I understand this type of argument is frequently tendentious and rarely persuasive, but I think it is truly apt in this case: if one of the casualties of the drug war was that things like this were happening in middle class American towns there would be no drug war
Just after Christmas, drug hitmen rolled into the isolated village of Tierras Coloradas and burnt it down, leaving more than 150 people, mostly children, homeless in the raw mountain winter….
On December 28, two days after the initial raid, a column of 50 to 60 men, some in military-type uniforms and ski masks, filed on foot down a steep mountain road and torched three dozen homes — about half the village — as well as two schools, 17 trucks, the radio receiver and the community store.
The attack on Tierras Coloradas is one of the most dramatic examples yet of a still largely hidden phenomenon of Mexico’s drugs war: people forced from their homes by the violence.
It’s hard to grow up in any class in America without knowing someone with some kind of drug problem. So when voters in this country think about the costs of decriminalization, I think they’re probably mostly considering the people they know who would have developed worse drug problems had they been more available. What they don’t think of are the Mexican villagers being harassed and murdered because our drug laws create profit centers for their criminals.
Who we are or aren’t thinking about is important, because the only way the utilitarian calculus of our drug laws comes down in favor our of current system is if you value the well-being of Mexicans as being worth an order of magnitude less than Americans. Even then you’d probably have to value the welfare of the Americans who are rotting in jail for non-violent drug crimes very low in order to tip the utilitarian scales in favor of current policy. Something is dreadfully wrong with our social welfare function if we can’t clearly and unambiguously declare that the costs of the status quo are vastly outweighing it’s benefits. I suspect the problem is the people whose welfare we aren’t fully considering.
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Thursday ~ February 17th, 2011 at 10:50 pm
RickRussellTX
“I suspect the problem is the people whose welfare we aren’t fully considering.”
You mean voters?
Friday ~ February 18th, 2011 at 12:54 am
Hal
While I completely agree with your point, I think the broader point is that – obviously – there is no economic calculation being made here. The failure to apparently realize that even the most obvious of economic calculations sometimes aren’t even at play for – well – pretty much every human being that has ever trod the earth is something I find bizarrely fascinating about economists in general. It’s not that you’re wrong. You’re absolutely right.
But the fact that it mystifies y’all is truly a spectacle. And I don’t mean “mystify” in the sense that we know WTF people are really doing, or WTF we can do about it. It truly seems like y’all really believe that humans _should_ be making decisions purely (or mostly) on rational economic terms.
I ain’t got much better, and I truly find the situation you describe appalling on many, many levels – including the obvious economic frame.
But the problem we face in spaces doesn’t seem amendable to economic analysis. Or at least past history seems to have shown us that it makes zero sense. The economic incentives are clear, and everyone involved is pretty much making the most f*d up decision possible.
Myself, I subscribe to the “really f*cked up system” theory where by one observes that complicated systems, for example monkeys in captivity, will do all sorts of bizarre and horrifically self destructive things to themselves and others because of the conditions they are being forced to live under. I think humans are pretty much in the same kind of conditions, but we impose them on ourselves (unless there’s some Aliens out there I don’t know about. Maybe I should ask Glenn Beck about that).
Best I got is: “If you don’t like mutants, stop growing them in toxic waste”. Sadly, we here in America seem to blame the mutants for their adaptations instead of the toxic waste we have so lovingly created and maintained for us all to grow up in throughout the millennia.
Friday ~ February 18th, 2011 at 2:20 am
RickRussellTX
That was sort of the snide point I was making. As long as voters keep voting on a strict drug prohibition platform, the economics will continue to be ignored. Probably 70% of the population has zero intersection with the drug culture, most of the rest don’t want to admit their intersection with the drug culture. People want drug prohibition, and buy the idea that it protects their properties and families. End of story.
But, I think there is some hope. There’s a groundswell in the southwest due to the horrific gang violence (we see it taking one direction in Arizona, another direction in California and SW Texas), and California’s poorly-written marijuana legalization proposition did pretty well. A properly written one, with less ambiguity, might break the 50% mark.
Friday ~ February 18th, 2011 at 9:51 pm
brian levine
Your post assumes that by making some drugs illegal, we are cutting down on their use. This is by no means proven. Many countries with more liberal drug policies than the U.S., such as Portugal and the Netherlands, have much lower rates of drug abuse than the U.S.
Our drug policies are foolish as well as intolerant.
Friday ~ February 18th, 2011 at 10:35 pm
Tweets that mention Are We Really Weighing the Costs of the Drug War? « Modeled Behavior -- Topsy.com
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Perry Smith, Perry Smith. Perry Smith said: Are We Really Weighing the Costs of the Drug War? More in world suffer because of policy than just in US http://bit.ly/evbWIc via @addthis [...]
Friday ~ February 18th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
Thomas
Hmm… funny how they still have drug wars in the Netherlands where soft drugs are legal/tolerated. Competing legal drug suppliers are tossing hand grenades through each other.
Saturday ~ February 19th, 2011 at 12:31 am
Lance
The problem with the Netherlands where ‘they still have drug wars’ is that they have only ‘decriminalized’ consumption or purchase for the end user while allowing no legal avenue for product creation or procurement.
Saturday ~ February 19th, 2011 at 12:43 am
Thomas
It is the salesmen who are chucking grenades around, and sale is decriminalized to the same extent as the consumption and purchase.
Saturday ~ February 19th, 2011 at 10:46 am
josh chaffin
yes. The main problem with decriminalization from the point of view of a sympathetic US policymaker is that the positive effects would mostly accrue to relatively less affluent/non-white Americans and people in other countries: reduced street crime, fewer fatherless families in US ghettos (with all the positive associated development outcomes), fewer police and political corruption incentives in drug-supplying countries, fewer human rights abuses by militarized 3rd world police forces, reduced power of non-state armed groups, etc.
Meanwhile the negative effects (namely an increase in the number of 1st world addicts) would mostly accrue to the families of relatively affluent white Americans, a.k.a. US voters.
I would guess that in sheer numbers of humans, the positively-affected would outnumber the negatively-affected by 10,000 to one, but that’s a hard case to make to a voter in suburban Kansas, to whom the only directly observable effect of decriminalization would be his brother-in-law’s ugly new drug habit.
Thus I think the only argument that we decriminalizers can win on is the appeal to US voters’ pocketbooks.
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2008/04/just-how-good-w.html?cid=124827676#comment-124827676
Wednesday ~ July 11th, 2012 at 8:12 am
Drug War Reads – Tyler’s AM Reads – July 11, 2012 « Blog of Rivals
[...] This old Modeled Behavior post looks at some considerations for the drug war. [...]