- Dave Borden, DRCNet

In a Monday column for the Internet version of Business Week, contributing economics editor Christopher Farrell called for legalizing currently illicit drugs and taxing them at very high rates. In his regular "Sound Money" column, Farrell called for "a new kind of drug war," arguing that, "The conventional one has been highly costly, with little return. Making narcotics legal -- and very expensive -- can reduce addiction and crime," he wrote.

Citing Boston university economist Jeffrey Miron, Farrell wrote that government at all levels had spent $33 billion in prosecuting the drug war in recent years. "How is the return on that investment?" asked Farell. "Abysmal." Farrell cited the usual litany of disasters to make his case -- continuing strong demand for drugs, the growth of drug trafficking organizations, crime and corruption, overstuffed US prisons.

"It's time to consider a dramatic shift in policy," Farrell concluded. "Instead of the battle cry 'war on drugs,' let's try the mantra 'legalization, regulation, and taxation.' We should regulate narcotics just as we do cigarettes and alcohol, restricting sales to minors and imposing steep excise taxes... Indeed, the model for dealing with alcohol is instructive. Banning alcohol outright in the US was a public policy disaster. Ending Prohibition quickly cleaned up the liquor industry. Gangsters were denied a lucrative source of income, and violent crime associated with the business fell."

While the idea of legalization and regulation is not new, Farrell wrote, it has never been implemented because of fears that cheap legal drugs would create an army of addicts. The solution, Farrell opined, is to tax newly legalized drugs at rates so high that prices remain similar to current black market prices. Even though demand for drugs is relatively inelastic, it is not completely inelastic, he argued. Higher drug prices mean lower drug use levels.

"With the addition of a steep excise tax -- several hundred percentage points above the cost of wholesale production, for example -- the price of cocaine could be greater than the price the fruitless war on drugs supports. It's possible that consumption would be lower in a high-tax regime than it is in today's law-enforcement environment."

Farrell did not come to this conclusion easily, saying he did not look forward to heroin and cocaine being made available at the corner liquor store. "I know that the cost of drug abuse and addiction -- including nicotine and alcohol -- is already substantial, especially measured by increased health-care expenditures and lower worker productivity. And I have no wish to see the numbers of addicts increase. But there's the hope that with a carefully crafted new paradigm of legalization, there could be fewer users. That's positive. There's nothing positive to be derived from staying with the status quo."

In addition to writing the regular "Sound Money" column for Business Week, Farrell also hosts the nationally-syndicated "Sound Money" program for Minnesota Public Radio and contributes to National Public Radio's "Marketplace" program.

Obviously it's great that this column has run. While praising Farrell for raising the legalization issue, I also want to raise some cautions about the idea of ultra-high prices through taxation. "Vice taxes" to discourage drug use financially while keeping it legal are one option to consider. But if the price goes too high -- if it's as high or higher than current black market prices as Farrell has suggested -- the result will be a significant black market as buyers and sellers seek to avoid the high taxes. Not quite as terrible a black market as we have now, perhaps, but pretty bad.

My other caution is that a lot of the harm to addicts results from the high prices, which have a financially destabilizing effect on them, in serious cases literally driving people to homelessness, theft, prostitution, etc. So I think there are limits to how high we can wisely drive up the price.

Still, he called for legalization in the pages of a widely read publication read by the economically-focused, and my points are not intended to take away from that. Check out the column, which is titled "A New Kind of Drug War." There is a lot of interesting discussion and good statistics which are well worth examining. If anyone locates letter to the editor information, please post it here, as I was unable to find it.

- Dave Borden, DRCNet

Fox was widely praised as the first Mexican leader ever to seriously tackle the country's powerful cartels, but security experts worry his success in jailing drug kingpins is only producing more violence, and no slowdown in the flow of drugs.

Some fear Mexico's "narcos" may become desperate enough to execute politicians or promote their own candidates for office, a chaotic scenario that echoes Colombia's losing struggle against cartels in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Among the experts quoted was Jorge Chabat, an analyst at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico City. Chabat pointed out:

For years, the U.S. told Mexico's government, "The problem is that the narcos are still powerful because you don't dismantle the gangs." Now they're doing just that... and the narcos are more powerful than ever.

The article conveyed the ominous sense of some observers that Mexican drug traffickers if pushed into a corner could resort to political assassinations or promoting their own candidates for public office, raising the spectre of chaos and violence such as Colombia experienced at the hands of Pablo Escobar.

This is a good article, but it would have been even better if it had mentioned that Jorge Chabat has called for legalization. Having drawn the Colombia comparison, a call in to Gustavo de Greiff, the Colombian attorney general who defeated Escobar -- who now lives in Mexico City -- would also have added to the level of insight offered to the reader. (Click here to read DRCNet's interview with de Greiff before our Mérida, Mexico conference, Out from the Shadows: Ending Drug Prohibition in the 21st Century. Click here for video and audio of de Greiff and others at Mérida.

And of course, post back here if you spot this article in any news outlets (Reuters is a wire service), and let us know how to send letters to the editor to them.

- Dave Borden, DRCNet

The article discussed the much higher homicide rate during the mid 1990s -- 1995 had the peak with 56 -- implicitly raising the question of whether 2004's increase means that violence is again going back up. Police Chief Sam Cochran isn't worried about that, according to the article, for among other reasons arguing that three of the 28 are likely to be cut from the statistics -- they were killed by police and ruled "justifiable."

It seems awfully cavalier for Chief Cochran not to be worried about a possible rise in violence, if that characterization by the reporter is accurate. To be fair, four homicides or one out of 28 is not very conclusive statistical evidence; maybe it's not going up. But there have been ominous signs in other parts of the country in recent years, such as Baltimore, which in 2002 saw a wave of juvenile murders putting the city on track to exceed the mayor's hoped for reduced homicide target by more than 25%. And two weeks ago the Baltimore Sun reported on a wave of drug trade killings and the stunning admission by police that their drug crackdown was the cause.

More unfortunate was Chief Cochran's predictably unimaginative response -- he wants more cops, 600 instead of the current 475 -- and he credits the work of the Street Level Interdiction Drug Enforcement (SLIDE) team for reducing violence in the city. Cochran should look to the Baltimore events for an example of why his analysis may be off base.

Regardless of that, the national homicide rate, and the individual rates in our big cities, are unacceptably high and only go to show just how bad the situation was a decade ago when they were even higher. As Chief Cochran points out, one of the cause is drugs. By and large that means the drug trade, which means that the way to stop them is clear -- end prohibition, legalize drugs. Then Cochran and the taxpayers wouldn't need 125 more cops on the payroll. And they might be able to do something about those five remaining unsolved homicides from last year -- at least they could try harder if they weren't spending so much on the futile drug fight. But Cochran loves his SLIDE team too much for that.

Letters to the editor can be submitted here.

- Dave Borden, DRCNet

Mexican president Vicente Fox shot back at Garza and the State Dept., saying "Mexico's fight against drug trafficking is firm," and "The Mexican government does not admit judgment from any foreign government about political actions taken to confront its problems."

If Fox really meant that, he would push harder for legalization, which once a few years back he said was the right way for the world to go. Mexico suffers terribly from the drug trade violence that prohibition has created, and they have the right to an effective solution. Only replacing the illicit drug traffic with a legal trade that is governed by laws has a chance of providing that.

E-mail letters@nytimes.com to send a letter to the editor. And send good thoughts for peace southward to our peoples on both sides of the border.

- Dave Borden, DRCNet

It would be unfortunate if they got them. The way to reduce heroin overdoses and poisonings is to move the trade into a legal, regulated environment in which users can know what they are getting. Certainly there are some, probably many dealers who knowingly put their customers' lives at risk by providing bad stuff, and there are dealers who engage in violent behavior and who are legitimate targets of the criminal justice system for that reason. Going after the former group might help a little in preventing ODs; going after the latter will clearly not. Many low-level suppliers are addicts who have been driven to it by the high price of heroin that prohibition has caused. Many others are just down and out people who are doing what they need to do to survive.

In the end, the government shares in the blame for most if not all of these deaths, because the government's prohibition laws made them more likely. Legalization, not prosecutions or lengthy sentences, will rescue generations of heroin addicts.

KXAN News 36 accepts comments online here. I haven't seen this story run anywhere else yet; please post back here if you do.

- Dave Borden, DRCNet

One of the people indicted is an assistant superintendent in Prince Georges County, Maryland, Pamela Hoffler-Riddick, which has led to coverage by the local NBC affiliate. That's nearby to where DRCNet is based in Washington. I haven't seen the report, which was posted on the web at about 6:30pm this evening. The CEO of the county school system, Hoffler-Riddick's boss, made some appropriate remarks in which he refrained from rushing to judgment and expressed compassion for her and her family. Hoffler-Riddick has been placed on administrative leave for the time being.

Obviously I don't whether she is innocent or guilty, and the law presumes her innocent until proven guilty. The federal jurisdiction is the one headed by US Attorney Paul McNulty, according to an article about the same operation in The Virginian-Pilot, and he is scheduled to make an announcement and provide further information tomorrow. McNulty is the son-of-a-bitch who prosecuted Dr. Hurwitz, and that makes any indictments brought by his division suspect in my book, especially high profile indictments such as those against Hurwitz or Hoffler-Riddick -- McNulty and his crew may have a special penchant for seeking to make high-profile takedowns on prominent citizens that biases their decisions. But that is speculation only and is neither here nor there in this case insofar as the information currently available is concerned.

Regardless of my suspicions of anything prosecutor McNulty does, my main suggestion in this post is directed at the newspapers that have reported on the indictments. They should investigate whether the cash and equipment seizures done eight months ago had any noticeable impact on the price or availability of drugs on the Peninsula, and they should return to the topic in a month or so to see whether this week's indictments have had any effect. If, as is overwhelmingly likely, the answers are "no" and "no," their editorial boards should ponder what the rationale is for drug busts or prohibition itself.

Get Virginian-Pilot letter-to-the-editor information here. Get Daily Press letter-to-the-editor information here. NBC4 accepts comments online here.

- Dave Borden, DRCNet

One of those points is about the extremity of the current drug war, the use of paramilitary tactics such as stun grenades. This has been driven in part by the dilution of the strict separation between the military and domestic law enforcement, a dilution which began in earnest under the Reagan administration. My quote in the article characterizes the use of pyrotechnic devices in routine drug raids as "reckless" and takes the position that such equipment should be limited to extremely dangerous situations such as those involving hostages. An unidentified local woman also used the word "reckless." While withholding judgment on the specific situation without knowing more details, Peter makes some trenchant observations about the dangers inherent in such tactics and the values that lead to them being used so widely.

John Chella, Niagara's police superintendent, while regretting the injury caused still defended their use of the device, noting that police recovered a loaded weapon during the raid. I stand by my criticism fully -- results are what count, and the harm is not limited to the injured bystander but is felt in the fear of all her neighbors that their police could one day do the same thing to them. Policing is an inherently risky profession -- we should be grateful to our police officers for that reason -- but that does not afford them the luxury to used any available tactic to minimize all risk to themselves while increasing it to others. The least risky course for the officers would have been to just blow the house up and kill everybody inside. Obviously that's the most extreme example, and I'm not by any means implying that what the officers did in this case resembles it. But it's a question of balance and where in a given situation the line gets drawn. In my opinion pyrotechnics crossed the line in what by all appearances was a routine drug raid -- and again, results are what count.

But this leads to the second important point. The use of such tactics by police is not hard to understand, given that the dangers that the drug trade and drug war often present to them. There is an arms race going on between the drug fighters and the drug suppliers, and amongst drug suppliers, with prohibition is at the root of both. Hunting down marijuana dealers and their product is clearly not worth arms races with their attendant collateral damage. But the same principle applies even to the more dangerous drugs, which could be controlled instead and more effectively through some form of legalization.

Check out Dan Herbeck's and Bill Michelmore's critical examination of stun grenades in drug enforcement here, and click here for letter to the editor information or here to submit one online.

- Dave Borden, DRCNet

Whether or not one regrets the loss of a marijuana dealer's life in a robbery targeting his cash or supply, Henry King did not deserve to be killed and his girlfriend and her son did not deserve to suffer life-threatening wounds. But most clearly, their neighbors don't deserve to have to live in an environment characterized by violence. Nor should they have had to deal with the constant stream of visitors his business brought in and out of the building every day -- that also affects the quality of life.

Decades of the "war on drugs" have shown that the drug trade cannot be extinguished in that way. This means that blaming the dealers, deservedly or otherwise, accomplishes nothing. Only some form of drug legalization can put those kinds of dealers out of business, stop the violence and disorder, and give inner city neighborhoods a chance to finally heal and prosper.

I've submitted a letter to the editor -- and you can too. Click here to do so online.

- Dave Borden, DRCNet

Rape is a horrible crime, and Barr if found guilty should be punished for it. But that will be small comfort. Wouldn't it be better if the rape had never taken place at all? The victim, whom police and Local 10 mercifully did not name, was forced into contact with the criminal underground because the drug on which she is hooked is banned under law. If she had had access to a legal source of cocaine, through a pharmacy, perhaps, or some other appropriate outlet, she would probably not have come into contact with Barr, certainly not for the same reason or with the same frequency; there would have been no necessity for her to associate with such unsavory characters.

And, how many people who get victimized, in this or other ways, by people with whom they have engaged in drug transactions, don't report the crimes because they are afraid of being criminally prosecuted as drug possessors or worse themselves?

Local 10 can be contacted here.

- Dave Borden, DRCNet