Tag: The War on Unpatentable Drugs

Collectivizing Individual Action

The War on Some Drugs is justified by collectivizing individual action. According to its proponents, drug usage is a societal problem. They try to justify this claim by using other forms of collectivism. For example, proponents of the drug war will claim that drug usage costs “us” fantastic amounts of money in healthcare-related expenses. However, they can only make that claim because the government has collectivized a significant portion of the healthcare market. If the healthcare market were a free market, drug users would be left footing the expenses for their habit.

The drug war’s current hot topic is illegal opioid usage. In an attempt to make illegal opioid usage look like a societal problem, proponents of the drug war are now claiming that opioid usage has lowered the average life expectancy in the United States:

The problem is so bad, in fact, that the epidemic is dragging down the entire country’s life expectancy—by 2.5 months. That’s according to a new analysis by CDC researchers who published Tuesday in JAMA.

The problem with this statistic is that it’s completely meaningless.

Drug usage isn’t a communicable disease like plague or the flu. A drug user can’t transmit the effects of the drugs they’re using to you. Like them, you have to make a conscious decision to use drugs. If my neighbor down the street decides to use heroine, my life expectancy isn’t impacts in any way whatsoever. But if enough people actually realized that, the government would have a difficult time drumming up popular support for its very profitable war.

Reefer Madness

Anybody who has watched Reefer Madness knows that marijuana can send people into psychotic rages. Take Officer Yanez, for example. One sniff of the devil’s weed made him go from a calm cop who was issuing a citation for a broken taillight to a hardened killer:

The officer who fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop last year told investigators that the smell of “burnt marijuana” in Castile’s car made him believe his life was in danger.

Of course cannabis doesn’t send people into psychotic rages. It actually has quite the opposite effect. If Castile was being influenced by cannabis he was probably more compliant and relaxed than normal. Likewise, had Yanez toked up before hitting the road it’s possible that Castile would still be alive today.

The Evils of the Drug War

The war on unapproved drugs may be one of the most evil acts being carried out here in the United States. It took an entirely voluntary activity, introducing chemicals into one’s own body, and turn it into an excuse for unprecedented levels of expropriation and criminal activity by agents of the State.

Using the drug war as justification, police have stolen cars, cash, and other property as well as sexually assaulted a practically uncountable number of victims. Their victims include the elderly, disabled, and even children:

But now, a lawsuit filed on behalf of several students and seeking class-action status for all of them makes some far more disturbing allegations:

a) Deputies ordered students to stand facing the wall with their hands and legs spread wide apart;

b) Deputies touched and manipulated students’ breasts and genitals;

c) Deputies inserted fingers inside girls’ bras, and pulled up girls’ bras, touching and partially exposing their bare breasts;

d) Deputies touched girls’ underwear by placing hands inside the waistbands of their pants or reaching up their dresses;

e) Deputies touched girls’ vaginal areas through their underwear;

f) Deputies cupped or groped boys’ genitals and touched their buttocks through their pants.

[…]

According to the lawsuit, the deputies had a list of 13 suspected students. Three of them were in school that day. For that, they searched 900 students. (And, let’s just point out again, found nothing. In a school of 900.)

If several adults went into a school and sexually assaulted 900 children most people wouldn’t even wait for a trial, they would grab the pitchforks and torches. But when the adults are wearing badges the behavior is suddenly seen as excusable in many people’s eyes. Oftentimes when officers commit such heinous crimes they receive no punishment, which encourages more wicked people to seek a job in law enforcement.

I’m hoping this lawsuit results in the involved officers being jailed. Even if the accusations of sexual assault are unfounded (which, considering the actions performed by officers in the pursuit of unapproved drugs, seems unlikely) the officers violated the privacy of 887 students (they only had a list of 13 suspected students) by searching them without any reason whatsoever.

Employers Having A Difficult Time Finding Employees Who Can Pass A Drug Test

The war on drugs has permeated our entire society. Police have been militarized and given almost limitless power, entire industries have developed around detecting illicit drugs, and employers have become snoops that test employees for illicit drug use. The last one really baffles me.

Outside of being coerced at the point of the State’s gun, why would an employer waste their time and the time of their employees testing them for drug use? If an employee is performing their job satisfactorily an employer shouldn’t care what that employee puts into their body. If an employee isn’t performing their job satisfactorily then the employer will likely terminate them regardless of the reason. But employers have allowed themselves to become snoops for the State and is do doing have handicapped themselves:

SAVANNAH, Ga. — A few years back, the heavy-equipment manufacturer JCB held a job fair in the glass foyer of its sprawling headquarters near here, but when a throng of prospective employees learned the next step would be drug testing, an alarming thing happened: About half of them left.

That story still circulates within the business community of this historic port city. But the problem has gotten worse.

All over the country, employers say they see a disturbing downside of tighter labor markets as they try to rebuild from the worst recession since the Depression: They are struggling to find workers who can pass a pre-employment drug test.

That hurdle partly stems from the growing ubiquity of drug testing, at corporations with big human resources departments, in industries like trucking where testing is mandated by federal law for safety reasons, and increasingly at smaller companies.

I’ve heard a lot of people who work in human resource departments at software development firms joke about how their companies would lose all of their employees if they actually started doing drug testing. It’s good evidence that users of illicit drugs aren’t incapable of performing reliably. This is especially true when many drugs that are declared illegal aren’t actually that harmful. Cannabis, for example, is an example of a drug that’s still illegal in many states but doesn’t actually cause a great deal of harm. In fact it can improve an individual’s performance at work by helping them coax with anxiety or stress.

The lesson from this story is that you should not volunteer to enforce the State’s policies. Even though the State has declared a massive list of chemicals illegal that doesn’t mean you, as an employer, should volunteer to test your employees. You gain no advantage from it (when’s the last time you heard of the State giving a sizable reward to an employer for drug testing their employees) and actually put yourself at a severe disadvantage by limiting your pool of potential employees.

The War On Drugs Breeds More Dangerous Drugs

Imodium may be the new over-the-counter scary drug but it appears that W-18 is the new illicit scary drug (which is in desperate name of a marketing department to give it a better name):

For the second time in a year, police in Alberta have uncovered a drug called W-18, a synthetic opioid that’s 100 times more powerful than fentanyl — and 10,000 more powerful than morphine.

Police in Edmonton announced Wednesday they seized four kilograms of the substance in powder form during a raid carried out in December during a fentanyl investigation. The powder was then sent to Health Canada, which confirmed on Tuesday that it was W-18.

Staff Sergeant Dave Knibbs told a press conference that this amount of powder could have produced hundreds of millions of W-18 pills.

A stronger substance that people can voluntarily put into their bodies? The horror!

In all seriousness though, W-18 is likely a more dangerous drug than fentanyl but it is also a byproduct of the war on drugs. The iron law of prohibition states that the potency of a prohibited substance increases along with the enforcement of the prohibition:

Super potent pot is not a market failure. It is simply the result of government prohibition. In fact, it is one of the best examples of the iron law of prohibition. When government enacts and enforces a prohibition it eliminates the free market which is then replaced by a black market. This typically changes everything about “the market.” It changes how the product is produced, how it is distributed and sold to consumers. It changes how the product is packaged and in particular, the product itself. The iron law of prohibition looks specifically at how prohibition makes drugs like alcohol and marijuana more potent. The key to the phenomenon is that law enforcement makes it more risky to make, sell, or consume the product. This encourages suppliers to concentrate the product to make it smaller and thus more potent. In this manner you get “more bang for the buck.”

During alcohol prohibition (1920-1933), alcohol consumption went from a beer, wine, and whiskey market to one of rotgut whiskey with little wine or beer available. The rotgut whiskey could be more than twice as potent of the normal whiskey that was produced both before and after prohibition. The product is then diluted at the point of consumption. During the 1920s all sorts of cocktails were invented to dilute the whiskey and to cover up for bad smells and tastes.

Therefore, the current high potency of marijuana is not a market phenomenon, nor is it a market failure. It is primarily driven by government’s prohibition and the odd incentives that this produces on the sellers’ side of the market. Under these conditions consumers may prefer higher potency marijuana, ceteris paribus, but it is not primarily a consumer driven phenomenon.

W-18 is the byproduct of stronger enforcement of opioid prohibitions. Since law enforcers are concentrating their efforts on opioids such as heroine and fentanyl the producers are responding by making a more concealable version (as the product is more potent less is needed for the desired effect) that is easier to transport under the watchful eye of the badged men with guns.

This is just another example of how the war on drugs has actually made the drug market more dangerous. In addition to adding the risk of men with guns kicking down the doors of drug users at oh dark thirty and shooting their family pets, the war on drugs has also made the substances themselves more dangerous by creating an environment that motivates producers to increase the potency. So long as the war on opioids continues we will see more potent forms. In a few years W-18 will likely become a footnote in history; just another less potent version of a new opioid. This trend will continue until the war on drugs is ended and producers are no longer encouraged to make ever increasingly potent substances.

Mark Dayton Sending Mixed Messages

For those of you living outside of the thawing tundra of Minnesota one of our current political battles is cannabis legalization. This battle hasn’t been going well for proponents because higher ups in the state, namely Mark Dayton, are basing their decision on that of the law enforcement lobby. The law enforcement lobby, predictably, opposes cannabis legalization because property stolen from suspected violators of the prohibition is a major income source for police departments.

Not satisfied with being a coward hiding behind a major lobby Dayton decided to open is mouth again. This time he acknowledged that cannabis may be beneficial for people suffering certain ailments, mentioned the fact that cannabis can be purchased in almost any city, and then reminded people that his will still order law enforcement agents to aggress against individuals buying cannabis for medical reasons:

ST. PAUL — Minnesotans who want marijuana to ease pain and deal with other medical conditions already can get it, Gov. Mark Dayton said Thursday.
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However, he quickly added, buying pot on the street is illegal, and he does not endorse it. In a conference call with reporters, he said that possessing a small amount of the drug could bring a fine about the same cost as a traffic ticket.

“I am not advocating anybody do whatever it is that they do,” Dayton said. “I am just trying to point out reality.”

Dayton added: “The fact is that you can go out in any city in Minnesota, I am told, and purchase marijuana.”

In other words those of you suffering from chronic pain, glaucoma, epilepsy, or other ailments that can be improved with cannabis can buy it but doing so will put you at risk of the only thing known to kill cannabis users: police aggression. While possession of small amounts of cannabis only officially results in a fine the fact of the matter is it also results in interaction with police officers, which is often very harmful to one’s physical well-being.

It’s funny watching Mark Dayton try to appease both advocates of cannabis legalization and law enforcement agents that profit greatly from cannabis prohibition. Either side could cost him the next election and that seems to be making him rather nervous (and that would be a good thing if he wouldn’t simply be replaced by a different psychopath).

Why Police Departments Fight Cannabis Legalization

Legalizing cannabis is a fight that has been ongoing here in Minnesota for many years. The current governor, Mark Dayton, has stated numerous times that he would only sign a legalization bill if law enforcement signed off on it. That’s a great cop out because law enforcement agencies are unlikely to support any effort to legalize cannabis. Their reasoning is simple, legalizing cannabis would cut into their revenue:

MILL CREEK, Wash.—A drug task force in Washington’s Snohomish County has historically been funded in part by cash, cars, houses and other assets seized from marijuana purveyors. But with recreational pot becoming legal in the state, this funding is going up in smoke.

Snohomish’s 22-officer drug-fighting operation, one of 19 such task forces in the state, brought in about $200,000 from forfeitures in marijuana cases in 2012—15% of its funding that year; the haul has exceeded $1 million in years past. The task force has a piece of land, seized from a pot grower, where it stores seized vehicles awaiting auction and trims with a riding mower confiscated in a drug bust.

The county’s task force has already slashed its projected funding for this year by more than 15%, partially because of a decline in revenue from asset forfeitures in pot cases, said task force Commander Pat Slack. That will mean less money for overtime, training and new equipment, said Mr. Slack, a vocal opponent of legalization.

With marijuana legalized for those at least 21 years old in Washington later this year and in Colorado as of Jan. 1, law-enforcement agencies in those states expect to lose millions in revenue gained from assets seized from growers and dealers.

Cannabis prohibition is a racket. Through civil forfeiture laws police departments make large amounts of money off of the war on unpatentable drugs. The incentive of revenue ensures police departments will generally oppose any form of cannabis legalization.

Government decrees tend to have an air of permanency to them. Nobody should find this surprising because most government decrees become revenue generators for the state. Whether violating decrees result in direct extortion (fines and confiscation of property), enslavement (prison), or coercion (being forced to work as a snitch for the state) the state always manages to turn its decrees into profit. Once something becomes a revenue generator it’s difficult to convince those profiting from it to destroy it.