Drug Legalization -- They've Lost Their Minds

Seems George Shultz and Paul Volcker are suffering dementia. There is no surer way to guarantee that America becomes a dytopian nightmare than by legalizing recreational drugs.

Is there anything more frightening than the US government forming a partnership with recreational drug makers? What could be worse than a paternship between companies that market addicting producs and a government desperate to maximize tax revenue? Have we learned nothing from our tobacco addiction?

What a nightmare.

A Real Debate About Drug Policy

George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker on why the 'war on drugs' has failed—and what to do next

By GEORGE P. SHULTZ And PAUL A. VOLCKER

"The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world."

That is the opening sentence of a report issued last week by the Global Commission on Drug Policy. Both of us have signed on to this report. Why?

We believe that drug addiction is harmful to individuals, impairs health and has adverse societal effects. So we want an effective program to deal with this problem.

The question is: What is the best way to go about it? For 40 years now, our nation's approach has been to criminalize the entire process of producing, transporting, selling and using drugs, with the exception of tobacco and alcohol. Our judgment, shared by other members of the commission, is that this approach has not worked, just as our national experiment with the prohibition of alcohol failed. Drugs are still readily available, and crime rates remain high. But drug use in the U.S. is no lower than, and sometimes surpasses, drug use in countries with very different approaches to the problem.

At the same time, the costs of the drug war have become astronomical. Inmates arrested for consuming drugs and for possessing small quantities of them now crowd our prisons, where too often they learn how to become real criminals. The dollar costs are huge, but they pale in comparison to the lives being lost in our neighborhoods and throughout the world. The number of drug-related casualties in Mexico is on the same order as the number of U.S. lives lost in the Vietnam and Korean wars.

Throughout our hemisphere, governance and economic development have suffered because of drugs. It is no accident that the initiative for this global commission came from former presidents of Latin American nations. These countries, sometimes with American support, have made strong efforts to reduce drug supplies. But they have increasingly concluded that drug policies in the U.S. are making it more difficult for their people to enjoy security and prosperity.

The problem starts with the demand for drugs. As Milton Friedman put it forcibly over 20 years ago in the pages of this paper: "It is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials."

We do not support the simple legalization of all drugs. What we do advocate is an open and honest debate on the subject. We want to find our way to a less costly and more effective method of discouraging drug use, cutting down the power of organized crime, providing better treatment and minimizing negative societal effects.

Other countries that have tried different approaches include Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal and Australia. What can we learn from these varied experiences, some more successful than others? What can we learn from our own experience in reducing sharply the smoking of cigarettes or in the handling of alcohol after the end of Prohibition?

Simple legalization is by no means the only or safest approach. One possibility is to decriminalize the individual use of drugs while maintaining laws against supplying them, thus allowing law-enforcement efforts to focus on the drug peddlers. Some of the money that is saved can be spent on treatment centers, which drug users are more likely to seek out if doing so does not expose them to the risk of arrest.

The situation that confronts us today is dangerous. After 40 years of concentrating on one approach that has been unsuccessful, we should be willing to take a look at other ways of working to solve this pressing problem. As the global commission concludes: "Break the taboo on debate and reform. The time for action is now."

—Mr. Shultz, former U.S. secretary of state, is a distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Mr. Volcker, former chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, is professor emeritus of international economic policy at Princeton University.

Legalizing Recreational Drugs -- Opening Pandora's Box

Empowering recreational drug developers by legalizing marijuana and, eventually, other substances, will set us on a course of massive recreational drug innovation. That's the bad news. It gets worse from there.

In Quest for 'Legal High,' Chemists Outfox Law

By JEANNE WHALEN

ANTWERP, Belgium—When the housing market crashed in 2008, David Llewellyn's construction business went with it. Casting around for a new gig, he decided to commercialize something he'd long done as a hobby: making drugs.

But the 49-year-old Scotsman didn't go into the illegal drug trade. Instead, he entered the so-called "legal high" business—a burgeoning industry producing new psychoactive powders and pills that are marketed as "not for human consumption."

Mr. Llewellyn, a self-described former crack addict, started out making mephedrone, a stimulant also known as Meow Meow that was already popular with the European clubbing set. Once governments began banning it earlier this year, Mr. Llewellyn and a chemistry-savvy partner started selling something they dubbed Nopaine—a stimulant they concocted by tweaking the molecular structure of the attention-deficit drug Ritalin.

David Llewellyn is part of a wave of chemically savvy entrepreneurs who see gold in the gray zone between legal and illegal drugs.

Nopaine "is every bit as good as cocaine," says Mr. Llewellyn, who has lived in Antwerp on and off since the late 1980s. "You can freebase it. You can snort it like crack." Still, he emphasized, "Everything we sell is legal. I don't want to go to jail for 14 years."

Mr. Llewellyn is part of a wave of laboratory-adept European entrepreneurs who see gold in the gray zone between legal and illegal drugs. They pose a stiff challenge for European law-enforcement, which is struggling to keep up with all the new concoctions. Last year, 24 new "psychoactive substances" were identified in Europe, almost double the number reported in 2008, according to the Lisbon-based European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, or EMCDDA.

The problem is also touching U.S. shores. A new synthetic drug similar to marijuana is increasingly popular, for instance. Some states have started banning it. But many of the other substances and stimulants vexing Europe are less of an issue in the U.S., according to a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Designer Fashions

Among the 'legal highs' that have appeared in recent years:

Mephedrone. Also known as Meow Meow, Drone and M-Cat. Similar to amphetamines such as speed. It has been responsible for at least three deaths in Europe. Recently banned in most European countries.

Naphyrone. Also known as NRG-1. Similar to amphetamines. Banned this year in the U.K.

MDAI. Similar to MDMA, or ecstasy. Still legal in many countries.

Spice. A synthetic cannabinoid that is similar to cannabis. Sprayed on herbal leaves and smoked. Recently banned in most of Europe and many U.S. states.

BZP. Belongs to a class of drugs called piperazines, which mimic the effects of MDMA, or ecstasy. Piperazines are used in industry to make plastics, resins, pesticides and brake fluid.

BZP was once investigated as a potential antidepressant, but the work was abandoned when it was found that the drug had stimulant properties similar to amphetamines. Now banned in many countries.

"The legal high phenomenon is very much European," says Roumen Sedefov, head of supply reduction and new trends at the EMCDDA. New substances tend to hit Europe before the U.S. and other markets, he says, in part because European consumers are more accustomed to buying drugs online. Strong trade links between Europe and southeast Asia, where many of the drugs are made, also play a role, he said. Web sites, no matter where they are based, often market new drugs to Europeans, pricing their wares in euros or British pounds, he said.

European authorities blame mephedrone for the death of three young people in the U.K. and Sweden in recent years. They say it may have contributed to more than 30 additional deaths in the U.K.

The products Mr. Llewellyn sells aren't banned substances. Because he and others market their wares as "not for human consumption," his business is technically legal. Still, authorities don't like what he's doing. Drug-enforcement officials are scrambling to spot and ban harmful new drugs faster. Many have banned substances like mephedrone and naphyrone in recent months, giving them the "class B" status assigned to amphetamines and other drugs.

But with their resources stretched, police say the new drugs aren't as high a priority as fighting "class A" drugs, such as heroin and cocaine.

As he scurries to stay ahead of the law, authorities have put speed bumps, not roadblocks, in his path. Mr. Llewellyn says Belgian customs officials recently raided one of his storehouses and seized his chemicals, threatening to use environmental laws to shut him down. And he says he may have to move one of his production labs from the Netherlands because authorities there are planning to outlaw the use of certain lab equipment without a professional license.

A spokesman for Dutch police said he didn't have any information on Mr. Llewellyn. Belgian customs didn't respond to requests for comment.

Other than that, however, Mr. Llewellyn's business is cruising along largely unimpeded. He and eight employees make drugs in a pair of "underground" labs—one in Holland and a new, $190,000 lab in Scotland. He hawks his wares online at www.alchemylabz.eu, taking payment by bank transfer. He advertises some of the drugs by their formal chemical name and some by nicknames like Euforia or XT.

Mr. Llewellyn says he expects governments to catch wind of Nopaine soon and ban it. Anticipating the move, he says he's got dozens of other products ready to go, including a drug similar to the horse anesthetic Ketamine and something else he claims to be "the closest thing to Ecstasy that ever existed." By the time officials crack down, he says, "we are going to bring out something else."

His products sell for about €20 ($28) a gram, or €4,000 to €5,800 ($5,500 to $8,000) a kilo. By contrast, a gram of cocaine costs roughly €50 to €70 ($69 to $97) in Europe, according to the EMCDDA.

Many users buy small amounts of the legal stuff online, while large wholesalers buy in bulk and sell it on to dealers. They, in turn, peddle the drugs in nightclubs. Mr. Llewellyn travels frequently to promote his latest products to the biggest wholesalers, whom he declines to name.

He and his chief chemist get ideas for new drugs by scanning scientific literature. They pay particularly close attention to new papers published by scholars known for researching mind-altering, psychoactive substances.

David Nichols, a pharmacologist at Purdue University, has been especially valuable, Mr. Llewellyn says. Through his work studying brain receptors, Dr. Nichols has developed a range of psychoactive substances. His papers give a full description of the drugs he's using, including their chemical makeup. This provides Llewellyn and others with a roadmap for making the drugs.

Dr. Nichols says he's well aware of this fan club. "The drugs we make often end up on the black market, and it's very troubling to me," he says. Particularly worrying is that the drugs are rarely tested in humans before hitting the street. Random people sometimes write to him to ask for help in making certain chemicals, he says. He doesn't reply out of caution.

"When people use this stuff chronically, on a weekly basis—suppose it produces liver cancer?" he asks. Also of concern are effects on the kidneys and bone marrow. Most of the designer drugs haven't been tested in humans at all, let alone in large clinical trials. Dr. Nichols says he himself only ever carried out animal tests of the compounds that others are now copying and selling.

Mr. Llewellyn and his colleagues make many of their products with the help of a rotary evaporator—a piece of lab equipment resembling a food processor that heats and evaporates liquid chemicals, turning them into powders. To outfit his new lab in Scotland, he ordered custom-made, stainless-steel equipment from a welder. He says he didn't purchase the equipment from a commercial supplier because it would have asked questions about why he was buying gear normally used for industrial chemical production.

Recent deaths attributed to legal highs like Meow Meow have drawn attention to the drugs in some parts of Europe. Mr. Llewellyn says he stopped selling mephedrone when countries started banning it, although he still scoffs at the idea that the drug is dangerous.

To try to prove his point before European countries began banning mephedrone, he snorted half a gram of it on one of Belgium's evening news programs. "I took a gram, cut it in half, put it in a line and I sniffed it," he says. "They couldn't actually show the sniff but they showed everything else." Afterwards, he says he felt pleasantly buzzed.

Others have had darker experiences with the drug. One teenager in central England started using mephedrone last year when he was offered it at a party. His mother says he was soon addicted, and became aggressive and wired—staying up for days at a time before crashing and refusing to get out of bed. He lost his part-time job and got kicked out of school. After one heated confrontation over Christmas, she kicked him out of the house.

"It had a massive, big effect on the family. I had a nervous breakdown," the mother says.

Her son would buy the powder online, or get it from friends, she says. "It was like he couldn't live without it." After about a year, he managed to quit the drug, she says. Her son declined to comment.

Many U.K. nightclubs search patrons upon entry and place any suspicious substances in so-called "amnesty bins" that are regularly emptied by police. When they see anything potentially new, police often forward the substance to John Ramsey, a toxicologist at St. George's, University of London, who keeps a vast database of new drugs.

Dr. Ramsey and his team specialize in identifying new substances, and have seen a "dramatic increase" in recent years, he says.

"Probably five years ago, the appearance of a new drug was notable—we'd all get together and talk about it—whereas last month, we found six," Dr. Ramsey says. A few were similar in structure to mephedrone and naphyrone, while another was identified as desoxypipradrol. A stimulant, it is similar to pipradrol, a drug once prescribed for weight loss and other uses that fell out of favor because of its potential for abuse.

Police also hear about new drugs from emergency rooms. This summer, a hospital in northwestern England phoned local police after six people in a single week reported taking something called "Ivory Wave." They came to the hospital "paranoid and extremely agitated," with extremely fast heart rates, says cardiologist Kate Willmer, who helped treat them. It took four members of staff to restrain one young woman, who was eventually sent to a mental institution, where she is still being treated, Dr. Willmer said.

James Brokenshire, minister for crime prevention at the U.K.'s Home Office, says police are encouraging hospitals to keep them informed about new drug threats. Law-enforcement agencies also monitor Web sites for signs of new drugs, and are stepping up visits to head shops to keep track of what's being sold. Most sellers of legal highs advertise them as "plant food," "pond cleaner" or "bath salts" not meant for human consumption, as a legal figleaf to protect them from any liability.

Narcotics experts say many of the novel drugs are manufactured in China, where they say lax regulation makes it easy for companies to produce and export a cornucopia of chemicals. Les Iversen, chairman of the U.K.'s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which advises the government on new substances, says customs officials at Heathrow Airport recently seized a large shipment of white powder from China that was labelled "glucose" but contained mephedrone.

China also supplies raw ingredients to manufacturers located elsewhere. Mr. Llewellyn says he buys his raw ingredients online from Chinese suppliers, who charge rock-bottom prices and ask few questions about his business. The powders and liquids arrive by plane in 1-kilogram sacks and 25-liter drums and go to a warehouse in Glasgow before being shipped to his labs.

Chinese officials say the country is taking steps to control the flow of new drugs. On September 1, China began regulating mephedrone as a "category I psychotropic substance," which means anyone importing or exporting it needs a special license. In a written statement, China's State Food and Drug Administration said it has "strengthened monitoring of the situation in the country," and is ready to work with other countries to "exchange information, share resources and jointly respond to new emerging problems of drug abuse."

Mr. Llewellyn, meanwhile, is unfazed. He boasts that his safety testing method is foolproof: He and several colleagues sit in a room and take a new product "almost to overdose levels" to see what happens. "We'll all sit with a pen and a pad, some good music on, and one person who's straight who's watching everything," he says.

Legalize Drugs says Professor Moron, uh, Miron

In another outbreak of stupidity, a Harvard professor has urged legalization of recreational drugs. You know. Heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and marijuana, to name a few.

Every time one of these crackpots erupts in favor of drug legalization, the response from the sane people is near silence. Why? The reasons to oppose legalization are plain as day.

If recreational drugs were legal, advertising of the those drugs would become ubiquitious. Omnipresent. Relentless. Why? Because advertising works. Thus, the use of powerful substances, many of which are highly addicting, would soar.

Imagine the number of sporting events sponsored by recreational drug makers. The stadiums on which their names appear.

But that's far from the worst of it.

Every drug legalization crackpot mentions the potential for tax revenue and the further benefit of reduced law enforcement spending to catch drug criminals. Great.

That's another way of saying the government becomes a partner to drug sellers whose business is selling addicting substances to hapless consumers. As everyone should know, drug dealers want your money. All of it. When a drug consumer is addicted, he willingly forks over all he's got. He'll keep paying until he's broke or dead. But the only time he'll truly stop spending is when he's dead.

We already know the government exploits partnerships with sellers of addictive products. Tobacco. It's true that cigarettes cost little to make. Marketing expenses raise the price to consumers. But a pack of Marlboros sell for $12 in NY City convenience store. Why? Federal, state and local taxes. Everyone wants a piece of this pie, and no one objects to extracting as much money as possible from the pockets of tobacco addicts. It's politically safe to exploit addicts.

Is this what we want from our government? A platform for peddling crystal meth or cocaine from which every state and municipality extracts its piece? There are about 50 million cigarette smokers in the US. The number is declining, partly because people, after almost 50 years of anti-smoking campaigns, are getting the message.

But what does it say if we reverse our moral position by legitimizing the use of dangerous addictive substances for the sake of increasing tax revenue and, astonishingly, claiming that somehow unrestricted access to newly legalized recreational drugs will make a bad situation better?

If we legalize the sale of heroin, cocaine and crystal meth, etc., we have opened the door to the most vile of all possibilities -- enslavement of the population by a government driven by visions of the revenue stream it can extract from helpless addicts. Truly an unholy alliance between government, human weakness and commerce.

Wait. It gets worse. For guidance, drug legalization crackpots like to look at alcohol. But alcohol, the molecule that intoxicates drinkers, contains a specific number of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Whether in beer, wine or liquor, that intoxicating molecule is the same. Recreational drugs fall into a different and far more dangerous form of chemistry.

They are limited only by the creativity of the scientists who develop them. Do we want to live in a nation, a world, where scientists are suddenly motivated to create addicting substances that will induce people to spend all their money? If you want dystopia, drug legalization will do it.

In the corporate world, could there be a more sought-after product than one that is so addicting that consumers will do anything to get it? Talk about brand loyalty.

The pharmaceutical industry is credited with regularly creating miracle drugs, the drugs that save lives, defeat death. Do we want the same brilliant people to design drugs for sinister, mercenary and destructive purposes?

Meanwhile, what would legalization of recreational drugs do for the prescription drug industry in general? Vicodin? If heroin were legal, then what reason would remain for selling Vicodin by prescription? Or any other painkiller?

What would legalization mean for imports? Cocaine and heroin are imports. I suppose, if they were legalized, some smart scientists would develop plants capable of thriving somewhere in the US. Till then, is there an argument to support the importation of heroin made from opium poppies grown in Afghanistan? Should we fund the muslim terrorists who are killing American troops? Should we enrich the narco-terrorists in Colombia? There's no reason to think other nations would surrender their national interests to coca or poppy growers.

Moreover, there's no reason to think the violence on the Mexican side of the Mexico/US border would decline if the US were to legalize drugs.

What would drug legalization do for tourism? Consider the wine industry. First, has the growth of the wine industry led to lower prices for wine? No. Second, wine tours are common. Drug legalization would mean the return of opium dens. Drug tourists would come to the US on dope-smoking excursions and for tours of drug laboratories where visitors would sample the goods, just like they do at the Jack Daniels distillery, at breweries and wineries.

As consumers became inured to the effects, what would they do to increase and intensify their highs? Would it surprise anyone to see a surge in intravenous drug use? It's the obvious step. Of course pharmaceutical companies would do their best to create even more potent products. How would the law regulate these legal drugs?

Then there are social consequences. Legal or not, as with alcohol, employers would have to take a stand against on-the-job recreational drug use. Municipalities would have to prosecute drivers operating vehicles under the influence.

Furthermore, legal use of recreational drugs will undoubtedly cut different paths through different socio-economic and racial groups. Substance abuse is already a big problem in minority neighborhoods. There's already a disturbing link between drug use and prostitution. Drug legalization would make it even easier for exploiters to enslave young girls and put them to work on the street. At the same time, the exposure to disease would multiply. They would face the usual risk of contracting venereal diseses. But their risk of contracting AIDS would increase as a result of contact with johns and with IV drug use their exploiters would likely encourage.

Meanwhile, what would legalization do to the price of drugs? As pricing of alcohol suggests, some drugs would sell for very little, and some would sell for a lot. Reputation, snob appeal, product quality, all of the elements of consumerism would result in a range of prices. Majorska or Grey Goose.

Is it conceivable that abuse of currently illegal substances would subside if the substances were both legal and less expensive? The thought is folly.

Just Say "Yes!" Legalizing Drugs Is Good for Society ... and the Economy, Harvard Prof. Says

Oct 06, 2010

California residents will vote in November on whether or not to legalize marijuana. If they do vote "yes," says Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron, that should only be the beginning.

All drugs should be legalized nationwide, Miron says. Pot, cocaine, LSD, crystal-meth --- you name it.

"Legalizing drugs would save roughly $41.3 billion per year in government expenditure on enforcement of prohibition. Of these savings, $25.7 billion would accrue to state and local governments, while $15.6 billion would accrue to the federal government," Miron claims in a recent Cato Institute report he co-authored.

According to their website, "The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $46.7 billion annually, assuming legal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco. Approximately $8.7 billion of this revenue would result from legalization of marijuana and $38.0 billion from legalization of other drugs."

But won't we become a nation of drug addicts?

No, says Miron. Walk down any city street and you can already buy legal drugs in multiple establishments: Caffeine at Starbucks, nicotine at the supermarket, alcohol at bars and restaurants. And we're not ALL addicted to all of these drugs.

Our current drug policy doesn't work, Miron observes. Despite ~$40 billion spent on enforcement and prosecution, drug use is still widespread. Meanwhile, because the products are illegal, they're dangerous, low-quality, and unregulated, and they generate zero tax revenue.

Legalizing drugs would solve those problems, Miron says. It would help close the budget deficit. And it would eliminate a bizarre double standard, in which Americans are encouraged to drink and smoke themselves to death -- while guzzling addictive coffee and tea -- but become criminals if they dare to get stoned.

Doctor's Orders -- Smoke Pot in New Jersey

The latest legislative move in New Jersey pushes the country a little closer to the slippery slope of drug legalization. However, until that time, New Jersey is likely to experience the arrival of ill migrants drawn by the fact that they can get a weed prescription from a doctor.

Will medical insurance cover prescriptions for pot? Seems as though it will. How long will it take for the list of pot-treatable ailments to reach epic length? Undoubtedly anorexics will get a double dose. Drs Cheech and Chong will make house calls, delivering good weight priced at insurance-company rates.

New Jersey Lawmakers Pass Medical Marijuana Bill

The New Jersey Legislature approved a measure on Monday that would make the state the first in the region and the 14th in the nation to legalize the use of marijuana for medical reasons.

The measure, passed on the final day of the legislativesession, would allow patients diagnosed with severe illnesses like cancer, AIDS, muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis to have access to marijuana distributed through state-monitored dispensaries.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine has said he would sign it into law before leaving office next Tuesday.