Florida Amendment 3

So Florida voters can amend the Florida State Constitution via the ballot.  Next month has a number of amendments for voters to consider, most notably Amendment 3 to legalize marijuana.  I've been increasingly skeptical about this simply because there is a very well funded TV advertising campaign.  Someone is putting a lot of money into this, which I find suspicious.

Well, the devil is in the details, and the fine print for Amendment 3 is, shall we say, interesting.  The Polk County sheriff cuts through a lot of the fog in a way that I find pretty convincing.  While I'm not adverse to legal pot, this seems to be a pretty bad way to go about it.  I'm not a fan of changing the Constitution so that particular interests can make money.

Is this the most Florida thing that has happened this year?

If not, it's close:

More than $1 million worth of cocaine washed up on a beach in the Florida Keys after Hurricane Debby battered the Gulf Coast’s Big Bend Monday morning, officials said.

Debby, which made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane early in the morning, carried more than two dozen 70-pound packages of cocaine ashore as winds topped 80 miles per hour, the US Border Patrol said.

“Hurricane Debby blew 25 packages of cocaine (70 lbs.) onto a beach in the Florida Keys,” US Border Patrol acting chief patrol agent Samuel Briggs II said in a social media post.

 Well all right then.  I love Florida, but it has some goofy branding.

The fabric of society 2

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

― Richard P. Feynman

1804 was a bad PR year for Napoleon Bonaparte. In March, he had sent French Dragoons across the Rhine into sovereign German territory to kidnap Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien, bringing him to Paris to be tried on trumped up charges of conspiracy and then executed. A European aristocracy who had breathed a sigh of relief that Napoleon had leashed the French Revolutionary Terror instantly became implacably opposed to his rule. While he was able to conquer for a while, he was unable to hold his gains in the face of their continuing resistance. As Talleyrand is said to have explained, It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.

Napoleon's hubris - his belief that he could exercise power with fewer and fewer restraints was a blunder.  We see this in our own day.  The War On Drugs has led to the militarization of the police forces.  It has led to an ever increasing ratchet of police use of force - including deadly force.  It has led to an "us vs. them" mentality, as police forces face increasing criticism for this increased use of force.  It has led to "no knock" raids, sometimes at the wrong address.

Yes, there's a lot of opportunistic looting going on right now.  Yes, radical leftist organizations like Antifa are using this as an excuse to spread chaos and fan the flames.

But it's hard to see how this happens without the last 40 years of military police tactics.  There's a real distrust between the citizens and the police, one that did not exist when I was young.

All for a War On Drugs that sees record levels of drug overdose deaths, the sale of narcotics on every street corner in the Republic, and a monstrous black market funding Narco-terrorists (among others).  Can we all agree that the War On Drugs is a blunder?  We can argue later about whether it was a crime.

A picture says a thousand words

No, we can't just invade Mexico to go after the drug cartels

Well, I mean that we could, but that there is precisely zero chance that we would succeed.

Folks are talking about this and I want to throw my two cents in.  Sure, we would initially blow away the cartel's armored vehicles and heavy weapons, but the initial success would be fleeting.  There are a million reasons for this, but here's a quick summary:

• The cartels would hole up in rough terrain, just like Pancho Villa's forces did in the early 20th century.  Sure, we have helicopters which mitigates the lack of roads but the last two decades in Afghanistan do not give confidence in quick military success in mountainous regions.
• The Pancho Villa expedition in 1916 was called off because the Mexican military intervened to oppose American intervention.  Most Americans don't really realize just how viscerally Mexicans would react to US forces on their soil in numbers.
• Since the cartels have bought off most Mexican politicians ("silver or lead" - take the payoff or a bullet) the last point becomes even more relevant.

So it's not a question of whether we'd inflict a lot of damage on the cartels.  Of course we would.  But ultimately we'd leave with our tails between our legs and this would make the situation worse than it is today.

And don't think that we would be safe, north of the Rio Grande.  The size of the drug market is unknown but RAND says that just the US black market for drugs was over $100B in 2010.  Add in the EU, Asia, the Anglosphere, and South America and this is certainly half a trillion dollars a year.  That's a lot of money.  The cartels have used this to purchase heavy weapons and armored vehicles, submarines and airplanes.  But that isn't where the threat ends.

Consider how much computer hacking $50M or so could buy.  We know that the power grid is already compromised - the hope is that it is by nation state actors.  But what if it is Black Hats for hire?  It's entirely plausible that if the cartels face a truly existential threat from the US military that they could take down big parts of our critical cyber infrastructure.  This threat has been pretty clear for a decade; I've been beating this drum for that long, although I've mostly given up by now since it's getting worse not better.  Someone in the cartels will have noticed this.

And so while the idea of "let's go blow the cartels away" sounds good on the surface, it's an enormously bad idea.  We'd be fighting a 3rd generation war while the cartels would escalate to a 4th generation one - and we are entirely unprepared for this.

I'm at an all day meeting, so more thoughts on just how fragile our cyber infrastructure is will have to wait.  But it's not just bad, it's worse than you can possibly imagine.

You want to hurt the cartels, then you dry up the cash flow.  You end the war on drugs, legalize everything, and give the drugs away for free.  They can't compete with free.  Anything short of this and you're just going to get a lot of people killed and end up right back where you started.

At the intersection of stupid gun laws and stupid drug laws

Pregnant Mom Kills Home Invader in Justified Shooting, Now Going To Prison For the Gun She Used:

Do convicted felons have the constitutional right to defend themselves with a firearm? The answer to the question, in most U.S. states is a resounding no. Those who do, like Arkansas native Krissy Noble, face years in prison, all for choosing to protect their lives and the lives of their loved ones with a firearm.

Noble was cleared of all wrongdoing in the Dec. 7th shooting death of Dylan Stancoff, who attacked her in her own home. Noble was pregnant at the time of the shooting when Stancoff, calling himself Cameron White, stopped by her home and asked to speak to Noble’s husband who was not home at the time. Saying he was a friend from the military, Stancoff left but returned later, pushed himself into Noble’s home, attempted to cover her mouth to prevent her from screaming, and began to struggle with the mother-to-be.

Noble escaped briefly and retrieved a .40 caliber handgun, fired three shots, and killed her attacker. But because Noble pleaded guilty (before the shooting in 2017) to felony possession of marijuana, she now faces six years in prison, all for the crime of using her husband’s handgun, a gun she successfully used to defend herself and the life of her unborn baby.

The term "anarcho-tyranny" describes a situation where the Organs Of The State refuse to control criminals (hence, the anarchy) by puts strict controls on the law abiding (hence, the tyranny).  Sure, it's hard to control criminals and easy to control the law abiding, but that's hardly a justification.

It's hard to think of a group with a stronger claim on society's protection than expecting mothers, and yet the police failed her.  No doubt that is because the woman lived in a rural area, but her moral claim on protection stands.  The State is making things worse - adding to their moral failure - by prosecuting her for using not her firearm, but her husband's firearm to defend herself and her unborn baby.

The State is effectively saying that not only do they have no moral duty to protect these two people, but that Mrs. Noble has no legal authority to protect herself and her baby - and that the state will imprison her for 5 years if she does.

Let that sink in.

All because she was busted with some pot once.  What a miserable failure of the stupid War On Drugs.  Future generations will judge us by our works, and the judging will be harsh.  Fair, but harsh.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

The War On Drugs takes down Oklahoma

I've been very vocal for a very long time about how the stupid War On Drugs is destroying much of this country.  Now we can add Oklahoma to the list.  The Oklahoma State Attorney General sued Johnson & Johnson because (a) there are a lot of Okie opioid deaths and (b) J & J make and sell prescription opiods.  Never mind that science has shown that overdose deaths do not result from prescription medication, an Okie judge awarded the State a half billion dollars in damages.  There are something like 1,000 other lawsuits lined up on the taxiways as other States are salivating for all the shake-down dough.

Buh-bye, Johnson & Johnson.

Aesop has a fine rant about this and you should go right now and read it.  I particularly like this part:

It will start with J&J ceasing all opiate sales to Oklahoma, in perpetuity.
(Hint: they should institute that policy tomorrow. Then refer the howling from hundreds of thousands of agonized senior citizens to Judge Fucktard, and post his home phone number and that of the OK AG on the J&J website for complaints.)

Then every other drug company should follow suit, and will.

His point that this will end up driving firearms manufacturers out of business hits center mass as well.

The one thing that I would add is that this is the modus operandi we should expect from the government: they are incompetent to do their assigned task (win the stupid War On Drugs; sure, it's unwinable but they're the ones who want to fight that battle so this is on them).  Rather than get better at their job, they look for someone innocent to blame while they shake down cash and prizes that is fed right back into their patronage mill.

Pretty sweet scam, right there.  It would have a medieval robber baron taking notes.  Of course, the problem is the same as that faced by the robber baron: you steal half of the merchant goods passing by your castle and soon there won't be any merchant goods passing by your castle.  It's killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

The price of prescription opioids is fixin' to skyrocket, just like the price of cigarettes skyrocketed after the tobacco settlement of the 1990s.  Poorpeople will have to choose whether to eat or to live in pain.  Some will decide to go to the local dealer for the street fare because it will be a penny on the dollar compared with the script their Doc writes.  Some of these will OD.

Nice going, Oklahoma.  You've just about fucked up the situation in every possible way imaginable.

So Aesop, can we now declare victory on the stupid War On Drugs and bring the troops home?  Or should we keep burning the village down to save it?

Prescription pain killers do not lead to addiction or overdose death

So says a 20 year study in Germany:

The newer study, published last March in Deutsches Arzteblatt International, estimates that in 2016 there were 166,294 "opioid-addicted persons in Germany." The researchers add that "comparisons with earlier estimates" indicate the number was about the same two decades before then, prior to the dramatic increase in opioid prescriptions. In other words, a large increase in consumption of narcotic pain relievers did not lead to a surge in addiction, whether to those drugs or to illicit opioids such as heroin.

What's more, OECD data compiled by J.J. Rich, a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation (which publishes this website), show that deaths involving licit and illicit opioids did not rise in Germany either. In fact, both the number of deaths and the death rate declined during the same period when prescriptions were climbing.

So what does the brutal crackdown on prescription pain killers accomplish (other than to keep Americans in chronic agony)?   Well, it keeps the loot from Asset Forfeiture rolling into Law Enforcement coffers: Law Enforcement Took More Stuff From People Than Burglars Did.

The War On Drugs is stupid, and is being run by stupid people.

Willie Nelson - Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die

Folks seem to think that (a) legalizing drugs will make them more prevalent even though they are for sale on every street corner in the land, and (b) somehow there's a way to win this stupid War On Drugs if we really, really try harder, for real you guys.

Ooooooh kaaaaay.

I really like ASM826's solution - the government should give it away for free.  Hard for the cartels to compete against free, and hard to see why anyone would commit a crime to get cash for their next fix.  Sure, you'd still have people ODing and driving under the influence.  We can probably do something about that last one.

But the fly in the ointment, sadly, is that the government has gotten a taste of that sweet, sweet money and power that comes from the idiotic WoD.  One hit was all it took to get them hopelessly addicted, and so there's no chance at all that the WoD will ever end.  May as well lie back and think of England.  Willie has a strategy to make it less unpleasant.



Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die (songwriters: Willie Nelson, Buddy Cannon, Rich Alves, John Colgin, Mike McQuerry)

Roll me up and smoke me when I die
And if anyone don't like it, just look 'em in the eye
I didn't come here, and I ain't leavin'
So don't sit around and cry
Just roll me up and smoke me when I die.

Now, you won't see no sad and teary eyes
When I get my wings and it's my time to fly
Call my friends and tell 'em
There's a party, come on by
Now just roll me up and smoke me when I die.

Roll me up and smoke me when I die
And if anyone don't like it, just look 'em in the eye
I didn't come here, and I ain't leavin'
So don't sit around and cry
Just roll me up and smoke me when I die.

When I'd go I've been here long enough
So you'll sing and tell more jokes and dance and stuff
Just keep the music playin',
That'll be a good goodbye
Roll me up and smoke me when I die.

Roll me up and smoke me when I die
And if anyone don't like it, just look 'em in the eye
I didn't come here, and I ain't leavin'
So don't sit around and cry
Just roll me up and smoke me when I die.

Hey, take me out and build a roaring fire
Roll me in the flames for about an hour
Then take me out and twist me up
And point me towards the sky
And roll me up and smoke me when I die.

Roll me up and smoke me when I die
And if anyone don't like it, just look 'em in the eye
I didn't come here, and I ain't leavin'
So don't sit around and cry
Just roll me up and smoke me when I die.
Just roll me up and smoke me when I die.

All the ways that we are losing the War On Drugs

This is an update to an older post, but given the discussion on the stupid WoD, it's time to roll it out again.

This is what losing looks like:

Coroner Kent Harshbarger estimates that ... the state [of Ohio] will see 10,000 overdoses by the end of 2017 — more than were recorded in the entire United States in 1990.

Peter has an excellent and in-depth post of the utter idiocy of the "War on Drugs"and you should RTWT.

This would normally trigger an epic Borepatchian uberpost.  Instead, I will merely summarize the costs of this idiotic program:

40 year cost of War on Drugs is $1 Trillion
Half of all Federal prison inmates are serving time for drug offenses (same link as above)
$100 B black market in drugs shows no sign of going away
A single ship was seized, carrying $1B of cocaine.
Remember, after all of this treasure we are looking at an epidemic of overdose deaths.

Now add in the corruption of Law Enforcement:
The proliferation of SWAT teams
The proliferation of "No Knock" raids
The unaccountability of police (warning: autoplay video)
Billions of dollars taken via "Civil Asset Forfeiture" without charges, trial, or conviction
Police selling seized narcotics on the side

Now add in the corruption of the Intelligence Agencies:
DEA covers up program to collect information on all Americans

Now add in the corruption of the medical community:
A "Civil War" over pain medication is tearing the medical community apart
Patients can't get pain medication and so turn to heroin
How the War On Drugs fuels the Opioid epidemic

I could go on, but let me sum up: The war on drugs has made us less free, has fueled the growth of the Police/Surveillance State that targets us, has corrupted Law Enforcement and driven a wedge between them and the citizenry.  It has done this while drugs have become both more prevalent and more deadly, and while legitimate patients are forced to turn to illegal drugs because their doctors can't prescribe them the pharmaceuticals that would ease their chronic pain.

And let's return to what started this rant.  Consider the death toll: Ohio expects 10,000 overdose deaths this year, from a population of 11.6 M.  Nationwide overdose deaths are over 70,000 each year.  That's more than the war dead we suffered in Vietnam.  And that entirely ignores the fact that most murders in this country are over drug turf battles.

Think about that: all the treasure, all the lost freedom, and we are suffering a Vietnam War each year, every year, with no end in sight.

The War on Drugs is futile, stupid, and evil.  It should end immediately.  This is a stupid game, we're losing, and we shouldn't play.

Portugal's experience decriminalizing drugs

There seems to be quite a brouhaha over my post about the War on Drugs being stupid.  Opinions are running high, particularly from those on the ER front lines.  I'd like to shift the discussion from the realm of opinion to the realm of fact, specifically Portugal's experience when the decriminalized all drugs in 2001.

This is interesting because it is a long-term experiment on an alternative approach to the current War on Drugs.  There are some unanticipated consequences of their approach:

• Addiction rates have dropped
• HIV infection rates are way down
• Drug related crime is down
• The voting public has come around from strongly opposed to strongly in favor of decriminalization

This article from a couple years ago is interesting, because it highlights what doctors in Portugal have experienced from all of this.  It's a long read, but worthwhile to show what almost two decades of an alternative to our idiotic War On Drugs has done.

Quite frankly, it looks like not only are they spending a lot less than we are, jailing a lot fewer people than we are, suffering a lot fewer no-knock raids and property seizures than we are, but it seems that medical outcomes are better for drug users.

Sure, they haven't eliminated drugs or addiction - but after a trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands of dead and millions in prison we have narcotics for sale on every street corner in the land.  As I said before:

I could go on, but let me sum up: The war on drugs has made us less free, has fueled the growth of the Police/Surveillance State that targets us, has corrupted Law Enforcement and driven a wedge between them and the citizenry.  It has done this while drugs have become both more prevalent and more deadly, and while legitimate patients are forced to turn to illegal drugs because their doctors can't prescribe them the pharmaceuticals that would ease their chronic pain.

And let's return to what started this rant.  Consider the death toll: Ohio expects 10,000 overdose deaths this year, from a population of 11.6 M.  Normalizing this to a US population of 320M gives us an expected overdose death total of almost 300,000 a year nationwide.  That's more than the war dead we suffered in World War II.  And that entirely ignores the fact that most murders in this country are over drug turf battles.

Think about that: all the treasure, all the lost freedom, and we are suffering a World War II each year, every year, with no end in sight.

The War on Drugs is futile, stupid, and evil.  It should end immediately.  This is a stupid game, we're losing, and we shouldn't play.

Maybe Portugal can show us a different approach to the problem.  It sure can't be any worse than the nonsense we're trying right now.

The War On Drugs is stupid

We've spent a trillion dollars on this boondoggle, we've sacrificed more freedom than you can describe (had to burn the village to save it, and all that), and you still see this:

Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia have seized a container ship operated by the Mediterranean Shipping Co., weeks after authorities found more than $1 billion worth of cocaine on the vessel in what was one of the largest drug busts in American history.

...

On June 17, border agents found 39,525 pounds of cocaine stashed in several containers on the MSC Gayane at the Philadelphia seaport. The street value of the drugs was estimated at about $1.3 billion, making it the largest cocaine seizure by the agency.

One ship, 20 tons of cocaine.  A billion bucks of drugs on a single ship.

It's way past time to declare victory and brings the troops home.  Legalize it all, tax it (use some of the revenue to fund treatment centers) and be done with it.  This sure isn't working.  It's  a stupid game and we shouldn't play.

The CDC gets blowback on draconian anti-opiod guidelines

In 2016, the CDC published new guidance for doctors on pain medication.  This has resulted in increased difficulty in getting medication by people suffering from chronic pain, and in some cases had led to "cold turkey" withdrawal of the medications - a cruel and quite frankly medically dangerous practice.

Last month saw a letter to the CDC, a letter that documented hundreds of patients suffering the adverse consequences of the CDC's guidance.  The letter was signed by hundreds of doctors and nurses.  And suddenly the CDC is stumbling all over itself to "clarify" their 2016 guidance:

Acknowledging the suffering caused by "misinterpretation" of the opioid prescribing guidelines it published in 2016, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday sought to clarify that it never recommended imposing involuntary dose reductions on chronic pain patients. In a letter to physicians who had objected to that widespread practice, CDC Director Robert Redfield emphasized that his agency "does not endorse mandated or abrupt dose reduction or discontinuation, as these actions can result in patient harm." Redfield described several steps the CDC is taking to research the impact of its guidelines and correct misunderstandings that have led to abrupt withdrawal, undertreated pain, denial of care, and in some cases suicide.

"I have seen many patients harmed by widespread misapplication of the Guideline," said Stefan Kertesz, a University of Alabama at Birmingham pain and addiction specialist who helped organize a March 6 letter on the subject that was signed by hundreds of health professionals. Kertesz welcomed the CDC's response, which came the same day that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a warning about the risks of involuntary or fast opioid tapering.

It seems that a bunch of folks are giving the CDC attaboys for this.  My take is different.

The people at the CDC (and also it seems at the FDA) who wrote this guidance should be horsewhipped in the public square, and then denied pain medication.  The Reason post linked above contains story after story from people forced to live in agony.  Here's a sample quote from a patient:

"You don't know me, you don't walk in my shoes, you don't have my nerve damage, and you don't have to live with the thought of will today be the day that I kill myself because I can't take the pain anymore"

And the CDC's answer?  "Oops, my bad":

Redfield said the CDC is communicating with providers and health systems to "clarify the content" of its advice, to "emphasize the importance of developing policies consistent with the Guideline's intent," and to "highlight recommendations within the Guideline, including tapering guidance, options for non-opioid treatments for chronic pain, and communicating with patients."

Let's break that down, shall we?  Here's the translation from bureauticrese to English:

the CDC is communicating with providers and health systems to "clarify the content" of its advice 

Our guidance was crappy and too vague, almost certainly because we were covering our ass with politicians breathing down our necks on this "War On Drugs" nonsense and we were a bunch of pussies that caved to the pressure. 

to "emphasize the importance of developing policies consistent with the Guideline's intent" 

It may be vague but we're still pussies worried about those damn politicians.  But we're sorry we got caught and really really want this to get out of the public eye. 

and to "highlight recommendations within the Guideline, including tapering guidance, options for non-opioid treatments for chronic pain, and communicating with patients." 

Holy cow we're still pussies and are afraid of losing our jobs because the Politicians really really want their War On Drugs. 

The Government is a stumbling, bumbling idiot that crushes everything it touches.  Remember, kids: it's not "Government Healthcare" or even "Socialized Healthcare".  It's "Politicized Healthcare" and we're seeing it right now, before our very eyes.  Just wait until that's the only thing left to us and the Politicians really start yanking the levers.

Jerks.

Bad initial assumptions lead to bad pubic policy in the War On Drugs

We see this all the time with gun control - what possible justification can there be for "assault weapons" bans when these are used in one or two percent of gun crimes?  And yet there's the never ending drumbeat of "Assault weapons are BAD, mkay?"

You cannot solve a problem if you don't understand the problem.

Silicon Graybeard has a long and information rich post about how the war on drugs is simultaneously keeping patients from being able to control chronic pain while making no headway at all in reducing opioid overdose deaths:

The problem, as usual, is that the Government regulators are starting from a bad assumption.  They assumed today's junkie shooting contaminated fentanyl is yesterday's patient who started out on prescription drugs and got addicted that way.  Only about 8% of people who receive prescription opioids develop addictions.  80% of addicts get started in other, less legal, ways.

As the Journal of Pain Research points out, the government’s campaign is based on a false premise: “Today’s non-medical opioid users are not yesterday’s patients.” Medical users usually do not become addicts.

Wrong assumptions lead to wrong law, and doctors are being threatened with their livelihoods by new regulations. 

In my field of computer security there's a saying: sometimes its easier not to do something stupid than it is to do something smart.  Issues are complicated, and data are often sparse.  Fortunately, there's still a sense here that we don't know as much as we'd like to.

But not in the realm of public policy:

A study by Harvard’s Jeffrey Miron and others shows the government’s anti-opioid crusade has backfired and actually increased opioid addiction and overdose deaths:

Opioid overdose deaths have risen dramatically in the United States over the past two decades.… The opioid epidemic has resulted from too many restrictions on prescribing, not too few. Rather than decreasing opioid overdose deaths, restrictions push users from prescription opioids toward diverted or illicit opioids, which increase the risk of overdose because consumers cannot easily assess drug potency or quality in underground markets. The implication of this “more restrictions, more deaths” explanation is that the United States should scale back restrictions on opioid prescribing, perhaps to the point of legalization.

Again, issues are complicated and data are sparse.  It is, once again, easier not to do something stupid than it is to do something smart.  And yet here we are, mired up to our necks in stupid.

What SiGraybeard does not venture into is motivations.  How is it possible for all of the Organs of the State to have produced a result that is not just worse than doing nothing, but probably worse than any other policy conceivable?  After all, overdose deaths are skyrocketing, opioids are for sale on ever street corner in the land, the prisons are packed to overflowing, and patients are forced to live in excruciating pain for years.  It's hard to come up with an outcome worse than this, and yet the War on Drugs persists.

I think that the explanation is summed up in Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people":

 First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. 

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has a bunch of folks who are trying to keep people from killing themselves with narcotics.  They're in the first group.  But the Iron Law says that they will not be the ones who end up running the Agency.  Those will be from the second group - those who work to increase the power, scope, and budget of the DEA.

Note that keeping patients out of excruciating pain is not going to increase the power, scope, or budget of the DEA.  And so it does not happen.

The idea that really smart policy, implemented by smart and dedicated public servants is one that we scoff at when it is proposed for gun control.  It's right that we scoff, because it's no more plausible than Unicorns.  It's a tale to comfort small children.

And so with the stupid War On Drugs.  We're not going to get smart policy implemented by smart and dedicated public servants.  The Iron Law explains everything that you need to know about why.  It's long past time to declare victory and bring the troops home.

An interesting objection to the War On Drugs

Lawrence posts an interesting and different view on the War On Drugs: that's it's unconstitutional.  I am not a lawyer but his is an interesting argument even if from a practical matter that ship has sailed.

But you can have my "two spaces after a period" when you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.  I learned that in 8th grade typing class and that ship has sailed.  Please everybody, no flame wars on the Oxford Comma, either ...

So they had this guy "buy back" in Missouri

And sumd00d made three crapy guns from scrap metal and sold them to the State.  Then he took the money and bought a real gun.

But sure, the Organs of the State are totes competent to win the War On Drugs.

The War on Drugs and the persistence of pain

There's quite a discussion going on in the comments of the posts here and here.  A really good insight was left in this comment by Bill AKA waepnedmann:

I noticed that the three commenters, Aesop, Peter, and myself, who were relegated to the pro-war on drugs camp have their opinions formed by having been in the trenches on this so-called war. 

Aesop on the front lines in an ER 

I have a step-son who retired out as a paramedic in Richmond, CA. 

You literally cannot conceive of what medical personnel not only witness, but with which they live and wake up to in their dreams. 

PTSD is not only found in soldiers.  

Peter as a prison Chaplin. 

Myself: Twice my employment involved drug users and they damage they do: once as an MP in the Army (I was actually the NCOIC acting, for two months, at the maximum security cell bloc for an area confinement facility. Some of the troops returning stateside from The Land of Bad Things had drug problems and drug problems morphed into behavioral problems.

These guys speak passionately about their experiences dealing with people who are destroying their own lives, or the lives of others.  They speak passionately because of what they've seen.

I'm also going to speak passionately for a moment, about something that effects my life.  The Queen Of The World has had problems with her knees, problems that have been going on for a couple years now and which had her on crutches for months at a time.  Her doctors won't prescribe her pain medications because of the restrictions that they're under from the War On Drugs.

It's something to have to see the pain in her eyes day in and day out.  She's quite a trooper, but I can tell that it wears her down - the months and years of chronic pain take their toll.

To the people that think that the War on Drugs needs to get dialed up to 11, that there needs to be even more of what we've been doing - that we need to do it harder - well, she is the collateral damage from the stupid war.

Your point is a good one that people destroy their lives using drugs, but it's them who do it to themselves.  It's them that cause the aggravation and pain to their family and neighbors.  It's they who are not - and never will be - perfectible, or possibly improvable because they don't want to be.

But it's the government that is forcing the Queen Of The World and millions of others to remain in chronic, unrelieved pain for months or years at a time.  Remember, they say that government is just the things that we choose to do together.

This is personal to me.  Come up with a way to fight the War on Drugs that doesn't burn down the village to save it, or declare victory and go home.  I don't think that there's a way to win without massive collateral damage because the people using drugs want to use them, they don't want to stop, and they won't cooperate with efforts to improve/perfect/save them.

Out of the crooked timber that is Man nothing straight was ever built, and all that.

But it's not cool to keep the Queen Of The World and all the legions like her in constant pain.  It's not cool for local police departments to get all ninja'ed up.  It's not cool for no-knock drug raids to go into the wrong house by mistake.  It's not cool for law enforcement to get corrupted by bribes (or intimidation) from the cartels.

But there's no reforming a system this big.  Bureaucracies gonna bureaucracy and while the people in the system mean well, the system is lousy and getting lousier.  Out of the crooked timber that is Man nothing straight was ever built, and all that.

I do not believe in the perfectibility of mankind, and I sure as hell don't believe in the perfectibility of large organizations.  To win the War on Drugs you need both.  Or you need the organizations so strong and brutal that the population is cowed into acting like they have been perfected.

No thanks.  The Queen Of The World doesn't deserve this: she's the nicest person I know.  The millions of other people that the government keeps in pain don't deserve it either.  The human cost of the War On Drugs is not sustainable, it's not justified, and it needs to end.

Similarities between the War on Drugs and Gun Control

There's a big discussion in our corner of the 'net, bigger than I remember seeing in quite a while.  It's about the War on Drugs, and there are two distinct camps (for shorthand, let's call them the anti-drug camp and the anti-war camp).  Both sides are arguing intelligently and passionately, and making excellent points.  But it seems to me that both camps are speaking past each other.

As background, here are some links you should go and read before you go any further here.  Read the comments, too, which are packed full o' Smart.

I may have kicked over the anthill here.

Aesop replied in the comments, and then posted about it at his place.

Co-blogger ASM826 commented on both posts, and then left a clarification.

Peter stepped in with some examples from his history dealing with prison inmates.  You really should read this.

Reader Bill emailed with what I was going to put up as a guest post on the subject but I wanted to jump in with an idea that might clarify my (and I expect ASM826's) position.  I'll put it up later today, but for now we can put him in the same camp as Aesop and Peter.  Basically their position is that drugs have metastasized in the underclass and that not only destroys the lives of drug users (problem the lesser) but leads to a lot of crime against the wider society (problem the greater).

All of them are precisely correct with all of this.  While Thomas Hobbes was pretty pessimistic when he wrote that Man's life is "nasty, brutish, and short" that's the song you hear when you look upon the drug culture in the underclass.  Lots of death, misery, and criminal predation on the general population.  Essentially their point is that this is a huge problem that effects far more than just the addicts and we as a society should do something about it.

ASM826 and I point out that the "War On Drugs" has been a fifty year failure.  I don't really see how any reasonable person can argue with this.  We've spent north of a Trillion (with a "T") dollars, we've seen the local police militarize to the point that they all get Ninja'ed up and form a stick for no-knock raids that just might be at the right address, and we see the local governments "arrest" assets without convicting (or even charging) citizens.  There's also been an explosion of the prison population (which I'm less concerned about since these are not exactly choir boys).  With all that, drugs are for sale on every street corner in the land and overdose deaths are skyrocketing.  ASM826 and I are basically taking the position that half a century of trying has been a disaster, and we should stop banging our heads against this wall.

Both sides are right about where we are as a society right now.  The difference in opinion is about what to do.  This is where the similarity to gun control comes in, at least as I've been yacking about it.  I have proposed two questions to ask gun controllers about their proposed "solutions".  The questions are designed to make people clarify their thinking.  The questions are:

Rule #1.  Can the person proposing the law state what they think the law will accomplish?  Most of the time it seems that they can't.  For example, what good would banning bump stocks do?  They were (maybe) used in one crime in the Republic's history.  Is the goal really to prevent something that has only happened once?  Really?

Rule #2.  Can the person proposing the law state how likely the law is to accomplish the goal from Rule #1?  Considering that you can make a bump stock from a string and a key ring, is it rational to ban bump stocks? 

I try to take a practical view of things, and so anything that provides reasonable answers to both questions sounds, well, reasonable.  This applies to both guns and drugs: if someone actually could come up with a gun control proposal that had reasonable answers to both of these you wouldn't get any "Muh Second Amendment" from me.  Of course, I can't think of any gun laws that answer both of these in a reasonable manner, so that's all theoretical.

But in the interest of putting my pixels where my mouth is, let me take a stab at providing answers to these questions from the "we should declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home" perspective.  The proposal is that most or perhaps all drugs be decriminalized, offered for sale, and taxed.

Rule #1.  Can the person proposing the law state what they think the law will accomplish?  This is intended to accomplish five specific things: 

1. Remove the perceived need to militarization of the police forces, no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, controls on how much you can deposit at your bank, etc.  It's caustic for the Republic and it costs us a lot of money.  It's an anti-tyranny goal.
2. Improve the purity of the drugs on the market which will reduce overdose deaths.  Food and Drug purity laws would apply and so the heroin that Joe Junkie buys at the local Alcohol Beverage and Drug Emporium wouldn't be the equivalent of bathtub gin.  His gin isn't adulterated (like it was during the Prohibition days) and his smack shouldn't be either.
3. Lower the price of drugs, by eliminating the risk premium that must exist to cover expected loss from seizure, arrest, etc.  
4. Eliminate the massive profits that are flowing to drug cartels, which fund a bunch (admittedly not all) of the violence associated with illegal drug use.
5. Generate a tax revenue stream that can be targeted towards providing detox centers for drug users who want to fight their addiction.

Laws about theft, driving under the influence, etc would fully apply to junkies who commit these crimes, just as they do today.  Peter, Aesop, and Bill are entirely correct that today these are not "victimless" crimes.

Rule #2.  Can the person proposing the law state how likely the law is to accomplish the goal from Rule #1?  Let's break these down by the five points above.

1. No doubt some agencies will resist this - police unions, prison guard unions, the DEA, etc will rightly see the reduction of public funding as a threat to them.  However, this is more of a hinderance to getting decriminalization passed in Congress than in implementation.  In any case, I don't see any fundamental disagreement between the two camps in this as a goal.
2. This seems a no-brainer, as the illegal drug market is replaced by a legal one.  It will be safer for both sellers and users, and legalization will probably attract big corporations who know how to mass produce pure products.  I'm not sure you'll see Superbowl advertisements for "The Champagne of heroin" but I don't think you need to for success here.
3. This seems like an absolute no-brainer.  You are eliminating some very costly parts of the supply chain (machine guns, private armies, etc).  Not sure how big this is but it sure isn't zero.
4. We saw this with the end of Prohibition.  Today's Al Capones are drug king pins.
5. Tax money is notoriously fungible and is often diverted by politicians, but we see tax revenue streams from legal pot in places where it was legalized (e.g. Colorado).

So there you have it.  I may be wrong here, but at least I've shown my work (in admittedly excessive detail).  I'd like to see the same analysis from the other camp on what specifically they would do, and whether they expect it would work.

Just how messed up is California?

When I was a wee lad, California shone like a beacon for the rest of the country, attracting people from sea to shining sea.  Those days are long gone as the State has devolved into a wreck of epic proportions.  Here are two vignettes showing just how jacked up the Golden State is.

Item the first: No pets for you!

Rod emails to point out that there is seemingly nothing so mundane as to avoid the all seeing gaze of the California Government:

California will put a muzzle on the retail sales of dogs, cats and rabbits beginning Tuesday, the byproduct of a new law designed to curtail puppy mills and expand pet protections.

The legislation, Assembly Bill 485, says stores can sell the animals only if they come from local rescue groups, shelters and animal control agencies.

This won't effect the upper middle class, of course - they get their pure bred pups directly from "good" breeders.  Instead, it's making it harder for poorer people to get pets for their kids.  The "Progressives" became anti-progressive so gradually that people didn't notice.  This sort of Upper Middle Class SWPL bull hockey is likely the biggest reason for the cratering of the State.

The State's "High Speed Rail" to nowhere project is cut from the same cloth.

Item the second: No pot for you!

California legalized pot with great fanfare, and the State budgeted based on expected large tax revenues from legal pot sales.  The sales (and taxes) are not materializing:

"After voters legalized marijuana two years ago under Proposition 64, state officials estimated in there would be as many as 6,000 cannabis shops licensed in the first few years. But the state Bureau of Cannabis Control has issued just 547 temporary and annual licenses to marijuana retail stores and dispensaries," the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Welcome to the world of regulations and taxes, potheads. 

Potheads said for years "legalize it." 

Be careful of what you wish for. 

“The cannabis industry is being choked by California’s penchant for over-regulation. It’s impossible to solve all of the problems without a drastic rewrite of the law, which is not in the cards for the foreseeable future,” Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML, told the Times.

Not only has the typical California excess and opaque regulation reduced the number of shops by 90%, the State, Local, and Excise taxes raise the price of legal weed above the price of black market weed.  So getting it from Your Guy is not only more convenient but it's less expensive.

And the State wonders why tax revenue is short $150M?  The stupid state can't even sell dope to stoners.

Tab clearing

Lots of good stuff that is worth your attention:

Epic rant is epic.  Aesop brings it.  Long - almost Borepatchian in length - but is a must read.

The "Opiod Epidemic" explained.  The stupid War On Drugs is killing more Americans than the Nazis did in that war.  And since it enriches police departments and gives idiot Congresscritters tons of chances to mug for the cameras, we'll never get a sane policy.

Funeral of 92 year old Bletchley Park codebreaker.  She married an American and lived out her life in Nebraska, keeping her part in the "Ultra Secret" Enigma decoding project secret.  Good on the UK for giving her Military Honors at her funeral.  (Hat tip: Chris Lynch)

Home Owner's Association doesn't like man's Sherman Tank.  Man tells them "Come and tow it, bitches!"  'Murica!