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Tag: war on drugs

  • “Hard” versus “soft” drugs

    The Dutch make an interesting and useful distinction between “hard” and “soft” drugs. When a Amsterdam police officer says, “I think drugs should be illegal and dealers should go to prison,” they’re almost assuredly talking about “hard” drugs like crack and heroin. Marijuana and hashish are considered “soft” drugs and were decriminalized in 1976.

    The result is that “coffee shops” selling weed and hash appeared, since people knew you wouldn’t get arrested for possession.

    When the hard/soft distinction was made, the idea was to accept marijuana for what it is and allow people to buy weed without having to deal with drug dealers and guns and gangsters.

    The hard/soft distinction is somewhat arbitrary. But no more so than our distinctions between legal, prescription, and prohibited drugs.

    There is also some debate about whether to classify ecstasy and hallucinogenic mushrooms as hard or soft.

    Dutch police generally support the hard/soft distinction and would not want to close “coffee shops,” even if they could. In speech, they use “drug” to mean “hard drug.”

    When I asked a police officer to clarify the distinction between “hard” and “soft” drugs, she said a hard drug is one that, “if you do it wrong, you can die.” That’s not a bad working definition. Particularly because it presents the problem of drug policy as geared to saving lives, and not imposing morals or punishing deviants.

    Of course I think all drugs should be regulated, but I would settle for a system where no drug user is jailed, violence is low, and drug use is seen as a public-health rather than criminal-justice issue.

  • From the Economist

    This is from the Economist:

    Thursday

    I’M STANDING on a street lined with boarded-up shops—a popular haven for drug-dealers. A police officer is frisking a suspect whose trousers are nearly around his knees. The policeman didn’t pull them down; that’s how the suspect wears them. A bit impractical, perhaps, if his line of work requires him to run away from policemen.

    But he insists that he is no longer in that line of work. He was caught once, but is now going straight. He has a legitimate reason for hanging around a nearly deserted street, after dark, in the pouring rain, for several hours. He is waiting for someone, he says.
    AFP Follow the trousers

    The police officer’s colossal partner, whose sense of humour is as robust as his shoulders, prays aloud: “Oh Lord, I pray that a meteorite hits this [drug bazaar].” (He adds a P.S. to the effect that God should be careful not to hurt anyone.)

    The temporal authorities in Baltimore take a more pragmatic approach to fighting crime. Like every other large city, they have copied elements of New York’s system for mapping crime statistics, which allows police departments to send officers where they are most needed.

    Baltimore has also put more officers on foot patrol, so that they are closer to the people they are supposed to protect. It has locked up many of the most violent offenders. And it has encouraged local volunteers to mediate between young hot-heads. Such volunteers know when a fight is about to erupt over, for example, a stolen girlfriend. All this is quite new, but the mayor, Sheila Dixon, thinks it is working. The murder rate for the first three months of this year was sharply lower than last year.

    But still, the drug trade is unlikely to be peaceful so long as it is illegal. Crack pushers cannot ask the courts to settle their disputes. The only way to stop them shooting each other is to legalise drugs, reckons Peter Moskos, a sociologist who spent a year as a policeman in Baltimore’s eastern district and wrote a book about it.

    That is not going to happen, alas. And even if it did, it would hardly be a panacea. Anyone with a proper job leaves the ghetto. The young men left behind develop traits that render them unemployable. For example, says Mr Moskos, they react violently to trivial slights. This is a useful quality in a drug-dealer, but less so in most other trades.

  • These drug dealers aren’t so bad

    These drug dealers aren’t so bad

    In the Netherlands, you can walk into any “coffee shop” and legally buy or smoke marijuana or hashish. It’s a sight so common, you barely notice it. So here, in a “bad” part of town, are the drug dealers. They don’t shoot each other. They pay taxes–albeit not on the sale, which is technically only “decriminalized,” but they do pay income taxes based on the sales. It’s hard to understand how people can think that regulated drug selling is worse than unregulated drug sellers.

  • No joint smoking

    No joint smoking

    It’s my Spring Break and I’m in Amsterdam doing police research (and visiting friends).

    Biking with my brother today, I passed this sign.

    This is what you can do if you regulate drugs. This sign was put up because it’s an “area deserving special attention” (or something like that). In Amsterdam, this is considered a “bad” part of town. It’s not that bad. Compared to “bad” parts of town in America, it’s heaven.

    And oh yeah, the fine is €50. That’s about $80, with the weak dollar.

  • Lies, damned lies, and DEA statistics

    The DEA and other prohibitionists have a long history of lying about drug facts.

    In the past, they’ve claimed that the Netherlands drug policy was a “disaster,” despite all statistics to the contrary (especially compared to the United States).

    Here’s the latest. The DEA claims that a ballet measure softening enforcement of low-level marijuana crimes in Colorado is leading to an increase in drugs and organized crime. It’s a lie.

  • Officer shot in daylight gunbattle

    Wild gun battles in Baltimore are unfortunately nothing new. But this time an officer almost died.

  • Drug prohibition kills 220 in Juárez…

    …and that’s in the first 3 months of this year. And about a dozen of those are police officers.

    Enough!

    Here’s the New York Timesstory.

  • Ambitious Assult, Limited Victory

    The New York Times has an excellent article by Michael Brick on a large police operation meant to get drugs out of the Cypress Hills project. Guess what, there are still drugs in Cypress Hills.

    In many ways, it’s great police work (and conceivable right of The Wire). A five-month investigation, undercover officers moving into the projects and pretending they’re junkies. A tough prosecutor expanding the definition of conspiracy. Hundreds of arrests. Bad guys put in jail. It’s all good. Sort of.

    If I lived in Cypress Hill, I would want such police work. As longs are drug selling is unregulated and run by obnoxious, rude, and violent criminals I would want police trying their hardest. And yet I would also know the futility of the war on drugs in the long run.

    The raids happened in 2002. It takes years for this this stuff to work its way through the court. The projects are still rough. One man is quoted as saying that today things are “not perfect, but better.” That’s good, but not good enough. We need to set our sights higher.

    The whole article is worth reading.

  • California taxes drugs

    Richard Gonzales of National Public Radio report that California is pulling in $100 million a year in taxes from medical marijuana. This is a federal crime.

    The main opposition to medical marijuana comes from Big Government Conservatives. Big Government Prohibitionists would be a better label. They have a moral agenda and are only conservative (states’ rights be damned) in the sense that they hate liberals.

    I’m torn on medical marijuana. I’m for it. To me it is a no-brainer. But I’m worried that the fight for medical marijuana distracts from the real problem of unregulated drug selling in general. If stoners ever do get legal marijuana, God only knows they’ll be far too stoned to help support the cause of regulating other drugs.

    Still, it’s a step in the right direction. And a steady flow of tax dollar will undoubtedly convince some otherwise neutral people that regulation and taxation makes sense.

  • The international drug war coming home to roost

    Ending the war on drugs seems obvious to me. But many need more proof. Now the American-led international war on drugs is approaching our borders in New Mexico and Texas.

    One article yields New Mexicans saying “legalize drugs.” But a fellow New Mexican (my wife) warns, “But of course those Americans saying ‘legalize drugs’ are New Mexicans, so you already know they’re freaks.”