Legal Weed is Hurting San Francisco's Hippies
priceonomics.com
priceonomics.com
And this isn't a hypothetical: more than 12 years ago, Portugal decriminalized possession of all drugs -- from marijuana to heroin -- and plowed the money saved by no longer jailing addicts into treating them. The result has been lower rates of addiction and HIV infection, and higher rates of treatment:
http://www.alternet.org/story/151635/ten_years_ago_portugal_...
Now possession is a misdemeanor, like a traffic violation, punishable by a fine or community service, and accompanied by a screening for risk factors of addiction, with encouragement to enter treatment programs:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d...
It hasn't been a magic bullet, but nor has it been a disaster. And what is a disaster is the current policy: drug money fuels endless violence and murder inside the US and across central and southern America.
The social fabric of my home country (Trinidad & Tobago) is being torn apart by violence from drug trafficking, and there's nothing we can do about it as long as the amount of money to be made by risking the drug trade is so enormous. We can't lower the price, because we are not the market: the US is.
I wish more people in the US were aware that their paying $100/gram for the occasional fun evening is paying for murder on the streets of my home town. And I wish more people realized they don't have to stop taking cocaine; they just have to lower the damn price.
Taking a quick look at crowdsourced prices, weed in CA looks to be about $200/oz, which is not very cheap.
edit: $100 a gram.... what?! Are you talking about cocaine?
That $200/oz price may not be cheap to you, but it is half of what it used to cost and less than half of what these hippies can make selling it in New York.
Having to get justice outside of the legal system is a driver behind violence and other additional illegal acts.
EDIT: Should probably emphasize "addicts" to differentiate from recreational users.
Examples include the war on drugs, the war on terror, and domestic "security" theater (TSA).
this is off-topic, but did you see that article in Businessweek about the bomb detector.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/in-iraq-the-...
Ok, that's pretty obviously a fraud. But what it made me start thinking is if you can take an empty plastic handle and a radio antennae and sell millions of dollars of them ... there must be a ton of stuff that doesn't really do what its supposed to but people buy anyway.
This is one of the reasons I make sure I know how everything I own works. That, and the good ol' hacker ethic.
* Edit: well 'most' is highly subjective, but I hope we can agree on 'many.'
Drug trade has a very tangible economic driver that can be modified with legalization.
For terrorism, or other warfare methods, there isn't a simple economic driver you can attack. People are struggling for power and resources. You simply cannot make everyone happy.
You of course have the choice of simply withdrawing from the struggle, but as soon as you start doing this there really isn't an end in sight. This is not a choice US can take without dire consequences.
In wars between states, you can negotiate, but in wars of ideology/religion, that's not so easy.
That's based on the flawed assumption that people just are out to get you.
People are out to get the US to a large extent because of how much the US has been meddling all over the place.
Stop the one sided support for Israel, and stop supporting Middle Eastern dictators, and don't invade any more countries, and a large part of the recruiting-basis for islamic fundamentalists for actions against the US would start falling away pretty quickly.
> In wars between states, you can negotiate, but in wars of ideology/religion, that's not so easy.
It might not be so easy, but it is far more effective than military actions that breed new generations of people who hate you for ever person you kill - whether a legitimate target or "collateral damage".
To modify your point:
Better question: why does $_GOVERNMENT so frequently think the right answer to a problem is $_GOVERNMENT_ACTION?
Examples include: $_HUGE_SPENDING_PROGRAM, $_HUGE_SOCIAL_WELFARE_PROGRAM, taxpayer-funded bailout of $_INDUSTRY, massive new regulations for $_INDUSTRY, price controls on $_PRODUCT, etc.
Maybe it's simply the general distrust of the individual and free markets by those in government, combined with voters who believe what politicians promise regarding that same government.
Opposite of how we all like to think of the tech industry, politics are slow, clunky, and bureaucratic — for good reason. It takes a long time to go from "random HN/reddit commenters talking about legalizing drugs" to "politicians talking about legalizing drugs."
Legalization means allowing the people to choose to engage in an activity, thus shifting to the permissive oversight role of government. In this case, the citizen has the implicit trust of the government in that he may act as he chooses toward the previously-banned item. If this second route involves more parts of government, so be it, but at least it returns some autonomy / choice / liberty to the individual.
Depending on what politicians do, we may be stuck in a bad in-between state where you have the full police state going strong to prevent non-authorized dealing as well as the oversight / regulation function.
I fully trust that the politicians will continue to pursue power at any cost, including the liberty of the people and the sovereignty of the nation.
Moreover, the typical political response to problems these days is to throw money, regulations, or laws at it to force it to be fixed. It's hard for politicians to realize that society and culture can't simply be commanded around.
Seriously? I'm not sure if you're saying to legalize all drugs, but that's how I'm interpreting this....
Legalizing addictive drugs will make us safer & richer? I feel like if we legalized heroin, we'd have junkies all over the place running around stealing whatever isn't bolted down just to get the next high. It affects far more than just the user, it affects the families, the kids, the neighborhood, the town, etc. Even if we taxed it, those taxes would likely go right back into having more security: police officers, hospitals, etc.
Sure pot might be more or less harmless, but letting people stuff themselves with any drug of choice seems very wrong. There are some drugs that I think should absolutely be restricted very tightly.
Making it illegal doesn't stop those who will use it. It didn't stop my brother, who ended up dying from a heroin overdose.
But legal alcohol was always available and my mother was able to drink herself to death. Legally. So let me call the cops on you for having beer in your house and kick in your doors and kill your dog and hall your ass off to jail for your protection.
Ugh. Keep your fucking nanny state to yourself.
If drugs were all legal tomorrow, would you run out and try heroin? No. Most people don't want hard drugs, and the people who do can already get them, and those people aren't all becoming drug addicts, otherwise Burning Man would be a city of 50,000 hopeless junkies every year.
Drug addiction -- like alcoholism -- happens only to a fraction of users, and in both cases factors like poverty, genetics and bad home situations are contributing factors.
Drug addiction absolutely does affect more than just the user, but the effect of legalizing drugs (again, not hypothetically, see Portugal) is less addiction, not more, and better treatment for those who do become addicted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
I mean we can argue all day long over the emotional aspect, but real-life data is hard to argue with: Decriminalization (along with rehabilitation for those who want it) reduces crime. Full stop.
While it sounds really appealing, there is no evidence to support this. What there is evidence for however (see Portugal), is that decriminalizing drugs and advocating treatment programs will lead to fewer infections, crimes, and even fewer addicts.
Why? Do you know anyone who doesn't use heroin now, just because it's illegal?
Highly addictive opiods such as percocet, oxycodone, codeine, etc. are legal (although regulated). Many of the risks associated with heroin use derive from its illegality, in the sense that people use heroin which has unknown purity (i.e. can be cut with other drugs), use unsterilized needles, and take unsafe dosages (i.e. there is no physician regulating the amount they consume nor preventing addiction).
My point is not that heroin is a safe drug, or that anyone should take it. But drug laws are applied with incredible inconsistency. Cocaine, which is potentially addictive and dangerous, is a Schedule II drug, while marijuana and even hallucinogens such as LSD are Schedule I drugs (meaning they have strong potential for addiction and no recognized medical use, which is simply untrue). Addictive opiods marketed as prescription drugs, meanwhile, are legal with regulation. Not to mention alcohol and tobacco, two highly addictive and unhealthy drugs which are perfectly legal.
There's good evidence that restrictions on quantity of acetaminophen/paracetamol sold in a single transaction reduces overdose deaths. E.g. in the UK it is estimated that restrictions to 16 (in regular shops) or 32 tablets per sale (in pharmacies) has saved 600+ lives since 1998. There are still 100+ deaths a year from it, though.
Yet the sale of pure codeine is substantially more heavily regulated than the sale of co-codamol and other variations of paracetamol/acetaminophen or ibuprofen mixed with codeine at ratios that means that anyone with a serious codeine addiction finding themselves unable to get a prescription or find a dealer for pure codeine might find the mixed products available over the counter as their only source at times. Yet chances are they will have to take a potentially dangerous dose of other painkillers to get their codeine high.
So, we have evidence that people often intentionally or accidentally die of acetaminophen/paracetamol as well as ibuprofen overdoses. Yet we consider it acceptable to require codeine to be mixed with these (and other) drugs for over the counter sales.
Codeine alone is one of the safest opiates we know, with a substantial safety margin for use, but also highly addictive, and so chances are a subset of users will get sufficiently addicted to be unable to properly control their usage, even in the face of taking substantial risks.
In other words: Fuck off and die a painful death if you get addicted enough to fail to manage to resist (or pay attention to) taking too much of the other drugs it's mixed with. Oh, and when you die, remember it's because we intentionally ensured you had a supply that was effectively mixed with poison.
That codeine addiction is often the result of its extensive use as a prescription painkiller and in hospitals exactly because it is so safe on its own just makes the whole thing more offensive.
Diacetylmorphine, brand name Heroin, costs about $0.25 a day, or $1 per day for the pharmacy grade injectable version.
Junkies are called that because the original Heroin addicts wandered around trading junk, bits of scrap and garbage that could be sold to junk traders to get the pennies it took to support their habit.
The present high price of Heroin is a deliberate policy decision. It's a transfer payment from your stolen TV to the drug cartels, in much the same way that Social Security is a transfer payment from your employer to your grandma.
And yes, a heroin junkie can hold down a normal job especially if they have a steady supply of heroin. Many do. The biggest problem with living a normal life for a heroin junkie is the time and effort spent chasing down heroin supplies and cash.
You might very well know heroin junkies without knowing it - someone with sufficient cash to not have to worry will most of the time appear completely "normal".
That's not to say that heroin doesn't have a lot of problems, but clean heroin, used with clean syringes, is still fairly safe. What isn't safe is the alternative - what we see today: products that have been mixed with all kinds of crap, of varying strengths, dirty syringes, and price levels that drive users to crime because it's the only way they can afford their habit.
And do you really think that lots of people would suddenly decide "oh, cool, heroin is legal now - lets shoot up"? Heroin junkies are hardly top of the totem pole, and being able to go to a pharmacy and buy it would hardly make it cooler.
What affects the families, the kids, the neighbourhoods the most is when we treat users as criminals because of their addiction, and force many of them to carry out crimes to meet needs they have minimal control over, as well as make it risky for them to seek help when they need it without facing legal threats.
This is a bit naive. I don't think taboos are responsible for drug prohibition. I think it's the economic interests of industries which benefit from drug prohibition, like police, prisons, alcohol, and pharmaceuticals.
I suspect you're right, but it seems to be true. Unless this source is unreliable (let me know why if you think it is!):
http://www.republicreport.org/2012/exclusive-why-cant-you-sm...
Everyone knows about overdoses. But if you take opioids to the point you become physically dependent and then you need surgery, the anesthesia provider has to work around a body with a different (narrower!) dose-response curve to anesthetics: Normal people have a broad range of doses which provide pain control but don't kill them. A long-term addict has a very narrow range between "Not feeling it" and "Heart just stopped."
That's just one example. I'm sure there are others. How are Portuguese healthcare providers dealing with this?
And which crimes should they go for? Guns aren't needed when you don't need to defend a territory. Smuggling would be an obvious next step, but what should they smuggle? Diamants? Counterfeit goods? Women?
All those are much more difficult to smuggle than drugs and the price per kilo is much, much less so they would have to invent new ways of smuggling. At present drug prizes it makes sense to build one way semi-submercibles (or even submarines) to get the stuff from Columbia to the US, I doubt the risk is worth it if you are to smuggle counterfeit goods at a few dollars a pound.
At least 60,000 people were murdered by organized crime just in Felipe Calderon's six year term.
One more way: by legalizing and taxing it, there properly should be more money available for treatment, helping to eliminate dangerous lifestyles that often cross over into crime.
Supply and demand. Your response only tackles half of the problem - demand - while ignoring the half that hits closer to your home.
1: It gives easy revenue for criminals.
2: It puts many people into the "criminal" category, making them much less willing to interact with law enforcement and making it more likely that they will be willing to consort with true criminals.
3: It takes away resources from the criminal justice system, and further perverts it as well. It breeds the sort of police officer who is unskilled at forming a bond with the community they serve and with basic policework and instead focuses on making drug busts. It also breeds the sort of "assumed guilty" plea bargain dominated prosecutor model.
4: As a consequence of 1 and 2, the cognitive dissonance of the law banning victimless drug use causes many police officers to lose their respect for the law as well. And because of the wealth of criminal drug dealing enterprises there becomes a natural synergy which promotes police corruption.
5: Similarly, due to drug forfeiture laws it becomes possible for the way that police undertake law enforcement activities to dramatically affect their own budgets and resources. Naturally police organizations tend to be drawn to the activities which provide the most revenue, drug busts, to the detriment of other policing.
6: Because of the drug/criminal connection combined with rampant police crack downs due to the above factors drug busts can often be dangerous, which pushes police officers even farther away from a healthy relationship with their communities and increasingly toward a militarized relationship which spills over into every citizen/police interaction and further poisons the relationship.
One of the odder things to me about the area (everything was odd to some degree, including my presence there) was that there was so much drug activity right next to the police station.
Edit: You (probably) do want control cannabis sales to teenagers. Citation: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201208...
I'm used to graphs and visualizations on Priceonomics, and there was a distinct lack of hard data from this piece. It felt much more subjective than what I'm used to.
In short, I don't doubt the conclusion, but this doesn't feel like a normal priceonomics piece. Just my $.02.
Now realize that the entire pharmaceuticals industry is born from this desire for safe production, distribution, consumption, and storage of drugs -- and the hypocrisy of selective drug prohibition.
I suspect meth is abundant now because of logistical reasons i.e. it can be manufactured in the country it is sold, using precursors that can also be obtained there (legally or otherwise), rather than having to grow plants (coca, poppies, marijuana) which can be seized whilst growing or being imported from overseas.
A good drug policy would make meth seem like the bad idea that it is by providing superior alternatives.
It would be Erdos-style addiction.
It is always a rough transition when government changes its policy to one of more morality and fairness. Protected business interests who have shaped their business model around shitty laws now are at a disadvantage to businesses that can spring up around new rules. That doesn't mean our laws shouldn't change for the better.
I don't think you're supposed to care. I just think its an interesting observation for a couple reasons.
One, there's modest historical significance to the hippie movement, especially in SF. Hippie culture dying out is news worthy.
Two (less interesting, more obvious), is to note that people who sold drugs illegally are hurt by legalization. That's not given, it's possible that people who sold drugs illegally would be the same people who sold drugs legally .. but that doesn't seem to be the case (or more interesting, the profit margin got squashed).
Man, rough life. I really feel for those guys...
Pay for the the treatment industry and you will get recovering addicts and fewer cartels.
Pay for the punishment industry and you will get criminals and cartels.
"in your choices lies your talent..."
I recall one article put most of the blame for the rise of organized crime in the US on Prohibition and that it wasn't really the dedicated work of the FBI that stamped out the mafia in the US, it was the aging and eventual death of the entire generation that had risen to wealth and power during those times.
It looks live we've really set ourselves up for long-term pain with the drug war, even with total de-criminilization like Portugal has done, it will probably be at least another generation before the worst effects of the criminal organizations fade away. By which time enough people will have forgotten the price of the drug war and be gung ho to start some new socially-destructive campaign.
It's similar to how all manufacturing happens in China because it's a way for countries to export their social issues and environmental impact to another country that is willing to take it.
If you think they would make less money under the new scheme then that would be a good thing because it would lower the benefit of doing the crime and thus fewer people would risk being involved.
And honestly there isn't really a market for slaves (at least in the US), so the organizations would mostly collapse, with the remnants smuggling counterfeit goods, which is an outcome I would be okay with.
Lots of people (who were not hippies) were interested in buying weed, while hippies were happy to supply the willingness to take a moderate legal risk. However, non-hippies aren't all that interested in other things that hippies like, such as hemp weaving or handicrafts - at least, not to the extent of providing hippies with any sort of livable income. So the choice is to either supply other, more risky markets - in other states, or with 'harder' and potentially more dangerous drugs - or find some other kind of employment. But other kinds of employment aren't really compatible with being a hippie, and while I don't think that's a fantastic thing to aspire to I respect that some people would rather live simpler, non-materialistic lives, or part of their their lives, and this is increasingly hard to do in a society that fetishizes private property.
War on drugs[1] is a cure far worse than the illness it tries to cure:
It's one thing to idealise the hippie culture of the 60s, it's another to bend the facts of what GGP panhandle neighbourhood is really like to fit that narrative. I am sure there are actual hippies out there, but it's unlikely that they're in SF or even Berkeley.
(Background: spent sometime time in Inner Sunset in ~2009-2010 and walked to Haight; know a lot of folks who also attended USF Law in that neighbourhood).
[1] I'll also note that by drugs I generally don't mean marijuana. I have zero interest in marijuana, but to put it in the same category as heroin, cocaine, or meth seems odd. We do need to decriminalize the "harder" drugs as well for both moral and pragmatic reasons -- bulk of drug war violence (especially in the US border states and south of the US border) is not over marijuana.
It is a $30 billion dollar industry after all. [1]
The problem with substance consumption is that it's an asymmetric negotiation. The consumer is the weakest link (for obvious reasons), so the dealers have the upper hand. You don't even need to look at illegal drugs, just look at pharma industry for an example of that.
Legalization only benefits the consumer, who have access to a better product at a lower price and zero risk. Also, creates low wage jobs. To everyone else involved (and that's a lot of people: farmers, cooks, dealers, truck drivers, cops, politicians, even consumers who sell to friends), it's the most interesting that it stays illegal.
The tendency with weed legalization is for dealers to start moving a better high, not go bankrupt. The tendency of consumers is to look for a better high also. In the places where weed is legalized, you now have higher THC breeds and hash oil. It's a forever regulation struggle (are these harmful? can it still be classified as pot?).
One of the main reasons that cannabis has failed to be fully legalized in California is because greedy dealers want the industry to stay small and contained. I remember seeing tons of "Vote No" signs in Mendocino and Sonoma counties regarding legalization (which are huge cultivation areas,) and have known many growers and distributors who were vehemently against legalizing it.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Humboldt-Life-Americas-Marijuana-Front...
"The Emerald Triangle refers to a region in Northern California so named because it is the largest cannabis producing region in the United States. Mendocino County, Humboldt County, and Trinity County are the three counties in Northern California that make up this region."
Here in Priceonomics’s home city of San Francisco, however, legalization is also eroding the easy drug profits that have been a lifeline to the remnants of the hippy scene.
Yes, lets all lament the demise of the "Haighth"[1], while ignoring the political, artistic and, well, non-weed legacies of the late-60s San Francisco subcultural landscape.
tl;dr it's totally interconnected, man.
Yet Priceonomics attempts to do so.
News at 11. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Since Idaho is so behind the times on the legalization front, hippies are most welcome here. So if any hippies are reading this, there are many markets opening in the gateway states that lie between the cool states. Another way to look at this is, marijuana legalization will lead to the liberalization of the states that are behind the times, which is probably why fogies are fighting against it so vehemently.
In Canada price of weed dropped to $80/120 per oz of AAA kush since washington legalized and more exports come out of california
Ha! Just kidding, as if people used reason when thinking about political issues! No, the question is really whether tribal forces will drift in the direction of ending prohibition in general. Superficially, it will appear to be reasoned arguments swaying public opinion, but the true nature of the beast is betrayed by its slowness.
In any case, the problems with them switching to selling LSD are that the demand isn't anywhere near as high, and that producing it requires a fair bit more education than reading about gardening on the internet and then growing some plants in your closet.
"Many are homeless by choice: Some are the transient underemployed or unemployed that hop railcars across the country."
http://24.media.tumblr.com/f57b0d94ce4e855c44891a68b21abe20/...
Two claims specifically are pretty obvious exaggerations/blatant lies:
That a marijuana dealer can make 4-times more selling in New York than in California[1]. And that street kids used to make enough in a few days to travel for weeks[2].
[1] Unless the difference is purely a matter of volume, price alone cannot account for that big of a difference, as the article seems to imply. Marijuana is more expensive in New York but it's nowhere near 4-times more expensive.
[2] I sold marijuana in the bay area in the timeframe referenced in the article, between roughly 1999 and 2001 (in the dorms, to friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends etc). Yes the prices were higher than they are today ($50 an 8th was standard) but wholesale prices were also much higher. In the end I was lucky to clear $100 an ounce, after smoking myself - which the street kids surely do. They'd have to have been selling a half pound or more per day at full retail to make the claim even remotely possible.
And a small piece of anecdotal evidence - I went to Haight Ashbury in search of some weed not long ago. I asked some street kids near the park. I was quoted $60 an 8th and they were unwilling to bargain. The quality was low - probably over 100% markup from what they paid. Those kinds of margins were not possible in the Good Old Days glorified in this piece.
Cliffs: don't take the word of street hippies on how great things were in the past.
That said, people who bum around can go a long time on very little cash. Imagine if you only had to pay for food and sometimes got it free crashing with friends with chickens, etc.. Housing - crashing places, parks outside, tents, etc.. Transportation - hopping trains.