cannabisnews.com: The Hydra-Headed Drug Business





The Hydra-Headed Drug Business
Posted by FoM on May 16, 2001 at 09:17:11 PT
By David Boaz on NRO
Source: National Review
At last we've turned the corner in the war on drugs. A Coast Guard crew has seized more than 13 tons of cocaine in what authorities are calling "the largest cocaine seizure in U.S. maritime history." But careful news watchers have heard those words before. Back in 1998 Attorney General Janet Reno and Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin announced more than 100 indictments and the seizure of some $150 million from Mexican banks, representing a successful conclusion to "the largest, most comprehensive drug money laundering case in history." 
Indeed, it seems not a week goes by without a report of "New Hampshire's biggest drug bust," "the biggest drug bust in middle Georgia history," "the largest drug bust ever in the United States outside of Florida," or — drum roll, please — "the largest drug bust in history." According to Nexis, in the past year newspapers have reported 66 "biggest drug busts." Law-enforcement agents and journalists both love those stories — they publicize the "success" of the war on drugs, and they offer the journalists great visuals and great numbers. Helpful police flacks always provide some sexy dollar figures — cocaine with a street value of $3.3 million, $20 million, $73 million, $2 billion. In a 1991 San Francisco case, billed as the biggest heroin bust ever, television cameras panned over 59 boxes containing 1,080 pounds of heroin — enough to supply each of the country's estimated 500,000 heroin addicts for a month. Drug-war officials said the street value of the heroin was $2.7 billion to $4 billion. It's true that the drug warriors are interdicting more drugs at our borders all the time. Seizures of cocaine rose from 9,000 kilograms in 1983 to 80,000 kilograms in 1989 to 108,000 kilos in 1997. But does that indicate success? More likely, it means that more drugs are crossing our borders, and officials are interdicting about the same percentage as before. The street prices of cocaine and heroin have been falling for years, a pretty good indication that plenty of both are still crossing our borders. As Mark A. R. Kleiman, a specialist on drug policy at Harvard University, said about the California raid, "For any shipment like this that you catch, you can assume that many more get through." When Americans read about ever-larger drug busts, or when we watch television shows about drug enforcement, we get the impression that drug-enforcement agents are clever and innovative, always staying one step ahead of the sinister pushers. But in reality the drug distributors are the innovative ones — because they have a financial incentive to be. The DEA and other law-enforcement agencies are bureaucracies, and like all bureaucracies they tend to be inefficient. Police officers and drug agents get paid whether they slow drug traffic or not. In fact, they may receive more funding if the drug problem gets worse. Drug dealers, on the other hand, are entrepreneurs. If they outwit the officers, they make big money. That economic incentive spurs creativity, innovation and efficiency. Every week brings reports of innovations in drug smuggling: people who swallow heroin and carry it into the United States in their stomachs; drugs placed in the luggage of unaccompanied children on international flights; cocaine implanted in a passenger's thighs — and those are just the methods police have discovered. When the Supreme Court approved surveillance flights over private property to search for marijuana fields, marijuana growers began moving indoors and underground. In November 1990 five subterranean marijuana farms were found by law enforcement officials in Southern California and Arizona; imagine how many were not found. One near Lancaster, Calif., cost about $1 million to build, police said, and had the potential to produce an annual profit of $75 million from 8,500 plants harvested four times a year. Around the world, drug enforcers face what Ethan Nadelmann of the Lindesmith Center calls the "push-down/pop-up factor": push down drug production in one country, and it will pop up in another. Marijuana and opium can be grown almost anywhere, and coca is being grown in places previously considered unsuitable. As long as Americans want to use drugs and are willing to defy the law and pay high prices to do so, drug busts are futile. Other profit-seeking smugglers and dealers will always be ready to step in and take the place of those arrested. "We've cut off the head of the dragon," said Robert Bender, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's San Francisco office, in announcing that 1991 heroin bust. But in decade since, the DEA has discovered that it had cut off the head, not of a dragon, but of a Hydra — the nine-headed monster in Greek mythology that couldn't be killed because whenever one of its heads was cut off, two more grew to replace it. Is there any reason to hope that today's "largest cocaine seizure in U.S. maritime history" will be any different? Note: There’s no killing it. David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute and editor of The Crisis in Drug Prohibition and The Libertarian Reader.Source National Review (US) Author: David BoazPublished: May 16, 2001 Copyright: 2001 National Review Email: letters nationalreview.com Website: http://www.nationalreview.com/ Forum: http://www.nationalreview.com/forum/forum.shtmlRelated Articles & Web Sites:The Cato Institutehttp://www.cato.org/TLC - DPFhttp://www.lindesmith.org/CannabisNews DEA Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/DEA.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by kaptinemo on May 16, 2001 at 17:22:48 PT:
"Biggest Bust Ever! - Biggest Bust Ever!
Biggest Bust Ever!On and on they chant.1914 Biggest Bust Ever! 2 whole pounds of dope!1960 Biggest Bust Ever! 20 pounds of dope!Fast-forward to today: 13 M*****-******g TONs of dope!While we are on the subject of Greek Mythology, how about this one? Sisyphus was condemned by the Gods to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill all day long, just to have the Gods flick it aside and send it rumbling back down to the bottom of the hill. Where ol' Sisyphus had to start all over again, the next day.For all eternity.In case it still eludes you, antis, you're Sisyphus-made-flesh. And your labors are as tragically pointless as his were.
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Comment #1 posted by letsgetfree on May 16, 2001 at 13:28:11 PT
good piece
With all the drug busts going on I find it funny that I could find and buy any drug I want within a day of wanting it. Easily. "If we legalise it drugs will be everywhere," the antis scream. WAKE UP! Drugs are everywhere! There are also courts and prisons filled with people who shouldn't be there, and that's the real tragedy.
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