canadian Ecstasy producers, likely increases the addictive potential of their product, and effectively gives a dangerous "face lift" to a designer drug that had fallen out of fashion with young American drug users.

Confusingly, Walters claimed Ecstasy dealers were ripping off their customers by substituting a cheaper drug for MDMA yet also somehow providing extra value by fortifying the pills with meth. As I noted at the time, the ONDCP's warnings about "Extreme Ecstasy" could be mistaken for advertising, which is often the case with government's anti-drug propaganda. "If I was a meth dealer in Canada," a former ONDCP economist tells the Canadian Press, "I would certainly rebrand mine to 'extreme ecstasy.' " Likewise, I'm sure Canadian pot growers were grateful for Walters' warnings about their "crack of marijuana."

[Thanks to Caleb O. Brown for the tip.]

They're So Scared They Put 20 Tons on One Ship!

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:30:00 EST

If you thrill to the sight of boats chasing boats, this video of the Coast Guard's "Top 10 Drug Busts" is for you. In a recent press release, the Coast Guard brags that it's been "a record year for cocaine seizures with 355,755 pounds seized, worth more than $4.7 billion." It claims smugglers are "desperate" and cites unusually large seizures as evidence.

Is a rising seizure total a sign of success or a sign that the volume crossing the border has increased? Is an increase in large-volume seizures a sign of smugglers' desperation or a sign that smugglers are not terribly worried about interdiction, treating the risk as a cost of doing business? The press release acknowledges that "smugglers adapt their tactics in response to effective counternarcotic measures." So even "effective" interdiction efforts cannot have a substantial, lasting impact on drug consumption, as Antonio Maria Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, conceded in a speech at the International Conference on Drug Policy Reform earlier this month.

However much the Coast Guard seizes, enough drugs always get through to meet the demand. The most drug warriors can expect is to temporarily increase prices by raising traffickers' cost of doing business. Since the cost of replacing seized drugs is very small compared to their retail value, with most of the markup occurring after they arrive in the U.S., interdiction is a highly inefficient way of discouraging drug use. But don't tell John Walters. The drug czar thinks "every load of drugs seized represents that much less that can be used to poison our young people and harm our nation."

[Thanks to Veronique de Rugy for the tip.]

Quite a Hash We've Made in Afghanistan

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:16:00 EST

Crop substitution, Afghan style.

[Thanks to sage for the tip.]

Also, It Makes Your Coke Cost More

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:23:00 EDT

Over at Alternet, the Drug Policy Alliance's Bill Piper offers some reasons to think the recent increase in cocaine prices is not the good news the Bush administration says it is:

Higher drug prices contribute to increased violence...
Higher drug prices tend to lead to decreased purity, which can have devastating public health consequences. As cocaine purity falls, some people may switch from smoking or snorting cocaine to injecting it, increasing the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and other infectious diseases
Cocaine users who do quit will likely switch to other drugs, with unpredictable consequences...
Rising drug prices leads to greater trafficking, not less.

Piper also points out (as I did in a post on the subject a couple weeks ago) that supply reduction is a doomed strategy over the long term.

Wisdom and Folly on Drug Laws in U.K.

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 09:30:00 EDT

The wisdom is from North Wales' Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom, as reported in the U.K. Independent. He has called

for all drugs – including heroin and cocaine – to be legalised and urges the Government to declare an end to the "failed" war on illegal narcotics.

The folly, alas, is from 10 Downing Street:

In his conference speech this year, Gordon Brown signalled an intensification of the existing battle. "We will send out a clear message that drugs are never going to be decriminalised," the Prime Minister told the party.

Ron Bailey blogged last month on the prospects for global drug legalization.

Link via Rational Review, a great news aggregator of libertarian interest.

Where Is My Soros Money?

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:25:00 EDT

The Office of National Drug Control Policy is citing recent increases in cocaine prices as evidence that the war on drugs is (finally!) working. "On average at all levels of the supply chain," USA Today reports, "the price jumped 24% between January and June 2007." Retail prices rose only 15 percent during the same period, but purity also declined somewhat, according to the DEA. "If the price of cocaine goes up, it might bar entry [into drug use] by young people who simply cannot afford it," says DEA intelligence chief Tony Placido. "The real challenge will be how long we can preserve this trend."

If history is any guide, not very long. In 2005 ONDCP Director John Walters trumpeted what proved to be a temporary increase in cocaine prices. He was quieter about an 11-percent price drop between February 2005 and October 2006 that was accompanied by an increase in purity. The ONDCP may be right that the recent price spike has something to do with disruption caused by the Mexican government's crackdown on traffickers who carry Colombian cocaine to the U.S. (One reason for the disruption: The crackdown has intensified violence along the U.S.-Mexican border.) Over the long term, however, the black market always adjusts. If pressure on trans-Mexican smuggling continues, traffickers may switch to other, less risky routes, but there is little reason to expect a lasting effect on retail prices, let alone one that will lead to a noticeable reduction in cocaine consumption. The average retail price paid in undercover DEA buys, about $120 per gram last summer, is around one-fifth what it was in the early 1980s (taking inflation into account).

Still, interdiction looks like a smashing success next to so-called eradication:

Analysts found that Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, the main source countries for the U.S. cocaine supply, are growing and shipping the same amount of cocaine as in previous years.
"There is not more or less cocaine entering the pipeline," Placido says. Instead, he says, Mexican authorities apparently are stopping [some of] the cocaine before it gets to the USA.

Although you would not think the experience with crop eradication in Latin America would inspire imitation, the U.S. government is pressuring Afghanistan to copy the Colombian model of drug control, including aerial spraying of opium poppies with herbicide. According to the lead story in today's New York Times, initially reluctant Afghan officials show signs of yielding to American demands, despite the likelihood that stepped-up anti-drug efforts will alienate farmers and further strengthen the Taliban.

In light of all this progress, a recent Investor's Business Daily editorial declares "Victory Over Drugs," while worrying that "naysayers" funded by George Soros have hidden the triumphant truth from the American people by dominating press coverage of the war on drugs. After 20 or so years of writing about this subject, I've noticed more than a few flaws in drug policy reporting, but mindless echoing of anti-prohibitionist talking points is not one of them.

Disclosure: I once sought a book grant from a Soros-funded program, but I did not get it. I did get a journalism award from the Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance, but it did not come with any money. I guess this is really more of a complaint than a disclosure.

Return to the House of Death

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 06:43:00 EDT

The Washington Times picks up the House of Death story, first blogged here last December, and doggedly reported by Texas investigative journalist Bill Conroy.

Sandalio "Sandy" Gonzalez, a now-retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) senior executive service supervisor, and other high-ranking DEA officials are demanding a congressional investigation into the use by federal agents of a "homicidal maniac" as a paid informant in a probe of a Juarez drug gang and the failure of federal prosecutors who oversaw the case to stop it — even after they learned of the informant's role in the killings.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and federal prosecutors, according to Mr. Gonzalez, went to "extreme lengths" to protect the informant, adding that a dozen persons might be alive today had those in charge pulled the plug on the investigation.

This needs to be a much, much bigger scandal. Particularly in light of the congressional hearings last July, in which an FBI representative couldn't assure members of the House Judiciary Committee that the agency had policies in place to make sure its agents weren't looking the other way while its own informants were committing violent crimes.

A Report Title That Also Serves as an Executive Summary (Drug War Failure Edition)

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:00:00 EDT

A great new study from the Government Accountability Office has a title that doubles as an executive summary:

Drug Control: U.S. Assistance Has Helped Mexican Counternarcotics Efforts, but Tons of Illicit Drugs Continue to Flow into the United States

Gee, I wonder how it ends? And whether Mexican drugs do the jobs that American drugs just don't want to do?

America's Taliban-Support Program

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 06:27:00 EDT

According to a recent report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, 19,047 hectares of poppies were eradicated in Afghanistan this year, 24 percent more than in 2006. Meanwhile, the number of opium-free provinces more than doubled, from six to 13.

Those victories were somewhat overshadowed by the news that the total amount of land devoted to opium poppies in Afghanistan rose from 165,000 to 193,000 hectares, an increase of 17 percent. Due to "favorable weather conditions," estimated opium production rose even more, hitting an all-time high of 8,200 metric tons, 34 percent more than the previous record, set last year.

Since their efforts have had precisely the opposite of the result they intended, U.S. drug warriors, predictably enough, plan to try harder, calling for more eradication, possibly including aerial spraying of herbicide, and more interdiction. Over the long term, if history is any guide, these supply reduction measures will have little or no impact on heroin consumption. Over the short term, they will continue to strengthen the Taliban insurgency.

The U.N. report emphasizes that poppy growing is becoming increasingly concentrated in the southern provinces where the Taliban are strongest. Having forgotten whatever religious scruples they may once have had about the opium trade, the Taliban make money by charging poppy farmers for protection and taxing traffickers at checkpoints, a fund-raising opportunity created by U.S. demands that the Afghan government wipe out a crop the U.N. says accounts for one-third of the Afghan economy.

"Afghanistan's drug money corrupts the government, weakens institutions, and strengthens the Taliban," says a new report from the U.S. State Department. It would be more accurate to say that America's drug policy, which it insists on exporting to every other country in the world, corrupts the Afghan government, weakens institutions, and strengthens the Taliban.

The State Department draws exactly the wrong conclusion from this situation, saying "the increasing linkage between the region's major drug trafficking organizations and insurgencies prompts the need to elevate the drug enforcement mission and integrate it appropriately into the comprehensive security strategy." In fact, the "drug enforcement mission," which alienates Afghans from their government, helps fund the insurgency, and distracts NATO and Afghan forces from the central goal of reducing violence and establishing order, is fundamentally at odds with the "security strategy."

The U.N. says this year's opium output, which represents 93 percent of the illicit world supply, "exceeds global demand by a large margin," indicating a stockpile of thousands of tons. Despite their concerns that opium profits are helping to fund terrorism, U.S. and U.N. drug warriors seem intent on raising the value of that stockpile by curtailing production.

Even if they're successful, they cannot reasonably hope to have a lasting impact on heroin availability. If cracking down on opium production in some Afghan provinces simply shifts it to others, cracking down on opium production throughout Afghanistan will simply shift it to other countries. That has been the general pattern during the last century of opium "eradication," which might more accurately be called opium relocation.

A decade ago, Pino Arlacchi, then the head of the U.N.'s anti-drug program, declared that "global coca leaf and opium poppy acreage totals an area less than half the size of Puerto Rico," so "there is no reason it cannot be eliminated." For a less optimistic man, the fact that such a tiny percentage of the earth's surface is needed to supply the world with heroin and cocaine would be cause to doubt the effectiveness of eradication.

Speaking of cocaine, in recent years the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars on anti-drug aid to Colombia, with no discernible effect on prices or purity. Colombia, which still supplies about 90 percent of America's illicit cocaine, has been helping to train Afghan police in anti-drug tactics, and Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says it provides "a good model" for Afghanistan.

Dutch Pot Freedom Weakened

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:50:00 EDT

The de facto drug liberty in the Dutch city of Maastricht is getting weaker: The AP is reporting that, thanks to a bummer of mayor who took office in 2002, licensed "coffee shops" in that town will "begin fingerprinting customers and scanning their IDs this summer to help prove they're following rules governing such sales." (The rules include age and amount-per-day limitations.)

The chairman of the Coffee Shop Union (yes, there is such a thing) laments that "This is not something that we are doing willingly, but with pain in our hearts. We're very afraid we're going to lose customers over this, and to be honest we're even a little ashamed we're doing it, but the city of Maastricht has such harsh punishments that we don't feel we have any choice."

The mayoral crackdown has led to 11 of Maastricht's 26 licensed shops being shut down.

[Link via Rational Review.]

Random News from Afghanistan

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Tue, 08 May 2007 07:46:00 EDT

From a Wash Times story titled, "NATO Paces Afghan Offensive":

Government officials charged with eradicating the poppies also have their hands out, these growers said. Having apparently surrendered to the inevitability of a successful harvest, the government functionaries demanded stiff fees for not destroying the crop several weeks ago.
The huge profits to be made from the opium trade help explain why a U.S.-funded annual $800 million counternarcotics program has failed to reduce the output.
A much-anticipated Taliban offensive across eastern and southern Afghanistan this spring has yet to materialize, although NATO officials and Western diplomats warn that the Taliban should not be seen as a depleted insurgency.
Suicide attacks and guerrilla actions are commonplace across southern Afghanistan, even as Taliban leaders and fighters are preoccupied with the poppy harvest. Government officials say they think as many as six would-be suicide bombers are lurking in Lashkar Gah alone, searching for targets.

More here.

Lou's Blues

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 11:15:00 EST

America's favorite floppy-jowled populist took aim at the gang at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition this week. Dobbs' reporter actually tries to deliver a straight news package. But Dobbs' of course doesn't do straight news anymore. And all this drug war capitulation talk nearly sends Lou into apoplexy. A few favorite excerpts from the broadcast:

DOBBS:...But despite the idiocy that surrounds border security, there is another idiocy rising up.
A group of law enforcement agents now say that effort is actually fueling drug trafficking and violence, and they say the answer is to end the war on drugs.
[...]
DOBBS: This idea of legalizing meth, Ecstasy, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, what in the world are these people thinking about?
WIAN: Well, they say that the war on drugs has been a massive failure. That despite all the money that we've spent, the massive amount of resources, law enforcement resources and time, drugs are cheaper now than they've ever been, easier to obtain than they've ever been.
DOBBS: Right.
WIAN: More deadly than they've ever been and more addicts than we've ever had.
DOBBS: All that's true. But why in the world — you know, Casey, and you I have reported on that border. I've done reporting on that border for 30 — in that border in Mexico for more than 30 years. You and I both know that this country has never taken seriously either border security or shutting down those drug cartels. And that if we wanted to do it and we had the will to do it, we could do it, in short order.

Ah yes. Because it's only "lack of will" that's keeping us from winning this whole "drug war" deal once and for all.

Lou's closer is particularly weird:

And whether you're a libertarian, or whatever one might be, the fact is, we've got to get serious about not eating our young, which is what this nation is doing right now.

Setting aside the general creepiness of the analogy, I'd say that the wholesale feeding of young people into an unforgiving criminal justice system is a more apt description of "eating our young" than lacking the cojones to drop bunker-busters on Monterrey.

Entire transcript here .

Gun Control That Works

jwalker@reason.com (Jesse Walker) — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:37:00 EST

Well, sort of. Apparently, so many Tijuana cops are involved with violent drug-trafficking gangs that the whole force has temporarily been stripped of its arms. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Tijuana, a sprawling metropolis of about 1.5 million people, was bustling as usual Friday, and there were no signs of social unrest or public disorder two days after more than 3,500 soldiers and federal agents starting arriving as part of Operation Tijuana.

Members of the 2,300-strong municipal police force were ordered by the military to turn in their weapons to see whether any are linked with homicides and other crimes. More than 2,000 weapons, most of them 9 mm handguns, but also some automatic weapons and shotguns, are being inspected.

Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon said in an interview that he had feared putting unarmed police at risk and had ordered them off the streets Thursday after receiving assurances from the general in charge of Operation Tijuana, Hector Sanchez Gutierrez, that his troops would maintain order.

The 18 hours without municipal police went without any major incidents, though there were some complaints of no law enforcement response to a few minor traffic accidents. And at the jail holding facility in the red light district, Municipal Judge Oscar Gonzalez Valdez said he had freed some detainees - mostly drinking-related offenders - because there were no transit police to take them to the main jail across the city.

Municipal police may get their weapons back within two weeks, Tijuana officials say, but many residents aren't demanding urgent action.

I'm not wild for the idea of troops acting as police, but I understand the frustrations that led there. Of course, if the military took over patrol duties permanently, the soldiers would soon face the same corrupting incentives as the ordinary police. That's how the drug war works.

The best quote in the story comes from a 55-year-old Tijuanan: "I bet the number of assaults goes down until the police get their guns back. I feel pretty safe right now."

The Associated Press's Supermarijuana Meets Its Kryptonite

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:40:00 EST

The AP story I blogged about last month about supposed superhybrid marijuana strains in Mexico--which various commenters here were, wisely, skeptical about---gets a full and hearty slam from Jack Shafer over at Slate, longtime expert at debunking crappy, breathless mainstream reporting on drugs. Some excerpts:

.....A "new high-yield hybrid" that is "genetically improved" sounds scientific, even coming out of the mouth of a Mexican general. But what does it really mean? Hybrids are created whenever planters crossbreed varieties of a plant or between species, and by definition the successful ones are "genetically improved.".....
Should we be impressed with the supergrass's high yield? AP reports that "traffickers can now produce as much marijuana on a plot the size of a football field as they used to harvest from four or five hectares (10 to 12 acres)."......A football field—exclusive of its two end zones—covers a little over an acre. If AP is saying that growers now produce as much pot planting the hybrid on one acre as they once did planting conventional marijuana (whatever that is) on 10 acres, I say, so what? Why attribute the higher yield to the hybrid alone? Smaller plots of most crops outyield larger plots because planters tend to extend more TLC to each plant under cultivation, whether the plant is marijuana or tomatoes.
One clue that TLC—and not an exotic hybrid—should deserve credit for higher yields in the Mexican plantation can be found in the long version of the AP article. Not every newspaper carried AP's paragraph about some of the raided plots having "sophisticated irrigation systems with sprinklers, pumps and thousands of yards (meters) of tubing." Irrigated plots tend to produce greater yields than nonirrigated plots, a fact mankind has appreciated for 4,000 years.....
Finally, Gen. Garcia alleges that the Dracuweed is resistant to herbicide, although he doesn't say which herbicide. As every farmer and cultivator of weed-free lawns knows, plants develop resistance to herbicides via natural selection, without any guidance from breeders. If growers have deliberately bred a herbicide-resistant plant or exploited one that they discovered, I'd love AP to get a botanist—as opposed to a Mexican general—to confirm it......

I should have known better than to link to the AP's report so uncritically or to take it at all seriously.

Drug War Update, Mexican Division: Drugs Still Winning

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 14:16:00 EST

Wow, just when I thought the war on drugs couldn't get any more futile, this from the Associated Press:

Soldiers trying to seize control of one Mexico's top drug-producing regions found the countryside teeming with a new hybrid marijuana plant that can be cultivated year-round and cannot be killed with pesticides.

Soldiers fanned out across some of the new fields Tuesday, pulling up plants by the root and burning them, as helicopter gunships clattered overhead to give them cover from a raging drug war in the western state of Michoacan. The plants' roots survive if they are doused with herbicide, said army Gen. Manuel Garcia.
"These plants have been genetically improved," he told a handful of journalists allowed to accompany soldiers on a daylong raid of some 70 marijuana fields. "Before we could cut the plant and destroy it, but this plant will come back to life unless it's taken out by the roots."
The new plants, known as "Colombians," mature in about two months and can be planted at any time of year, meaning authorities will no longer be able to time raids to coincide with twice-yearly harvests.
The hybrid first appeared in Mexico two years ago but has become the plant of choice for drug traffickers Michoacan, a remote mountainous region that lends to itself to drug production.

Yields are so high that traffickers can now produce as much marijuana on a plot the size of a football field as they used to harvest in 10 to 12 acres. That makes for smaller, harder-to-detect fields...

Toward the end of the article, another lovely sign of what good the war on drugs does for domestic peace and tranquility:

[Former Mexican President Vicente] Fox boasted that his administration had destroyed 43,900 acres of marijuana and poppy plantations in its first six months and more than tripled drug seizures.
Yet drug violence has spiked across the country in recent years, with gangs fighting over control of routes following the arrest of drug lords, authorities say.
Mexico has also continued to struggle with corruption among its law enforcement ranks. Garcia said authorities did not tell soldiers where they were being sent on raids and banned the use of cell phones and radios.

Earlier this year there was a brief and aborted fooferaw about Mexico possibly loosening some of its drug possesion laws, which I wrote about in the LA Times. They should really think of revisiting that eminently sensible idea, extend it to sales as well, and say goodbye to the endless, violent, hopeless task of keeping people from substances they want to consume.

"House of Death" Update

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 09:33:00 EST

Glenn Greenwald has more on the horrifying story I posted yesterday involving a torture and murder house in Mexico. The place was run by the Juarez cartel, and U.S. officials allowed it to continue to operate instead of giving up their informant (who, incidentally, participated in the killing). When one scrupulous DEA agent protested the abhorrent misplacement of priorities in a letter, he was forced to resign.

As if the story itself weren't awful enough, Greenwald finds that the reporter who originally broke the story for the Narco News website was then intimidated by federal agents. Bill Conroy is the reporter. He works for the San Antonio Business Journal, and freelances at Narco News.

According to Conroy's lawyer, Ron Tonkin, a former assistant U.S. attorney specializing in drug cases, around 6 p.m. on May 23, a man and woman identifying themselves as internal affairs agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement visited Conroy's home. Conroy was still at work and his wife answered the door. At the behest of Conroy's wife, Agent Carlos Salazar gave her a phone number for Conroy to call him, then he and the unidentified agent left.

After receiving a call at work from his wife, Conroy phoned the number Salazar provided and left a voicemail, Tonkin said.

The Current called Salazar's number several times over the course of four days, but no one answered, nor was there voicemail.

Salazar didn't call Conroy back, but the next day, he and a male agent showed up at the Business Journal. Conroy escorted them to a conference room, where Salazar reportedly said, "I want to know your source" of a leaked, yet unclassified DHS memo that had been the centerpiece of one of Conroy's Narco News stories. Tonkin said Conroy refused to give up his source and told Salazar that if they planned on continuing to question him, he would record the conversation.

The agents left the conference room, reportedly asking Conroy, "Does your boss know you write for Narcosphere?"

The agents then took Conroy's boss into a conference room, where, according to Tonkin, he told them Conroy had done the work on his own time for another publication and there was nothing he could do for them.

Greenwald is calling for a Congressional investigation. I think that's appropriate. Not only do you have federal government agencies complicit in the murder of a U.S. citizen (and about a dozen Mexican citizens), you have ensuing cover-ups, intimidation, forced resignations, and bureaucratic turf wars. This goes fairly high up the chain of command at the Justice Department, far enough that Congressional oversight seems not only appropriate, but the only type of investigation detached enough to investigate appropriately.

Don't Do Drugs, European Kids--They'll Eat Out Your Wallet

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:22:00 EST

Quite literally. In what could function as the most effective and scary bit of antidrug propaganda ever, if true, according to a "spokesman for the forensic unit of the Rhineland Palatinate police," snorting meth through your 50 euro notes can cause them to crumble away to uselessness.

Your Typical Drug War Outrage

rbalko@reason.com (Radley Balko) — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:55:00 EST

Here's a horrifying story from the Guardian:

These documents, which form a dossier several inches thick, are the main source for the facts in this article. They suggest that while the eyes of the world have been largely averted, America's 'war on drugs' has moved to a new phase of cynicism and amorality, in which the loss of human life has lost all importance - especially if the victims are Hispanic. The US agencies and officials in this saga - all of which refused to comment, citing pending lawsuits - appear to have thought it more important to get information about drugs trafficking than to stop its perpetrators killing people.

The article details how the U.S. government was complicit in several murders carried out by Juarez drug cartel, including the kidnapping and murder of El Paso resident Luis Padilla -- who appears to have been a victim of mistaken identity. U.S. drug cops apparently took no action as their trusted informant helped in several homicides, including helping to purchase lime to dissolve the bodies of the victims. And when one highly-decorated DEA agent wrote an outraged letter of protest, high-ranking officials at the Department of Justice -- including DEA Administrator Karen Tandy -- chastised him, demoted him, and basically forced him to resign.

If true, this ought to be a scandal on par with Abu Ghraib. But in the three years since Luis Padilla's death, the Guardian reports that not a single American media outlet has spoken to his widow, and only the Dallas Morning News has given the case any coverage at all. It's certainly the first I've heard of it, and I follow drug war stories pretty closely.

Sad thing is, terrifying as this story may be, nothing in it is all that surprising. Same for the American media's apparent lack of interest in it.

Thanks to reader James Williams for the tip.

The Latest Dope

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:02:00 EDT

After years of hard work by drug warriors in Afghanistan, the country no longer produces 87 percent of the world's illicit opium. Now it produces 92 percent, according to the latest suspiciously precise estimate from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

On Tuesday, citing ties between opium trafficking and the Taliban insurgency, UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa called upon NATO forces in Afghanistan to get more involved in efforts to stamp out the opium trade. This is exactly the right strategy to pursue if the aim is to alienate the Afghan people, undermine their government, and strengthen the insurgency.

The Taliban-opium connection goes back at least a decade. After they took control of Afghanistan in 1996, they encouraged opium poppy cultivation and took a cut from the trade, using the money to buy weapons and put up their buddies in Al Qaeda. In 1999, per the UNODC, Afghanistan had a record opium harvest of 4,565 tons.

The following year, the Taliban suddenly announced that growing poppies was contrary to Islam. The UNODC says the ban, enforced by the threat of summary execution, nearly eliminated cultivation, resulting in a 2001 opium harvest of less than 200 tons.

But the Taliban's reading of Islamic law conveniently did not require the destruction of opium stockpiles, much of which they controlled. The opium ban therefore looked like an attempt to profit from price increases while getting credit from the West for a firm anti-drug stance.

In any case, since losing power after the U.S. invasion in 2001, the Taliban seem to have forgotten their religious objections to opium, production of which hit an all-time high of more than 6,000 tons this year, up about 50 percent from 2005. "We are seeing a very strong connection between the increase in the [Taliban] insurgency on the one hand and the increase in cultivation on the other hand," the UNODC's Costa told The New York Times.

What is the nature of this connection? Poppy farmers welcome the Taliban because the Taliban offer them "protection." Protection from whom? From their own government, which is trying to destroy their livelihood under pressure from the U.S. and the U.K.

Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries, and the UNODC estimates that opium accounted for more than 50 percent of its GDP in 2005. By his own account, then, Costa is demanding that the Afghan government wipe out half of the country's economy, with conspicuous assistance from U.S. and British forces. Does that sound like a recipe for peace and stability?

It's no mystery why barely subsisting Afghanis choose to grow opium poppies instead of legal crops, contrary to the wishes of foreign governments. According to the UNODC, a hectare of poppies earned farmers some $5,400 last year, about 10 times what they could get by growing wheat.

Western governments, the U.S. foremost among them, created this incentive by banning opium to begin with, thereby enabling criminals (including terrorists) to earn a risk premium. Having artificially boosted the price of opium, the U.S. now asks desperately poor Afghan peasants to resist this financial attraction for the sake of Westerners who fail to resist the pharmacological attraction of heroin.

Even if drug warriors were successful in curbing Afghan opium production, an effort Costa says could take 20 years, there are plenty of other places to grow poppies. As with coca, the most that has been achieved by attempts to eradicate opium has been to move production from one country to another, with no lasting effect on drug use.

Meanwhile, a NATO-backed crackdown on opium would drive farmers further into the Taliban's arms and jeopardize Afghanistan's future. "Counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics efforts must reinforce each other," says Costa, "so as to stop the vicious circle of drugs funding terrorists and terrorists protecting drug traffickers." Prohibition started this vicious circle, and more vigorous enforcement will only strengthen it.

Coping With Doping

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 16:09:00 EDT

After winning the Tour de France, Floyd Landis was hailed as an American hero who epitomized all that is good and glorious about cycling. A few days later, when it was announced that a urine test he took during the tour had revealed a suspiciously high ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone, he was condemned as a cheater who had disgraced the sport, perhaps ruining it forever.

Testosterone is powerful stuff, causing outbursts of anger and anxiety in people who have not even taken it. The antidote for those reactions is not a renewed commitment to drug-free sports but the acceptance of steroids as one of many tools athletes use to enhance their performance.

First let me state the obvious: Cheating is wrong. If you agree to follow certain rules, no matter how arbitrary or silly they may be, you should follow them.

Yet if you believe no one else follows them--an impression reinforced by the very sportswriters who bemoan the ubiquity of performance-enhancing drugs--the temptation not to be the only chump who does is strong. Furthermore, widespread violation of the rules, despite testing and severe sanctions, casts doubt on their wisdom.

The rules' supporters seem to think steroid use and other banned methods fundamentally change an athletic contest. "We have signed a television contract for a sports event and not for a display of the performance of pharmaceuticals," said the editor in chief of the German TV network ZDF, threatening to drop coverage of the Tour de France in response to the Landis scandal.

That over-the-top reaction, typical of the angry, hurt tone that pervades commentary about once-admired athletes implicated in doping, grossly exaggerates the power of performance-enhancing drugs. Testosterone, for example, helps build muscle and hasten recovery during training; but as an expert on the hormone told The New York Times, "no one has been able to show clearly that testosterone improves endurance" during a competition.

Landis may have believed a short-term testosterone boost would help him win one of the world's most grueling athletic contests. But it probably had little or no effect on his performance in Stage 17, when he climbed from 11th to third place, gritting his teeth through the pain caused by a degenerative hip condition.

To judge from some of the hand wringing over Landis' test results, however, any cyclist could have done just as well, given the right dose of testosterone. New York Times sports columnist Bill Rhoden, who called Landis' performance "an exhilarating exhibition of strength, speed, ingenuity and heart," simultaneously worried that "everything we think we see" in athletics "is little more than a sports mirage."

Suppose Landis was telling the truth when he claimed he had naturally high testosterone levels, and suppose this characteristic gave him a competitive edge. Would that render his amazing accomplishment a "mirage"? Obviously not, unless an athlete's innate talent also gives him an unfair advantage and makes him a fake.

To see how untenable the natural/artificial distinction is, consider altitude tents and rooms, which simulate the low-oxygen environment of high elevations in an attempt to improve endurance by spurring the production of red blood cells. The World Anti-Doping Association is considering a ban on this widely used technique, which its ethics committee deems contrary to "the spirit of sport."

If performance-enhancing drugs violate "the spirit of sport," it' hard to see why performance-enhancing rooms don't. If anything, they're even less natural than steroids. Yet banning high-altitude simulations arguably would make contests less fair, giving an advantage to athletes who happen to live at high elevations or who can afford to move there.

Athletes use all sorts of technology to improve their fitness and performance, ranging from multivitamins to weight machines, and they are properly judged by how well they use them. Instead of arbitrarily prohibiting certain techniques, why not level the playing field by repealing the prohibitions?

Bet On Handcuffs

jsullum@reason.com (Jacob Sullum) — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:03:00 EDT

Creators' Syndicate

Although they supposedly speak English in England, they have different names for certain things. When they say "lift," they mean "elevator." "Lorry" is their word for "truck." And someone they call a "businessman" is what we call a "racketeer."

David Carruthers, CEO of BetOnSports, discovered the significance of that difference during a recent layover at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport, where he was arrested for helping Americans bet on sports. His arrest is part of a larger attempt by the U.S. government to impose its brand of repressive paternalism on countries with more tolerant policies.

Carruthers was on his way from London, where his company is headquartered, to Costa Rica, where its online betting operations are based. The business is perfectly legal in both of those places, but not in the United States. And since most of its customers are Americans, Carruthers is guilty of about 20 different felonies.

Or so the FBI and the Justice Department say, and they're the ones with the guns and handcuffs. Catherine Hanaway, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, accuses Carruthers and 10 other people associated with BetOnSports, including company founder Gary Kaplan, of violating the 1961 Wire Act, which prohibits using "a wire communication facility" to accept bets on "any sporting event or contest."

Leaving aside the question of whether the Internet counts as a "wire communication facility," online bookmakers in other countries argue that the U.S. prohibition does not apply to them simply because some of their customers are Americans. If a betting operation is based in Costa Rica, they say, that's where the betting takes place, even if the customer is using a computer in St. Louis.

The Justice Department disagrees, and on this difference in interpretation it has built an indictment that could send Carruthers to prison for decades. While a Wire Act violation carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison, a "racketeering conspiracy" involving such a violation can be punished by a prison term of up to 20 years. So can "mail fraud," which BetOnSports supposedly committed by advertising that it is "legal and licensed"--never mind that BetOnSports is legal and licensed in the countries where it operates.

Despite the talk of fraud, BetOnSports is not accused of ripping off its customers. This case has nothing to do with consumer protection, except in the sense of protecting consumers from their own desire to bet on sports.

The timing of the indictment is also suspect. BetOnSports has been in business since the early 1990s, but the Justice Department waited until this summer—coincidentally, less than two weeks after the House voted to ban online gambling and shortly before a Senate vote on the same bill—to announce its charges. Carruthers has been one of the most visible opponents of the ban, urging Congress to legalize and regulate the business instead.

There's no need to speculate about political motives in the case of Marc Emery, the Canadian marijuana seed dealer and vocal anti-prohibitionist who was nabbed by the long arm of American paternalism last year. Karen Tandy, head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, described Emery's arrest as "a significant blow" against "the marijuana legalization movement," bragging that "drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on."

Like BetOnSports, Emery's online seed business had been operating openly for more than a decade, with minimal harassment from Canadian law enforcement authorities. In the United States, which is seeking his extradition, he could face a life sentence.

If an executive of a U.S. media company were arrested in Beijing for violating a Chinese law against "subversive" online speech, or in Tehran for creating "indecent" Web content viewed by Iranians, Americans would ask what right these countries have to impose their illiberal policies on us. Sadly, our government is giving people in other countries good cause to wonder the same thing about the United States.