How much time are you prepared to buy? And how many lives are you prepared to pay?
Back when he was Ambassador to Iraq and one of the chief salesmen of the Surge, Ryan Crocker told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee “We are buying time at a cost of the lives of our soldiers.”
We have now bought just a little more than five years at the cost of a little more than 4,000 lives, not counting the tens of thousands of maimed. How much time would you like to buy, Senator? And how many lives are you willing to pay?
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman