Apostasy: Something More Important Than the Drug War
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:53 PM

It's that little matter of winning the war in Afghanistan. A British outpost is surrounded by poppy fields. So of course, the soldiers are out in the fields, pulling up poppies and ensuring that the opium crop is not replanted, just like the head of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime wants. Oh no, that's not right: the soldiers ignore the poppy fields and their diligent custodians:

Sometimes they even help them. When one poppy worker arrived at the camp gate suffering from heat exhaustion recently, he was referred to the main base in Garmser town, less than a mile away. He was treated by a military doctor. "We're not much interested in what they are doing with the poppy," said Sgt Russell. "We know it's going on but we're soldiers, not politicians. And we're here to do a good job."

Of course, the US and the UN haven't given up on eradication of the poppy fields. (Remember, the UN is committed to a drug-free world by...er, 2008):

US-funded efforts to destroy the crops with tractors and sticks have produced meagre results. This year's campaign left several eradication workers dead, dozens more injured and destroyed just 4,000 hectares of poppy - a sliver of the total. But officials are pleased that some major drug cultivators were hit. About a fifth of the crop of Abdul Rahman Jan - until two years ago the provincial police chief - was destroyed.

That last is quite a resounding victory in this war on an unapproved plant. Shout it from the mountaintops! One producer's output is but 80% of what it used to be! We might never achieve this level of success again.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, UN

 
Anti-Drug Counter-Advertising in Afghanistan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:58 PM

The contradiction between NATO's military mission in Afghanistan and poppy eradication efforts briefly burst into the open, until the Afghan government requested that the status quo ante, the implicit contradiction, be restored. A radio advertisement, paid for by the NATO-run International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), was at the heart of the controversy. Isaf's mission is to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people to the cause of the Afghan government and its foreign allies. Recognizing that some two million poor Afghans raise poppies for opium production, the radio advertisement, aired in a poppy-growing region of Afghanistan,

...said Isaf troops understood that most Afghan people had no source of income other than poppy production.

It [the ad] said that troops are not in Afghanistan to eradicate opium poppies, but to bring security and kill foreign militants.

The implication that it was OK to grow opium poppies was too much (too honest?) for some folks, and the advertisement was dropped. A representative from the ever-helpful UN Office on Drugs and Crime reminds us (in the linked BBC article) of the connection between the Afghan insurgents and drug traffickers -- a connection fostered by the misguided worldwide prohibition on opium, which incidentally, also is responsible for the connection in UN offices between Drugs and Crime.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, UN

 
Innovative Anti-Drug Strategy for Afghanistan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:45 PM

Sure, the recent news is that attempts to eradicate the opium crop in Afghanistan were wildly unsuccessful. But sometimes it takes a crisis like this to inspire bold new policy breakthroughs. Fortunately, Mr. Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, had a burst of insight, recounted in the linked New York Times story:

“I am pleading with the government to be much tougher,” he said. A new high-security prison block would be inaugurated in a few weeks, he said. “We have room for 100 people and I am asking the government to fill it within six months,” he said.

No word on whether the prison should be filled after trials and convictions, or by some less time-consuming method. Perhaps in terms of the impact on the Afghan opium crop, the precise prison-filling mechanism is immaterial.

Hmmm, another policy reform jumps to mind. Either eliminate the UN's "Office on Drugs and Crime" while turning drug policy over to the WHO, or open an "Office on Alcohol and Crime."

Libby at Last One Speaks noted the UN's refreshing new idea, too.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, UN

 
Britain and US at Odds...
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:57 PM

...and not just on climate change policy and aid to Africa. On needle exchange for heroin users, too. Britain tends to be pretty supportive of needle exchange as a harm reduction (specifically AIDS and hepatitis prevention) measure -- the US, shall we say, is less supportive. Well, having different approaches in different places is fine, maybe even desirable. But the US is not content with having its own weak drug policies, it wants to be the cause of weak drug policies in others. And so it is pressuring the UN to come about against needle exchange. According to this article in Tuesday's Guardian...

The issue has already become fraught. At a meeting in Vienna earlier this year the UN agency responsible for the policing of narcotics, the United Nations office on drugs and crime, was forced to accept the US line and oppose needle exchanges.

While we are looking at ways to reform the UN, why don't we move drug policy to the WHO and end its coupling with crime policy?

Labels: Britain, harm reduction, needle exchange, UN

 
Vicewire, 3/16/2005
- posted by Ryan @ 2:14 PM

1) Here is a story about a West Texas District Attorney who had a vehement stance on drug abuse, but was arrested for possession of methamphetamines and cocaine.

2) A United Nations official has commented that he believes the prices of illegal drugs should rise next year due to the United States' new crusade against cocaine in Colombia.

3) Here is a story about the hallowed American tradition of betting on the NCAA tournament, and the continually greater amounts of money being bet-- approximately 1 in 10 will partake. Some say this year more money will be bet on the tournament than on the Super Bowl for the first time.

4) Here is an updated story on the ban on revealing clothing in a northern Malaysian state.

5) And a man has been arrested for DUI after his vanity license plate reading "TIPSY" gave police a clue as to his high Blood Alcohol Content.

Labels: UN, Vicewire

 
Estimating Opium Production in Afghanistan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:57 PM

A few days ago co-blogger Mike noted the new UN report indicating that opium production was enjoying a boom in Afghanistan. How would anyone know? Does someone collect opium production statistics?

Well, yes, as this Slate Explainer article, er, explains. Satellite photography provides the big picture -- ha! -- and then 60 surveyors went into the Afghan countryside to get the straight, er, to fill in the details. This was dangerous work, but they seem to have come out of it OK, while somehow completing their assignment: "...the field researchers managed to survey nearly 2,500 villages, where they pressed the locals on such questions as how many families were growing poppies, when the harvest was scheduled, how much opium the poppies were expected to yield, and how much opium was selling for." Despite the photos and the surveys, the UN estimates remain highly uncertain.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, UN

 
The more things change, the more they remain the same in Afghanistan
- posted by Michael @ 5:33 PM

On Thursday, the UN released a report described in the New York Times (registration required) stating that “the fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality.” I guess the US and NATO military presence as well as elections haven’t made that much difference with respect to the drug production and trade. Markets work. As long as producing opium and heroin provides the greatest risk-adjusted returns, people are going to do it. It might be perhaps somewhat surprising that the cultivation of these drugs has apparently reached its highest level in history, according to the report. While the UN and various officials cited in the NYT article are naturally upset about the facts stated in the report, I can’t claim to be too worried about all this. It does suggest, however, that the US, NATO, and Afghan government’s control of the country is quite tenuous. The UN report states that more than 321,000 acres of land were planted with poppy in 2004, representing a 64% increase over last year. Apparently, poppy production has spread to every Afghan province. This year’s harvest was estimated at 4,200 tons, a 17% increase over last year’s output. Despite the largest ever area planted, however, this was not the highest production ever because of the draught and disease.

One good thing about the great economic achievements of the Afghan farmers is that perhaps they have lowered the price of the drugs in the US and Europe. Not having purchased any heroin lately (or ever, for that matter) I don’t know if this has actually occurred. But, assuming a relatively inelastic demand for the stuff, the price effect must be substantial.

Another good thing is that the greater supply should allow the anti-narcotics agencies around the world to report greater successes is seizing ever larger quantities of opium and heroin. In fact, recently, a Russian news website has reported the start of the trial of the “organizers of the international narco-syndicate” that supplied several Russian provinces with large shipments of Afghan heroin. The police claims to have cut this distribution channel and have confiscated about 130 kilos of heroin. Apparently, the usual shipments were about 100 kilos each. And that was in 2003. I wonder what other channels are being used to deliver the 2004 bumper crop of Afghan drugs. Somehow, I don’t think that they all stay in Afghanistan. I am sure we can expect more reports of the exploits of the anti-drug agents around the world.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, Prohibition, UN

 
For the UN, Use = Abuse
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:16 PM

The UN's Office on Drugs and Crime -- gee, I wonder why these two are paired; do they have an Office on Ketchup and Athletics? -- released its World Drug Report 2004 last week. The Press Release begins thusly:

VIENNA, 25 June (UN Information Service) -- Approximately three per cent of the world population (185 million people) have abused drugs during the previous 12 months, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). A small percentage of the world population abuses cocaine (13 million people) or opiates (15 million abusers of heroin, morphine and opium). By far the most widely abused substance is cannabis (used at least once a year by over 150 million people), followed by the amphetamine-type stimulants -– ATS (38 million users, among them eight million users of ecstasy).

Fortunately, this problem of drug abuse can be tackled via a "holistic approach". To ridicule the bureaucratese that pervades the Executive Summary is shooting fish in a thimble. Here's an excerpt from page 13 of the Executive Summary, sans further commentary from moi:

The drug problem has a negative impact on the functioning of societies as a whole. It can hinder development programmes and compromise peacemaking and reconstruction efforts in countries torn by civil war. In turn, poverty, strife, and feeble governance are fertile ground for drug production, trafficking, and abuse. Those various dimensions can become so interlocked that getting out of the vicious circle they create can only be accomplished through a comprehensive approach. Confined for too long to special programmes handled by specialized agencies, drug control priorities are now finding their way into the mainstream of the socio-economic agenda.

Starting at community level, this broader understanding of the socio-economic dimensions of the drug problem must notably be reflected in a society-wide approach. Public institutions cannot do everything. Interventions are far more effective when they are joined by various actors in civil society (such as families, non-governmental organizations, and the media) in a common purpose and programme.

Labels: recreational drug use, UN

 
Globalizing Drug Prohibition
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:40 PM

Thanks to the efforts of primo research assistant Ryan Monarch I managed to read "The Secret of Worldwide Drug Prohibition," an article by Harry G. Levine that appeared in The Independent Review in Fall, 2002. Levine offers many insights in the 16-page article, and I will try to share some of them in the next few days. To start, let me quote Levine's paragraph summarizing how drug prohibition became a global phenomenon in the 20th Century:

"In the twentieth century, drug prohibition spread from the United States to every country in the world, for a number of reasons. First, drug prohibition spread so successfully because of the enormous economic, political, and military power of the United States. Second, many different kinds of governments throughout the world supported drug prohibition because they found that police and military resources marshalled on behalf of drug prohibition could be used for many nondrug-related activities. Third, drug prohibition also gained substantial popular support in many countries because drug-demonization crusades and antidrug ideology were rhetorically, politically, and even financially useful to many politicians, the media, schools, the police, the military, religious institutions, and some elements of the medical profession. Fourth, the spread of drug prohibition was aided by the twentieth century's romantic or utopian ideologies about coercive state power, making the fight against 'drugs' the one topic on which politicians of all stripes could usually agree. Finally, drug prohibition gained great legitimacy throughout the world because it was seen as a UN project."

Levine later suggests that repealing or amending the chief UN antidrug convention would allow nations and eventually localities to experiment with different drug-control regimes, much as repealing the 18th Amendment in the US allowed the individual states to develop their own alcohol control regimes.

Labels: drugs, Prohibition, UN

 
Prostitution in the Czech Republic
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:27 AM

Reuters reports that police in the Czech Republic stormed more than 400 brothels on Friday night. (More details
are available in this story from the Czech News Agency.) It seems as if the raids are aimed at those who traffic in
women rather than the prostitutes themselves. (Update: The Czech News Agency reports the results of the raids.
Seventeen people have been charged with procuring, and another sixteen have been charged with trafficking
in women.)

The Czech Republic has been under pressure from the EU and the UN to try to do a better job of controlling trafficking in women. As the
Czech Interior Ministry has noted in the past, differentiating voluntary from coerced prostitution is not always straightforward. Foreigners
coerced into prostitution generally are wary of cooperating with authorities, as they might fear either their pimps or that they will be
deported (or both). The Czech Interior Ministry has been developing methods to try to overcome that problem, by providing temporary visas
and even the prospect of permanent legal residency for those prostitutes who cooperate with police against illegal traffickers.

Finding regulatory mechanisms that do a good job of discriminating between coerced and voluntary prostitution is no easy matter. In 1910,
the US enacted the White Slave Traffic Act (the Mann Act) to combat a perceived (and almost entirely fictional, it seems) mushrooming of
coerced prostitution across state lines. (Here's a great book by David Langum on the Mann Act.) Within a few years, the Mann Act was being
used to prosecute consensual adult relationships, many of them not even involving prostitution or commercial sex of any kind.
Though enforcement slowed after the 1930s, it wasn't until the mid-1980s that the Act was amended to put couples traveling across state lines
out of harm's way.

Is prostitution itself illegal in the Czech Republic? The Reuters article says yes, but that it is widely tolerated. I have seen previous reports
(including a claim from a Czech Interior Ministry spokesperson) that prostitution per se is not illegal (which is the case in many European countries),
though public solicitation is a misdemeanor. There has been talk of setting up German-style regulations around legal prostitution in the Czech Republic.

Labels: EU, Europe, prostitution, UN

 
It Is Too Risky to Prohibit Drugs!
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:59 PM

Yesterday I quoted Mr. Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC), speaking on ecstasy and amphetamine-type drugs. To wit: "Opting out, namely --
accepting any notion of the liberalisation of the market, is not an option, as the health of our society
is at risk. Better safe than sorry."

I noted yesterday that the argument "legalization is too risky" is a common one among prohibitionists,
having been invoked, for example, by James Q. Wilson and the late John Kaplan. I think that this
argument is flawed, and I perhaps will one day explain why, but for now, I will transpose the argument
to another time and place (though to do so might actually make the argument seem more plausible!)

Imagine the situation in the United States in 1913, say, when heroin and cocaine were available
without a prescription. A prohibition has been proposed. Consider this argument against adopting
the prohibition: Maybe after prohibition the use of these dangerous drugs will fall to negligible
levels. But can we count on that? What if, over time, use rises? Then we will be jailing thousands
of people, perhaps (it sounds crazy, but it is conceivable) hundreds of thousands, simply because
they want to consume one of these drugs. The judicial costs, the violence spawned by the huge
black markets, the accidental overdoses brought about by uncertain quality – all will be
enormous. Children might even be recruited to work in the black market, to avoid the criminal
penalties imposed upon adults. Perhaps you say, OK, if the outcome is as frightening as that, we
can simply get rid of the prohibition, we can return to a system of free availability or a
prescription regime. But will it really be so easy to rid ourselves of a failed prohibition? A huge
industry of prisons and treatment providers and lawyers and specialized police squads and
prosecutors all will be feeding at the narco/prison trough. Instead of acceding to the calls for
liberalization, these interested parties will constantly push for more -- longer sentences,
mandatory minimum jail terms, banning related activity like possessing paraphernalia. New
drugs that come along will become fodder for their interest, their fetish to punish. They won’t
even have to work all that hard to make their case. Every drug-related tragedy will reinforce the
perils of drugs in the public mind. How to avoid these tragedies? Reduced prevalence of use.
How to reduce prevalence of use? Prohibition, more committed prohibition! The problems that
will arise under prohibition will transmute into justifications for prohibition. So even if my
nightmare vision of greatly increased use and hundreds of thousands of Americans wasting in
prison is unlikely, even if there is only a ten percent chance of such an outcome, prohibition is
too great a risk. Once the prohibition genie is out of the bottle, it cannot easily be put back - "and
it is not a kindly genie."*

*Apologies to James Q. Wilson for purposely (mis-)appropriating his genie line, which at more length
reads: "But that social experiment is so risky as to be no experiment at all, for if cocaine is
legalized and if the rate of its abusive use increases dramatically, there is no way to put the genie
back in the bottle, and it is not a kindly genie." This is from "Against the Legalization of Drugs."
Commentary 89: 21-8, February 1990.

Labels: Prohibition, UN

 
Amphetamine-Type Stimulants and the United Nations
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:21 PM

On September 23, the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime released a major report, Ecstasy and
Amphetamines - Global Survey 2003. The report didn't seem to get much attention in the
US press, but it was page one news, above the fold, in the September 28 Observer, the
British Sunday paper. The Observer article highlights the significant increase in ecstasy
prevalence in the UK, where some 2.2 percent of the population aged 16 to 59 uses the drug.
This represents a near doubling in British ecstasy use in the past five years. The British
National Criminal Intelligence Service estimates that each week, 500,000 to two
million ecstasy tablets are consumed in Britain, according to the Observer article.

It turns out that, on a worldwide basis, synthetic drugs such as ecstasy and amphetamine
(the report calls them "ATS," for "amphetamine-type stimulants") are much more popular than
heroin and cocaine. All told, some 40 million people worldwide take illicit ATS drugs.

The UN report repeatedly conflates drug use with drug abuse, as well as being questionable
on other grounds. Here is the first paragraph of the Preface:

Amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) are simple to produce and easy to take.
They are also (erroneously) perceived as less harmful than other illicit substances,
like heroin and cocaine. Indeed the opposite is true: designer technology, which
has produced and keeps refining these synthetic drugs, gives origin to several concerns.


Somehow, despite the erroneous perception, I doubt the UN would declare it a great improvement
were the world's ATS users suddenly to shift to heroin and cocaine.

In the press release that accompanied the publication of the report, we hear from
Mr. Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC). (By the way, it is interesting in itself that the UN has chosen
to pair drugs with crime. Alcohol and crime? Tobacco and crime? Guns and crime? No,
drugs and crime.) Mr. Costa adheres to the (discredited?) criminalization model,
it seems: "Opting out, namely -- accepting any notion of the liberalisation of
the market, is not an option, as the health of our society is at risk. Better safe
than sorry," is the quote attributed to Mr. Costa in the press release. Perhaps later
I will address this common argument of the prohibitionists, that drug legalization
is too risky.


The Observer is an excellent source for vice news, incidentally; check out their drug
coverage here.

Labels: Britain, drugs, UN

 
Loose Ends
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:43 PM

Every now and then I have mentioned some issue, only to remark that it would undoubtedly
be discussed later on Vice Squad. As these are beginning to pile up, I thought that I would
at least make a handy list of what has been promised but not delivered. Only in one case,
though, will I begin to fulfill my obligation today, and I will save that one for the subsequent post.

On September 18 I referred to a newspaper article concerning a UN report on coca
cultivation in Colombia. I have tried, without success, to locate that report. The 2002 Coca Survey
for Colombia can be downloaded from this page, however, along with opium
and cocaine surveys for other major source countries. The UN provides a wealth of other material
related to drug control; much of it can be found here.

On September 23, I mentioned some of the controversy concerning the rationality of choices
involving potentially addictive goods. I also indicated that harm reduction would be a topic of
future Vice Squad posts. For an introduction to harm reduction with respect to drug use, see
this page.

On September 25, I introduced the topic of civil asset forfeitures, a particularly pernicious
practice that has become common in vice control in the US. Here is
the ACLU's helpful page concerning asset forfeiture with respect to drug policy.

On September 27, John Stuart Mill's "harm principle" was discussed, though many of its implications
for vice control were postponed.

I received an e-mail from my friend Dr. Christopher Young of London, UK, suggesting that I
have been remiss in not talking more about the three and one-third standard vice concerns.
I'll try to move that discussion along in the next post. In the meantime, as I have not yet put links
and other info on the side of the blog, let me note that my e-mail address is j-leitzel@uchicago.edu.

Labels: asset forfeiture, coca, drugs, harm reduction, Mill, UN

 
Victories #2, #3, etc.
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:02 PM

From the Chicago Tribune on Thursday, September 18

Victory #2: The UN Drug Control Program has released a report suggesting a 32 percent fall in
Colombian coca cultivation. (Wow, what specificity: I was sort of expecting only 31 percent.)
Even with some increased production in Peru and Bolivia, “overall coca production in the Andes
Mountains region is dropping at a rapid pace.” More specificity, by the way: Colombian coca
fields fell from 251,940 acres in December to 170,430 at the end of July. How the former coca
farmers are managing to scrape out a living was not mentioned in the article, though perhaps
later I’ll look for the UN report itself. I understand that opium fields have increased in popularity
in Colombia, however.

This welcome news from Colombia, following yesterday’s revelation of a seizure in the Chicago
suburbs, indicates that we have won the war on drugs, and we never again have to fear that one
of our fellow Americans will pursue pleasure by snorting cocaine.

Victory #3: 6,000 marijuana plants growing in a forest preserve in Cook County were
confiscated. On the heels of this week’s eradication of the cocaine problem, this seizure provides
more evidence of victory in the war on drugs. No longer must you live in dread that your friends
and neighbors will smoke marijuana. Rather, they will have to confine their intoxication efforts
to alcohol, glue, various household solvents, prescription medications, and whirling dervishly.
VD Day will no longer just be September 16 – perhaps we can celebrate the entire third week in
September as Victory over Drugs Week. Incidentally, we are informed that each of the plants
has an estimated street value of $6000 (coincidence? 6,000 plants, 6,000 dollars?). Wow. And I
thought ferns were expensive.

Seattle: A proposed 10 cent per drink tax on espresso was voted down in Seattle yesterday. An
initiative to allow police to give marijuana possession laws the lowest enforcement priority was
approved, however. Normally I would suggest to our nation’s Attorney General, John Comstock
Ashcroft, that he immediately flood Seattle with DEA agents to ensure that the new local
enforcement priorities do not lead to a surge in folks walking around with a little marijuana in
their pockets. But given the news above, there is no longer any marijuana in the US, so the
enforcement reduction should not make any difference.

As for espresso, yesterday in a coffee shop I thought I saw a 12 year old consuming an espresso
(though I could be wrong as I am not an expert in identifying the age of children or the contents
of coffee-based beverages). He seemed to be doing homework, too. Espresso can’t be good for
kids - shouldn’t there be a law against selling such poison to our youth, and a prohibition on
possession by a minor? (And because we care so much about our kids, those who are caught
using espresso should probably be kicked out of school and possibly jailed, to deter others.) If
espresso is homework performance enhancing, and we don’t nip this in the bud, soon all the kids
will feel pressured to consume the stuff. If I see that kid again, I think that I will read him the riot act.
Zero tolerance for kids and espresso!

Flagger death update: The suspect in the death of the construction worker has been charged with “aggravated DUI in the death of another,” which carries a 7 to 14 year sentence upon conviction. The victim was 36 years old and the mother of seven children. For some reason, the fact that the suspect has children of his own was mentioned to the judge by the public defender at a Bond Court hearing.

More Comstockery: Speaking of our nation’s Attorney General, he told the president of the American Library Association that he would make public the number of times the FBI has sought bookstore and library records under the powers in the USA PATRIOT Act. I’d also be interested in how many terrorists these records have helped identify, and how many innocent civilians have had their records examined to produce the intelligence windfall that has uncovered this bevy of terrorists. What does this have to do with vice? Well, nothing really. I noted it because I am still contemplating the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which the Supreme Court upheld against Constitutional challenge in June, 2003. Most public libraries in the US receive federal funds earmarked to help them establish and maintain Internet access. CIPA requires public libraries that receive such federal funding to install filters on all of their computers that are connected to the Internet. This one hits close to home for this vice researcher, who frequently accesses the Internet at public libraries and who likes to run searches on such terms as vice, obscenity, pornography, prostitution, cocaine, and so on – the very kind of searches that most filters don’t take well to.

Labels: caffeine, CIPA, cocaine, driving, marijuana, opium, UN