Drug War keeps digging itself a larger hole

[Phil Hellmuth]

simply a chess match with the druglords having the advantage, no matter what the Govt. does the profit is way too high for people in other countries to simply to just drop it.


LA Times

U.S and Allies seen as Losing Drug War



MEXICO CITY — The United States and its Latin American allies are losing a major battle in the war on drugs, according to indicators that show cocaine prices dipped for most of 2006 and U.S. users were getting more bang for their buck.

Despite billions of dollars in U.S. antidrug spending and record seizures, statistics recently released by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy suggest that cocaine is as available as ever.

Cocaine users and law enforcement officials both care about price and purity. Authorities work to choke off supply, driving up cost and dampening street sales. Users want better coke at cheaper prices.

In 2005, John P. Walters, the head of the drug policy office, made headlines touting a surge in cocaine prices and falling levels of quality. Those figures indicated that U.S. drug control policies were working, he said.

But the new numbers issued by his office indicate that any victory was short-lived. Retail cocaine prices last year fell more than 12% from January to October, while average purity of cocaine seized by authorities rose from about 68% to 73%. And this time, the drug policy office did little to publicize the figures, releasing them in a letter to U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).

The new statistics emboldened critics who say the Bush administration's antidrug strategies need to change.

"You can spin this any way you want, but when prices go down and supply goes up, the fact of the matter is that this policy is not working," said U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), a longtime critic who supports spending more on economic development.

Since the Iraq war began more than four years ago, the Pentagon has sharply reduced spending on air and sea surveillance of trafficking routes in the Pacific and Caribbean. The centerpiece of the U.S. strategy against cocaine has shifted to Plan Colombia, which funds aerial fumigation of coca plants. Colombian growers supply 90% of U.S. users through Mexican smuggling rings that control the cocaine and marijuana trade.

"Crop control is the most cost-effective means of cutting supply," according to the 2007 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, issued by the U.S. State Department. Last year, Colombia reported it had destroyed more than half a million acres of coca plants.

But growers have responded to the fumigation by breaking up their crops into smaller areas in an apparently successful hide-and-seek strategy. U.S. officials estimate that as much as 800 tons of cocaine still was exported from Colombia.

Patrick Ward, deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said the Colombia eradication program kept 350 tons of cocaine from being produced.

But critics say that availability of cocaine in most U.S. cities is evidence of failure.

"In 2005, more coca was grown in Colombia than they had in 2000, when Plan Colombia started," said Adam Isacson, a Colombia analyst for the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. "They can say, 'Look how much more coke we'd have without fumigation,' but that sounds pretty lame."

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe traveled to Washington this week to lobby for continued U.S. support amid allegations of ties between his government and illegal paramilitary groups. Colombia has received $4.7 billion since 2000.

The continued high production in Colombia is also troubling news for Mexico, which reaps the cocaine trade's greatest profits and bears the brunt of its costs. More than 2,000 deaths last year were attributed to an ongoing battle among rival drug gangs for control of smuggling routes.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon in December deployed the army to stem the bloodshed. But the killings continue at or ahead of last year's pace. In January, Mexico extradited several key drug trafficking figures to face trial in U.S. courts, including the alleged head of the country's east coast-based cartel. More extraditions are expected.

But continuing violence and a steady supply of cocaine crossing into the U.S. from Mexico have many questioning Calderon's strategy as well as Washington's.

"The standard that economists would use on extradition would be that it frees up the market," said Peter Reuter, an economist and drug policy expert at Rand Corp. "If you're Mexico, you care about reducing the capability of these organizations to execute people in large numbers. But the idea that it will stop cocaine is wrong."

Mexico's army operations, historically, have been effective only in the short term, said Jose Luis Pineyro, a military affairs expert in Mexico City. "After the military leaves, the narcos come back."

[Nbadan]

supply and demand, supply and demand, supply and demand...

...economics 101 wins again.

[exstatic]

It's pretty much been established that people are going to use drugs if they want to. Make it legal, and tax the shit out of it, and you remove the black market, much as the end of prohibition cut the legs out from under bootlegging. The removal of the black market also removes the ancilliary misery of collateral damage, the father or brother killed by the addict knocking over the filling station, the sister, cousin, or mother shot for drug money. The only people suffering will be the addicts, and they seem to want to do that anyway.

Hell, the govt could produce the drugs, hand them out at free clinics, and offer free rehab, even repeatedly, at probably 1/10th the cost of the war on drugs.

[PixelPusher]

It's pretty much been established that people are going to use drugs if they want to. Make it legal, and tax the shit out of it, and you remove the black market, much as the end of prohibition cut the legs out from under bootlegging. The removal of the black market also removes the ancilliary misery of collateral damage, the father or brother killed by the addict knocking over the filling station, the sister, cousin, or mother shot for drug money. The only people suffering will be the addicts, and they seem to want to do that anyway.

Hell, the govt could produce the drugs, hand them out at free clinics, and offer free rehab, even repeatedly, at probably 1/10th the cost of the war on drugs.
Silly surrender monkey, we just have to Stay The Course®.

[boutons_]

Politicians are so butt-fucked and enslaved by well-financed and well-organized SIGs they they will never do the sane thing and drop the war on drugs and drug crime and make the drugs legally available.

The "Christians" will of course want to continue the drug suffering and crime "in the name Christ" in the same way they want kids to stop fucking before marriage, or tell Africans that condoms are ineffective against STDs and AIDS.

The US is full of nutcases, like people who threaten to kill a pizza shop operator if he accepts pesos.

[velik_m]

Use the nukes.

Then will see if "the profit is way too high for people in other countries to simply to just drop it".

[Cant_Be_Faded]

Bring back the bomb, official slogan of the War Party.

[RandomGuy]

It's pretty much been established that people are going to use drugs if they want to. Make it legal, and tax the shit out of it, and you remove the black market, much as the end of prohibition cut the legs out from under bootlegging. The removal of the black market also removes the ancilliary misery of collateral damage, the father or brother killed by the addict knocking over the filling station, the sister, cousin, or mother shot for drug money. The only people suffering will be the addicts, and they seem to want to do that anyway.

Hell, the govt could produce the drugs, hand them out at free clinics, and offer free rehab, even repeatedly, at probably 1/10th the cost of the war on drugs.

See the thing about getting people into programs, is that even if they don't 100% quit, you can get rid of 99% of the criminal activity that REALLY costs us.

Studies have shown that even if a treatment program doesn't get a 7+ times a week herion/drug user off the drug it does reduce the drug usage to 2 times a week, and this is actually supportable through legal means.

This treatment takes most of the criminal activity out of drug use, other than the actual purchase and use, and thus avoids a LOT of the costs, both in terms of economic loss, and increased use of police and prisons.

One dollar spent on treatment programs saves MUCH more than that in terms of law enforcement, interdiction etc.

Reduce the demand at our end, and you reduce the amount of money to be made at the other end, both for the smuggler cartels, and for the farmers who can then have less motivation to grow drug crops.

This is common sense and makes a good economic argument for how to spend our anti-drug money.

[RandomGuy]

The suck thing is that treatment programs are BORING politically.

Which makes for more splashy headlines? (remember kids headlines=votes)

A) Tons of drugs seized from smugglers

or

B) New rehab clinic opened.

This illustrates the sad political reality that the most effective policy solution is not the one that motivates politicians. :depressed

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

Politicians are so butt-fucked and enslaved by well-financed and well-organized SIGs they they will never do the sane thing and drop the war on drugs and drug crime and make the drugs legally available.

The "Christians" will of course want to continue the drug suffering and crime "in the name Christ" in the same way they want kids to stop fucking before marriage, or tell Africans that condoms are ineffective against STDs and AIDS.

The US is full of nutcases, like people who threaten to kill a pizza shop operator if he accepts pesos.

Props to boutons for the huge religious tangent :tu

The US is full of nutcases, like posters like boutons who are nothing but copy and paste bots incapable of independent thought.

I'm actually with ex - make it legal and tax the fuck out of it. Problem solved, and all that money becomes available for other shit like border security, education, etc.

[Ginobilly]

supply and demand, supply and demand, supply and demand...

...economics 101 wins again.

exactly! Where the US does wrong is that they target all the users and not so much the dealers, cartels. It's like they want people to be doing coke so probation and police officers could have jobs. If the US would see it as a health issue rather than criminal we would see less crime and drugs on our streets cause ur cutting of the demand.

[01Snake]

Legalize the shit and the demand and violence associated with it will go down.

[RandomGuy]

hippie thread


Um, yeah, that's right. Those damn hippie economists... :spin

[DarkReign]

Bush has no time to be soft on drugs.

He hasnt been soft on anything. Hes a man's man with "hard on everything" written in stone on his fireplace.

War on Drugs = Mission Accomplished

[boutons_]

"huge religious tangent"

typical Aggie bullshit.

The religious nutcases, evangelicals have the Repugs by their short and curlies, with the Repugs having polluted the Exec with 100s of "Christian" asshole incompetents from junk "Christian" "universities". See Julie Annie giving commencement address at one of them soon or recently.

Repug policies are on drugs, like their policies on abortion, marriage, condoms, sex ed, stem cells, etc are DICTATED by "Christian" hard right nutters.

ie, no religious tangent at all.

Aggie, consider your dubya-sucking kisser to have been bitch slapped, AGAIN.

next ...

[mookie2001]

typical Aggie bullshitits funny because its true.








the war on drugs was never made to be won

[whottt]

Why is Bush being blamed for a shitty drug policy? It's only been like this for 70 years.


Anyway...legalize the plants, MJ, Coca...problem solved...kills the Latin American Black Market for Drugs, in the case of coca, provides a much less addictive and harmful alternative to coke and crack(and way to wean addicts off them)..and the American Black Market for guns to support them.


Put it this way...unless the Government is going to start giving away free drugs to people that can't afford insurance...they have absolutely no right to outlaw the natural alternatives that man used for thousands of years prior to 1930, as a means of treatment...and honestly, Americans ought to have less dangerous alternatives to the psychoactive man made shit they prescribe.

I'll go buy my kid a pound of weed before I let him take Paxil, Prozac, Adderall or any of that garbage. If the Weed doesn't work...then I'll consider those powerful and dangerous alternatives.

[exstatic]

Why is Bush being blamed for a shitty drug policy? It's only been like this for 70 years.

Who was the first drug czar, and what is his relationship to Dubyah? What is the dynamic in that type of relationship? Dubyah gotta do it better, just like Iraq...not.

He doesn't get a free pass just because he didn't start it.

[PixelPusher]

Who was the first drug czar, and what is his relationship to Dubyah? What is the dynamic in that type of relationship? Dubyah gotta do it better, just like Iraq...not.

He doesn't get a free pass just because he didn't start it.
Yes, but everybody in this country has to share responsibility on this one...we've had several decades to evaluate the effectiveness of the "war", but come election time we keep voting for the "tough on crime guy"...in other words building more prisons and harsher sentencing for drug violations.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

"huge religious tangent"

typical Aggie bullshit.

The religious nutcases, evangelicals have the Repugs by their short and curlies, with the Repugs having polluted the Exec with 100s of "Christian" asshole incompetents from junk "Christian" "universities". See Julie Annie giving commencement address at one of them soon or recently.

Repug policies are on drugs, like their policies on abortion, marriage, condoms, sex ed, stem cells, etc are DICTATED by "Christian" hard right nutters.

ie, no religious tangent at all.

Aggie, consider your dubya-sucking kisser to have been bitch slapped, AGAIN.

next ...

Dude, the next time your nappy, corn bread ass 'bitch slaps' me, it'll be the first.

You own yourself every fucking time you post on this forum. Because everything you write above could have been said about every democratic administration for the last umpteen years as well.

That's the beauty in your idiocy. If Bush and the Repugs and the super Christians do it, you have all these ass vomit posts that you think bring some kind of hard ass take, when in reality I could save, archive, and paste every one of your posts the next time a Democrat gets in the White House and all I'd have to do is change the names and it would work there.

You talk shit about Bush and his oil buddies getting rich last year, where is your fucking bitching when gas is now at an all-time record high, despite Democrats being in control of Congress? That was part of the Democraptic platform too - 'put us in office, and we'll bring down gas prices'. Well guess what, not a year later Pelosi and Co. are up there, in charge, and now the oil companies are lining their pockets to look the other way.

You are the biggest bitch and hypocrite on this political forum, and every idiotic, mindless, pointless profanity laced tirade by your candy ass just exposes you even more.

There's still hope for you though, maybe one day you can graduate vocational school, find a decent community college to let you in, and get some semblance of a quality education.

You don't get it so I'm going to give you some semblance of a clue on this shit. It doesn't matter who the fuck is in office. No one up there is accountable to the people of this country. They go up there, they stay as long as they can, they get their pockets lined with millions, either legally through lobbyists or illegally in back rooms, and the common man in this country gets fucked.

And that goes for whatever party is in charge - Democrat or Republican, and under the current system of government we have nothing will ever change.

Yet your piddly little mind seems to think that the moment you get Bush out of office and Obama, Hillary, or whatever Democratic flavor of the moment shows up in November for the election will make a difference.

Well it won't. It won't matter one fucking bit. Clinton had people lining pockets just as bad as Bush does, only you didn't hear as much about it with all the liberal media looking the other way. Yeah, I know, Fox News is biased. Blah fucking blah.

The fact of the matter is all politics in D.C. has been, is, and will continue to be about those assholes in Congress lining their pockets as much as possible and as fat as possible for as long as they can.

And unfortunately, there's not a fucking thing you or I can do about it. But for you to bitch and moan about Bush and his administration like some wicked, ugly ass, illiterate, brainless love child of Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan shows just how clueless you are about what really goes on in our nation's capital.

I think you better check again, because the only bitch around here is you, and you're also the only one getting slapped.

[whottt]

He doesn't get a free pass just because he didn't start it.


Well I agree with that...but the sad truth is, as random guy pointed out, both parties have a do nothing shitty stance and are owned by special interest groups on this issue...

And all the politicians that might do something about it have friends that get busted too much...


This is a change that's not going to get made at the Federal Level...the movement is going to have to start at the state level...we as Texans need to take care of this shit...


Kinky had my vote...before Willie got busted like a DA.

Talk about something that would quickly become a driving force in the Texas economy....

[exstatic]

This is a change that's not going to get made at the Federal Level...the movement is going to have to start at the state level...we as Texans need to take care of this shit...
Fat lot of good that did California. Feds are still busting people complying with their med marijuana program.

[whottt]

Fat lot of good that did California.


The Govt hates Cali, not Texas. This Govt can't hate Texas, or it's fucked.

[boutons_]

he calls me "dude", that's weak-ass girly-talk. go fuck yourself, aggiefucker

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

he calls me "dude", that's weak-ass girly-talk. go fuck yourself, aggiefucker

Nice take on the discussion :tu I wouldn't expect anything more from you. Cindy Sheehan called, she's got a new strap-on ready for your ass.

[boutons_]

"Nice take on the discussion"

It wasn't a take on the discusssion, as if you were really interested in my takes.

go fuck yourself, Cindy wouldn't stoop to cornhole you.