Vacant Cells -- What Is To Be Done?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:35 PM

Crack offenders who received ridiculously long sentences -- ridiculous in comparison with similar offenders of the cocaine (but non-crack) variety, and more ridiculous (for the non-violent offenders) relative to any reasonable standard of justice -- are qualifying for "early" release from prison. But nature abhors a vacuum -- who can be recruited to fill the vacated prison cells?

Hmmm, how about khat offenders! Sure, khat is legal in benighted parts of the world, such as the UK, but in the good ol' USA, we jealously guard our right to arrest khat possessors. Now how to get these local khatheads into federal prison? Well, that's what those multi-jurisdictional drug task forces were created for, no?

[Update: Pennsylvania gets in on the jailing khatheads craze.]

Labels: arrests, khat, sentencing

 
Is Khat Illegal in the US?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:09 PM

Khat is legal in Britain and, I believe, the Netherlands, but not in much of the rest of the developed world: Khat is illegal in Canada and the US, for instance. Or is it?

A stimulant, khat leaves are chewed like tobacco in social settings in Africa and the Middle East, where it was been used for centuries. Khat technically isn't illegal in the U.S. -- but the cathinone it contains is. That mild stimulant, however, begins to break down into legal cathine as soon as the leaves are picked; and it's nearly is absent 72 hours after harvest.

In this country, the federal court system has little experience with prosecuting khat cases and hasn't yet established guidelines for how the drug should be handled for testing.

In Seattle, according to the linked article, khat charges were dropped against some defendants, apparently in part because it was unclear whether the khat in question could be shown to have enough cathinone to be be illegal. The New York case mentioned in the article resulted in a mixed verdict, so it remains possible to be convicted of khat trafficking in the US.

I was in London last week, where khat is legal. Somehow the British civilisation stumbles along without locking up khat sellers. I managed to pick up -- no, not some khat, but Khat, while I was there. And if you are a British subject travelling to Canada, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has a warning for you:

• Around 650,000 British nationals visit Canada each year. Most visits are trouble free. Being arrested for smuggling Qhat (Khat) is the most common reason that British nationals require consular assistance in Canada. The plant is illegal in Canada. Smugglers are regularly caught and face a term of imprisonment.

Labels: Britain, Canada, khat

 
The War on Khat in the US
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:02 PM

Pete at Drug WarRant points us to an article that indicates the extent of federal resources that have been put into service to fight the relatively mild stimulant in the US. Turns out that despite the prosecutorial ardor, it might be hard to lock the defendants in cages for significant periods of time. The 'problem' is that the the 'bad' compound in khat, the one that is categorized with heroin in US drug scheduling, breaks down within a few days into another compound that just doesn't command the same amount of hard time. The article also is noteworthy for revealing, in passing, as it were, just how weak the arguments are for criminalizing khat possession at all. It is suggested that the khat crackdown might have something to do with fighting the war on terror in East Africa -- a crackdown on a drug produced in a potential terrorist-breeding ground always being a smashing policy choice (April 25, 2007).

All is not irrationality, however. The latest figures from TRAC indicate that the post-9/11 decline in federal drug prosecutions continues apace.

Labels: Drug WarRant, khat, policing

 
Khat in Finland
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:25 PM

Of the twenty drugs assessed in The Lancet's recent review of potential harms from drug abuse (see the Vice Squad post from March 25, 2007), the least harmful drug was khat. The relative safety of khat, however, does not prevent it from being illegal in the United States and most of Europe -- though khat is legal in Britain and the Netherlands. Khat is most popular, of course, with Somalians and other East Africans.

One place that has seen a large increase in seizures of illegal khat imports in recent years is, curiously enough, Finland. Why does Finnish customs seize so much more khat than does Sweden, or France? One reason noted in the linked article is that Finland cares more than other countries do about reducing khat smuggling. But why care, why view khat as a problem? The answer from the linked article: "Finnish customs considers khat smuggling to be a problem because it diverts resources that could be used for investigating more serious crimes." So the Finns put resources into fighting khat because fighting khat diverts crime-fighting resources away from serious crimes. Got it.

To be fair (or at least more fair), there is something that I find almost charming in the Finnish approach. When they catch a khat courier at the airport, they impose (but do not collect) a fine, and return the smuggler the same day. No languishing in jail for these dangerous drug criminals. A crime investigator for Finnish Customs is quoted in the linked article explaining why harsher sanctions are not imposed: 'The use of tough coercive measures would be unreasonable, because the couriers are usually foreigners who have been deceived into the activity, to some extent.' This is the same approach used in the US by the DEA, right?

Labels: Finland, khat

 
Comparative Drug Harms
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:15 AM

The Lancet recently published an article ranking twenty drugs, legal and illegal, according to their potential for harm. (The article is here, though a free registration is required.) They had groups of experts score each of the substances along nine dimensions of harm, on a four-point scale, from 'zero' representing no risk to 'three' representing extreme risk. The dimensions comprised three categories: physical harm (acute, chronic, intravenous); dependence (intensity of pleasure, psychological, physical); and social harm (intoxication, health-care costs, other). The nine individual scores were averaged for the overall assessment, which ranked heroin as the most harmful drug. Cocaine was second, alcohol fifth, tobacco ninth, cannabis eleventh, LSD fourteenth, ecstasy eighteenth, and the least harmful of the twenty ranked drugs was Vice Squad fetish khat. The authors note that their ranking does not cohere with the scheduling of drugs that is the basis for drug policy and enforcement.

The harms of drugs, of course, are dependent upon the public policies that are adopted towards them. The authors note as much when they caution against direct comparisons in their rankings between the legal alcohol and tobacco and the illegal drugs. But I think that this point could be further stressed. The Swiss experiment with heroin maintenance (along with subsequent heroin maintenance trials) shows that even with that drug, harms can greatly be reduced through easy availability of a standardized dose in a controlled setting. Dependence responds to policy, too; for instance, a prohibition that renders availability sporadic and purity uncertain lends a gambling element to drug acquisition that itself can be addictive for some users. Nevertheless, rankings such as the one in The Lancet can be helpful in highlighting the inordinately repressive control regime that has been adopted towards marijuana, hallucinogens, ecstasy, and, in the United States (though not in Britain), khat.

Labels: addiction, drugs, khat

 
Anti-Khat Fundamentalism
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:05 PM

The Somali Islamic Courts Council no longer sets the rules in Mogadishu, so its short-lived ban on khat has been rescinded. (Thanks to Alcohol and Drugs History Society for the pointer.) Nothing like banning a substance used for centuries by a majority of the male population. The SICC banned movies, too, and I suppose that that ban went south with them as well.

In the US, the fundamentalist government banned khat nationally in 1993 -- put it in the dreaded schedule 1, in fact, reserved for only the worst drugs, like heroin, psilocybin, and pot. (State laws on khat seem to vary, however.) This is one war that the Blairites in Britain have not joined. In Tennessee, a Somali immigrant found with 17 bags of khat -- which degrades quickly so must be consumed within a few days of harvest -- was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison. Motion pictures remain legal in Tennessee, generally speaking.

Labels: khat, Somalia

 
Khat In Britain
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:31 PM

The Somali expatriate community in Britain provides a sizeable market for imports of khat, according to this BBC story:

Around seven tonnes of khat leaves, which is an evergreen shrub which grows in mountainous areas across Africa, is estimated to be imported into the UK each week from Ethiopia, Yemen and Kenya.

Khat is legal in Britain, though illegal in the US and Canada. Here's a summary of the effects of khat consumption, taken from the linked BBC article:

EFFECTS OF KHAT USE
It is a stimulant, making the user more alert and talkative
It is an appetite suppressor
If chewed over a few hours, it produces a state of calm
A chemical found in khat could boost the power of men's sperm
Long-term use can bring on insomnia, heart problems and sexual problems
Can bring on anxiety and aggression
Can bring on irritability, anger or violence
Excessive chewing can lead to sore mouths and infections
It can bring on depression
It is associated with mental health issues among users

Labels: Britain, khat

 
Khat In Missouri
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:09 PM

According to this story, possession of khat (or qat), the plant whose fresh leaves are chewed by millions of Africans, does not violate Missouri state law. (Here's a good point to remind Vice Squad readers that I am not a lawyer and I am frequently wrong, so under no circumstances should you rely upon any information or misinformation that you read here.) Some people view this as a loophole, it seems, as it diminishes opportunities to incarcerate: "Last year, police stopped a car in North Kansas City that was carrying 50 pounds of khat, and officers couldn't do anything to punish the seven people inside." Naturally, there is an effort to close this dangerous loophole.

Maybe we should start referring to drug prohibition as a loophole? Something along the lines of...

...we noticed recently that while most dangerous substances and activities are legal -- including skiing, scuba diving, sushi, and ice cream sundaes -- there seems to be a loophole whereby we forgot to legalize marijuana, opium, and some other drugs. As a result, we find ourselves incarcerating people simply because they are walking around carrying a little bit of a substance that they later might want to consume. We must close this dangerous loophole immediately, before we end up putting hundreds of thousands of Americans in prison for activities that don't harm others.

Labels: khat, Prohibition

 
US Khat War Victim
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:46 PM

When we hear of someone getting killed during an attempted robbery involving illegal drugs and the associated cash, we generally think of cocaine or heroin or meth as the drug in question -- though these sorts of things are not unknown with respect to, e.g., marijuana or ecstasy, either. But we don't usually think of khat, at least in the US. But there is an ongoing trial in Minnesota concerning a homicide that seems to be khat-war-related. Khat is legal in many other places.

Labels: khat

 
Qat Chat
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:26 PM

Yemenis do chew a lot of qat (or khat), it seems. They have only 10 million or so adults, but 6 million of them indulge. And indulging is itself a time-consuming affair, if you can believe the headline in this story from the Yemen Times: "Qat: 22 million working hours wasted every day". Wasted? Apparently the Yemenis do not subscribe to Vice Squad's reluctance to count productivity effects as "costs" of drug use.

Labels: khat

 
Qat Promotes Fertility?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:51 PM

The qat (or khat) plant is chewed by millions of people in East Africa and elsewhere for its stimulating effect. But the stimulation is more general, it seems:

The leaves of the khat plant give a feeling of euphoria when chewed. But scientists at King's College London have discovered that they also contain chemicals that help sperm to mature and fertilise an egg.

Vice Squad's most recent previous posts concerning qat are here and here.

Labels: khat

 
Chewing the Qat in Yemen
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:29 PM

Minutes after posting about growing qat, I stumbled upon this wonderful article by Elisabeth Eaves in Slate concerning the chewing of qat in Yemen. Here's a brief excerpt that refers to the pleasures and pains of qat:

Part of the charm of qat is that no one, at least in Yemen, has ever tried to distill it or speed up its effects. Qat can be strong stuff, but it takes a long time to take effect, and while you are waiting you must sit and pick at the little stack of shrubbery you have brought, painstakingly stuffing bad-tasting foliage into you mouth, and washing it down with water or soda pop. This will frustrate anyone chasing a quick high, but it preserves the social ritual, which is a major part of qat's appeal. If I'm in the right mood, I love the hours of ebbing and flowing chat that segue seamlessly from one-on-one confidences to group discussions to solo speechmaking and back, about politics and culture and love and war. It makes me wonder how often, back home, I really took the time to listen and talk.

The drawbacks are serious and numerous. To name a few: Qat cultivation uses up scarce water resources, and consumption uses up even scanter incomes. Little children run wild in the streets while their parents indulge—one afternoon I saw a group of them playing with a sizable fire they had built in the street.

Labels: khat

 
Supply-Side Substitutions: Turning Coffee Into Qat
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:01 PM

One of the most vexing problems in thinking about desirable vice policies concerns possibilities for substitutions. It might be the case that making marijuana less accessible leads to increased use of alcohol or other drugs, possibly with worse social outcomes. So even a drug prohibition that "works" in terms of reducing prevalence might be a policy mistake, due to undesirable substitutions (and perhaps one hundred other reasons). (Here is one recent sad story along these lines, and a Vice Squad post from early May that touched on this theme.)

Most discussion of substitutions deals with the demand side, though occasionally supply-side substitutions enter the picture: crack down on alcohol, and there will be a shift from beer to spirits, and crack down on marijuana smuggling, and there might be a shift to cocaine. There is an interesting substitution currently underway in Ethiopia and some other African countries: low coffee prices are inducing a substitution by farmers to the growing of qat (or "khat"). Here's an excerpt from the linked Reuters article:

"No one tends coffee plants any more because they are not worth the effort. We prefer to look after our qat crops which generate good income for us," said one farmer in Kaffa.

Ethiopia exports qat across the Horn of Africa, counting the crop as its second biggest foreign exchange earner. Ethiopia is the largest coffee producer in Africa with annual production estimated between 250,000 and 300,000 tonnes, most of which is consumed locally.

Addendum: Here's a recent news story that provides some information about the consumption of qat.

Labels: khat

 
Khat Under Review in Britain
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 12:00 PM

Friend of Vice Squad Phoebe Rice brings to our attention this BBC report on British investigations into khat (or qat). Chewing the leaves of this plant, which contains an ephedrine-like stimulant, is a popular pastime in Somalia and other parts of East Africa. Khat (pronounced "cot") is generally harvested in Ethiopia, Yemen, or Kenya, and rushed to various markets (in Mogadishu, for example), as unrefrigerated leaves lose some of their psychoactive compounds fairly quickly after being removed from the plant.

Chewing a lot of khat can produce some adverse health effects, and it is these that have prompted the British review. The linked BBC article reports that a ban on khat in Britain is under consideration, though it sounds as if, for now, that measure remains unlikely -- khat is consumed by many Africans living in London and other parts of the UK. In the US, of course, khat is already banned.

A BBC story from December notes how falling coffee prices have induced Ethiopian farmers to switch to khat production.

Labels: Britain, khat