[wordup] Stumbling in the dark (more on the war on drugs)

[Adam Shand]

I like this famous quote from the article.

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to
others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it
will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier,
because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right.
These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him,
or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or
visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. Over himself, over his
own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."


From: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=706591

Stumbling in the dark
Jul 26th 2001

  Moral outrage has proved a bad basis for policy on illegal drugs, says
  Frances Cairncross. Time for governments to go back to first principles

IF ONLY it were legitimate, there would be much to admire about the drugs
industry. It is, to start with, highly profitable. It produces goods for a
small fraction of the price its customers are willing to pay. It has
skilfully taken advantage of globalisation, deftly responding to changing
markets and transport routes. It is global but dispersed, built upon a
high level of trust, and markets its wares to the young with no spending
on conventional advertising. It brings rewards to some of the world's
poorer countries, and employs many of the rich world's minorities and
unskilled.

However, it is an odd business. Its products, simple agricultural extracts
and chemical compounds, sell for astonishing prices. A kilo of heroin, 40%
pure, sells (in units of less than 100 milligrams) for up to $290,000 on
the streets of the United Statesenough to buy a Rolls-Royce car. These
prices directly reflect the ferocious efforts by the rich countries to
suppress drugs. The effect is to drive a massive wedge between import and
retail prices. The import prices of both heroin and cocaine are about
10-15% of retail prices in rich countries. In poor countries, the ratio
may be more like 25%. Add a little more for seizures, valued at import
prices, and the grand total is probably about $20 billion. That would put
the industry in the same league as Coca-Cola's world revenues.

Taken at retail prices, it is almost certainly the world's largest illicit
market, although probably smaller than the widely quoted estimate by the
United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention of $400
billion, which would put it ahead of the global petroleum industry. Every
number about the production, consumption and price of drugs involves much
guesswork, a warning that applies all through this survey. But global
retail sales are probably around $150 billion, about half the sales of the
(legitimate) world pharmaceutical industry and in the same league as
consumer spending on tobacco ($204 billion) and alcohol ($252 billion).

The estimate of world drug sales comes from Peter Reuter, an economist at
the University of Maryland and co-author (with Robert MacCoun) of a
comprehensive new study of illegal drugs on which this survey frequently
draws. He notes that the official estimate of retail drug sales in the
United States is $60 billion, making America easily the world's most
valuable market. European sales are at most the same again, probably less.
Pakistan, Thailand, Iran and China account for most of the world's heroin
consumption, but prices are low, and so sales in total are probably worth
no more than $10 billion. Add in Australia and Canada; add, too, Eastern
Europe and Russia, where sales are growing fast, but probably still make
up less than 10% of the world's total. Exclude European marijuana, much of
which is domestically produced.

It may seem distasteful to think of drugs as a business, responding to
normal economic signals. To do so, however, is not to deny the fact that
the drugs trade rewards some of the world's nastiest people and most
disagreeable countries. Nor is it to underestimate the harm that misuse of
drugs can do to the health of individuals, or the moral fury that
drug-taking can arouse. For many people, indeed, the debate is a moral
one, akin to debates about allowing divorce, say, or abortion. But moral
outrage has turned out to be a poor basis for policy.

Nowhere is that more evident than in the United States. Here is the
world's most expensive drugs policy, absorbing $35 billion-40 billion a
year of taxpayers' cash. It has eroded civil liberties, locked up
unprecedented numbers of young blacks and Hispanics, and corroded foreign
policy. It has proved a dismal rerun of America's attempt, in 1920-33, to
prohibit the sale of alcohol. That experimentnot copied in any other big
countryinflated alcohol prices, promoted bootleg suppliers, encouraged the
spread of guns and crime, increased hard-liquor drinking and corrupted a
quarter of the federal enforcement agents, all within a decade. Half a
century from now, America's current drugs policy may seem just as perverse
as Prohibition.

For the moment, though, even having an honest debate about the policy is
extremely difficult there. Official publications are full of patently
false claims. A recent report on the National Drug Control Strategy
announced: National anti-drug policy is working. In evidence, it cited a
further rise in the budget for drugs control; a decline in cocaine
production in Peru and Bolivia (no mention of Colombia); and the fact that
the proportion of 12th-grade youngsters who have used marijuana in the
past month appears to have levelled off at around 25%. If these
demonstrate success, what can failure be like?

Nearer the truth is the picture portrayed in Traffic, a recent film that
vividly demonstrated the futility of fighting supply and ignoring demand.
In its most telling scene, the film's drugs tsar, played by Michael
Douglas, asks his staff to think creatively about new ideas for tackling
the problem. An embarrassed silence ensues.

This survey will concentrate largely (but not exclusively) on the American
market, partly because it is the biggest. Americans probably consume more
drugs per head, especially cocaine and amphetamines, than most other
countries. In addition, the effects of America's misdirected policies
spill across the world. Other rich countries that try to change their
policies meet fierce American resistance; poor countries that ship drugs
come (as Latin American experience shows) under huge pressure to prevent
the trade, whatever the cost to civil liberties or the environment.

Moreover, America's experience demonstrates the awkward reality that there
is little connection between the severity of a drugs policy on the one
hand and prevalence of use on the other. Almost a third of Americans over
12 years old admit to having tried drugs at some point, almost one in ten
(26.2m) in the past year. Drugs continue to pour into the country, prices
have fallen and purity has risen. Cocaine costs half of what it did in the
early 1980s and heroin sells for three-fifths of its price a decade ago.
Greater purity means that heroin does not have to be injected to produce a
high, but can be smoked or sniffed.

A matter of fashion

However, American experience also suggests that the pattern of drug
consumption is altering, arguably for the better. Casual use seems to have
fallen; heavy use has stabilised. More American teenagers are using
cannabis (which, strictly speaking, includes not just the herbmarijuanabut
the resin), but the number of youngsters experimenting with cocaine or
heroin has stayed fairly steady. The American heroin epidemic peaked
around 1973, since when the number of new addicts has dropped back to the
levels of the mid-1960s. The average age of heroin addicts is rising in
many countriesindeed, the Dutch have just opened the first home for
elderly junkies in Rotterdam. America's hideous crack epidemic has also
long passed, and cocaine use has retreated from its 1970s peak. And a
recent study shows that the likelihood of proceeding from cannabis to
harder drugs such as cocaine or heroin has fallen consistently for a
decade. We are largely dealing with history, says Mr Reuter. The total
population of drug users has been pretty stable since the late 1980s.

This is not an unmixed blessing: heavy users seem to be using more drugs,
and to be injuring and killing themselves more often. As with
cigarette-smoking, drug-taking is increasingly concentrated among the
poor. And in some rich countries other than America, such as Britain, the
number of both casual and heavy users of most drugs is still rising. In
the poorer countries and in Central and Eastern Europe too, drugs markets
are flourishing. India and China are probably the fastest-growing large
markets for heroin.

But in the rich countries, the drugs that increasingly attract young users
are those that are typically taken sporadically, not continuously:
cannabis, ecstasy, amphetamines and cocaine. In that sense, they are more
like alcohol than tobacco: users may binge one or two nights a week or
indulge every so often with friends, but most do not crave a dose every
day, year in, year out, as smokers generally do. That does not mean that
these drugs are harmless, but it should raise questions about whether
current policies are still appropriate.

Today's policies took shape mainly in the mid-1980s, when an epidemic of
crack cocaine use proved a perfect issue around which President Ronald
Reagan could rally middle America. His vice-president, George Bush, called
for a real war on drugs, which caught the mood of the time: opinion polls
showed that drugs were at the top of people's lists of worries. By the
early 1990s the crack scare had faded, but a series of increasingly
ferocious laws, passed in the second half of the 1980s, set the framework
within which Mr Bush's war on drugs is still waged today.

This framework is not immutable, although formidable vested
interestsincluding the police and prison officersnow back tough drugs
laws. Attitudes to policy change over time (see article), and drugs
policies in many countries are changing with them. Governments are
gradually putting more emphasis on treatment rather than punishment. Last
autumn, in a referendum, California voted to send first- and second-time
drug offenders for treatment rather than to prison. And the law on
possessing cannabis is being relaxed, even in parts of the United States,
where several states now permit the possession of small amounts of it for
medical use.

In Europe and Australia, governments have relaxed the enforcement of laws
on possessing soft drugs. In Switzerland, farmers who grow cannabis for
commercial sale within the country will be protected from prosecution if a
new government proposal goes through. In Britain, Michael Portillo, a top
opposition politician, advocates legalisation. But it is hard for an
individual country to set its own course without becoming a net exporter,
as the experience of Europe's more liberal countries shows. Ultimately,
the policies of the world's biggest drugs importer will limit the freedom
of others to act.

At the heart of the debate on drugs lies a moral question: what duty does
the state have to protect individual citizens from harming themselves? The
Economist has always taken a libertarian approach. It stands with John
Stuart Mill, whose famous essay On Liberty argued that:

  The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any
  member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to
  others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
  warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it
  will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier,
  because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even
  right.  These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning
  with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling
  him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. Over
  himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

This survey broadly endorses that view. But it tempers liberalism with
pragmatism. Mill was not running for election. Attitudes towards
drug-taking may be changing, but it will be a long time before most voters
are comfortable with a policy that involves only remonstration and reason.
People fret about protecting youngsters, a group that Mill himself
accepted might need special protection. They fret, too, that drug-takers
may not be truly sovereign if they become addicted. And some aspects of
drug-taking do indeed harm others. So a first priority is to look for
measures that reduce the harm drugs do, both to users and to society at
large