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Der Spiegel on the drug war we are losing. The existence of Aruba as a transit point reminds of the days Pickerhead went there to windsurf and purchased some used boards from a sail site. They ended up at US Customs at the Norfolk airport. The inspector said he would have to drill some holes in the boards and wondered if that was a problem. I said I had to refinish the non-slip coating anyway, so go ahead. “In that case,” he said, “take them and get out of here.”
… The longer Popeye talks — about his murders, the drug war and the havoc he and Escobar wreaked and that is currently being repeated in Mexico — the less important my prepared questions about this war become. I realize that I might as well throw away my notepad, because it all boils down to one question: How can we stop people like you, Popeye?
He pauses for a moment before saying: “People like me can’t be stopped. It’s a war. They lose men, and we lose men. They lose their scruples, and we never had any. In the end, you’ll even blow up an aircraft because you believe the Colombian president is on board. I don’t know what you have to do. Maybe sell cocaine in pharmacies. I’ve been in prison for 20 years, but you will never win this war when there is so much money to be made. Never.”
I’m sitting face to face with a killer: Popeye, an evil product of hell. And I’m afraid that the killer could be right.
The drug war is the longest war in recent history, underway for more than 40 years. It is a never-ending struggle against a $500 billion (€378 billion) industry. …
… To this day, the war on drugs is being waged against anyone who comes into contact with cocaine, marijuana or other illegal drugs. It is being fought against coca farmers in Colombia, poppy growers in Afghanistan and drug mules who smuggle drugs by the kilogram (2.2 pounds), sometimes concealed in their stomachs. It is being fought against crystal meth labs in Eastern Europe, kids addicted to crack cocaine in Los Angeles and people who are caught with a gram of marijuana in their pockets, just as it is being fought against the drug cartels in Mexico and killers like Popeye. There is almost no place on earth today where the war is not being waged. Indeed, the war on drugs is as global as McDonald’s.
In 2010, about 200 million people took illegal drugs. The numbers have remained relatively constant for years, as has the estimated annual volume of drugs produced worldwide: 40,000 tons of marijuana, 800 tons of cocaine and 500 tons of heroin. What has increased, however, is the cost of this endless war.
In the early 1970s, the Nixon administration pumped about $100 million into drug control. Today, under President Barack Obama, that figure is $15 billion — more than 30 times as much when adjusted for inflation. There is even a rough estimate of the direct and indirect costs of the 40-plus years of the drug war: $1 trillion in the United States alone.
In Mexico, some 60,000 people have died in the drug war in the last six years. US prisons are full of marijuana smokers, the Taliban in Afghanistan still use drug money to pay for their weapons, and experts say China is the drug country of the future. …
… A new way of thinking is beginning to take root: If a war can’t be won, and if the enemy has remained invincible for 40 years, why not take the peaceful approach?
German officials take a decidedly cool stance toward these developments. No top politician with a major German party is about to call for a new drug policy or even the legalization of marijuana. Drugs are not a winning issue, because it’s too easy to get burned.
Martin Lindner, the deputy head of the pro-business Free Democrats in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, recently triggered a scandal when he lit up a joint on a talk show. The headline of a recent cover story in the Berliner Kurier daily newspaper read: “Has Martin Lindner gone off the deep end?” …
… The drug trade is a straightforward business. The farther the product is removed from the coca plantation, and the closer it comes to some party in Los Angeles or Berlin, the higher the price. The final price has nothing to do with actual costs, which make up only a miniscule percentage of it.
Most of the purchase price consists of a sort of risk premium: the amount the dealer collects in return for the risk of ending up in prison. In other words, it includes an insane profit margin that can only exist because the product is banned.
Since the costs are irrelevant, the amount of cocaine that General Pérez confiscated is also practically irrelevant. From the standpoint of the dealers who have just lost almost two tons of drugs, this only means that, since the police are being vigilant, it’s time to increase the price of our product.
The demand for narcotics is what is known as “inelastic.” No matter how cheap heroin is, most people won’t buy it, regardless of the price. But addicts will always pay. They have no choice, or else they wouldn’t be addicts. To them, it doesn’t matter what the drugs cost.
That’s the economy of drugs. …
Debra Saunders writes about the few times the president has shown an interest in the drug war.
… On Dec. 12, when Time magazine interviewed Obama for its 2012 “Person of the Year” piece, Obama mentioned a New York Times story that ran that day about Stephanie George, a nonviolent offender sentenced to life without parole when she was 27. Her federal judge described George’s criminal role as “a girlfriend and bag holder and money holder but not” an active drug dealer as he lamented a federal mandatory-minimum-sentencing system that forced him to sentence George to life against his better judgment.
When Time reporters asked the president if he would push for alternative sentencing, Obama brought up the George story as he noted that social scientists were looking for “smarter, better ways – and cheaper ways” of sentencing nonviolent offenders. It makes sense for them to do so, Obama said, but: “I think this is one of those things where I don’t think you should anticipate that I’m leading with an issue like this.” It’s not on his to-do list.
Julie Stewart of Families Against Mandatory Minimums is appalled. She thinks the president should look at nonviolent drug offenders who served 20 years and are in their 40s and ask: “If they have served 20 years and are in their 40s, what are we doing keeping them there until they die? These are not people who are dangerous to society.”
Then there’s Clarence Aaron, a first-time nonviolent drug offender who is serving life without parole for a first-time nonviolent drug offense in 1993. The Washington Post/Pro Publica reported that Obama’s pardon attorney failed to inform predecessor George W. Bush that Aaron’s U.S. attorney and judge no longer oppose a presidential commutation – yet Obama keeps him on the job.
Why hasn’t Obama commuted Aaron’s sentence? …
… if the president doesn’t want to take any risk in the exercise of mercy, he should be honest and furlough the pardon staff permanently. Then, at least, the president could spare federal prosecutors and counterterrorism operatives from furloughs.
By the way, the pardon power is the rare executive power Obama can exercise unilaterally. Mercy is a fine concept but if an action does not fan the flames of partisan rancor, this president cannot be bothered.