Wow: It’s time to legalize drugs, says … Tom Tancredo?

posted at 9:55 pm on May 21, 2009 by Allahpundit

Via the Cato Institute, a shocker that shouldn’t feel as shocking as it does. Because Tanc’s top priority has always been the border, it stands to reason he’d be willing to take bold measures to strengthen it. De-fanging Mexico’s narco-cartels by yanking their black market out from under them would go a long way towards making it safer, albeit not necessarily more secure. Even so, this is Sir Tancelot we’re talking about — staunch supporter of the war on terror, stalwart social con, and of course crusading anti-amnesty advocate. Watching him embrace one of the left’s pet social issues isn’t unlike watching Obama come out in favor of waterboarding in extraordinary circumstances. Which, like Tanc’s position here, would also be the correct one.

Below the news clip you’ll find an informative new promo for the Showtime series “Weeds.” At least, I think it’s informative. I’m too worn out to fact-check it. Click the image to watch.

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scotta:

You seem to base your entire argument on legalization being a boon to drug cartels, of which you seem pretty confident.

The end of prohibition was a massive boon to the newly-reopened legal ventures, who had superior quality and experience to the illegal ad-hoc breweries, right?

Yes. Do illegal drug cartels have contacts with the drug stores and bars that would be selling drugs if they were legal?

A. Probably not the types they need, but experience says they can find them, given their penachent for doing so in the Netherlands and here pre-ban.

B. who is to say we don’t see some of the old contacts emerge from the shadows and suddenly become “legit” while remaining tied to them?

C. If those two fail, there is always the potential of slipping them directly into the general market, which has proven quite difficult to counter (the Dutch themselves admitted that itt was almost impossible to filter what drugs were legit and what were illegally grown once they hit the market, which has partially paralyzed their reaction).

Can you point out to me the great land that drug producers currently use

Yes indeed. First, you have the Amazonian basin, where the topsoil is usually thicker than it is here, the locations are out of sight, the crews are experirenced, and the location has already been altered for growing.

Than we have South-East Asia, which , save for the topsoil, is roughly the same, with the added perk of being considerably easier to get up the rivers to the coast, and from their to the market.

Central Asia is perhaps the weak link in that assertation, but they HAVE cultivated Opium production into a rather fine art. The main Achilles’ heel is market transport, but they have been able to solve that in the past, though they do it mainly to Europe or “Western Asia” (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, as opposed to Pakistan or Sri Lanka).

and tell me how it compares to the vast swaths of farmland across America that aren’t currently used to grow drugs because it’s illegal and the owners don’t want to go to jail?

Depends on the circumstances and the crop you are talking about. However, the main points that spring up to me in general is that:

A. Much of the usable soil is actually not unused, simply put to other uses (herding/ grazing, etc).

B. Would these independent growers be able to withstand the shock of a sudden “business offer” by strange and vaguely threatening individuals who are trying to make “an offer he can’t refuse?”

Those who could survive legally would probably be a hardy bunch, and withing a few decades might even be able to crowd the cartels out of their own market.

However, that would be after several long years of building the infastructure, getting overseas and domestic contacts, and generally making the trains run on time.

And in the interlude, charmers like the Mexican warlords and FARC would be counting their money and possibly doing damage with it that would take decades to reverse, if it is even possible at all.

Do you really think it’s that hard to grow drugs,

As I mentioned: much depends on the type of drugs, and in some such as Cocaine, what quality/purity they are.

and that if there was any expertise that cartels have, it couldn’t be quickly surpassed by scientists and farmers here who would actually be able to research the subject without fear of going to jail?

Perhaps, but again: would these scientists and farmers be able to wistand intimidation and the threat of armed force? And how long would it take for the survivors to eventually crowd the market out?

It seems to me most of the cartels’ expertise is on how to grow and distribute an illegal product, not a product in particular.

Well, that depends. The Minor Latin American syndicates? Yes, since the expertise of the Poppy Cartel has probably long fallen from grace.

However, the major syndicates or the Asian/Middle Eastern ones, who largely deal with more socially Liberal Europe (the Netherlands in particular), where there are fewer if any laws against them probably have some chops in competing on a level market.

Can we agree that profit margins on growing drugs would be vastly lower than they are now if drugs were made legal?

Depends on the level of competition. I would probaby have to agree with you in general, though.

Do you think that might make it less desirable for for cartels and gangs to be in the business of selling drugs?

And that is one major point against my “Cartelcentric” argument. However, the question becomes how long that will take, what degree of legal competition will it require, and will the cartels be able to circumvent either?

I hope they won’t, but the threat of them doing it on the side (which, even in a diminished market, isn’t something I would scoff at, given the money involved) while “expanding into new business opperunities” is something we would have to keep an eye on.

What’s the difference?

While that was mainly a rehtorical rebut, I would have to say the difference lies in what rights we genuinely need to mantain our individual soveriegnty in a Democratic/Republican society, versus wha are largely unnecessary.

Perfect definition? No. But it works well enough for me, and while some degree of liscence is, of course, necessary to prevent infringement of more fundamental rights, (there is no law against one eating one’s, um, number two, to use a rather out-there example, and rightfully so), not all things we can do are necessary to live free lives. Perhaps the BANNING of a particular type of liscence may impinge on one’s freedom by the methods used (for instance, alcohol standards enforced via intruding and unstoppable searches of all residences and properties one owns), but on average the liscence itself does not.

Yes, that is an ackward definition, but it’s honestly the best I can come up with, given history and the intent of the foudners.

Also, I don’t know where the 1/3 of the rate of addiction stat another commenter wrote of comes from, but I’m pretty sure that by saying rate, that refers to percentage, or per capita. I could be wrong, though.

That was a possibility I was considering, but the considerable growth in population in the meantime coupled with the addiction rate at the turn of the century probably invalidated that (or at least was an exagerration), and the methods of surveys probably means it was a comparison in raw numbers as opposed to per capita (which is unbelievably hard to determine from your average survey).

Sorry for the rant, and pleasure meeting you.

I await a response.

Turtler on May 23, 2009 at 2:44 PM

Turtler on May 23, 2009 at 3:52 AM

I see Dostoyevsky has made an appearance here too.

Simple: For the same reason Phillip Morris would kick their asses if the cartels ever tried to move into Tobacco.

They are experienced, have contacts, and already have the best land staked out.

Uh, no. Phillip Morris would kick their ass for the same reason they will kick their ass if they are ever allowed to grow cannabis. They would kick their ass because they have world-class botanists, marketing specialists, managers, logistics specialists, and every other skill modern industry needs. The cartels employ people who are good at avoiding the law and willing to use violence. Forced to compete against legitimate business, and they would fail, epically.

Honest ventures can’t compete with that.

Nice to see the value you place on honesty. Typical prohibitionist.

The POPULATION of the planet was hardly 1/3 of what it is now in 1900, and this was before the advent of the automobile, mass-transit, reliable aircraft, or the internet.

Which means you are using a straw argument: more people= more drug users= (given the flawed methodologies of studies) a higher rate of use.

What you SHOULD be looking at is PER CAPITA use.

Uh, that’s what I was looking at.

Department of Justice

By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict.

According to the National institute on Drug Abuse

In 2002, an estimated 1.5 million Americans could be classified as dependent on or abusing cocaine

Also according to the NIDA

In 2003, 57.4 percent of past year heroin users were classified with dependence on or abuse of heroin, and an estimated 281,000 persons received treatment for heroin abuse.

So, approximately 1.8 million people in the US were cocaine or heroin addicts, which gives us an addiction rate of 1 in 166. Of course, NIDA also notes that their numbers probably underestimate heroin addiction, which only serves to increase the addiction rate today.

Further, this doesn’t include methamphetamine use. Once again, according to NIDA

In 2006, there were an estimated 731,000 current users of methamphetamine aged 12 or older (0.3 percent of the population)

That raises our addiction numbers to 2.5 million addicts in the US, or a rate of 1 in 120.

So, we can clearly see that addiction rates are higher today than in 1900, before prohibition.

And you wonder WHY? Because goons, cartels, juntas, and enemies tended to USE their sales in the West to cause trouble abroad.

Except you ignore the fact that, as Consumers Union reports

Most of the opium consumed in the United States during the nineteenth century was legally imported. Morphine was legally manufactured here from the imported opium. But opium poppies were also legally grown within the United States.

So, most of the drug traffic was above board, not funding underworld revolutions that I still think are in your imagination.

Right now, drug money is financing Hugo and his proxies, the Taliban, various Asiantic Triads and the Yakuza, Mexican drug cartels, Latin American warloards, and your garden variety criminal gangs.

They have had the market cornered well before legalization, and as things stand now, legal competition will probably be pushed to the side or run out of business.

No. The cartels have the black market cornered. Where legitimate firms produce opiates, they buy their opium from legitimate sources in Australia, Turkey, and India, not from mafias. Where legitimate firms produce cocaine (in the US, a monopoly held by Mallinckrodt Corp), they buy their coca from legitimate sources, not from mafias. If you have evidence to the contrary, please give a citation.

Make the entire market legitimate, as opposed to just the medical market, and legitimate firms will crowd out the mafias, because they simply are better at what they do. Just like after the end of alcohol prohibition.

So, how does denying a criminal organization markets and forcing it UNDERGROUND make it “stronger and deadlier?”

Once again, your economic ignorance rears its ugly head.

prohibition doesn’t deny criminal organizations markets… it denies legitimate organizations markets. This severely drives Supply (as opposed to quantity supplied) down, which in turn drives equilibrium price up. That’s what is known as a price support. Same thing happens when tariffs are imposed, except this is like a tariff on steroids, since it wipes out all legitimate Supply.

Do your homework.

Perhaps the most deadly operation by a drug cartel was the 1925 attempted coup by the “Poppy Cartel” of Colombia, which was so powerful that we actually had to send the Air Force in to work with the Federales to disperse the revolt, and for a while it looked like even THAT wouldn’t be enough.

And the Poppy Cartel got its money from LEGAL sales throughout the West.

Please give a link to this coup attempt, or admit that you cannot.

However, that will be cold comfort to the Mexicans or those living in the Southwest when the Cartels are STRENGTHENED by an influx of drug money.

Except the cartels would experience a decrease in drug money, not an influx.

As I have pointed out to you on the mexican cartel thread, William F. Buckley estimated the legitimate price of hard drugs to be 2% of their street value, and that estimate is backed up by The Economist.

Now, if we were to allow for your idiotic claim that the cartels would beat out American firms for drug business, that means they would have to lower their prices by 1/50th to be price competitive. That means even if we allow for a doubling of use of drugs after legalization, the revenues going to cartels would be 4% of what they are today.

JohnGalt23 on May 24, 2009 at 2:00 AM

Turtler on May 23, 2009 at 3:52 AM

I see Dostoyevsky has made an appearance here too.

Simple: For the same reason Phillip Morris would kick their asses if the cartels ever tried to move into Tobacco.

They are experienced, have contacts, and already have the best land staked out.

Uh, no. Phillip Morris would kick their ass for the same reason they will kick their ass if they are ever allowed to grow cannabis. They would kick their ass because they have world-class botanists, marketing specialists, managers, logistics specialists, and every other skill modern industry needs. The cartels employ people who are good at avoiding the law and willing to use violence. Forced to compete against legitimate business, and they would fail, epically.

Honest ventures can’t compete with that.

Nice to see the value you place on honesty. Typical prohibitionist.

JohnGalt23 on May 24, 2009 at 2:01 AM

The POPULATION of the planet was hardly 1/3 of what it is now in 1900, and this was before the advent of the automobile, mass-transit, reliable aircraft, or the internet.

Which means you are using a straw argument: more people= more drug users= (given the flawed methodologies of studies) a higher rate of use.

What you SHOULD be looking at is PER CAPITA use.

Uh, that’s what I was looking at.

Department of Justice

By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict.

According to the National institute on Drug Abuse

In 2002, an estimated 1.5 million Americans could be classified as dependent on or abusing cocaine

Also according to the NIDA

In 2003, 57.4 percent of past year heroin users were classified with dependence on or abuse of heroin, and an estimated 281,000 persons received treatment for heroin abuse.

So, approximately 1.8 million people in the US were cocaine or heroin addicts, which gives us an addiction rate of 1 in 166. Of course, NIDA also notes that their numbers probably underestimate heroin addiction, which only serves to increase the addiction rate today.

Further, this doesn’t include methamphetamine use. Once again, according to NIDA

In 2006, there were an estimated 731,000 current users of methamphetamine aged 12 or older (0.3 percent of the population)

That raises our addiction numbers to 2.5 million addicts in the US, or a rate of 1 in 120.

So, we can clearly see that addiction rates are higher today than in 1900, before prohibition.

JohnGalt23 on May 24, 2009 at 2:01 AM

And you wonder WHY? Because goons, cartels, juntas, and enemies tended to USE their sales in the West to cause trouble abroad.

Except you ignore the fact that, as Consumers Union reports

Most of the opium consumed in the United States during the nineteenth century was legally imported. Morphine was legally manufactured here from the imported opium. But opium poppies were also legally grown within the United States.

So, most of the drug traffic was above board, not funding underworld revolutions that I still think are in your imagination.

Right now, drug money is financing Hugo and his proxies, the Taliban, various Asiantic Triads and the Yakuza, Mexican drug cartels, Latin American warloards, and your garden variety criminal gangs.

They have had the market cornered well before legalization, and as things stand now, legal competition will probably be pushed to the side or run out of business.

No. The cartels have the black market cornered. Where legitimate firms produce opiates, they buy their opium from legitimate sources in Australia, Turkey, and India, not from mafias. Where legitimate firms produce cocaine (in the US, a monopoly held by Mallinckrodt Corp), they buy their coca from legitimate sources, not from mafias. If you have evidence to the contrary, please give a citation.

Make the entire market legitimate, as opposed to just the medical market, and legitimate firms will crowd out the mafias, because they simply are better at what they do. Just like after the end of alcohol prohibition.

So, how does denying a criminal organization markets and forcing it UNDERGROUND make it “stronger and deadlier?”

Once again, your economic ignorance rears its ugly head.

prohibition doesn’t deny criminal organizations markets… it denies legitimate organizations markets. This severely drives Supply (as opposed to quantity supplied) down, which in turn drives equilibrium price up. That’s what is known as a price support. Same thing happens when tariffs are imposed, except this is like a tariff on steroids, since it wipes out all legitimate Supply.

Do your homework.

Perhaps the most deadly operation by a drug cartel was the 1925 attempted coup by the “Poppy Cartel” of Colombia, which was so powerful that we actually had to send the Air Force in to work with the Federales to disperse the revolt, and for a while it looked like even THAT wouldn’t be enough.

And the Poppy Cartel got its money from LEGAL sales throughout the West.

Please give a link to this coup attempt, or admit that you cannot.

However, that will be cold comfort to the Mexicans or those living in the Southwest when the Cartels are STRENGTHENED by an influx of drug money.

Except the cartels would experience a decrease in drug money, not an influx.

As I have pointed out to you on the mexican cartel thread, William F. Buckley estimated the legitimate price of hard drugs to be 2% of their street value, and that estimate is backed up by The Economist.

Now, if we were to allow for your idiotic claim that the cartels would beat out American firms for drug business, that means they would have to lower their prices by 1/50th to be price competitive. That means even if we allow for a doubling of use of drugs after legalization, the revenues going to cartels would be 4% of what they are today.

JohnGalt23 on May 24, 2009 at 2:02 AM

Yes. Do illegal drug cartels have contacts with the drug stores and bars that would be selling drugs if they were legal?

A. Probably not the types they need, but experience says they can find them, given their penachent for doing so in the Netherlands and here pre-ban.

Except drugs aren’t legal in the Netherlands. Clearly you don’t know what you are talking about.

JohnGalt23 on May 24, 2009 at 2:09 AM

Regarding pre-prohibition drug addiction vs. addiction rates today:

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm

According to the Department of Justice:

By 1900, about one American in 200 was either a cocaine or opium addict.

Today?

http://web.archive.org/web/20050204051018/http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm

Well, once again according to Justice Department

There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999

http://web.archive.org/web/20050204124554/http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm

And also from DOJ

Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year

So, there were, at least in 1999-2000, 4.6 million people addicted to heroin or cocaine, out of 300 million, which amounts to an addiction rate of 1 in 65.

So, tell us turtler, why is the addiction rate 3x as high today as it was in 1900, before prohibition.

JohnGalt23 on May 24, 2009 at 2:31 AM

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