Thought for the day

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

- Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Should drugs be legal?

This informal, unsourced discussion of drug policy is intended to put Brett Kimberlin's lifelong crime spree in the proper perspective. My chief goal is to aid readers in realizing how the justice system should better deal with criminals like Brett Kimberlin, but as side effects, I will talk about many arguments that are posed about whether drugs should be illegal.

To lock up ones neighbors and fellow citizens for drug use is immoral

I personally disapprove of the use of recreational and illegal drugs. But if I had the chance, I  would never vote in favor of locking up my neighbors and fellow citizens who use them. I have peaceful tools of persuasion I can use, and that is my proper and just recourse to carry out my disagreement over whether to use drugs. Sending the courts and police after people who aren't persuaded is heavy handed and immoral. The proper use of court and police power is to resolve disputes and to force bad actors to atone to their victims. Forcefully attacking drug users achieves none of these proper uses, and in fact, it undermines them.

Drug use is not a dire emergency that justifies severe reactions

Some people see my point in the prior paragraph but argue that the consequences of drug use are so dire and awful that extreme, forceful responses must be accepted. The premise is false.

Most users are not addicts

As I said earlier, I don't approve of drug use, but a great majority of people using illegal and "hard" drugs - ranging from marijuana to cocaine to heroin - are not habitual addicts. They are mainly otherwise normal members of society, who mainly obey laws, work for a living, but happen to do things in their spare time I disapprove of. Even those who do form habits normally manage to drop them after some years. Heroin is presented as the scariest, hardest drug. But if you want to know what most heroin use is like, it's actually very similar to alcohol use. A majority of heroin users are occasional users. Some addicts are still functioning acceptably in most areas of life; some other addicts allow their lives to be ruined. Most addicts eventually come to completely drop the drug after some years of their own volition. Some people are on again, off again. The patterns are very similar whether one talks of alcohol, cigarettes, and yes, "scary" heroin or cocaine. Heroin addiction, while serious, does not warrant a massive wholesale inversion of the whole legal system any more than alcohol or cigarette addiction does.

Prohibition makes problems worse rather than better

The "dire emergency" argument is in no way helped by the fact that prohibition tends to make consequences to users WORSE. When the US federal government prohibited alcohol in the 1920s and early 1930s, the business was taken away from reputable, accountable tradesmen, and handed over to criminal gangs such as the mafia, and to fly-by-night scofflaws. One result was several incidents in which the delivery of impure, poisoned product injured or killed tens of thousands of customers. Prohibition curtails or outright denies the use of the justice system to people harmed this way, so, prohibition means that dangerous products, cheating, lying, stealing, and thuggery are no longer deterred in the industry like they would be if the industry were legal. Prohibition not only doesn't protect users from the potential problems of their drugs; it shepherds them in to business with criminals who might expose the users to dangers without the deterrent consequences that would be present if the drug were legal.

I readily acknowledge that the problems of drug addiction can be painful and heart-wrenching.  Solutions are hard to come by. But those claiming to offer prohibition as the solution are selling snake oil.

Addiction connected troubles are not unique enough to warrant uniquely harsh recourse

It's often pointed out that a drug addict often harms people around him. For private matters, the proper response to this is to withdraw (whether partially or fully) from voluntary relationships with the addict in response to his misdeeds. Or, if an addict lies to you or steals from you, your reaction should be basically similar to if a non-addict lied or stole. Apply this logic to any other failing that an addict might experience - all these failings also happen on the part of non addicts and to the extent that the recourse might involve the legal system, the recourse should generally be similar. Handing over an entire industry to criminal gangs is a ridiculous recourse to take.

Prohibition has terrible consequences for people who don't buy, sell, or use drugs

 

Crime and corruption increase due to prohibition

When alcohol was prohibited in the US in the early 20th century, the result was a huge growth in organized crime activity. Over a period of little more than a decade, the murder rate rose by a factor of about three. A much higher percentage of law enforcement officials were corrupted by payments from criminals in the illegal alcohol trade. Meanwhile law enforcement deviated from its productive goal of helping people, and instead wasted more resources on a battle against something people have a perfect right to consume. Resources were also strained by the rise in crime that was a consequence of prohibition. Also note that drug traffickers and retailers often compete with each other not by running more efficient businesses, but by engaging in outright violence. Prohibition is a terrible policy because it rewards the business that is better at violence and corruption, instead of rewarding the business that is most efficient at peaceful use of legitimately acquired resources.

When federal prohibition ended, the US murder rate began a major, nearly continuous decline that lasted for decades. A later long term spike in the murder rate followed beginning in the 1960s and 70s, which suspiciously coincides with a greatly increased law enforcement focus on illegal drugs.

Making drugs illegal hands the trade to criminals, who behave much worse than legitimate businesses

Illegal drug traffickers specialize in violence, threats, fostering and recruiting street gangs, corrupting officials, etc. This is in stark contrast to above-board, legal businesses. If you want to reduce violence, threats, street gangs, or corruption, you want to hand the drug trade back over to legitimate businesses. Legalize it. Completely.

Major Conclusion: drug prohibition concentrates more power and influence in the hands of criminals

If you have no desire to ever use drugs, you should still want them to be legal. That's because prohibition hands the trade over to criminals. It leads to the criminals having more revenue, more influence, more public support, and more opportunity to corrupt the justice system. If you aren't swayed by the drug war's negative effects on small time end users of drugs, you ought to be totally outraged by the drug war's effect on overall criminality, which affects everyone. Including people who personally have nothing to do with drugs or the drug trade. High crime rates, bigger and richer mafias, full jails, and corrupted officials are inevitable and universal costs of prohibition.

What does all this have to do with Brett Kimberlin?

As I said above, drug prohibition takes business away from the peaceful law-abiding population and hands the business over to lying, cheating, violent, disreputable bad actors - such as Brett Kimberlin. Brett cultivated bad, undesirable, dishonest "anti-skills" in his criminal career, including: forgery, perjury, and impersonating federal security personnel. Because of the folly of prohibition, these bad behaviors were HUGELY renumerative to Kimberlin. By age 24, Kimberlin's drug income had bought him his 300 acre property with a big custom 4000 square foot dream home, with a late model Mercedes. He took expensive vacations and romanced girls (in his case, an underage elementary school girl) with his horses, pool, and expensive vacations. He apparently also bought huge amounts of silver, and spent a fortune on a high power expensive Texas drug defense lawyer, along with other lawyers for his other crimes. These expenditures were all funded with drug money. Prohibition was part of the problem here. The prohibition-created underground crime world of the drug trade was like a playground for Brett.

It is also worth noting that the seedy nature of the illegal drug business attracted William Bowman, who helped Brett by doing his dirty work of shooting Julia Scyphers. Such thuggery is no asset in the legitimate business sector, but it is perhaps an asset in the seedy underground criminal scene that surrounded Brett Kimberlin.

Conclusion: drugs should be legal in order to prevent power from concentrating in the hands of violent, dishonest scofflaws like Brett Kimberlin.