From the NY Times:

Tennessee has collected nearly $3.5 million since it began enforcing its tax on illegal drugs two years ago, officials from the Department of Revenue said Wednesday.

The state’s Unauthorized Substances Tax, passed by the Legislature in 2004, requires anyone in possession of an illegal drug to buy and affix stamps to the drugs’ packaging.

Under the law, information provided to the Department of Revenue to buy stamps cannot be used in criminal prosecutions. There is a toll-free number for stamp application requests, and stamps are doled out based on type of drug and weight.

Just imagine what that number would be if drugs were decriminalized, regulated, and taxed - not to mention the savings in resources no longer used to fight the “war on drugs.”

The Quad Cities (Moline and Rock Island in Illinois and Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa) have a law limiting how much pseudo ephedrine an adult can purchase every month.  Minors are not permitted to purchase the drug.  The geniuses in the Quad Cities set the limit at almost exactly the same amount of pseudo ephedrine that a one month supply of Claritin-D contains.  Not coincidentally, if you and one or more minors in your household take Claritin-D to treat your allergies then you stand a strong chance of running afoul of this ill conceived law - like this man.

“(I was) made to feel like a criminal — Made to feel low, dirty. Just totally degraded,” recalled Tim Naveau, who says he’ll never forget the hours he spent in Rock Island County Jail — he says all because of his allergies.”They searched me, made me take my shirt off, my shoes off,” he recounted.

Tim takes one 24-hour Claritin-D tablet just about every day. That puts him just under the legal limit of 75-hundred milligrams of pseudo ephedrine a month. The limit is part of a new law that Quad Cities authorities are beginning to strictly enforce.

…

Rene Sandoval, Director of the Quad Cities Metropolitan Enforcement Agency — the agency that enforces the law – says it’s meant to catch meth makers, and does.

“We’ve seen a huge decline in methamphetamine labs,” Sandoval said.

But even if you’re not making meth, if you go over that limit — of one maximum strength pill per day — you will be arrested.

Impressive.  You could be a criminal and just don’t know it yet!

Kudos to Dr. Taylor

That should be the headline for this article.  It’s the latest tear jerker about payday loans.  It starts off with the story of Earl Milford, who had the good sense to take out payday loans at no fewer than 16 different establishments and now pays $1,500 per month to cover the interest.  Mr. Milford, who the article says is on a fixed income, can’t afford to buy Christmas presents for his married son, his wife, and their two children - all who live with him.  Where was the government?  Why didn’t the government protect him from himself?  We can’t be expected to make decisions for ourselves like grown ups!

I am, by the way, sick of the term “fixed income.”  It’s used in such a way as to imply that A) the person receiving the “fixed income” can’t or shouldn’t be expected to find supplemental income or B) the rest of us can easily turn a knob and adjust our income as needed.  If you have a salaried job then your income is just as fixed as Mr. Milford’s (he gets a pension and disability benefits).

The article didn’t mention why Milford’s progeny isn’t expected to provide for his own offspring or why he, his wife, and their kids still live at Milford’s home.

I abhor payday lenders just as much as anyone.  I think their practice is immoral.  But government does not exist to protect us from ourselves.

Milford’s plight is somewhat illustrative of the futility of economic redistribution with the goal of eliminating poverty or any perceived financial dichotomy.  Poor people make bad decisions that insure they remain poor.  Rich people make good decisions and enable the poor people to make their bad decisions.  My wife saw anecdotal evidence of this on a recent episode of Oprah.  A show producer gave a homeless man $100,000 and offered free financial counseling.  The man took the money, declined the advice, and predictably wasted the entire sum of money.  The homeless man continued his habits of poor decision making and remained poor, while the retailers who instead wisely choose to offer goods and services in exchange for money got it all in the end.

The cries of people begging to have their decisions made by government because they couldn’t be troubled with making the right one themselves could be heard recently when New York City banned trans fats.  It’s not enough for groups like these to simply be content with their own personal choices or to go the extra mile and inform you about the risks and rewards of engaging in certain activities or consuming certain products.  No sir!  They must actually encourage the government to make your decisions for you.  How nice of them.  The other day I had a trans fat laden french fry in one hand and an apple in the other and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out which one I should eat.  I felt very confused and I just wished a bureaucrat would come by and take one of the two from my hand so that I could consume the other.

The core problem of having government make decisions for us is that their decision does nothing to change demand.  Just think about the war on drugs.  The government says smoking marijuana is illegal, but people still want to purchase and use it.  Consequently a black market forms and thrives.  Criminals seek to create a supply to satiate the demand and many innovative, intelligent people who might otherwise engage in legitimate, beneficial occupational endeavors choose to lead a life of crime (like these entrepreneurs who bought and gutted suburban houses to set up hydroponic marijuana farms).  I don’t smoke marijuana and I wouldn’t if it were decriminalized (I don’t think that intentionally inhaling the products of combustion is wise), but people should be allowed to kill themselves in whatever manner they deem appropriate as long as they don’t infringe another’s rights.

I’ll close with two quotes from pretty disparate sources.  The first is from Milton Friedman, written in response to the banning of a sugar substitute called cyclamates.  The second is from the late comedian Bill Hicks.

“If we continue on this path, there is no doubt where it will end. If the government has the responsibility of protecting us from dangerous substances, the logic surely calls for prohibiting alcohol and tobacco. . . . Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives.” - Milton Friedman 

“It’s not a war on drugs, it’s a war on personal freedom.” - Bill Hicks.

If the metric of success is attaining the highest rate of incarceration in the world, then the War on Drugs is a resounding success.  That’s right we imprison a greater percentage of our population than both China and Russia.

A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people — or one in every 32 American adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail.

…

“The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens,” said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs.

In a country that prides itself as a world leader in freedom and liberty, am I the only person who finds it a bit ironic that we lock up so many people for doing something that is completely voluntary and detrimental only to one’s self?

Shocker.

Drug agents arrrested [sic] the Republican candidate for Madison County coroner Thursday for possession of cocaine, police said Friday.

Greg Goodwin, 38, was booked into the Madison County jail Thursday and released on $1,000 bond, police said.

Police spokesman Wendell Johnson declined to release further details because the investigation is ongoing.

Goodwin, who works at Hazel Green Funeral Home, is running for coroner against incumbent Democrat Bobby Berryhill.

The radio news story said that it was “crack cocaine.” 

I have spoken briefly with him on a couple of occasions and he seemed like a decent guy.  He has a handsome little boy who is just a couple of months older than mine.  I couldn’t imagine doing anything like using/possessing illegal drugs for the simple fact that it hurts those around you so much.  I hope the allegations aren’t true for his family’s sake, but I’m sure his campaign is all but over.

Update: The HSV Times has a little bit more in today’s edition.  Goodwin is not going to drop out of the race and his preliminary hearing will not take place until after the Nov. 7 election.  He is, of course, pleading not guilty.  There was this interesting line.

[Goodwin's attorney] said Goodwin does not know of the evidence against him.

I know he’s pleading not guilty, but I would think the evidence against him in a drug arrest would be pretty obvious to all involved.  As unlikely as it might sound, what if this was a mistake by the Madison-Morgan County Strategic Counterdrug Team?  You don’t just say “I’m sorry” after destroying someone’s campaign and life.

John Noel, chairman of the Madison County Republican Party, said no attempt will be made to replace Goodwin on the ballot unless he is convicted. “In this party and in this country, people are considered innocent until proven guilty,” Noel said.

Replacing Goodwin in the 17 days before the election wouldn’t be practical anyway, he said. “The idea of taking him off the ballot just isn’t feasible.”

We’ll see how much support he gets down the home stretch, though.

The most famous non-athlete, non-graduate of Auburn University, Jimmy Buffett, was reportedly detained earlier this week in France.  Authorities claim to have found 100 ecstasy tablets in his luggage.  He was fined $380 and released without being charged.  Either France has really lax drug laws or it pays to be Jimmy Buffett.

Of course, Buffett’s spokesperson claimed the pills were actually prescription medication, not ecstasy.

From Slate.com:

In federal court, crack offenses generate sentences 100 times greater than comparable powder-cocaine crimes. In other words, while it takes 500 grams of cocaine to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, 5 grams of crack earns the same punishment. Last month, four senators introduced a bill to close that gap. The proposed bipartisan legislation, sponsored by Republicans John Cornyn and Jeff Sessions along with Democrats Mark Pryor and Ken Salazar, would reduce the penalty ratio from 100-to-1 to 20-to-1 by increasing powder penalties slightly while decreasing crack sentences significantly.

The 100-to-1 penalty ratio dates from 1986, when lawmakers established mandatory minimum sentences in response to widespread fear of a crack epidemic. For years judges have railed against the heavy crack sentences as unfair, and Congress has considered amending them before. What’s different this time is that the judges are doing more than complaining. Seizing on a Supreme Court decision that expanded their discretion over sentencing, judges have justified less harsh punishments for some crack offenders by trumpeting the sentencing scale’s many faults. And rather than ignoring the judges or trying to silence them, Congress may actually be listening, for a change.

To be clear John Stossel is talking about drugs - not using them (to the best of my knowledge).

John is opening a window into the libertarian philosophy on drugs.  Their belief is that your body is yours and if you want to do it harm that is your business.  Furthermore, government has no right legislating what you can or cannot purchase, grow, or own for your own personal use.  To boil it down further, they (libertarians, not drug users) don't want government legislating morality.

That philosophy can be quite alluring, but the very foundation of our legal system is based on defining what is moral and immoral.  Acts such as murder, rape, polygamy, and many others are illegal because they are immoral.  Government has, whether we like it or not, full autonomy to legislate moral matters; it is up to us to draw the moral line in the sand by electing people with similar views.

Government has a long and sullied history of prohibiting mind altering substances. Remember prohibition?  Based on what I've learned about the prohibition period it did wonders for the organized crime syndicates.

I prefer to look at the drug crisis (too strong a word?) in our country from a cost benefit point of view.  How much are we spending in our attempts to stem the import, production, and distribution of illegal substances?  What portion of our prison population is incarcerated solely for drug violations?  How much does that cost?  We can answer those questions with firm numbers.

But there are more difficult to answer questions.  Of those incarcerated for drug violations, how many would have lived normal, productive lives were it not for their drug convictions (i.e. the drugs were legalized)?  How many of those drug offenders are now "institutionalized" by our prison system and are highly prone to committing further crimes once released?

Those are a few of the costs currently borne by us, but there are potential benefits from legalizing AND REGULATING many drugs.  By regulating and taxing the sale of many drugs both state and federal governments would reap huge sums of revenue.  Regulating the production of drugs would have health benefits.  You wouldn't hear anymore about "bad batches" of drugs that cause large number of fatalities.  Government could set limits on the allowable content of the active ingredient within the drug, hence rendering it less potent.

I have been planning on doing a little research into prison statistics, but I may also fold in some research on the drug war since the two have significant overlap.  Maybe in the next couple of months I can put together something of value and answer some of my own questions above.

For full disclosure: I do not use drugs now, nor would I were they legal.  Don't bother commenting or emailing calling me a pot heat or anything else.