I had to laugh when I read that the Palestinian Authority cannot pay its workers. This morning, when I went to work, I passed a demo by local authority workers. Why the demo? They haven't been paid for 5 months.

"funding terror networks via the international heroin trade"

Come on guys. If we can't get the terminoligy right we will never get a hold of the problem.

Heroin does not fund terror networks. Heroin prohibition funds terror networks.

i.e. our own policy is funding terror networks.

American prohibition of heroin creates a black market that funds terrorism.

Do you understand how to solve the problem now?

End prohibition.

You know I'm told the USSR had a lot of these black market problems in it's final days. The idea of prohibited goods is mainly a socialist idea.

You got to wonder why so many nominal capitalists support socialism in fact.

In any case clear words suport clear thinking. Try it. You will like it.

At best your argument only addresses above-market prices caused by prohibition.

Were heroin to become legal everywhere (and it would have to be everywhere for the pricing to be affected), prices might drop once sufficient supplies were established. However, given the addictive nature of the drug, the equilibrium point would not drop as far as you might think since new users would be captured. And captive users always end up paying a premium for any good or service -- I know, I wrote operating system-specific software in the 70s and 80s, when we regularly managed NET margins before tax of 25%.

Even if heroin were to be legalized, it would remain an "industry of choice" for terror networks as it fits their situation: requires little production infrastructure and less transportation fixed infrastructure, is compact and can be carried by a single courier or by a small boat or truck and the producers of the raw materials are not in a position to exploit the end market well. Note that, so far as I know, al Qaeda has not branched into methamphetamines or cocaine, each of which requires a modest amount of know how to produce. In the case of cocaine, one also needs access to the raw materials, and even with their growing presence in South America, I doubt al Qaeda plans to take on the Columbian narcoterrorists anytime soon.

The problem with simplistic arguments like the one you just raised, M. Simon, is that they ignore all the externalities which would be priced in (negatively, in this case) once regulations were lifted.

Regarding the sale of suitcase nukes to Al Qaeda, I also think it is highly unlikely.

However, these rumors happen time and time again. Lookt at: http://www.debka.com/ to see some earlier such warnings from 2001.

Nevertheless, given that we still have all our cities, it is unlikely they have such weapons. (Thank God!)

You are absolutely correct Robin. My arguments are simplistic.

What you leave out are a number of points.

1. Terrorists don't deal aspirin. Why is that? It's a drug.

2. Ending alcohol prohibition ended much of the gang violence and all the excess profits associated with that prohibition. When was thte last time an American got shot over the terms of a beer distribution contract?

3. The US of A is the main driving force behind drug prohibition in the world. You might want to look up the history of the Single Convention Treaty.

4. If a country in the current day and age plans to go the decrim route who puts on the full court press to get it to change it's mind? Why the US of A. The US of A will even prod the UN anti-narcotics group to get involved. Example: The US of A has been sending Drug Czars and others to Canada to talk them out of doing what California did re: marijuana in the 80s. Some 20+ years ago. Why is the US of A against a Canadian pot policy similar to California's?

To say that the US of A can't end drug prohibition by itself is to avoid tthe issue of who is the main driving force in maintaing prohibition.

Robin:

The #1 extenality you have not priced in is that drug prohibition according to many including the current Mayor Daley of Chicago is responsible for 80% of ALL crime in America.

i.e. The Drug War is a government sponsored crime plague. Now just who would be in favor of more crime in America? Who benefits? I'll let you work that one out on yer own.

As to externalities of prohibition try this url for a look. Updated every second:

http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm

Let the terrorists deal heroin if they want. Let them sell wheat. Let 'em start a Toyota dealership.

Fine by me.

What I object to is that they not be accorded extrodinary profits through the efforts of our own government and their Heroin Price Support and Gang Finance Program. aka the War On Drug Users.

The question of decriminalizing recreational drugs isn't the topic of this WOW post, but since it clearly is the MAIN issue in M. Simon's mind I'll respond to a few points in his serial comments.

Externalities: it is certainly true that many property crimes, and much inner city violence, is associated with drug dealing or is performed by addicts to fund their habit. What makes you think the funding crimes would go down if the drug was decriminalized? Addicts are addicts - and no, I am NOT going to "help them" by sponsoring their habit through public funds.

Gang violence currently filtered through drug dealing would IMO continue for other reasons in inner city venues.

You still haven't addressed my main point above, which is that the price point of heroin will NOT fall as significantly as you might think (hope?) if heroin is decriminalized.

Terrorists don't deal aspirin because it is legal, but also because it can be made very cheaply and easily. Most importantly, it is a) not addictive and b) there are many substitutes easily available for it - i.e. there is no captured market for it.

These are basic product pricing issues.

To extend this just a little further, pharmaceutical firms know how to manufacture a number of synthetic drugs that are as good as heroin for pain relief and generally feeling fine. Most of them area also psychologically as well as physically addicting, like heroin.

My personal political stance generally is moderately libertarian, but I don't favor decriminalizing most of these drugs because the resulting social hassles and expenses are not something I care to fund out of my tax dollars - and given the nature of addiction, it is very difficult to force the addict to bear all the costs his addition creates. And, since I know something about the neurochemistry of addition and about wasted lives due to addiction, neither do I see any particular advantage to me of making this stuff legal.

If al Qaeda didn't deal drugs it would deal some other high-risk, high-profit item (witness the $20 mil in counterfeit money an al Q operative had on him in Jordan last week).

Sorry, M. Simon, fervent feelings and vague associations don't make a compelling case.

Well Robin I have more bad news for you.

A former head of the American CIA thinks that the drug lords control American politics at least as far as the drug trade is concerned. Here is some info on that:

"While we usually think of corruption in relation to police officers on the street and local prosecutors, the drug war has managed to offer incentives for corruption that reach to the very highest levels of the United States government. It is indeed ironic that the very agencies of government who are beating the drums loudest in the war on drugs have also established an infamous record of accepting assistance from and providing logistical support to some of the largest drug trafficking syndicates in the world."

CRJ 875: Crime and Public Policy

Module 5: The Failure of Drug Control Policies
Gary W. Potter, Professor, Criminal Justice and Police Studies Eastern Kentucky University

from:
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATcolby.htm

Now Colby has not always been truthful about government involvement in the drug trade:

But the CIA's involvement in this traffic was widely known in the Sixties and Seventies, and was amply documented in Alfred McCoy's book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (Harper and Row, 1972), which I cited in my article, referring in particular to the chapter on the drug trade in Laos. In his letter Colby ignores McCoy's evidence, which led to this conclusion:

American diplomats and secret agents have been involved in the narcotics traffic at three levels: (1) coincidental complicity by allying with groups actively engaged in the drug traffic; (2) abetting the traffic by covering up for known heroin traffickers and condoning their involvement; (3) and active engagement in the transport of opium and heroin. It is ironic, to say the least, that America's heroin plague is of its own making. [p. 14]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/3433

BTW I highly reccomend the McCoy book which is available for your reading pleasure on the www.

Here is where Mr. McCoy works.

http://www.wisc.edu/ctrseasia/profmccoy.htm

Here is an interview with Prof. McCoy:

http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/DARKALLIANCE/ciah1.html

I'm looking for the link to "the Politics of Heroin" book. I'll post it when I find it. This bit is long enough.

This is kind of cute:

"[In 2001]Pakistan and the United States have turned to a tried and trusted 'friend' in their efforts to exert control over events in Afghanistan - convicted Pakistani drug baron and former parliamentarian, Ayub Afridi.... Without fanfare, Afridi was freed from prison in Karachi last Thursday after serving just a few weeks of a seven-year sentence for the export of 6.5 tons of hashish, seized at Antwerp, Belgium, in the 1980s. No reasons were given for Afridi's release..... It is a matter of record that top US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials believed in the early 1980s that they would never be able to justify a multibillion-dollar budget from the government to provide support to the mujahideen in the fight against the Red Army. As a result, they decided to generate funds through the poppy-rich Afghan soil and heroin production and smuggling to finance the Afghan war. Afridi was the kingpin of this plan.... "
Asia Times, 5 Dec, 2001
http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/CL04Df01.html

"Neither does the last State Department report explain why Haji Ayub, a major Pakistani drug baron, who had voluntarily surrendered to U.S authorities, returned to Pakistan in 1999 after spending a mere three and a half years in a U.S prison ....The saga of Haji Ayub Afridi is a good illustration of the troubling links between traffickers and politicians in Pakistan, as well as the shady deals made by the United States with both sides..."
The World Geopolitics of Drugs - Annual Report 1998/9

http://www.ogd.org/2000/en/99en.html

"Afridi lives in Jalalabad, a half-hour outside Peshawar in a compound protected by anti aircraft guns and armed tribesmen. His responsibility is to keep the flow of heroin and hashish moving to local distribution and sales groups in New York, Newark, NJ, L.A. and San Francisco."
War's Bastard Son

http://www.comebackalive.com/df/drugs/drugprod.htm

"Afghanistan's new government is failing to tackle the cultivation of opium poppies, a BBC investigation has found. Earlier this year, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw announced that almost a third of the country's poppy fields had been destroyed. But BBC Radio 4's Today programme found there was little evidence that the crops were being eradicated.... Mr Straw has congratulated the interim government on its opium eradication scheme which he said would help stem the flow of heroin into the UK. Eradication teams go to the farms armed with sticks to destroy the opium crops. They give farmers $350 US for about one-fifth of a hectare of poppy. Sayed Tariq, governor of Badakshan, said although progress was being made, the cash incentives for eradication were counter-productive because they encouraged more farmers to grow poppy... According to the Foreign Office, 90% of the heroin in the UK originates in Afghanistan... The Taleban had banned the growing of opium in areas under their control. "
Afghan heroin trade 'booming'
BBC Online, 25 July 2002

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2150580.stm

Of course the real externaliteis that all these people fear is that when this rock is lifted their dirty dealings and their complicity in the multiplication of misery will come to light.

The reason prohibition continues is not the "protection" of innocents. It is the flow of the money.

McCoy in his interview (link above) says something which I have felt was true but didn't have the evidence:

"What the first war of drugs seemed to have produced, on balance, was a worsening of America's drug problem. The attempted interdiction failed - not only did it fail, it worsened the drug problem. Why do I say this, because it's a fairly strong conclusion? It's one I reached by looking at it."

So here we have it Robin. Prohibition as the model for drug control has not only enriched terrorists and criminals, it has made our drug problems worse.

Your government at work.

More tidbits from tthe McCoy interview:

One of the things that will happen as a result of the Bush drug war I expect will be another major expansion of the DEA. Working against that has been the Central Intelligence Agency. Because of their mandate to stop communism or to run a secret army in Laos or to harass the Nicaragua government with the contra operation - because they've had a political covert action mandate- they have found it convenient to ally themselves with the very drug brokers the DEA is trying to put in jail. While you're working with the CIAyou are untouchable. The CIA backs you up. There are instances of minor traffickers being arrested in the United States for importing drugs and the CIA will actually go to the local police and courts and get them off and out because oftentimes they threaten to talk, make trouble, so the CIA just gets them out.

Of course what is left out of all this politics is the people taking heroin for their pain.

No matter what is done in the name of "drug control" you will not be able to stop people from seeking pain relief. It is a very strong motivator. It is why people get tortured by other people. Which is why the drug market is so inelastic.

To provide a broader perspective on this situation, Professor Alfred McCoy stated in The Politics of Heroin, “Since the prohibition of narcotics in 1920, alliances between drug brokers and intelligence agencies have protected the global narcotics traffic. Given the frequency of such alliances, there seems a natural attraction between intelligence agencies and criminal syndicates. Both are practitioners of what one retired CIA operative has called the ‘clandestine arts’ – the basic skill of operating outside the normal channels of civil society. Among all the institutions of modern society, intelligence agencies and crime syndicates alone maintain large organizations capable of carrying out covert operations without fear of detection.”

http://www.john-f-kennedy.net/VietnamCIADrugs.htm

now the above goes into a bunch of conspiracy theories which may or may not have a basis in fact.

What is on solid ground is McCoy's work.

A lot of links on the Afghan heroin scene

These guys hate Bush. But their drug war info seems valid. The story ties together.

The thing is I am not a Bush hater.

Where I am coming from is that the War On Some Drugs like our alliance with dictators is costing us more than it is worth.

Sure the CIA gets funds from prohibition arbitrage. But so do our enemies. And lost and crushed in the middle are the unfortunates who just want relief from their pain.

Here is thte link to the McCoy book on line

A more recent McCoy intrerview, Published Aug/Sept. 2003

Simon, can I gently pull you back to our topic? I think we're all aware of how central this issue is to you, but the 'War on Drugs' example is just that - an example - in this case...

A.L.