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Did Decriminalizing Pot Cause the Heroin Crisis?
Let me say at the outset that I’m dubious. But Don Winslow makes an interesting case in El Chapo and the Secret History of the Heroin Crisis:
If you wonder why America is in the grips of a heroin epidemic that kills two hundred people a week, take a hard look at the legalization of pot, which destroyed the profits of the Mexican cartels. How did they respond to a major loss in revenue? Like any company, they created an irresistible new product and flooded the market. The scariest part: this might not have happened with El Chapo in charge.
He argues that the Sinaloa Cartel — whose flagship product had been weed — found itself suddenly unable to compete against a superior American product with dramatically lower transport and security costs. “Once-vast fields in Durango now lie fallow.” This of course was supposed to be a selling point of decriminalization: It would put the cartels out of business. Except that it didn’t. Instead of taking up gainful employment as insurance adjustors or chartered accountants, they analyzed the US market and saw an unfilled niche. A growing number of Americans were addicted to expensive prescription opioids:
They increased the production of Mexican heroin by almost 70 percent, and also raised the purity level, bringing in Colombian cooks to create “cinnamon” heroin as strong as the East Asian product. They had been selling a product that was about 46 percent pure, now they improved it to 90 percent.
Their third move was classic market economics—they dropped the price. A kilo of heroin went for as much as $200,000 in New York City a few years ago, cost $80,000 in 2013, and now has dropped to around $50,000. More of a better product for less money: You can’t beat it.
At the same time, American drug and law-enforcement officials, concerned about the dramatic surge in overdose deaths from pharmaceutical opioids (165,000 from 1999 to 2014), cracked down on both legal and illegal distribution, opening the door for Mexican heroin, which sold for five to ten bucks a dose.
With consequences we all know — 125 deaths a day, more than five an hour, a fatality level that matches the deaths from AIDS at the height of the epidemic.
Many journalists, including Winslow, believe the Mexican government wound up supporting the Sinaloa Cartel during the worst years of the Cartel Wars on the grounds that someone had to win for there to be even a modicum of stability. The Sinaloa crew was, at least, averse to killing civilians, which couldn’t be said of their rivals. When Guzmán was recaptured in 2014, Winslow predicted that like Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Mexico would now be plunged into blood feuds in a chaotic power struggle:
I reminded them that in the power vacuum that followed Saddam Hussein’s capture and subsequent execution, Iraq splintered into sectarian violence, Shiite against Sunni. ISIS came into being, overran Iraqi and Syrian cities, and launched a reign of terror.
Look, I shed no tears for either Hussein or Guzmán. Both were killers and torturers. But the fact is that the horrific violence of Guzmán’s war of conquest had largely abated by 2014, precisely because he had won the war (with at least the passive assistance of the Mexican and U. S. governments) and established what’s come to be called the Pax Sinaloa.
The cartels, he says, control somewhere between 8 and 12 percent of the Mexican economy. The Mexican economy is dependent on the drug trade. He doesn’t buy the story about El Chapo escaping his maximum security prison through a mile-long tunnel, by the way:
For the record, Guzmán did not go out that tunnel on a motorcycle. Steve McQueen escapes on motorcycles. My money says that Guzmán didn’t go into that tunnel at all; anyone who can afford to pay $50 million in bribes and finance the excavation of a mile-long tunnel can also afford not to use it.
Gentle reader, the man is worth $1 billion. He was thinking about buying the Chelsea Football Club. He went out the front door. … Guzmán didn’t escape; he was let out so that he could try to reestablish order.
At roughly the same time, Fentanyl enters the scene. For narcos, it’s got huge advantages over heroin. It’s made in a lab, so you don’t need poppy fields. You don’t need to hire people to tend and harvest the crop. It’s incredibly powerful, so you can smuggle more per courrier.
But it’s the profits that will make fentanyl the new crack cocaine, which created the enormous wealth of the Mexican cartels in the eighties and nineties. A kilo of fentanyl can be stepped on sixteen to twenty-four times to create an astounding return on investment of $1.3 million per kilo, compared with $271,000 per kilo of heroin.
No wonder the DEA estimates that the importation of fentanyl from Mexico is up by 65 percent from 2014.
Fentanyl is now mixed with heroin to increase its potency. Unwitting heroin users die from taking a same-sized dose. Doctors and cops don’t realize they need a much stronger dose of Narcan to revive someone who’s taken an overdose. And it’s even more addictive than heroin: Once you’ve tried it, you don’t go back. The combination of lab-produced fentanyl and the fracturing of the Sinaloa Cartel “is a catastrophe for law enforcement and American society as a whole but an absolute boon for the narcos seeking to supplant the old order.” The profits ensure that up-and-coming cartels can afford to pay their fighters.
The rest of the article’s a great read — starring Sean Penn, a ravishing telenovela star named Kate, and a monkey — but if you’re strapped for time, short version is Guzmán winds up back in jail. And nothing changes.
The Los Angeles Times estimates that two thirds of Mexican drug lords have been either killed or imprisoned. And what’s the result? Drugs are more plentiful, more potent, and cheaper than ever. Deaths from overdoses are at an all-time high. Violence in Mexico, once declining, is starting to rise again. Just last week, I looked at photographs of the bodies of four people stuffed into a car trunk in Tijuana. The bodies showed signs of torture. …
… Someone will replace El Chapo, just as he replaced his predecessors. My bet’s on El Mencho, but it really doesn’t matter. That’s the lesson we seem to have to learn over and over and over again, world without end, amen. Guzmán was right: “If there was no consumption, there would be no sales.” I’m always amazed that progressive young millennials will picket a grocery chain for not buying fair-trade coffee but will go home and do drugs that are brought to them by the killers, torturers, and sadists of the cartels. …
As long as the U. S. and Europe continue to buy billions of dollars’ worth of drugs a year while at the same time spending billions to intercept them, we will create an endless succession of Chapos and Menchos.
An entire economy is based on drug prohibition and punishment, something to the tune of $50 billion a year, more than double the estimated $22 billion we spend on heroin.
I’m not persuaded that this wouldn’t have happened absent the decriminalization of pot, are you? If it had remained profitable to sell weed, I reckon these guys would have sold weed and opioids. If you argue as Winslow does that this is an entirely demand-driven industry, it doesn’t make sense to think that the cartels only have the wit, resources, or manpower to sell one drug at a time.
But it’s easy to persuade me that so long as there’s a multi-billion market for drugs in the US and Europe, someone will supply it. And easy to persuade me that the war on drugs has resulted in social catastrophe for the US and Mexico — probably more of a catastrophe than total decriminalization could ever be. Almost half the federal prison population is in the pen for a drug-related offense. The US has about five percent of the world’s population, but a quarter of its prison population — a grievous shame in a country that prides itself in being the land of the free. Locking up drug offenders ensures that families are destroyed, children fatherless, and the curse of underclass life passed to a new generation.
And for Mexico, it’s been far worse. In 2014, researcher Molly Molloy estimated the human toll of the previous six years, and found that as many as 130,000 people or more had been killed, 27,000 were missing, and an untold number buried in mass graves.
“The overwhelming majority of the deaths are people shot down on the street, in their homes or workplaces, on playgrounds, etc. In my reading of the daily accounts of the killings, it is clear that most of the victims are ordinary people, exhibiting nothing to indicate they are employed in the lucrative drug business,” Molloy wrote. …
Amid all the killing, Molloy told NCR, she has seen no evidence the flow of drugs from Mexico has decreased, which prompts her to ask, “So if this is a drug war, who is winning, and what were all those dead people killed for?”
Thoughts?
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You’re right, it’s definitely part of the core “why” of the chemical allure.
Prohibition doesn’t work. Not if there is a real demand for the product. Prohibition of drugs doesn’t work. Prohibition of alcohol didn’t work. Prohibition of guns wouldn’t work. Prohibition never works.
Usually it is only leftists who can’t understand the phrase “doesn’t work.” Their policies never work, and their answer is always to double down on the policy. But on drugs, everyone thinks like a leftist.
Not exactly. Prohibition can work. You just have to be really serious about it. Like Communist China was with opium. The answer is not on the the supply side it’s on the demand side.
Okay. A small correction – in anything short of a totalitarian nightmare society, prohibition doesn’t work. I guess I thought that was just a given.
That exactly right, we could stop it on the demand side but wouldn’t like the results either. Too many of our kids would end up dead, in jail or in reeducation camps.
The argument is about “least resistance.” That is, all entrepreneurs try to balance profits against expenses, and that applies to a drug seller. Each product has a relative balance between likely profits and costs, and usually entrepreneurs seek the products that offer profits at the least resistance. If the costs go up – i.e., the resistance increases – they just move to the next product with the next-better balance.
Many normal products never get made because the balance never works out favorably. But because America has an endless appetite for drugs, that means that just about every drug can be profitable. The drug entrepreneurs target the ones with the least resistance first, but if you take one drug away, there are plenty of others next on the list. They just move on.
So the obvious key question is – why does America have an endless appetite for drugs?
“The US has about five percent of the world’s population, but a quarter of its prison population — a grievous shame in a country that prides itself in being the land of the free.”
We also have much lower rates of violent crime than they do in England and most of Europe.
I am proud of our prison policy – it beats the eurozone alternative.
No and no – that’s like giving your alcoholic Uncle Bob a continuously stocked liquor cabinet for his birthday. The war on drugs is winnable. A country doped up at will, will never thrive – we are just zombies to foreign terror. A healthy society produces more than a sick society – go live in Mexico and see for yourself – not to mention the terror element that also enter through the unsecured borders along with the toxic “new” drugs. This problem has been ongoing before the legalization of pot – ask anyone who works in social services. It is the symptom of much bigger and ignored societal problems.
I think that’s, to a significant degree, because they are, in that instance, collectivists. They have a vague, but unprovable, fear of the collapse or rot of “society”, “the community”, “civilization” — some collective — that they think is more important than the individuals comprising it.
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) seem to have been effectively banned. We don’t seem to have gangsterism and blood in the street over the phasing out of these products, even though compliance is not perfect.
The banning of Thalidomide doesn’t seem to have resulted in widespread abuse and crime.
PCBs have been banned since the late 1970s and we don’t seem to have a robust smuggling regime.
I’m not trying to be cute, but certain prohibitions are necessary and are effective. The Prohibition failed because (among many reasons) there was a low barrier to access as people could make their own alcohol and this was primary pitched as a social engineering scheme that ultimately had little support (and hence a lot of non-compliance).
A gun is nothing more than an assembly and any good machinist would be able to put together a serviceable device with reasonable effort. They are cheaply manufactured around the world. A prohibition on firearms would simply affect the law abiding as criminals will simply smuggle in what they want.
Governments can effectively implement and enforce prohibitions but the ability to control supply is critical, as well as ending or diverting demand to alternatives.
A critical challenge with drugs is that while prohibition and enforcement has limited effect, can we afford (are we willing to accept the costs) of a regime where very toxic and highly addictive substances are widely available with no barriers to access? Having seen the impact of addiction and abuse, this is not an easy call.
See my guess, based on @andrewklavan ‘s view.
One of the most interesting (and entertaining) books I’ve read is “Ether Day: The Strange Tale of America’s Greatest Medical Discovery and the Haunted Men Who Made It.” It’s the story of anesthesia. But prior to ether’s groundbreaking role in the operating rooms of the day, it mainly served as a party drug for ladies and gentlemen of leisure.
People, it seems, like to get high – and until this apparently hard-wired, human trait is somehow deactivated, we will be having similar conversations for a very long time.
I based my statement on evidence from the past several decades. I wish you were right but what makes you so confident? How is it winnable? Seems like you stamp it out in one place and it appears in another. There are hundreds of billions at stake and there is strong demand, unfortunately.
Not just people. Not even just mammals. My childhood home had a pyracantha bush in the back yard. When the berries were overripe it would be swarmed with birds who after gorging would then start acting really strangely.
Well, it’s worth mentioning because the only way to “solve” the drug problem is to make the costs too high for anyone. Not that I favor it, but if you wanted to effectively eliminate the drug problem, you could start cutting off heads.
The War on Drugs is as winnable as we are willing to let addicts starve to death in the streets.
If we, as a society, are not willing to let them do that it is an unwinnable war.
Should we want to be willing to let them do that? If someone is destroying themselves are we obligated to save them? If so, how many times and at what cost?
Thank you for that! I was going to add something about other species, but didn’t have any examples at my fingertips…That and the fact it’s still early out here :)
Huh? This is the comparison with France:
And it’s similar throughout Europe and the UK. There’s much less violent crime in Europe and the UK than the US. Where’d you hear that?
China still resents the days when Queen Victoria was a drug lord, taking her cut from the British drug pushers who plagued the country. Something to keep in mind for the people on Ricochet who were wishing for the return of the British Empire.
“There’s much less violent crime in Europe and the UK than the US. Where’d you hear that?”
The source you are looking at is talking about “gun violence” – while ignoring the presence of other types of weapons.
Here. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jun/24/blog-posting/social-media-post-says-uk-has-far-higher-violent-c/
Notable takeaways.
“For England and Wales, we added together three crime categories: “violence against the person, with injury,” “most serious sexual crime,” and “robbery.” This produced a rate of 775 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
For the United States, we used the FBI’s four standard categories for violent crime that Bier cited. We came up with a rate of 383 violent crimes per 100,000 people.”
Notably, despite the truth in the headline and inconsistent with the internal discussion the Left Leaning “Politifact” still rated the assertion False.
You could also look here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html
Key point: “In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people, way ahead of second-placed Austria with a rate of 1,677. The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609. ”
Note, in the graphic France’s rate is 504/100000.
The DEA has declined to reconsider classifying cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug.
Rarely do I even notice when some post of mine doesn’t draw any attention, but this time it gets to me. I’ll say it again in a different way: Talking about drugs without addressing meth is like talking about inflation without talking about money. This is from the users themselves: The attraction to heroin is as an alternative to meth. It may or may not be cheaper, but it’s a different high. A new experience. That’s what the people doing it tell me.
Second, the idea of lots of people incarcerated for “mere possession” is a complete myth. Doubt me? Check your local jail indexes, then go to the courthouse and pull some files, something I do all the time. Then come back and let’s talk. Except that if you do that, you won’t be back, except to say, geewhillikers, you’re right!
So, if they aren’t actually in jail just because they had some weed on them, why are they there, and how do you explain the obvious relation between the two facts – the crime in main and drug possession? I know H is cheaper than before, but that is only part of the picture, and maybe not the most important.
I’m confident like I am confident if we stamp out some terrorists here, and more pop up there, we don’t quit for that reason. The parents of dead children grieving in an interview on 60 Minutes was enough right there for me to keep going. These were people in safe neighborhoods, children with good grades, athletes. The beautiful mountain town where my sister lives has become rife with drugs, deaths and crime. Legal or not, you still have to pay for it. We may not be able to solve the entire problem, but we can continue to fight back – go ahead and build a wall if that’s what it takes to stop heinous activity – Israel did it, there are walls all over the world when there is no other choice. Now we have the additional worry of terror entering along with it. I can’t conceive of legalizing product that will impair and/or destroy our citizens deliberately. Most regular pot users will tell you it impairs your health, and leads to other drug use.
Can you further explain? I’m not grasping your point – for or against?
No, it separates “gun violence” from homicide rate, murder rate, and rape rate, and uses several different ways of measuring these. You can compare the US to any European country using a number of crimes: kidnapping, murder with and without firearms, assaults, robbery, “perceived rising rate of crime.” Here’s the comparison with France broken down:
I don’t have access to crime stats from 2009, which is the year in question with that Politifact citation, so I don’t know whether that was an unusual year in the UK. Generally the crime rate is higher in Britain than in the rest of Europe. Here’s the comparison with Denmark:
“No, it separates “gun violence” from homicide rate, murder rate, and rape rate, and uses several different ways of measuring these.”
I prefer the FBI definition of violent crime which is Murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Your stats are ignoring aggravated assault and robbery – the European Commission / UN report from the Guardian article is including them.
Additionally were it not for the cesspits of Democrat rule known as Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago, Baltimore etc – the US violent crime rate would be nearly 10 times lower.
The reason I skipped your comment — and I admit that maybe – maybe – I still should’ve read it — was that the drug debate is, for me, not about the minutiae about particular drugs or numbers of people this or that.
It’s about individual rights. Certainly if the entire country were collapsing and it were obvious that the cause was some drug or other, I’d listen. But, that’s not the case. It’s more fundamental, and more important to me, that people be left alone unless they are violating someone’s properly and strictly-defined individual right or other. Whether there’s a particular drug or not out there is beside that point.
Wait, if you take the money out of it by making it legal, there would be no drug crime any more. It would cost a fraction of what it costs now. And I am not getting what you are saying about walls.
I thought black market pot was doing well (in market terms) in Colorado?
1.) Prohibition worked. Alcohol consumption dropped through the floor by the late 1920s, and the violence was broken by the early 30s. Prohibition was repealed during the Great Depression because we had to do something with all the crops (burning them wasn’t going over well) and with the collapse in trade pretty well finishing off the revenue from the tariff, we needed something else to tax.
2.) 80-95% of state prisoners (the bulk of American prisoners) are incarcerated for violent, property, or public order crimes. Even the “drug” crimes are about distribution, not possession or use, and that’s before considering plea bargains. At the Federal level (many fewer prisoners to begin with) almost no one is in prison for possession or use, those drug crimes are all distribution, and they all large distributions, because the Feds don’t get involved with street-sellers (those being a state issue).
3.) Though the stats aren’t as clear, there’s decent evidence that a majority of American crime is “drug related” by which we mean “the person committing the crime was high at the time.” Though “high” has to be extended to include “drunk.” Most murders are not premeditated, things just escalated… and both people were drunk or high at the moment so their judgment was out. Even burglaries and robberies (when not fueled by drugs) are to support the drug fix.
Ending prohibition will not fix any of those problems -it must be justified on its own merits.