By most measures the majority of the drug problem in both the US and Mexico does not relate to marijuana, so nothing you’re going to do with marijuana is very likely to decisively change the character of the overall drug policy situation
So says Professor Jonathan Caulkins in Randolph Nogel’s unusually nuanced article on the potential impact of US marijuana policy on Mexico. What Jon is saying will surprise many people, but he’s quite correct. Marijuana gets outsized attention in US drug policy debates, yet it matters at most slightly for the security of Mexico (and not at all for Central and South America). Domestically, it does not contribute to overdose deaths nor account for even 1% of imprisonments. But its status as a culture war symbol — particularly for baby boomers — will keep it in the forefront of popular debate even as concern over cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin wanes.
Tags: drug legalization, marijuana
I think this view is a little short-sighted. What illegal marijuana does is to keep the market for illegal drugs large; it’s like the Kipling poem:
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark –
Brandy for the Parson, ‘Baccy for the Clerk.
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!
The mass market in marijuana (brandy and tobacco) keeps the infrastructure for everything else robust.
“it matters at most slightly for the security of Mexico”
How was this determined? Kleiman’s methodology seems to be to misrepresent a RAND study (in this blog post), and then decide that a loss of 20% of revenue (not profit) won’t effect an organization. What’s yours?
Well then, that makes it even more important to get it legalized right away so we can focus on the real drug problems and stop wasting our time arresting and treating non-problematic marijuana users.
I *guess* he’s talking about marijuana itself rather than the prohibition of marijuana? And it’s true that marijuana doesn’t cause any deaths, but the prohibition on marijuana certainly does! Our country’s illegal marijuana suppliers kill more than 10,000 people every year in order to protect their profits and market shares. These are real people who are tortured, murdered and mutilated as a direct result of us keeping marijuana illegal. We need to legalize marijuana like wine and END this horrific killing!
re: “Domestically, it does not contribute to overdose deaths”
True.
re: “nor account for even 1% of imprisonments.”
False.
False many ways, but most of all we know that marijuana is in fact *the* lynch-pin of the so-called “war on drugs”. We know this from the way prohibitionists ‘fight tooth and nail’ (Romney’s words) to keep the marijuana-prison pipeline full.
“Oh no,” prohibitionists claim, “Pot isn’t what the prison system is all about. We hardly ever (almost never/virtually never/etc.) toss pot people in jail for mere pot possession!” And that is why prohibitionists fight to keep jailing people for pot – because they never jail people for pot. Don’t you see? America must always jail people for marijuana – because America doesn’t jail people for pot.
Of course that trope is getting old and is transparently false and contradictory.
Why does the police state (and its cheerleaders here on same “facts”) fight so hard to keep arresting people for pot, to keep jailing them (at a tidy profit considering police salaries and private prison corp profitability), if people are never jailed for pot?
That’s the whole point of legalizing pot – so that people don’t go to jail for it. If (as weaselly prohibitionists disingenuously assert) nobody goes to jail for pot, then what is the big deal? Prohibitionists want it both ways.
re: “Domestically, it does not contribute to overdose deaths nor account for even 1% of imprisonments”
The 2010 Annual Report of one of America’s largest for-profit prison corporation, Correction Corporation of America, disagrees with you.
“The demand for our facilities and services could (only) be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.”
(2010 Annual Report, Correction Corporation of America)
Let me guess – The pot-prison cheerleaders (who equivocally claim people are never jailed for pot) will deny the CCA report how? There’s got to be a way out for prohibitionists there. Maybe “decriminalization” there refers to meth, coke or heroin? Yeah, that’s the ticket. CCA wasn’t referring to the “least important drug” (pot) there when they say “decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws”, no.
“it does not… account for even 1% of imprisonments.”
Can you expand on this a little more? Are you saying that at any one time 1% of the prison population is solely incarcerated for a marijuana offence? Do you know how many people have ever spent time behind bars for a marijuana offence?
Or had their sentence extended because of a marijuana offence?
I’m very sorry some policy wonks were bothered by our concern about hundreds of thousands of arrests and all the other terrible side effects of needlessly making criminals out of several million people. We will try to be quieter.
** Comments and Analysis of Randolph Nogel’s “unusually nuanced article” **
re: “Aljazeera”
Hey – are these the same folks who advocate literal death-sentence beheadings for the crime of pot? “Aljazeera” Like in Dubai? And Saudi Arabia? And Malaysia and Indonesia? Like those folks? Has “Aljazeera” ever done anything but cheer-lead prohibition? (I’m always optimistic lightening will strike.)
re: “US drug legislation to slow Mexico violence?”
The US could … with the stroke of a pen, end the violence tomorrow by
legalizing pot. But police-state cheerleader politicians would need to admit they have been wrong: so don’t hold your breath for that one.
re: “With more than 60,000 victims, politicians are analyzing the impact of new US marijuana laws on Mexico’s war on drugs.”
60,000 victims which can be laid right at the feet of US prohibition policies, starting with the prohibition of pot. In their lust to jail people for pot, they have (just like Prohibition I) made a low-cost commodity worth more than silver. With similar predictable results.
re: “In his first month as Mexico’s new President, Enrique Pena Nieto has promised a different strategy to fight the so-called war on drugs.”
More political language (see Orwell). Expect more of the same. Any “change” (short of legalization) will be more window-dressing. Anything, anything, to keep arresting people for pot. “Change”? Oh sure. “Different strategy”? Oh yeah. Totally different.
Not if they want that 1.6$ billion bribe from the US, they won’t contradict US prohibition (jail-for-pot-people) policies. That’s “Job Number One” – keep arresting and jailing people for pot.
re: “More than 60,000 people have died in Mexico’s drug violence since 2006 and politicians are looking for new solutions, as sending the military to fight the cartels has not reduced the carnage.”
Solutions – provided that the police state is unimpeded in its marijuana-to-jail pipeline that (after officer safety of course) is Job Number One. Only solutions which do not legalize pot, only “solutions” which leave the US government at all levels directed toward jailing people for pot. Only “solutions” which do not mention the taboo. The “L” word is out. Only “solutions” in which government is “free” to keep jailing people for pot. Only “solutions” like that may we discuss in polite company.
re: “Nieto has cited new marijuana laws in the US states of Colorado and Washington as further evidence that Mexico needs to rethink its drug war policy.”
Not if he wants that $1.6 billion dollar US bribe. (Or “mordida”, or Governmental Fiduciary Foreign Incentive Transfer, or whatever you want to call it.)
re: “The two states approved the commercial production and distribution of marijuana in statewide referendums on November 6.”
Forsooth, some truth!
re: “The impact of the new US marijuana laws on Mexico is being weighed in terms of the financial impact on drug gangs and the political impact on the Nieto administration.”
Nothing about the will of the people, the unjust jailing of people for pot, the wrongness of arresting and jailing (or shooting them if police assert they ran, might have had a weapon, dissed Officer Friendly, etc). No, first things first: The financial impact. The political impact. Understood.
re: “Drug gang revenue. Some analysts believe the new legislation will hurt Mexican drug gangs as they will lose access to parts of the US marijuana market as their products are displaced by local supplies.”
Not government -hired “analysts”, you can bet that. Because if you’re in the US government (federal, state or local), and you make a statement that might be construed as bolstering, supporting, or favoring legalization, you can kiss your government salary paycheck, goodbye. That includes the paychecks of “professors”, too, who get their government paychecks from the same place. Government. Their “deliberations” on matters which they have expertise, especially political ones, are “deliberation” in the Ambrose Bierce sense.
re: “A study by the Mexican Centre for Competitiveness says Mexican drug cartels could lose as much as $1.4bn due to the new laws in the two states.”
But the Mexican government stands to lose their big ($1.6 billion) bribe from the US if they speak out against prohibition too much. So what to do?
[...]
re: “Marijuana is not that profitable. Their big money comes from cocaine. They also make a lot of money from other things. This is a pinprick in terms of the Mexican cartels,” says Keith Humphreys, a former senior White House Policy Adviser on the drug trade.”
Oh sure. And this is why the US police state must always jail its own sons and daughters, grandparents, brothers and sisters (shooting them on sight: if they run or resist in any way). Because marijuana is not “that” profitable.
re: “Drug gang revenue has for years been misused as an instrument in making both pro and anti-legalisation arguments, critics say.”
Facts are what government says they are. Disagree, and kiss your government paycheck goodbye, professor.
re: “A study carried out in 2010 by RAND Corporation, a global policy think-tank, found that about 20 percent of drug gang revenue comes from trafficking marijuana. It challenged a widely reported estimate that drug gangs earn 60 percent of their revenue from marijuana trafficking.”
That’s proves it there, then. RAND proved with mathematical certainty that only 20% gangs get, not %60. So there. Q.E.D. Proved. Pravda.
re: “Beau Kilmer … We don’t know …”
That summarizes it nicely. Some more truth slips out in their article. It isn’t all false, misleading, and wrongly framed.
re: “Political posturing?”
What? US and Mexican Statesman never engage in political posturing .. or do they? Yes, there’s some mighty nuanced analysis there, all right.
re: “Aside from the potential impact on drug gangs themselves, there has also been speculation that the decisions in Colorado and Washington could have profound political consequences in Mexico.”
And the rest of the world. The facade of marijuana prohibition, based on lies as it is, is crumbling. True: many in the US establishment, the “Bought Priesthood” have indeed staked their reputations and their careers on the badness of marijuana and the badness of pot smokers. Reality be cursed: marijuana is bad. Period. End of discussion (hope prohibitionists). So don’t expect people getting government paychecks on the backs of pot smokers, and those bought priests which cheer-lead the arrest and jailing of people for pot, to just come clean and admit their totalitarian mistakes. To the contrary. They dig in and confabulate more “reasons” to keep jailing people for pot. (That’s Job Number One!)
re: “In an interview with Time magazine last month, Nieto said that the decisions in the US states of Colorado and Washington to legalise marijuana open, ‘a space for a rethinking of our [drug-war] policy’.
No argument here on this point.
[snip]
re: “In general, change in a criminal context tends to promote violence, so if you go in on a street sweep and arrest the guys who have five street corners you often see a spike of violence because everyone who’s left wants those street corners. ” -Keith Humphreys, former senior White House drug policy adviser
Right: that violence is like money in the bank for the drug-war police state and its camp-followers. Another Leviathan-caused “crisis” for which the acceptable and predictable “solutions” involve loss of traditional freedom and money for people, while government is aggrandized. Violence like that is violence that will boost budgets for DEA, FBI, Fatherland Security, the NSA, etc. If you’re in government, what’s NOT to like about a “street sweep” (of dehumanized druggie trash), which will predictably result in “a spike of violence”? That’s a next FY budget increaser, for sure. That’s how departmental fiefdoms are created and sustained.
Mencken had it right.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken
Plato nailed it.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other in order that the people may require a leader. — Plato
That’s the drug war in a nutshell: excuse for a police state.
re: “Despite those comments, Jonathan Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Melon University and expert on the drug trade”
Oh my lord … if he is an expert, then I should believe him – and not my lying eyes. Thanks for mentioning his expertship.
re: “says it’s unlikely the Nieto administration will make significant reforms in its drug war policy as a result of US marijuana policy.”
Not with that $1.6 billion bribe in the balance, he won’t. Thank you doctor for the nuanced analysis.
re: “By most measures the majority of the drug problem in both the US and Mexico does not relate to marijuana”
To the contrary: the marijuana arrest and prison industry is (despite claims to the contrary), the first and primary function of law enforcement across America, fed, state and local. Busting potheads (at taxpayer expense) is the great task of US Law Enforcement, today.
Again, the speculative expert assertions aside, we see how important jailing people for pot must be to the US police state: because they fight so hard to keep doing it.
Even when the majority of the people in a given place make a law that police shall not bust people for pot, the police know better. Some laws are more important than others to police. Especially laws which fatten police salaries and careers with pot busts. Jailing people for pot is Job Number One for US police.
re: “so nothing you’re going to do with marijuana is very likely to decisively change the character of the overall drug policy situation.”
Assertion. And piffle. Just as the CCA annual report was forced to admit. Knock out pot prohibition, and lots of police state drug war camp followers will lose their funding. Jailers are already feeling the loss in Washington state and Colorado.
re: “Caulkins says it’s more likely the Nieto administration is concerned about the violence as a result of the trafficking as opposed to which drug is being trafficked.”
No doubt. And since RAND has declared 20% not 60% of Mexican gang revenues come from pot, then the US is all the more justified in jailing its own people for pot. That’s the main thing: keep arresting and jailing people for pot. The US Government is hell-bent on it, at all levels.
[snip]
re: Caulkins says Nieto’s comments about US marijuana legalisation could be aimed at getting Washington to give him some political leeway in doing some rethinking about how Mexico fights its drug war.”
If he wants that $1.6 billion, he’ll shut up and play the usual lick-spittle Mexican politician part: never contradicting the US, especially on the the third-rail, taboo issue of pot legalization.
re: “It’s doubtful Nieto would do anything to jeapordise the Merida Initiative, a US security assistance programme that has given Mexico about $1.6bn since 2008 to crackdown on drug gangs.”
Exactly. La mordida es muy grande, y el dinero es importante mas, en este caso.
re: “However, he is promising to take a new approach by refocusing on preventing drug gang murders, kidnappings and extortion – violent crimes that target ordinary citizens.”
Good luck without legalizing pot. Again. lip-service to change. Talk is cheap. Except for that $1.6 billion, which speaks quite loudly. (Of corruption, that is.)
re: “Nieto has acknowledged that targeting drug gangs and their leadership structure has led to the fragmentation of the drug cartels setting off violent turf wars.”
Gee, nobody never ever could have predicted that, either. What a surprise! Targeting drug gangs exacerbates and sets off violent turf wars.
Who would have thought?
re: “In general, change in a criminal context tends to promote violence,” says Humphreys. “So if you go in on a street sweep and arrest the guys who have five street corners you often see a spike of violence because everyone who’s left wants those street corners. There could be in the short term an uptick of trouble.”
Right. These government-generated, prohibition-created turf battles escalate when government’s “sweeps” of such druggie dirt destabilize the market. No surprising or scintillatingly striking conclusions there.
re: “The US referendums might not significantly affect violence in Mexico, but they could have other implications.”
“Might” not. (But if the law of supply and demand has not been repealed by government, it probably will.)
re: “The reality of the [Colorado and Washington] votes does make it easier for people to do the rethinking and it’s not going to be just Mexico,” says Caulkins.
He’s got that right. See? This article isn’t *all* wrong. But this democracy, this “re-thinking” (in a direction different of the acceptable police state thinking) is now a problem for police state totalitarians inside the beltway. What to do to thwart the will of the people? While not overtly seeming to do so too much? That’s the dilemma for DC beltway totalitarians. (I mean totalitarian in the sense of government controlling every aspect of our lives, right down the the marijuana-free purity of our literal blood. In the sense of total government control. That sense of the word.)
re: “Possibly Central American countries are going to be asking the same thing. Uruguay is proceeding with an attempt to legalise low level sales to their own citizens.”
If the wikileaked diplomatic cables are any indication, the US is frantically attempting to put out the legalization brush fires behind the scenes.
That would be something for samefacts to analyze sometime: the wikileak diplomatic cables concerning drugs.
re: “I think they will be less likely to get push back from the United States given that two US states have legalised.”
I don’t know. Rank, in-your-face hypocrisy has never stopped the US from pursuing police state policies. Why would the US honestly pay attention to public opinion now? Public opinion, the rule of the majority, is only something the United States government is interested in, if it increases US Government wealth and power. That stuff about the ‘consent of the governed’ is just window dressing anyway.
If the lying (about pot) stops, the system collapses.
I hope that rant was on the clock.
“Domestically, it does not contribute to overdose deaths nor account for even 1% of imprisonments.”
You are absolutely wrong on this!
“With over 5 million people on probation or parole in the United States, drug use on parole or probation has become the primary basis by which thousands of people are returned to prison. These technical violations of parole or probation account for as many as 40% of new prison admissions in some jurisdictions.” – page 6
PROHIBITION IS A DIRECT THREAT TO PUBLIC SAFETY:
“The war on drugs has also generated indirect costs that many researchers contend have undermined public safety. The federal government has prioritized spending and grants for drug task forces and widespread drug interdiction efforts that often target low-level drug dealing. These highly organized and coordinated efforts have been very labor intensive for local law enforcement agencies with some unanticipated consequences for investigation of other crimes. The focus on drugs is believed to have redirected law enforcement resources that have resulted in more drunk driving, and decreased investigation and enforcement of violent crime laws. In Illinois, a 47% increase in drug arrests corresponded with a 22% decrease in arrests for drunk driving. Florida researchers have similarly linked the focus on low level drug arrests with an increase in the serious crime index.”
—Drug Policy, Criminal Justice and Mass Imprisonment, by Bryan Stevenson
http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Arquivos/Global_Com_Bryan_Stevenson.pdf
Whole lotta crazy — guess some folks were out pretty late last night
Look in the mirror. Who controls your mind…. your body…….. your life? The general government believes it isn’t you. The War on drugs, Patriot Act, FEMA, NDAA, B347, Agenda 21 will have control over every aspect of you life, liberty and property. Everything fought for is being taken away; piece by piece. These controls are not merely designed by our government, but by the global international elite. Ron Paul never specifically charged conspiracies during his tenure, but used indirect indications that there are powers above US politics. In his farewell speech he said; “… impoverishes the people and rewards the special interests who end up controlling both political parties.” Another VERY revealing interview with NWO leader Henry Kissinger actually tells of the goal of thr ‘global international elite’ was taken off most sites. It still exists though. The interview exposes the power surrounding the Bilderburg power and scope. Although the entire interview is eye-opening, (you) can move it foreward to 15:00 to hear what one intended goal is in lulling the masses to follow them. http://video.foxnews.com/v/1865140554001/uncut-dr-henry-kissinger-on-the-record/
None of the current marijuana interest has anything to do with the ‘drugs problem’. The legislation and interest is in solving the ‘drug war’ problem. Just as Obama is enthusiastic about having forced Congress to raise taxes, just a little, because it represents a new state of being, I am enthusiastic about marijuana legalization because it changes this society from a reflexively ‘stupid on drugs’ position to one that has more nuance. That’s progress.
“it does not… account for even 1% of imprisonments.” If true, then in 2007 we imprisoned over 77,513,800 people.
Since Ronald Reagan began his war on drugs in 1982, the US prison population has quadrupled: The US only has 5% of the world’s population, but we now have 25% of its prisoners — more than China. In 2007, arrests for marijuana possession alone totaled 775,138, greatly exceeding arrests for all violent crimes combined.
Nearly one in eight drug prisoners in America are behind bars for marijuana-related offenses, according to data released this week by the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The BJS study, “Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004,” reports that 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses.
And, lest you think most of those imprisoned for pot must be dealers, traffickers, or growers, about 85 percent of marijuana-related arrests are possession arrests.
> Since Ronald Reagan began his war on drugs in 1982
FYI, although arrests for drug violations dramatically increased in the 1980′s, the ‘war on drugs’ dates back to Nixon administration where the phrase ‘war on drugs’ first originated
Keith: “…even as concern over cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin wanes.”
What comparable legislative and policy changes are on the table regarding these drugs? I challenge the assumption that there’s a “lump of attention” so that more concern for X means less for Y. That’s true for academics, legislators and other policy professionals: you can only work really hard on one thing at a time. But that’s not so for the general public. Marijuana activists have placed pot legalization on the political agenda. Good. They haven’t moved other drugs off it because they weren’t there in the first place.
I don’t understand the logic of this post. It seems to be that pot isn’t particularly harmful, therefore we shouldn’t bother to make it legal. That seems weird.
[...] marijuana is the least important illegal drug. It’s just the one everyone talks about because of its culture war baggage. [...]
re: “nor account for even 1% of imprisonments.”
As a very rough estimate (the Government deliberately does not keep the records of this), order 100,000 people are in jail for possession at any one time. Do we really keep 10 million people in jail ? News to me. Are 100,000 political prisoners inconsequential ? I don’t think think so.
By the way, if you know anyone who has gotten into legal trouble over marijuana, you know that the legal system can go to incredible lengths to avoid calling a possession arrest a possession arrest. I would bet that, if you tally up all of these possession by other name imprisonments, the total is a lot higher than 100,000.
Remember, the drug war was conceived in sin, born in corruption, and suckled on lies. None of their statistics are believable.