The War on Drugs

Many liberals are coming around to the view that the forty-plus-year “War on Drugs” initiated by the Nixon Administration in the 1970s has been a terrible failure and needs drastic transformation or an outright end.  Not only has it failed to reduce the incidence of drug use, but like the Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s it has resulted in a permanent underground economy dominated by violent criminal gangs involved in murder and corruption on a vast scale.  There are examples of successful programs in Europe that have legalized and strictly regulated recreational drugs and expanded compassionate rehab treatment for addicts who want to get clean.  The results seem to include the reduction of violence and death, generation of revenue, a reduction in the rates of usage and an increase in rates of rehabilitation and recovery.  Such a liberal program should be carefully studied for potential adoption in America.

For instance, Portugal decriminalized the possession and use of all drugs in 2001.  A person cited for drug intoxication has to go to a hearing in which they are offered treatment, but they are allowed to go home without it if they refuse.   A study found that in the years after personal possession was decriminalized, drug use among teens in Portugal declined 25 percent, heroin use declined 30 percent, rates of HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped 17 percent and the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.  The money saved from enforcement more than paid for the increased treatment costs.  Sweden offers a different model that combines strict enforcement against trafficking with light punishments but extensive counseling and rehabilitation for users.  Sweden has one of the lowest rates of drug use in Europe.    

In the United States, about $51 billion per year is spent trying to enforce the War on Drugs, including aid and combined operations with nations like Colombia.  About one and a half million are arrested for use and over 500,000 of these are sentenced to incarceration.  In 2012, 52 percent of inmates in federal prisons were there on drug convictions.  20 percent of African-American men spend time in jail at some point in their lives due to drug offenses.  In quite a few states people with these histories lose their right to vote.  Meanwhile, incidences of drug use have not improved.  According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the percentage of Americans over the age of 12 who had used an illicit drug in 2002 was 8.3 percent.  In 2012 it was 9.2 percent.  In 2007 the Institute found that 5.8 percent had used marijuana in the previous month.  In 2012 the percentage had grown to 7.3 percent. 

The point here is not to argue in any way that drug use or abuse is a good thing.  Addiction is responsible for enormous social disruption, many ruined lives, deaths, and negative health outcomes.  Even marijuana creates problems for many people.  The point instead  is to raise the question, as liberals do, about whether the way we are attacking the problem is effective and seems to be working.  The data would appear to indicate it is not.  Immense resources continue to be committed without perceptible improvement.  Meanwhile, approaches being tried in other countries show through hard data that they are making headway.  We do not seem to be meeting human needs well in the War on Drugs.  Research points the way toward better solutions.  Humble practicality seems to indicate there are more effective models we might follow.  In the War on Drugs, as with so many other issues, liberals are in tune with the common-sense saying, If you like what you’re getting keep doing what you’re doing. If you don’t like what you’re getting you need to change what you’re doing.        

World's Oldest Known Joint Stock Company

Reader Jeff sent me a most fascinating article about the first known joint stock company.  Many think that honor goes to the Dutch East India Company, formed in 1602 to wrest commercial dominance in the Far East from the Portuguese.  Instead, it turns out there was a grain mill in southern France that sold and traded shares, elected a board of directors at an annual meeting, kept meticulous records and paid dividends.  The formation of the Societe des Moulins de Bazacle goes all the way back to 1372.  Situated on the Garonne River near the city of Toulouse, the mill even made a successful transition from mill to hydroelectric dam in 1888.  It averaged about a 5% annual rate of return for its shareholders over a period of nearly 600 years.  The power dam was nationalized by the French government in 1946.  You can read an in-depth article on the Societe here.

The mill was a substantial facility.  Here's a nineteenth century (1800s) stereoscopic photograph.



And here is a more recent view of the river and the hydroelectric dam.

 

What to Do in Iraq This Time

Iraq is back in the news.  Al Qaeda-inspired militants have descended on the country from the north, overrunning large swaths of territory as Iraqi government troops abandoned their positions and fled.  Why is this happening?  What does it mean?  What should the United States do?

Why this is happening 
This is happening because Iraq is an artificial amalgamation of (mainly) three different groups, created in 1919 by the Versailles Peace Conference that settled affairs after World War I.  The groups don't get along and each wants to run its own affairs independently.  An ethnic group called the Kurds predominates in the northeast.  Sunni Muslims predominate in the north and west.  Shia Muslims predominate in the east and south.  When the area was under the Ottoman Turkish Empire until the end of World War I, Ottoman imperial power kept them all more or less in check.  After that the British Empire moved in and took control, suppressing several rebellions.  After independence Iraq's situation remained turbulent, with coup, counter-coup and revolt remaining the order of the day until Saddam Hussein gained power in 1979.  His totalitarian dictatorship achieved quiet through brutal repression.  Even so, Saddam, a Sunni, had to put down Kurdish and Shi'ite rebellions.

The U.S. led invasion of 2003 removed Saddam's dictatorship.  With his repressive power gone, soon Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish militias were engaged in vicious fighting for advantage against each other, and against American, British or other international contingents whenever they were seen as trying to enforce order along lines that any group felt tended to favor its rivals.   Finally, elections installed a government under a Shi'ite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki.  There are more Shi'ites in Iraq than the other two groups, explaining why Maliki was elected.  His government was decidedly sectarian, favoring Shi'ites and freezing Sunnis and Kurds out of meaningful power sharing.  The Kurds basically set up their own autonomous region in the northeast and bided their time.  The Sunnis, who are more closely intermingled geographically with the Shia, complained, seethed, and waited for their chance.  It came when the al-Qaeda inspired ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) forces, who are fanatical Sunnis, invaded last week from Syria, where they have been battling Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime.   

What it means
Since the end of the Cold War the world has seen the emergence of many smaller states out of what once were larger, multinational states.  The former "republics" of the Soviet Union and the small Slavic nations that were once parts of Yugoslavia are some prominent examples.  What is happening in Iraq means the same thing.  Cohesive peoples who are minorities and being ruled in a discriminatory fashion by other groups want their independence.  Middle Eastern Sunnis and Kurds who find themselves in a nation created by European diplomats a hundred years ago want to have their own countries and rule themselves.

What the United States should do
The U.S. should let nature take its course.  Having three states in what is now Iraq corresponds to the human reality on the ground there.  The history of the region shows that keeping all three groups together under one political order can be maintained only at great cost by coercive power, either by an outside empire willing to make a permanent commitment of time, money and blood, or by an internal dictatorship willing to operate with extreme ruthlessness.  Though enthusiastic in support of the invasion in 2003, by late 2004 the American people barely re-elected the president who started the war, and by 2006 had thrown that president's party out of the majority in both houses of congress.  Though militarists such as Sen. John McCain advocate going back in, they have quickly forgotten how desperate and costly the fighting was that temporarily kept the factions from each others' throats, how futile the idea is in light of Iraqi history, and how rapidly the American people's appetite for the entire exercise soured the last time it was tried.  In 2006 a Delaware senator, Joe Biden, co-wrote an op-ed in the New York Times saying that a three-state Iraq, or a weak state with three regions enjoying substantial internal autonomy, was the realistic solution to Iraq's repeated convulsions.  He was right.

Click here for a Washington Post piece showing an ethnic map of Iraq and a link to Biden's NYT article.

Time for a New Memorial Day

The drumbeat of killings goes on.  In the past few days we have seen random shootings take place in Santa Barbara, Las Vegas and Troutdale, Oregon.  If this seems to be practically a weekly occurrence, that's because it is.  In just the case of school shootings, for instance, there have been 74 in the 18 months since the horrific massacre of first graders and staff at Newtown, Connecticut.

These deaths are tolerable, even necessary, we are told by gun enthusiasts, as part of the price we pay for the right to bear arms.  A friend of mine has an admirable idea about this.  Louie Campos proposes we celebrate a new Memorial Day.  Just as we reserve the last Monday of May to honor  members of the armed services who have given their lives in defense of our country and constitutional rights, we should set aside April 20 or December 14 to honor those who have lost their lives to gun violence so that others can enjoy their right to guns.  As Louie put it, "If that unfettered right is their idea of freedom then they need to recognize those who are making the sacrifice for their freedom."  Well said.


The April 20 date would commemorate the mass murder at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.  The December 14 date would do the same for the Sandy Hook Elementary rampage of December 14, 2012.  But of course the sacrifice is ongoing, and the remembrance would be for those and for the many who give their lives every day so that others will have the crucial right of unhindered access to machines that fire lethal projectiles.  We lost 4,486 service members in Iraq and 2,187 in Afghanistan.  Yet these figures are dwarfed by the losses here at home to our own guns.  Every year American gun deaths top 30,000.  Over 105,000 are shot every year, an average of 289 a day.  Of these 86 die: 30 of them murdered, 53 by suicide, 2 by accident and 1 at the hands of police.  Between 2000 and 2010 335,609 Americans died after being shot by guns.  That is more people than live in St. Louis or Pittsburgh.  Stretch that out to 2013 and the number comes to over 400,000, or more Americans than died in World War II.

It is only fitting that the hundreds of thousand of Americans whose lives have been forfeited for the rights of others should be remembered.  That's the American way.        

Primary Election Picks

Tomorrow is the California Primary Election.  Like many people these days I've already filled by VBM (vote by mail) ballot out and sent it in weeks ago.  If you have yours or still go to the polls, please remember to vote!  If you have a VBM you haven't mailed yet, you can turn it in at the Registrar's office in the County Government Building on the west side of Mooney across from Mooney Grove Park, or at any polling place Tuesday.  You can find polling places and all the election information at their site, http://tularecounty.ca.gov/registrarofvoters/.uilera


As usual, I voted the entire endorsed Democratic slate.  There are some offices without an official endorsement, however, and I will give you my preferences for those.  With our still-new "Top Two" primary, the hopefuls of all parties and independents square off in the primary.  Only the top two vote-getters will appear on the general election ballot in November.

First, the officially-endorsed candidates. (I) means "incumbent."  Democrats hold all statewide offices in California.
Governor: Edmund G. "Jerry" Brown (I)
Lt. Governor: Gavin Newsom (I)
Treasurer: John Chiang
Attorney General: Kamala Harris (I)
Insurance Commissioner: Dave Jones (I)
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tom Torlakson (I)
Board of Equalization, District 2: Chris Parker
U.S. Representative, 22nd District: Suzanna "Sam" Aguilera-Marrero

Propositions:
41 Veterans Housing and Homeless Prevention: Yes
42 Open Government Records, Public Right to Know: Yes

Now, statewide offices with no Democratic endorsement:
Secretary of State: Alex Padilla.  His opponent Leland Yee is embroiled in a corruption scandal.
Controller: Betty Yee (unrelated to Leland). She is better qualified, with a Master's Degree in Public Administration and experience as Deputy Budget Director, than former Assembly Speaker John Perez.

Legislative District Offices:
State Senate, 16th District: Republican Jean Fuller is running unopposed.  I did not vote for this office.
U.S. Representative, 21st District: Amanda Renteria.  She's a highly qualified candidate with a good chance to win.  This is the district to our immediate west.
State Assembly, 26th District: I voted for Carlton Jones.  Ruben Macareno, the Tulare County Party Chairman, is a good man and would be fine, too.  I voted for Carlton though, because as a sitting Tulare City Councilman he has shown he can win an election, and what Democrats need more than anything else in this area is someone who can win.

County Offices: In both these races we have situations in which incumbents stepped down and the Board of Supervisors filled the vacancies, creating appointed incumbents.  This is a favored tactic of insiders to keep their friends and handpicked successors in power after them.  Therefore, I don't like it.  Though I have met both candidates in each race and they are all qualified and can do the job, I voted for the candidate in each contest who was not the appointed incumbent.  These are not "top-two" races, and whoever gets the most votes tomorrow will win.
Sheriff: Dave Whaley. 
District Attorney: Ralph Kaelble.