From the Inquirer story:

Police put the value of the marijuana at $812,000. On Tuesday, as the probe continued, investigators seized 12 pounds of hallucinogenic mushrooms worth $614,000 and more than $439,000 in cash, police said.

The reporter isn't telling us how much the drugs are worth. She's telling us how much THE POLICE SAID they were worth. I have no reason to doubt that this is exactly what they told her. And it's perfectly legitimate for a newspaper to report on what the police are saying about a pending case.

If there is a problem, it's that the reporter isn't checking the police statements against another source. Perhaps they could follow the above paragraph with something like this:

Scott Morgan, a blogger from the web site stopthedrugwar.com, scoffed at the police valuation of the drugs. "Just look at High Times Magazine's Market Quotes for marijuana to see that the highest street prices come nowhere close to these wildly false numbers. A gram of the very best pot can fetch $25-30, usually less. Let's do the math to analyze the police's estimate: $812,000 / 16 pounds / 16 ounces / 28.3 grams = $112.08 per gram."

Then the newspaper reader will be left with two conflicting sources, and have to decide which to believe: the police, or some guy running a "pro-drug" blog who quotes from High Times magazine. Me, I would be more inclined to believe High Times, but I imagine that many readers would give more credence to the police.

In recent years, the press coverage has gotten better. More and more often, I've seen the other side being presented, from DPA, MPP, LEAP, or some other outfit. LEAP would have the most relevance to the article presently under discussion. I hope that we get to a point where reporters will routinely call up one of these sources on this kind of story. We've still got a long way to go, but we're moving in the right direction.

A useful tactic is the letter to the editor. If the Inquirer gets twenty letters from different people complaining about the inflated prices of drugs, they might print one of them. In recent years, I've seen a lot more such letters voicing criticism of the drug war. I can't say I recall seeing any on these exaggerating valuations of seized contraband, but it wouldn't surprise me to see one.

I've seen this kind of stuff for years, and I put most of it down to the desire of the police to puff up their own accomplishments. An $800,000 drug bust is a lot more impressive than one of $50,000. Frankly, I've got to say that of all the lies and distortions brought forward by the drug warriors, this is among the least objectionable. If I was launching a PR campaign against the drug war, I would give other issues a higher priority than this.

Complaining that reporters are lazy or appealing to some non-existent code of journalistic integrity won't get you anywhere. Reporters are going to act like reporters; cops are going to act like cops; politicians are going to act like politicians. Any campaign that is dependent on these things changing is doomed to failure.

rachelrachel

Exaggerating—almost always by a common factor of ten—the retail prices of drugs, while ignoring the wholesale prices, keeps all the big numbers in stark public view. Among its other advantages, this propaganda technique provides a handy little tool to hide an awkward situation where, for example, a municipality might spend $5 million per year to seize drugs that are really only worth about $500,000 on the wholesale or even retail markets.

A ten-to-one ratio of money spent to drugs seized would make any drug war look dysfunctional. Even a one-to-one ratio is unsatisfactory. A one-to-ten ratio of money spent versus wholesale value of drugs seized starts to look better to the taxpayers and to congress people who are subsequently conned into funding the drug war farce.

Nevertheless, as the supply side prices reflect a very negligible cost of materials and labor needed to produce illicit drugs, an estimated hundred-to-one ratio, or more, of money spent for drug enforcement compared to the wholesale or even retail value of drugs seized is probably a truer and thus more useful economic model of drug war folly.

Giordano

i love how the cops made up the whole thing about people landing in the ER from the weed too. all i can say is with philly's murder rate being out of control, it is amazing that they would spend a penny on busting a pot dealer, especially one who (it looks like) doesn't even sell in philly, and lives on the very outer edge of the city (across the street becomes suburb). i don't know, maybe they just decided they had to nail a white guy to even things out. blackburn's the same tool who got his panties in a knot over the candy that looked like crack.

and just look at the list of most viewed and most emailed stories and tell me if the readers of this paper have the intelligence necessary to make up their own minds about things.

Look back at the 1920's the stock market was booming and alcohol was illegal!
now look at the 1980's to 2000! same thing only with "drugs"
The government was consolidating it's trade in liquor and when it was finnished
the crash of 1929 came! Then they "legalized" it to generate revenue.
Now what about today? Has Uncle Sam monoplized the "drug" trade?
He is in Afganistan... cut off/established routes in Iraq. And now the
USA is in the midst of the Second Great Depression! How will the
Government generate income? Maybe legalization is right around the
corner! By the way if you price the stock market from 2000 to today
in tearms of Euros instead of dollars it has gone down in value %7 a year
every year! The USA is in a depression and the Bush administration has
done a fantastic job of covering this up!(by devaluing the currency).
Is a Democtatic president and "drug" legalization the next step for the US?
Seems logical to me... America is aging and there are far fewer "children"
to "protect" against "drugs"! What do ya think?

Do you mean Democrat? I don't see that they made any difference, after winning the majority in 2006. And they are not saying anything different than any of the politicians, Democrat and Republican, alike! (EXCEPT Kucinich Gravel and Paul). They wiill continue the failed drug war because it is what they think their constituants want. More government waste! If I had a business that did as well as the DEA, in their drug war, it would not last a year!

Reminds me of all those companies out there that offer commission only jobs and say you can make thousands of dollars a week just by sitting at home, but in reality you make 1/10 or 1/100 of that and run your ass off...