Pubdate: Fri, 6 Mar 2009
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2009 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
Referenced: The Globe and Mail article 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n256/a11.html
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Jeffrey+Miron

HOW TO GET ME TO SHUT UP ABOUT DRUGS

The illicit drug trade is, despite its illicitness, a trade. It is an 
economic activity. "It's like in any marketplace," RCMP 
Superintendent Pat Fogarty told the Globe and Mail this week. The 
only difference is that "these guys don't resolve things through a 
court process."

The guys in question are the Vancouver-region gangsters whose brazen 
and brutal bloodshed has shocked Canadians and prompted the federal 
government to promise tougher laws. And Supt. Fogarty is right. 
Fundamentally, the drug trade is best understood not in terms of 
criminal law. It's economics that count.

Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard University, has been studying 
the drug trade for 15 years. He stresses that "drug-related violence" 
has little to do with drugs.

Prohibition of "any commodity for which there's demand leads to 
violence because the market is driven underground," he said in an 
interview. "It has relatively little to do with the commodity that is 
prohibited. It has almost everything to do with the fact that if you 
make it illegal, people are going to resolve their disputes with 
violence, not lawyers.

"If we banned coffee, we'd have a huge black market in coffee." And 
thugs in the coffee trade would be blasting away at each other in the street.

Miron stresses that prohibition is not, as most people assume, like 
an on-off switch: either a commodity is illegal or it is not. It is a 
matter of degree. Drugs like cocaine are illegal everywhere but the 
extent to which the law is enforced and offenders are punished varies 
widely from country to country. It also varies over time.

That fact is important to researchers like Miron. If prohibition is 
causing violence, countries that are less strict in enforcing the law 
should see less violence, while those that take a harder law should 
see more. Changes in law enforcement over time should be correlated 
with violence as well.

And that's just what Miron and two colleagues found in a paper 
published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Examining data spanning countries and decades, Miron and his 
colleagues found things like arrest rates, capital punishment and gun 
laws didn't explain the numbers. But "the hypothesis that drug 
prohibition generates violence," they concluded, "is generally 
consistent with the long time-series and cross-country facts."

Miron's conclusion is sobering: If governments respond to gang 
violence with tougher laws and crackdowns, they will ultimately 
produce more violence.

Among western nations, none has fought the drug trade harder than the 
United States. And none has a murder rate close to that of the U.S. 
Miron thinks that's not a coincidence. "I have one set of estimates 
that maybe 50 per cent of homicides in the U.S. are due to the 
prohibition of drugs."

The best way to make a significant and lasting reduction in gang 
violence, Miron contends, is to remove drugs from the black market. 
They can be strictly regulated using any of a hundred different 
policy models. But they must be legalized.

Of course, the police scoff at this. Legalization wouldn't hurt 
organized crime, they say. Gangsters would just move on to some other 
lucrative enterprise.

But this assumes there are lucrative enterprises available to 
organized crime that gangsters are not now exploiting -- in defiance 
of economic theory and common sense.

It's also contrary to historical experience. "We definitely see crime 
fall when we make things legal," Miron says.

The most spectacular example can be seen on a chart of the American 
homicide rate through the 1920s and 1930s. Through the first 13 years 
of that two-decade period, the murder rate rises steadily -- from 
seven per 100,000 population to almost 10. But then, in 1933, it 
begins a steep decline -- hitting six per 100,000 population by 1940.

So a 40-per-cent rise in murders until 1933 is followed by a 
40-per-cent decline. What changed in 1933? It wasn't the economy. It 
was terrible before and terrible after. Anything else? No. There were 
no significant changes in 1933 that could explain the turnaround -- 
nothing except the legalization of alcohol and the end of the 13-year 
mistake known as Prohibition.

Look, I know the police are sick of me writing that their hard work 
is worse than useless. To be honest, I'm sick of writing it, too. So 
let's make a deal. Canada spends an estimated $2 billion a year 
enforcing the drug laws and yet we have very little solid research 
examining the effectiveness of what we're doing. Not since the LeDain 
commission issued its report in 1972 has the government taken a 
serious look at drug policy.

Surely we can all agree that's irresponsible. Drug policy is a 
critical factor in issues ranging from crime to disease, mental 
health, civil liberties and international development. At this very 
moment, Canadian soldiers are dying in a narco-state. Surely it is 
time for a serious examination of drug policy, from top to bottom.

So let's have a commission of inquiry that can gather the best 
evidence from all over the world, analyze it properly, and draw 
conclusions without regard to political expediency.

Let the evidence decide. If the police and other supporters of the 
status quo are confident they are right, they should welcome an 
inquiry as a chance to silence the critics.

In fact, that's the deal I'm offering. Call for the creation of an 
inquiry. Demand wide terms of reference, a serious research budget, 
and a respected voice to lead it.

Do that and I'll shut up. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake