Drug war very effective

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 10:03:14 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED FEB. 3, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Drug war very effective -- at bloating police, prison 'industries'

Back in 1990, federal officials had what seemed like a modest idea for a new program: The U.S. Office of Drug Control Policy would identify a few areas -- all in the worst inner cities or along the Mexican border -- where local authorities were having trouble keeping the flow of illicit drugs under control. Some $25 million -- chickenfeed by federal standards -- would be parceled out to these "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas" in hopes of helping beef up local drug law enforcement.

Guess what happened?

Seeing a new source of funds for local police equipment, staff and operations, "Every congressman has raised their hand and said, 'I need relief from this problem, too,' " explains UCLA public policy professor Mark A.R. Kleiman.

If Sioux Falls, S.D. and Dayton, Ohio haven't yet been named "High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas" ... just give them time.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., recently announced Las Vegas as one of the latest cities to win the coveted "HIDTA" designation, which could mean $800,000 in new federal moneys in the first year alone, supposedly to "coordinate local narcotics investigations."

However, both the volume of drugs moving through this area -- and their purity -- have actually increased in recent years, despite the existence of five previously established drug task forces.

What kind of results can official show for those operations? Just this week, Las Vegas police and federal officials both refused to so much as disclose the names of the five pre-existing task forces -- let alone what they've cost or whether they can demonstrate any palpable success.

Insisting on keeping secret any evidence of their effectiveness -- or, who knows, the complete waste of every dollar allocated to them on bachelor parties and sports cars -- FBI Special Agent Daren Borst cited unspecified "operational concerns."

This does not instill a lot of confidence in the arrival here of a federal program which is quickly becoming known around the nation as the "SWAT Team Full-Employment Act."

HIDTA funding has expanded from $25 million in 1990 to $140 million in 1997 to a projected $205 million in 2001.

But Eric Sterling, executive director of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Washington, D.C., says that growth has been largely attributable to the desire of local congressmen around the nation to elbow a place for their constituents at this latest federal feeding trough -- not on any evidence that HIDTA does any good.

A HIDTA designation for anti-narcotics efforts in a town like Las Vegas amounts to little more than "a new set of lights and whistles you put on the old vehicle to make it look fancier," Sterling told Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Glenn Puit last week.

With a decade of experience under their belts and 26 HIDT areas now designated across the nation, one would think the federal government would by have gathered some evidence of the program's usefulness. But Professor Kleiman at UCLA says no independent, in-depth study of the effectiveness of the HIDTA designation -- and the federal funds that flow in its wake -- has ever been conducted.

A spokeswoman for the Office of Drug Control Policy responds that HIDTA's executive board is still "customizing performance measurement tools" for the added funds justified by the Trafficking Area designations. That is to say: Not only do they not know whether the $1.2 billion spent so far has done any good ... they haven't even figured out how to measure whether it's done any good.

It's tempting to say the War on Drugs isn't working. In fact, it's working very well as a justification for allocating billions of additional tax dollars for police equipment and staffing and tracking systems -- in what would otherwise be a shrinking industry, as the aging of the American population has caused the rate of virtually every non-drug crime to actually plummet in recent years.

Oh, the "War on Drugs" is working very well if your goal is to track where even law-abiding Americans go and who they call on the telephone and what they do with their money. It's only "not working" if we naively suppose the purpose is to stop people from voluntarily ingesting drugs -- which was actually given up as a lost cause in this country when they legalized "demon rum" in 1933.

At this point, it may even be legitimate to ask whether the folks rolling in the clover in the law enforcement and criminal defense and prison industries really want to see drug use reduced in this country. Imagine the kind of unemployment that would then ravage those "growth" industries if that were ever to happen.

Why, the drug warriors might even have to figure out some new "demon" to pursue -- just the way Harry Anslinger and a small group of other soon-to-be-unemployed Prohibition agents hit on a plan to launch a new "anti-marihuana" campaign just as that earlier "War on Drugs" was shutting down, back in 1933 and '34.

Any government program which spends money secretly, and which is thus totally lacking in accountability to the taxpayers who fund it, is dangerous and unacceptable in a free country, even before we start talking about the kind of invasions of privacy and systematic trampling of the Bill of Rights which are now widely (albeit foolishly) accepted as "necessary if we want to win this War on Drugs."

If there is a way to convince people to stop frittering their lives away in drug use, it's likely to be through stronger communities and families and churches and temples -- all focuses of energy and money and public attention from which programs like HIDTA only divert us.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair