R rated – language
Selling drugs in the inner cities is the worst job in America. The pay is low and the death rate is much higher than the death rate in Iraq. Drug prohibition has literally created a war zone in American inner cities.
A University of Chicago economist who lived with a gang for ten years looks at the details from an economic and sociological perspective. The talk lasts about 22 minutes and is given by one of the researchers on the project, economist Steven Levitt.
Eric tells me that the video does not show up on some browsers. If you are having trouble here is a alternate Youtube version.
Some commenters are wondering about drug addiction. Glad you asked:
Addiction Is A Genetic Disease
Fear memories, the amygdala, and the CB1 receptor
Cross Posted at The Astute Bloggers
The Worst Job in America
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23 responses to “The Worst Job in America”
Much the same can be found in the authors’ “Freakonomics.”
It provides good jobs for lawyers, judges, cops,bail bondsmen, prison guards, shrinks and tax agents to pay them. These jobs are of the type of the new industries of the future for America. You don’t think we’re going to make anything, do you?
So, the drug laws have that going for them, which is nice.
Levitt is one of the authors.
Lots of “rightards” like me say legalize it. I agree with Paul, the drug war has less to do with left vs right, it has more to do with a large group of people protecting their lucrative careers.
Never forget that profits on cocaine and heroin are a major, often THE major, source of profits for terrorists and other enemies world-wide, notably, Islamists, Latin American Communists, and North Korea.
Gee, I always thought the worst job in America, with the highest percentage rate of on the job
deaths, was..um..President.
So how is legalization going to work? How many days will go by before the first lawsuits hit and the whole industry is driven underground with the same drug territorial killings, the same addicts stealing, robbing and killing to feed their habits from the same dealers (now just unlicensed). The only way to legalize drugs without the same problems is for the government to supply the drugs (with no shortages) at no charge. Yuk.
mikem,
Uh, how did it work with alcohol prohibition?
Once you lower the profits gangs lose interest.
As always the free market works.
Coming from someone on the law enforcement side of the fence, I could care less if they legalize all the drugs, as long as they put an additive in them that makes the users sterile. :}
Addiction is a genetic disese initiated by trauma.
PTSD is an example. A lot of people smoke pot for mild PTSD. Those with a heavier case take heavier drugs. Anecdotal evidence and medical studies have shown that almost all women heroin addicts were sexually molested.
So we should steralize the traumatized?
Also note that police get PTSD from on the job trauma.
Addiction Is A Genetic Disease
Fear memories, the amygdala, and the CB1 receptor
I lean in favor of gradual legalization. Try legalizing pot, see how that works, move on to the next drug if it looks worth it.
However. Genetic vulnerability is not the same as cause, and trauma is not always in the background of the addict. I’ve been doing emergency psych for 30 years – and taking social histories – and think you overestimate that. It’s a fair point to keep in mind in any legislative or social discussion, but don’t oversell it. People often use drugs as a response to anxiety in general, of which trauma is only one possible cause. And sometimes, it’s hard to see what they are anxious about.
Personal example: my two adopted sons were multiply abused by alcoholic parents and placed in an orphanage in Romania (read: Mouth of Hell). So do I just give up, not bother to try and keep them from addiction? Once you have acknowledged that they can be helped – trained – to avoid, you have admitted that personal choice is a large, not merely anxillary part of our behavior. None of our choices is fully free or fully determined.
Legalize them. Tax them and treat the addicts. Prohibition didn’t work before, and it’s not working now.
I guess our ancestors were smarter than we are. They learned quicker.
Legalize them, but only if obtained from a free government dispensary. When it comes to free markets, nothing is freer than free. With free as your competitor, you go out of business, along with your supply chain all the way up the line. The cost to taxpayers is nothing compared to the existing cost.
First off, there’s a whole “Chicken-and-Egg” question with drugs and PTSD. Both drugs and the surroundings they tend to be found in can lead to stress and trauma. How do we know which came first?
Second, brutal as it sounds, how do you know when the the drug users are lying? It’s better to be a victim than a fuck-up and it’s easy as Hell to just invent a hard-luck story.
Assistant Village Idiot,
Anti-anxiety drugs are big pharma’s biggest sellers.
So in effect the drug war is a war on people who are not buying big pharma’s product.
What a business model – buy from a competitor and go to jail.
Who are some of the biggest contributors to the Drug Free America campaign? Big pharma.
They are probably just trying to do their civic duty. Just ask their accountants.
BTW I think you make a valid point. We don’t know all the reasons for drug taking. So we perescute a class people because we don’t understand them. i.e. the standard reason.
Remo,
Female heroin users are almost invarialby found to be sexually abused. Look at the work of Dr. Lonnie Shavelson.
So how did the drugs cause the sexual abuse?
In addition, trauma that happens in the pre-verbal stage may not be identified.
Also depending on genetics the level of trauma required might be quite variable across the susceptible population.
The worst part of all this is that because of the government bias re: prohibition, addicts are not a well studied population. Dr. Shavelson did his work on his own dime.
In any case we are not going to solve an obvious medical problem with police.
I have heard the Big Pharma competitor argument before – perhaps from you, though I think it was over at Tigerhawk. I find it extremely unpersuasive. Medicines target specific receptors and conditions and are studied for dosage. Abusable drugs just happen to work, sort of, so the action is repeated. Marijuana is far less effective, and its side effects are much worse, than the SSRI’s, for example.
Even Xanax and Valium, much as I think they should be avoided, have legitimate uses.
Substance abuse is well-studied in all the journals I read. It is, in fact, a primary topic.
AVI,
So if there are better medicines why are we throwing people in jail rather than treating their problems? Cannaibis may not be the best medicine (some Drs. disagree – see below – and the “Fear…” link above), however it may be the best medicine for the price.
It is possible you saw a comment of mine on Tigerhawk. It was probably on a thread about the military and PTSD. I do remember a comment or two on the subject there.
Here is a Dr. who thinks Cannabis is the Best Medicine.
Here is what the discoverer of the chemical synthesis of THC and the CB1 receptor, Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, has to say:
PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System
here is an interesting one about the aftermath of the American Civil War:
The Soldiers Disease
Chronic drug use is a symptom. Our drug war is all about fighting symptoms. Notice how well it is Not working?
One upon a time Drs. would prescribe cannabis to alcoholics, because it solved the problem (drinking to relieve fear/pain memories) and was less harmful to the body. Congress in its infinite wisdom outlawed that.
We are not going to find the answers without more study. Prohibition laws directly interfere with that study.
Brad’s Feb. 26 comment must resonate with a lot of law enforcement and medical people. I have been pretty much insulated most of my life from direct contact with the problems addiction causes in families. Some recent efforts to help people climb out of that lifestyle have forcefully demonstrated how often addicts are completely unable to respond adequately to the needs of their children. Their self-absorption is almost total in some cases. And the addicts tend to drive away family members and others who could help their children.
We are also working with the children of a paranoid schizophrenic at this time. She does not abuse drugs, and might in fact benefit from the right drugs. She also tends to shut people who could help her children out of their lives while allowing predatory people into their lives. Her children have many problems, but their situation is still not as dire as the situation of some children of meth users we have met. Her ex-husband’s family manages to stay in touch with the children despite her periodic irrational hostility toward them.
Addiction is only a lifestyle because of prohibition.
Other wise it would be just another medical problem.
If just half the money we spend on drug law enforcement every year ($40 bn minimum State and Federal) was spent for medical research on addiction we might actually make some progress.
BTW schizophrenia is 50% genetic and 50% environmental. My guess is the environmental is similar to the environmental triggers for PTSD.
I have no data, but I think the illegality of drugs is only part of the lifestyle profile of addicts. And I think the medical condition of some addicts, specifically meth addicts, severely limits their ability to care for children regardless of the additional lifestyle changes which come with illegality.
Alcoholism greatly affects children of alcoholics even though prohibition has ended. Changes in their interpersonal relationships often follow a predictable destructive pattern, leading to the formation of groups like Al-Anon. Alcohol-related domestic and street violence are very common.
This, to me, makes irrational the Left’s current tendency to single out tobacco as uniquely evil among the legal forms of self-medication. Though clearly damaging to the body, tobacco seldom, if ever, has devastating effects on the tobacco-users interpersonal relationships due to personality changes, nor does it typically induce violent behavior.
The prohibition of tobacco in more and more venues is a reminder that the illegal status of drugs stems from the efforts of lawmakers to do something about the perceived adverse effects of drug use on society. But I think lawmakers are straining at gnats with regard to tobacco. The Left seems to be somewhat preoccupied with physical health lately.
The illegality of drugs makes gangs part of the lifestyle of many addicts, which greatly compounds the problems of their children. But I’m pretty confident that meth addicts would still remind me of shizophrenics even if meth were legal. And meth has been suggested as a possible trigger for irreversible shizophrenia, as has marijuana. It would be interesting to know if this is because people in some pre-schizophrenic states often self-medicate or because of an actual chemical triggering process.
My recent experiences with meth addicts include a family where the immigrant parents are bragging that their younger daughter has kicked meth while in prison for pushing. She started using at 13 at the instigation of a boyfriend and is now 20, with rotten teeth. The older daughter, who has two children, is still a user, but has never used as heavily as her sister. She has never been in trouble with the law but is an object of great shame and calumny in the family.
She is struggling to quit. She acts like her emotional development was arrested when she started using. I recently took her two children’s books to read with her daughter, but this made her feel guilty because she still hasn’t been able to make herself sit down with her child to read them. She is just starting to realize what she has missed during the years she has been using but has a hard time seeing a way out of her situation. She has put herself on a list for a residential rehab program, where she would not be able to leave the campus once she started. Her parents oppose this move because they believe it demonstrates “weakness”, despite the success of their younger daughter at kicking meth while in prison. She has now moved out of their home due to increased conflict.
She has recently warned a slightly younger meth addict not to go down the same path she has gone down. The latter young woman has an 8-month old infant, whom she cannot currently bear to be around. She is “stressed out” because the infant caught a cold. She is perhaps 20, but looks 40, with vacant eyes. She wanders around nervously, trying to find someone who is willing to spend some time with her. She lives with a family to whom she is not related. They care for the infant in a perfunctory manner.
Concerning PTSD, my husband has a colleague who sufferes from PTSD from Vietnam and who self-medicated with marijuana for years. He recently commented that Zoloft has greatly decreased his symptoms of PTSD.
What a lot of self-justifying smoke and mirrors horseshit. Everyone I grew up with took drugs, some still do, some are in the gutter. They did it because it was the cool thing to do. Some grew out of it and have lives. some didn’t and do it in front of their children – hopefully inspiring them to skip a generation of abuse as with so many other things…
PTSD? Don’t make me laugh! These were spoiled indulged brats, and drug abuse fixed them in that mindset for life. Some people decide to learn, and live, and grow – and others decide to party. You make your choices and accept the consequences. As to harm reduction through legalization, why is nobody asking what all the hardcases who make/import/deal the shit going to do then? Sell Bibles door to door? Wake UP!
Interesting point of view Mike.
The NIDA says addiction is a genetic disease.
You have evidence to the contrary?
What is your take on PTSD and the edocannabinoid system?
The Max Planck mice studies?
I have science on my side Mike. What have you got besides opinions?