Tag Archives: war on drugs

bad things that happen in Philadelphia

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Well, as a certain leader said last Tuesday (I am writing on Friday, October 2), bad things happen in Philadelphia. Like several people getting shot every day. And it’s happening in cities all over the country. There are all kinds of debates about what is causing it, but what I see is escalating cycles of revenge and counter-revenge among young men in certain neighborhoods. Add in a culture that glorifies gun violence, and what could have been fist fights in more innocent times becomes fatal. Add in lack of education and economic opportunity which leads young men to get involved in the illegal drug trade to earn a living. The fact that drugs are illegal is what makes them valuable enough that young men can earn a living by getting involved. The fact that they are illegal means turning to the civil authorities to settle disputes is not an option. Add in violent repression by said civil authorities. Now you have a self-perpetuating and escalating cycle of violence. In a cycle, there is no true “root cause”. What you need to do is de-escalate the cycle of violence. The good news is you can tackle any link in the cycle. You can try to tackle the culture that glorifies violence by reaching out to young men at risk, providing better role models, reaching them at school, etc. You can try to do something about the guns. That all sounds good but the evidence is mixed. You can try to break the cycle by tackling child care, education, and economic opportunity. That is admirable, it is important, it is absolutely necessary, but it is a long, long game and you have to be prepared to stay at it for a long, long time before you see results. You can try to break a cycle quickly by tackling its weakest link. In a much shorter time frame, you can de-escalate the violence by taking away the value of the drugs. Just legalize them, and they will not be so valuable. Victims of violence will be able to turn to the civil authorities, without fear that they themselves will be punished. Drug addiction may increase and may cause suffering that wouldn’t have occurred before. This is a problem for the health care system, both physical health and mental health. Well, let’s get that figured out, but that is another long, long game…

Health care. Child care. Education. And goddamnit, LEGALIZE DRUGS NOW!!!

June 2020 in Review

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In current events, the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. is spinning out of control as I write this in early July. I made a list of trackers and simulation tools that I have looked at. Asian countries, even developing countries, pretty much have it under control, Europe is getting it under control, and the U.S. and a few other countries are melting down. Some voices are very pessimistic on the U.S. economy’s chances to come back. So of course I’m thinking about that, but I don’t have all that many novel or brilliant ideas on it so I’m choosing to write about other things below. Most frightening and/or depressing story:
  • The UN just seems to be declining into irrelevancy. I have a few ideas: (1) Add Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, and Indonesia to the Security Council, (2) transform part of the UN into something like a corporate risk management board, but focused on the issues that cause the most suffering and existential risk globally, and (3) have the General Assembly focus on writing model legislation that can be debated and adopted by national legislatures around the world.
Most hopeful story:
  • Like many people, I was terrified that the massive street demonstrations that broke out in June would repeat the tragedy of the 1918 Philadelphia war bond parade, which accelerated the spread of the flu pandemic that year. Not only does it appear that was not the case, it is now a source of great hope that Covid-19 just does not spread that easily outdoors. I hope the protests lead to some meaningful progress for our country. Meaningful progress to me would mean an end to the “war on drugs”, which I believe is the immediate root cause of much of the violence at issue in these protests, and working on the “long-term project of providing cradle-to-grave (at least cradle-to-retirement) childcare, education, and job training to people so they have the ability to earn a living, and providing generous unemployment and disability benefits to all citizens if they can’t earn a living through no fault of their own.”
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both:
  • Here’s a recipe for planting soil using reclaimed urban construction waste: 20% “excavated deep horizons” (in layman’s terms, I think this is just dirt from construction sites), 70% crushed concrete, and 10% compost

some numbers on police violence

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U.S. police violence disproportionately affects black citizens, but U.S. police violence affects the population as a whole at much higher rates than other wealthy industrialized countries. The U.S. has a violence problem, and the police violence problem is one part of that.

American police forces killed three people per day in 2019, for a total of nearly 1,100 killings.

Those numbers are far higher than in other wealthy western countries.

In comparison, The Guardian newspaper reported in 2015 that there was a total of 55 fatal police shootings in England and Wales between 1990 and 2014. Only 15 people were shot fatally by German police in 2010 and 2011 combined, the newspaper reported. The U.S. population is about six times that of England and Wales, and four times that of Germany.

CNBC

It would be nice for the reporter above to do the math for the reader, but here it is. If England and Wales were the size of the United States, they would have around 25 fatal police shootings per year, and if Germany were the size of the United States, they would have around 30 per year. Compare these numbers to 1,000 in the United States!

Look at statistics for other types of violence (which I don’t have handy, but have looked at in the past) like assault, homicides, suicides, traffic/cyclist/pedestrian fatalities, and the picture is similar.

The U.S. has a violence problem. Why? I don’t know – I can list factors that almost certainly contribute to it, but I can’t tell you which ones are the pivotal ones. Racism is certainly one factor, although I would speculate that removing racism alone would not come close to solving the problem. Ubiquity of guns is certainly a factor, because it turns what could be minor altercations and mental health episodes and accidents into fatal ones. Related to the ubiquity of guns is a lot of hidden advertising created by the gun industry and the larger military-industrial complex (free guns, even actors and settings for movie and TV producers, so that stories with guns are cheaper to tell than stories without guns, and sometimes guns are a substitute for bothering to tell stories at all). Economic inequality, and the underlying inequality of opportunity, is almost certainly a root cause. Lack of a functioning mental health care system for most Americans (especially those who lack economic opportunity) is a root cause. Criminalization of some common types of substance use (especially among those who lack economic opportunity) is certainly a root cause.

Solutions: I am probably a broken record, if you have read my other posts. But end the war on drugs now, provide universal health care (including mental health care) now, and continue the long-term project of providing education and job skills to all citizens. Stop tolerating violent death as a result of outdated transportation and urban design choices, when better designs are out there free to copy.

Police reforms are a good idea too – I am just suggesting that police reforms alone are not the leverage point that will bring our violence rates in line with the world’s leading countries. Notice I’m not even saying “other leading countries”. The U.S. is a great and powerful country that has run out of gas and is coasting on its past success. We slipped from a leadership position to the middle of the pack, and now we are slipping behind the middle of the pack. Solutions are out there, if we choose to acknowledge our problems and accept that we might be able to learn from others.

New Era of Public Safety: A Guide to Fair, Safe, and Effective Community Policing

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I think I’m almost done talking about the police and the war on drugs. But this report from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has a compendium of what I understand are considered best practices in modern policing. I don’t see anything about ending the war on drugs, but one thing that did catch my eye is an emphasis on “Responding to Crises”.

By providing adequate prevention, support, and referral services, departments and communities can divert people with mental health and developmental disabilities, physical disabilities, and substance use orders, from the criminal justice system. All departments should develop crisis intervention approaches that connect people in crisis to appropriate health services, and all officers should be trained to identify and handle crises.

Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

What if social workers and public health workers got the same pay, benefits, and respect as police officers? Maybe people who would have been trained as police officers would choose those professions instead. Maybe some police officers could be cross-trained as social workers. This could be a way to shift funding and priorities away from use of force without dismantling or defunding police departments.

a “decade of disillusion”?

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According to Vice magazine, the 2010s were a “decade of disillusion”. The first article in the series covers how the world went from cautious optimism to something approaching giving up on climate change. Other articles cover how the decade “broke American politics”, the worsening inequality situation, and the opioid crisis.

U.S. murder rate down a bit

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In a bit of good news, the murder rate in the U.S. appears to be down this year compared to trends in the last several years, according to the New York Times.

In the cities in which data is available, murder has been down about 7 percent on average this year relative to the same point in 2017…

If murder falls about 4.5 percent nationally this year, the murder rate of about 5 per 100,000 will roughly be in line with 2009’s rate and half of what it was in 1980, the highest U.S. murder rate on record. The accompanying chart shows what the national murder rate since 1960 would look like with a 4.5 percent drop in 2018.

Tracking the change in murder nationally is far easier than explaining why it’s happening. There is still no consensus on why murder rose nationally in 2015 and 2016, though various theories have been proposed, including simple randomness. Similarly, a projected drop in murder in 2018 would not have an obvious cause. Employment of smarter technologies, expanded community intervention programs, and even colder weather could help explain year-to-year local changes.

If I had to speculate, it might be that the drugs in question in the current round of the war on drugs are simply not as lucrative, and therefore not as worth killing for, as the ones we saw in the 1990s. The real profits accrue to the people willing to take big risks to get the drugs across the border, and it could just be that the body count this time around has been shifted just outside the U.S. border. It may also be that the U.S. government at various levels has shifted toward a little more of a public health approach and a little less of a law enforcement approach. I could think positive and consider this progress, or I could be cynical and say it is partial because there is a wider range of ethnic and socioeconomic groups being affected this time around.