Flint Journal – May 10, 2009:
Two rival local agencies spent more than $2 million last year fighting drug dealers and trying to rid communities of dope.
The results: They took about $350,000 worth of drugs off the street.
A Flint Journal review of the budgets and seizures for the Genesee County Sheriff’s Posse and the state police-run Flint Area Narcotics Group show far more was spent in enforcement of drug laws than the drugs are actually worth.
Officials with the two teams say even more drug fighting tools are needed locally. But critics contend it’s a waste of money and doesn’t fix the community’s overall drug problem.
Officials point out that drug enforcement is funded by the criminals themselves, by cash seized during drug raids.
However, drug forfeiture money is only 25 percent of the Posse’s overall budget of $536,000 and only 17 percent of FANG’s annual $1.4 million budget.
I did a little checking.
In Ohio it costs $14,000 per rehabilitated client (it’s complicated but this # will do for the math purposes.)
That’s approximately 140 people not buying drugs.
Would that take $350,000 worth of purchases off the street? ($2,400 each).
I honestly don’t know. Anyone know?
(That’s not to factor-in reduced social costs (foster care, welfare, theft for drug money, etc) and increase tax payments from ex-drug addicts who can now keep a job.)
MikeN “But if you punish enough people and spend enough money the price of drugs will go higher, causing an impact on the market.”
Certainly, law enforcement can impact the market, but it can never eliminate the market.
We’ve been fighting this war for several decades, spent probably trillions of dollars, turned Mexico and most of South America into a war zone, and yet even a dirt poor person can still find and can afford nearly any drug he wants anywhere in this country.
And your solution… we need to spend more money and punish more people?! What the frick?! That plan has not worked in the entire history of humanity. What makes you think it’ll work now? Sending potheads to prison for life? The death penalty for using coke? Being drawn and quartered in the public arena for having a scale and plastic baggies in your car?
It’s people like you who thought prohibition was a good idea. “Gee, if we spend more money and punish more people harder, eventually they’ll stop.”
Hey, if the cops just bought the drugs it would save millions a year.
To #7 Durgs have never been a victimless crime. The dealers kill each other and anybody that gets in their way. The junkies will do anything to get the cash to get their fix which is another way of saying a lot of drug users are career criminals. Employers fire junkies or refuse to hire them. Junkies cause a lot of accidents and what happens to the families of junkies is sin/criminal.
SN,
I don’t disagree that the War on Drugs is a failure, your arguments are hollow.
It was not that prohibition was such a bad idea, it did manage to garner sufficient votes to amend the Constitution. The problem with Prohibition AND the War on Drugs are the incompetent and corrupt police that allow it to take place. While most American police are not corrupt, the same can’t be said for police in most jurisdictions where the drugs originate.
A second problem was the lumping of marijuana in with heavy narcotics such as cocaine, heroin, and morphine. While cannabis is not harmful and is not addictive, the same is not true for opiates. While cannabis should, by all reasonable standards, be decriminalized, there should not be a blanket immunity for all drugs.
Instead of heavy prison terms, maybe we should have more diversion programs for drug addicts. It costs a lot less to treat them then it does to incarcerate them.
RE# 25,
Damn, I must be suffering from Alfred1 flu or something.
That first sentence should have read,
While I don’t disagree that the War on Drugs is a failure, your arguments are hollow.
I hope that makes more sense.
While I am at it though, I confess I have much admiration for SN. His posts are always well constructed and thought through. And he is a good looking man too.
deowll wrote: “To #7 Durgs have never been a victimless crime. The dealers kill each other and anybody that gets in their way.”
That’s because the government turned it into a war. You don’t see people killing each other buying potato chips.
“The junkies will do anything to get the cash to get their fix which is another way of saying a lot of drug users are career criminals.”
The exact same argument could be made against alcohol. Do you seriously want to try prohibition again?
“Junkies cause a lot of accidents and what happens to the families of junkies is sin/criminal.”
Yep, it appears you do, because we all know alcoholics cause more accidents than pot heads and have screwed up families. So let’s try prohibition again, I’m sure it will work this time, if we spend more money and give harsher punishments.
Mr. Fusion wrote: “I don’t disagree that the War on Drugs is a failure, your arguments are hollow.”
Which arguments are hollow? Has anyone refuted any of my arguments yet today? Nope.
“The problem with Prohibition AND the War on Drugs are the incompetent and corrupt police that allow it to take place.”
Oh, so that’s why, throughout the entire course of our history, that mind altering substances have never been eliminated. If we could only find perfect police, then the perfect prohibition could be implemented. Let’s get right on that.
“there should not be a blanket immunity for all drugs.”
And of course there would be no need for such immunity, because your hypothetical and completely imaginary perfectly incorruptible police force will solve all drug related crime. Yes!
“Instead of heavy prison terms, maybe we should have more diversion programs for drug addicts.”
But once your perfectly incorruptible imaginary super-police take over the planet, there will be no drugs left to become addicted to. What a paradise that will be! What a truly wonderful solution to the drug problem. Thank you so much! Why didn’t we think of imaginary hypothetical incorruptible super-police a long time ago?!
#7 – “Victimless crime?” Having seen the effects of drug addiction upon both the users and their loved ones, this statement can only be made by one of two people:
The naive.
or…
The addict himself.
Hey, I got a good idea:
legalize all drugs, and let the less than 1% of the population that ruin their lives using them do exactly that.
This argument that we’re trying to save people from themselves is bogus. The money and effort and curtailing of freedom to save these people just doesn’t make any sense.
It’s as ridiculous as outlawing porn, or gambling, or drinking, or extreme sports, or dumb business ideas, because a handful of people ruin their family’s lives over it.
This actually may be a record of efficiency!
Current drug policy is insane. Imagine you go to your doctor for a hangnail on your right hand, and he amputates your right leg.
Well.. now you STILL have a hangnail on you hand and you are missing a leg. This is drug policy as we know it. We get both the issues of drugs AND the issues of crime, we are making some very bad people very rich and they are spreading that money to corrupt our entire system of government.
And NOW, the doc (on the take) is recommending that left leg come off for the cure.
Oh yeah! Brilliance! Let’s do it for the kids!
#31:
“Imagine you go to your doctor… and he amputates your right leg.”
Thanks to the ‘drug war,’ some of my ‘doctors’ would amputate a limb or worse – for non-payment.
Black markets are awesome and we should encourage them.
it’s simple really.
war on drugs is a sham..always was.
it’s a political talking point for pols, and
a source of blackhole funding for federal and local law enforcement.
first, you have to get the government (esp
the CIA) out of the business of running
drugs to fund CovertOps and the like.
until then it’s a moot point.
sure you can get some cops to buy drugs, but most of them just shake down known local
users to pay off both off and on the book CI’s (confidential informants)
fwiw: street CI’s that take cash are usually payed $200.
you could save a ton of money by just decriminalizing/legalizing soft drugs and running drug clinics for the hard stuff.
(that’s where the real “feel good” money is)
the savings is in having a lot less hardware (vehicles and the like) and pensions to maintain/track.
you can make bank running a methadone
clinic. for instance, methadone clinics
around 2001-2002 iirc, were getting $77 per
dose, per day. probably more now. -not to mention all the support systems they offer that they get funding for.
re: government in the drug business:
they want to keep you hooked on meth for life too. ask any junkie that goes to a clinic:
you can get an dosage increase on the spot if your not “comfortable” -no questions asked.
ask to have dosage decrease and it’ll take 2, 3
days of dancing around the rosemary bush with the counselor. -and forget about getting Suboxone (which will free you right quick from the whole trap) -no money in that.
BOTTOM LINE: until the government gets out of the drug business, drugs will never be legalized and the faux war on drugs will live on forever and a day. -way to much money to made off and on the books.
ps, quite frankly, it’s the tweakers (crystal meth heads) that are the most trouble. -mellow is NOT in their vocabulary. no clue how to help them. they only good for getting your house cleaned (when you find and honest one)
..yada yada
-s
ps..
I agree with Mr. Fusion, -SN makes for some great irrefutable/on the money arguments/posts
logic etc.. Kudos SN.
-s
#28, SN,
They are hollow because they don’t offer anything except acceptance of something worse.
So the War of Drugs is an ongoing, never ceasing operation? Well Golly Gee!!! Guess what. So is the war on dandelions in my yard, weeds in my vegetable garden, and birds pecking on my cherry trees.
Some accountant might measure success by what it costs me in time and materials compared to buying fresh vegies and fruit from a vendor, but I don’t! It doesn’t matter that the weeds and pests might just be nature trying to make a living, I don’t want then in my yard.
The same argument can be made for illegal immigration. Just because so many illegals do cross the border does not mean we should just allow all illegals to stay and cease all immigration control efforts.
Oh, so that’s why, throughout the entire course of our history, that mind altering substances have never been eliminated.
Throughout our history people have committed suicide too. Does that mean we shouldn’t try to stop them? The same can be said about other moral adverse activities including consensual sibling incest; always happened, always will.
If the rest of Michigan were jumping off of bridges, would you?
#35 Fusion
I don’t buy this middle-class liberal crap about drugs being bad and that their use needs to be eliminated. People take drugs largely because they are PLEASURABLE and because they are FUN, not because of some mental illness or societal pressure. Some do take them to ‘ease the pain’, but use is largely recreational. How many great works of art and literature were created under the influence of various ‘hard’ drugs? How many people have experienced life changing epiphany on drugs? (the answer is many btw).
As is typical in society, is the poor that suffer most, forced into criminality when the rich can have their illegal drugs and get off scot free. The truth is there is, and always will be’ a demand for these drugs, and making them contraband only increases their lucrativeness and in turn makes it attractive for unscrupulous individuals at all levels to import and ‘push’ them to the poor.
The only logical answer to the problem is to decriminalise or legalise the drugs and provide help for those who want to use them safely or get off them altogether. The whole criminal enterprise will diminish as the profits do. Unfortunately there are too many people of power and influence who have their fingers in the drug trade pie to let this happen.
Do you want your kids to go out and lean how to take drug anecdotally or from shady dealers? If they are determined to try them they will. The priority is to make this a safe and educated process that minimises the risk and does not expose them to crime or make them criminals themselves.
35. “They are hollow because they don’t offer anything except acceptance of something worse.”
The war on drugs is infinitely worse than the affects of drugs. We know the affects of widespread drug use in this country. Anybody in this country who wants to do drugs are doing drugs. And you know what, it’s not that bad. The bad part is the war, where people kill each other over the sale and manufacture of drugs. We don’t have that problem over alcohol, because it’s legalized. We don’t have that problem over tobacco. Because it’s legalized.
“So is the war on dandelions in my yard, weeds in my vegetable garden, and birds pecking on my cherry trees.”
But that’s not a war. The drug war is a real war with real victims. And it’s that real war which is causing all the real problems. If your neighbors were dying from your dandelion war, exactly how long would you keep it up?
“The same argument can be made for illegal immigration.”
Once again, any “war” on immigration we have does not lead to murders and mass killings.
“Throughout our history people have committed suicide too.”
And yet another allegation that is not even remotely analogous to our drug war. Do you even know how to make an analogy? Once again, any “war” we have against suicide does not cause more harm than the suicide itself!
The real damage caused by drugs is the war, not the drugs. When the war is worse than what we’re fighting, it’s time to give up, not increase the war.
#37, SN
We don’t have that problem over alcohol, because it’s legalized.
Oh?
http://tinyurl.com/odzb8m
But that’s not a war. The drug war is a real war with real victims.
What happened to drugs being victimless?
Once again, any “war” on immigration we have does not lead to murders and mass killings.
But, … I thought the drugs didn’t kill, it was the guns in the hands of people clawing their way to be the top dog in the fight. A turf war. The Mexicans aren’t killing each other for drugs.
But again, that is a hollow argument. Instead of looking at the harm illegal drugs do, you are looking at the dangers of the illegal trade.
If your neighbors were dying from your dandelion war, exactly how long would you keep it up?
My neighbors aren’t dying from dandelions. They aren’t dying from the “Drug War” either. They are having their homes broken into by drug addicts and paying to incarcerate and clean up meth heads and foster their children.
Over 3/4 of the inmates in our local jail are there for meth, including several for manufacturing. Almost all of them have health problems requiring the County to supply medical assistance. Meth is very addictive and can be very inexpensive. I don’t want that legalized for the rest of us to pick up after.
And yet another allegation that is not even remotely analogous to our drug war. Do you even know how to make an analogy?
Your argument is it is happening anyway so we should stop fighting it. My examples are completely analogous. We fight these things because we don’t want them. They are not good for our society.
I suggest that you check out the link from the Portugal experiment earlier on in the thread, Mr. Fusion. Everything that you are complaining about is a symptom of -prohibition-, not drugs.
When was the last time that Coors and Miller shot each other up? And yet, alcohol runners did that all the time during our first failed experiment at prohibition. . . Our current policies only help the drug kingpins who get infinite money, and the law enforcement thugs who get fancy war-toys and a blank check on our civil rights.
Oh, and Meth? Our pilots in the Air Force are on it; the US Air Force gives it to them for long missions. You know why they don’t have health problems?
Because it is pharmacologically pure meth! It’s the home cooked shit that destroys your body, and once again, that is a symptom of prohibition, not drugs.