Reducing Gun Violence By Legalizing Drugs

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, there has, understandably, been a new wave of advocacy of policy proposals aimed at preventing future incidents of the same kind. However, gun violence in schools is already extremely rare, with the average child far more at risk of dying in a car accident or backyard pool accident than in school. And we are unlikely to reduce the already low incidence of mass shootings by gun control or other policy changes. Fortunately, as Yale law professor Dan Kahan explains at the Cultural Cognition Project blog, we can achieve a significant reduction in violence by legalizing drugs:

[W]hile the empirical evidence on the relationship between gun control and homicide is (at this time at least) utterly inconclusive, there certainly are policies out there that we have very solid evidence to believe would reduce gun-related homicides very substantially.
The one at the top of the list, in my view, is to legalize recreational drugs such as marijuana and cocaine.
The theory behind this policy prescription is that illegal markets breed competition-driven violence among suppliers by offering the prospect of monopoly profits and by denying them lawful means for enforcing commercial obligations.
The evidence is ample. In addition to empirical studies of drug-law enforcement and crime rates, it includes the marked increase in homicide rates that attended alcohol prohibition and the subsequent, dramatic deline of it after repeal of the 18th Amendment.

Kahan makes a number of other good points in his post, and cites lots of additional evidence. As they say, read the whole thing.
As an extra bonus, this approach to reducing gun violence doesn’t threaten anyone’s civil liberties or Second Amendment rights. It would actually increase protection for civil liberties by cutting back on the many abuses associated with the War on Drugs, such as bogus asset forfeitures and paramilitary paramilitary police raids that often kill or injure innocent people, and the erosion of the Fourth Amendment. And, unlike stepped-up gun control or “zero tolerance” policies of the sort we got after Columbine, it would actually save the government a great deal of money by reducing expenditures on enforcement efforts and prisons. Drug legalization would also help promote family values in poor communities, which is both good in itself and might help reduce violence still further.
As President Obama said in Newtown, “we can do better than this” when it comes to curbing gun violence. Cutting back on the War on Drugs is a great place to start. Polls show that marijuana legalization, at least, is rapidly gaining in popularity. That might give the president and other politicians the chance to effect change we can believe in in this field.

via volokh.com

Hillary Clinton Reminds a Hurting Latin America That She Is Opposed to Drug Legalization - Hit & Run : Reason.com

Mike Riggs|Nov. 29, 2012 7:43 pm

At a forum hosted by Foreign Policy magazine, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reminded the leaders of Latin America, whose countries have been savaged by drug-war violence, that the Obama administration, and Clinton in particular, are opposed to legalizing drugs as a means of making those countries less reminiscent of failed states:

"I respect those in the region who believe strongly that [U.S. legalization] would end the problem," Clinton said Thursday at a Washington D.C. forum hosted by Foreign Policy magazine. "I am not convinced of that, speaking personally."
Some Central American leaders have urged the United States to consider other approaches to domestic drug usage — citing ruthless drug cartels that murder thousands of their citizens. Several Central American countries are considering limited legalization of drugs within their borders.
"I think when you've got ruthless vicious people who have made money one way and it's somehow blocked, they'll figure out another way," she said. "They'll do kidnapping they'll do extortion."
Speaking about the two states that recently legalized marijuana, Clinton repeated the Obama administration position that they haven't formulated a response yet.
"This is an ongoing debate," she said. "We are formulating our own response to the votes of two of our states as you know — what that means for the federal system, the federal laws and law enforcement."
"I think you can, with a comprehensive strategy succeed in certainly pushing back the tide of violence and corruption that drug trafficking brings," she said.

Clinton's statement about ballot initiatives in Colorado and Washington represents the largest number of words a named official of this administration has uttered regarding the single biggest change in drug policy this century. Good on Clinton for acknowleding that it happened.
It's also fascinating to me how Clinton has shifted on this topic. Here's what she said during a Mexico City trip in 2009:

"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians."

Here she is in February 2011:

Maerker: In Mexico, there are those who propose not keeping going with this battle and legalize drug trafficking and consumption. What is your opinion?
Clinton: I don't think that will work. I mean, I hear the same debate. I hear it in my country. It is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it, and I don't think that—you can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped.

And November 2012: "I am not convinced of that, speaking personally."
Since when do personal convictions matter in deciding policies that directly affect billions of people?

via reason.com

back in the day it was the lady warriors who campaigned against the evils of alcohol. Today we have soccer Moms and pantsuit brigades who think of vice in the same manner.

Rats on cocaine love Miles Davis, and other dumb animal research paid for with tax dollars

snort! yeah... what comes to mind is John Belushi playing the piano

(Daily News) Taxpayers may feel kind of blue when they discover their dollars went to fund a study to determine rats like to bop to the music of Miles Davis while hopped up on cocaine.
The study, which was performed at Albany Medical College, drew jeers from the animal rights group In Defense of Animals and landed it on its top ten list of Real Ridiculous Research.
The research found that sober rats don’t really like music that much. After the silence, the rats liked Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” more than Miles Davis’s iconic jazz tune “Four.”
But when the rats were given doses of cocaine, their tasted shifted and they gravitated toward the jazz.
... Other studies that made the group’s list included the effect of lemon scent on monkey erections, contagious yawning in chimpanzees and the role of single mothers in the prairie vole community.

Sigmond Freud Snort!

Sigmund was eager to employ cocaine as an antidote for his best friend’s morphine addiction and continued to snort cocaine after his friend's death from the mix of two chemicals. (MORE)

(JIDF) Sigmund Freud's cocaine problem :

cocaine devastating Colombian rainforests

MPs on the home affairs select committee said the drug was devastating Colombian rainforests because trees are knocked down to grow coca plants.

Group chairman Keith Vaz said: "We were horrified to learn for every few lines of cocaine snorted in a London club, four square metres of rainforest is destroyed."

Un Office on Drugs and Crime chief Antonio Maria Costa added: "Europeans know they shouldn't buy blood diamonds or clothes made by slaves in sweatshops.

"Yet with cocaine the opposite occurs. Worse still, models who wouldn't dare to wear a tiger fur coat show no qualms about flaunting their cocaine use."

The MPs also warned that more people in Britain were dying from the drug - cocaine caused 235 sudden deaths in 2008. The committee said that it led to heart disease, the erosion of brain function and could be "extremely toxic" when mixed with alcohol.

Members called for police to get tougher on users with more hand-held drug tracing machines in public.

And they said the operation against drugs bosses was "woefully inadequate" with only about 12% of coke coming to the UK being confiscated. Mr Vaz added that the perception of the white powder as safe was a "myth".

via mirror.co.uk