Surprised? You shouldn’t be. It’s just another sign of the failure of the drug war. What’s our exit strategy?
Here’s the story in the New York Times.
Tag: war on drugs
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Drug Cartel Violence Spills Into U.S. From Mexico
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Taxing Drugs
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that the federal government will no longer raid medical-marijuana dispensaries was cheered by California dealers as well as state legislators who seek to legalize and tax sales of the drug.
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Marijuana is [estimated as] a $14 billion crop in California. Taxing the drug $50 an ounce… would generate more than $1 billion annually for a cash-strapped state that closed a $42 billion budget deficit just last month.Read Stu Woo and Justin Scheck’s articlein the Wall Street Journal.
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Baltimore NAACP Vice President Arrested, Not Charged
The Vice President of the NAACP is out there copping like a junkie? He’s arrested and then not charged. I’m shocked. Shocked.
Police say Staten, who is an executive committee member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Maryland conference, was in the driver’s seat of a car that had stopped near Pennsylvania Avenue and Dolphin Street, which police say is a well-known drug market.
Officers in an unmarked vehicle say a man walked away from a large crowd of people huddled on a street corner and climb into the passenger seat of a silver-colored vehicle.
They wrote in charging documents that they watched a back-seat passenger hand cash to a man standing outside his window in exchange for suspected drugs.
Officers approached the vehicle and found a folded-up dollar bill containing suspected heroin and two pills of suboxone, also known as buprenorphine, a medication used to treat heroin addiction, in the possession of the back-seat passenger, Kevin Logan, 44.
Police found Staten in possession of additional suboxone pills inside a case, and in the driver’s side door. They also recovered a half-smoked marijuana cigarette.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says a passenger told officers that Staten had brought him to the area to buy heroin.
Staten and Logan were taken to Central Booking, where Logan was charged with two counts of drug possession. Staten, of Pikesville, was released without charges.
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How to Stop the Drug Wars
Long before the Simpsons did it, my brother started quoting ideas from the Economistjust to sound smart. I’ll be damned if quoting from them doesn’tmake him sound smarter!
If you don’t read the Economist, you should. It’s notan economics journal. Just get over the name. It’s a world newspaper. But a magazine. And British. Like Timeand Newsweek. But for smart folk.
The Economistis generally a bit too economically conservative for my tastes, but that’s OK. It’s still good. The Economistis good news reporting. It’s what educated people read. And its got great high-brow fluff sections! Plus a killer obit.
I mention this not because I have a stake, but because the Economisthas a bunch of stories this week about the war on drugs. They’re against it.
To be honest, I haven’t actually read yet the articles yet. I just got the issue in the mail today and a helpful heads-up in a comment.
But without having read it, I can pretty much guarantee that it’s informative, interesting, and, more often than not, right. That’s because it’s the Economist.
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Drug Bust Oscars
Peter Hermann has a nice article giving Academy Awards for drug busts.
So, if we’re handing out Academy Awards for cocaine seizures, Bealefeld’s Oscar might read “Best director for a drug bust,” while Clark’s might read “Best supporting director for a drug bust.”
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It is a sad reminder that the drugs keep pouring in despite year after year of “record seizures.” Wouldn’t be nice to see Bealefeld standing in front of an empty pallet declaring victory in the drug war? -
1 in 27
One in twenty-seven Maryland adults are current in the correction system. Twenty-seven percent of those are behind bars. This is, sad to say, about par for the national average.
In Maryland, it costs $86 per day to lock a person up.
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Mexico and the “Failed State”
Spin this all want, drug warriors, it’s not good. From Ciudad Juárez. The whole story in the New York Times is here.
It was drug traffickers who decided that Chief Roberto Orduña Cruz, a retired army major who had been on the job since May, should go. To make clear their insistence, they vowed to kill a police officer every 48 hours until he resigned.
They first killed Mr. Orduña’s deputy … together with three of his men. Then another police officer and a prison guard turned up dead. As the body count grew, Mr. Orduña eventually did as the traffickers had demanded, resigning his post on Feb. 20 and fleeing the city.
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“I’m not going to give in,” [the mayor] vowed in an interview, welcoming the arrival of soldiers so that the traffickers will feel the heat even more.Mexico doesn’t need more heat.
How many days left till we win the war on drugs?
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Rockefeller Drug Laws Near End
With [David] Paterson in the governor’s mansion and Democrats in control of both houses of the State Legislature, an aggressive effort is under way to finally dismantle what remains of the stringent 1970s-era drug laws, which imposed stiff mandatory sentences as a way to combat the heroin epidemic then gripping New York City.
Here‘s the story in the Times.
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B*tch, stop lying!
Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora claims that US cocaine prices have increased 100% and purity dropped by 35% since the Mexican crackdown began in 2006.
Really? Let’s examine that, shall we?
In April 2007 John Walters (the drug czar) said that cocaine prices had declined 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per pure gram of cocaine. Of course he might have been lying. But let’s accept that figure as the base point for 2006. $135.
Since then, according to the prohibitionists, the retail price of cocaine has doubled. Plus purity has gone down 35% (adding another 35% to the price or a pure gram). So by logic the retail price of cocaine should be $270 per pure gram of cocaine.
According to shady data from the DEA, the price of cocaine in September 2008 was $183. Not $270, mind you, but that would still be a substantial increase compared to 2006.
But I don’t believe the $183 figure. Not just because I’m cynical, but because elsewhere, you see (supposedly using the same STRIDE source for data), the US government lists the price of as $124 per pure gram. Hmmmmmm. Curious.
So which one is it? The 235% percent price increase? The 50% price increase? Or the 5% price decrease? If I were a betting man, I’d guess the latter.
See the DEA keeps two sets of books. One is used to claim the price goes up ($183); the other to use as the low price ($124) so that next yearthey can say the price went up. Just watch. I’ve been keeping track.
As far as I can tell, this system of lies became policy in September, 2007. That’s when they claimed the price of cocaine in April 2005 was $94. Really? Because if you remember from six paragraphs up (and they’re really dependent on you not remembering), the DEA said in April 2007 that cocaine prices had declined 11 percent from February 2005 to October 2006, to about $135 per pure gram of cocaine. Zoinks! We’ve come full circle.
You’ve got to admire their chutzpah. They just make things up with a straight face. Do they really think nobody will notice? To believe that we’re winning the war on drugs requires a willing suspension of disbelief and a very short memory.
No doubt in 2010 the DEA will claim they’ve always said the 2008 price of cocaine was $124. You got a problem with that?
In further amazing displays of chuzpah, the DEA says that seizure data “indicate decreased cocaine availability beginning in early 2007. According to Federal-wide Drug Seizure System (FDSS) data, quarterly cocaine seizures by federal agencies have decreased significantly since the first quarter of 2007.” So lessseizure means we’re winning the war drugs? Last time I checked they said that moreseizures mean we’re winning.
My head hurts.
I suppose when usage rates dip they’ll stop talking about price. And when use goes up, they’ll talk about seizures. And when that gets old, we’ll go back to rising prices.
What’s amazing about this game is that the DEA can’t come up with anysingle standard that shows success.
The war on drugs is such a beautiful war because we never stop winning! No wonder they want to keep it going. Who can argue with success?
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Wait till Next Year!
“Mexican president rejects ‘failed state’ label.”
Well, I suppose he would.
He also says he’ll have the war on the drugs pretty much wrapped up when he leaves office in 2012.
Mean more than 1,000 people have been killed in Mexican war-on-drugs violence in the first eight weeks of 2009. According to the Mexican Attorney General, Eduardo Medina Mora, the total killed in 2008 (6,290) was double that of 2007. About 90% are suspected drug traffickers; 6% police and soldiers; 4% innocents caught in the crossfire.
Medina Mora also took a page from our DEA and starting marking shit up. He said the cartels are “melting down” under pressure from turf wars and the national crackdown. He also lied when he says that US cocaine prices have increased 100% and purity dropped by 35% since the Mexican crackdown began in 2006.
Really?
Why do foreign leaders lie? Because American leaders pay them. That’s what foreign aid is all about. We give them money. But I guess the gravy train runs out for former presidents. They start telling the truth.