Last month critics of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s murderous anti-drug crusade were dismayed by the official White House summary of a “very friendly” telephone conversation in which Donald Trump praised the bloodthirsty authoritarian for “fighting very hard to rid [his] country of drugs.” A newly revealed transcript of the April 29 call, prepared by the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs and published yesterday by The Washington Post, shows that Trump’s comments were even more alarming than they sounded in the summary.
After some initial pleasantries, Trump announces the purpose of his call. “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem,” he says. “Many countries have a problem. We have a problem. But what a great job you are doing, and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”
Duterte thanks Trump and adds, “This is the scourge of my nation now, and I have to do something to preserve the Filipino nation.” Trump repeats his unqualified endorsement of Duterte’s drug policies. “I understand that and fully understand that,” he says, “and I think we had a previous president who did not understand that, but I understand that, and we have spoken about this before.”
Trump is alluding to Barack Obama’s criticism of Duterte’s methods, which have included thousands of extrajudicial killings, routine falsification of evidence, and public incitement of murder as a justified response to drug addicts as well as drug dealers. While Obama may have had a problem with Duterte’s approach, Trump is saying, he understands that fighting drugs requires extreme measures.
Words fail me.
But let us just suppose for the sake of argument that words did not fail me.
A lot of difference that would make, right?
The complete insanity of drug laws and their supporters really challenges my ability to be patient and reasonable. As the murdering Philippine thug dictator (and Trump friend) Duterte shows by personal example as a Fentanyl user, it is considered perfectly OK to have your pain relieved by drugs — as long as they come from a doctor. But if you are too poor or too dysfunctional to go that route, you become a “dangerous” criminal worthy of the most severe punishment.
For not having the right document!
Many people use drugs to medicate pain. Yet the war on drugs makes criminals out of those who self-medicate their pain, particularly emotional pain (which doctors will not relieve with pain meds, but which some people need). Why create massive crime — and massive criminal opportunities — for such an irrational, downright frivolous reason? What was the problem with the pre-1914 situation when drugs could be purchased anywhere without prescription? The answer, we are told, is that people were becoming addicted, which is bad, so we have to have laws! Which imprison people for something that ought to be a matter of personal conscience, personal health choices. That these choices are bad is not a proper concern of the law — any more than whether people are making poor food choices or failing to exercise.
Then there are the emotional people who have lost family members to overdoses. They organize and agitate endlessly, and it leads to emotion-driven legislation. The drug war seems hopelessly destined to continue on forever. It makes me hate what this country has become and most of all hate the human mind for its pettiness and complete lack of logic.
Any economist can see what is happening. Make something illegal that people want, and you will get more of it because you create criminal opportunities. (And of course in the mathematical sense, the best way to increase crime is to create more crimes, by making more things illegal. More laws = more crime.) It is the most simple logic, yet so few people are able to grasp it that I am constantly astonished. Emotion does not listen to logic.
So, insane as it is, we turn a simple health issue into a crime issue, thus creating an economic issue which is in turn exacerbated by laws which makes drug user criminals who must pay exorbitant prices for relatively worthless substances. A pill that sells for 50 cents with a prescription sells for $50 on the street. This is pure madness, but simple economics. Yet instead of analyzing it economically, we analyze it MORALLY!
What does this have to do with morality? I realize economics is often fraught with moral analyses (hence Marxism), but what is moral or immoral about easing pain?
The answer is that it does not matter because posing such questions or debating them is a useless waste of time. There is no reasoning with the anti-drug people. I have concluded that the only way to stop the war on drugs would be to render it totally, ridiculously unwinnable by means of genetic engineering (like, say, morphine-producing yeast, which would be uncontrollable once in the hands of ordinary users). Anyway, this is no longer a free country, and it has not been for some time. Trump will do nothing to increase individual freedom; he seems hell-bent on subtracting even more.
It’s very depressing. Mostly because I am saying nothing here I haven’t said in countless posts.
Comments
19 responses to ““What A Great Job You Are Doing””
Eric, I’ve been sympathetic to the libertarian view of drugs from the beginning. The laws against marijuana use are no different than prohibition of the ’20s. But having to deal with a close family member, a young person who I thought would be my heir, someone who had (and I say that in the past tense very sadly) the potential to do great things, and see the destruction brought about by opiate addiction first hand has totally changed my view. I don’t have an answer. But I do know, after fully researching it with hours and hours of time reading articles, spending time with an old friend who volunteers at a rehab clinic, and getting to know the people who deal with this problem daily, that allowing drugs like heroin or its morphine substitutes to become easily available is no answer.
You talk about the $50 street price of a morphine derivative pill and the crime it causes as justification for ending all drug prohibition laws. That is a very false and totally bogus red herring. The fact is, and you know it, that the real thing, heroin, is almost as cheap as dirt. And its getting cheaper. It is being flooded into this country from Mexico and elsewhere precisely because we are in the process of legalizing pot and the cartels need another money maker.
I’ve seen first hand the physical and mental destruction that is opiate addiction. You will never, ever convince me that it anything but pure evil. And yes, that is moral condemnation. All drugs are not relative.
Frank,
I’m sorry to hear about your family member dying from drugs. I lost a number of friends to drug overdoses, smoking, alcoholism and AIDS, but the idea of criminalizing the behaviors that lead to such deaths solves nothing. Heroin is flooding the market now as a direct result of the crackdown on medically prescribed painkillers, which is why it is cheaper. I believe that if all of these substances were freely available, and doctors were free to prescribe whatever they want to whomever they want, it would be easier for addicts to manage their addictions safely and have medical help.
Current policies are incoherent.
https://reason.com/archives/2017/04/19/harm-reduction-an-alternative-to-incoher
The pre-1914 situation of no laws would be better.
Obviously, none of this is to suggest that opiate addiction is a good thing. It is terrible. But why compound it by imprisoning people for self harm?
I’m sorry for your loss – but
A magnified look at a tragedy proves nothing. There are millions of sob stories in the under-dressed city. One could easily substitute almost anything. “my uncle drank himself to death, ban alcohol” “my niece died in a car accident, lower the speed limit” “my grandfather fell off a ladder, ban aluminum”
It’s all one big, fat red, or at least pink, herring.
btw, where was your family while it was happening?
But why compound it by imprisoning people for self harm?
Of course that is true. Use and possession for use shouldn’t be a criminal offense. But how can anyone justify the dealer who gets teenagers hooked on a drug that will not let go? Who supplies narcotics that kill upon touch? Who sells poison?
I’ve read all the arguments and once believed them. This isn’t about personal choice. It’s that it simply doesn’t make sense to allow society to disintegrate without putting up a fight. And if you think decriminalizing drugs is right, then I challenge you to at the very least be as vocal about stopping government funding of addiction. You go into almost any nursing home and you’ll see opiate addicted old people on Medicaid. Then there’s the sham of opiate addicted bums getting their next fix from a government disability check. Same with doctor’s who are forced to prescribe oxy this or hydro that to Medicare patients. The VA is one of the biggest drug pushers in the damn country. When I signed up for VA medical benefits, that was the first, THE FIRST, thing they asked “are you in any pain?”
You won’t like this, but I’ve come to almost, not quite, but almost admire countries like Malaysia that execute drug dealers. They are evil incarnate.
14-Year Veteran Undercover Cop Exposes Truth About The Drug War: “I Used To Believe I Was Doing Good”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-16/14-year-veteran-undercover-cop-exposes-truth-about-drug-war-i-used-believe-i-was-doi
“When I went into policing I thought addicts had made the mistake of trying drugs and had no willpower to stop. Actually, problematic drug users – or at least all the ones I knew – were self medicating. Most of the heroin users I knew were self-medicating for childhood trauma, whether physical or sexual. As an undercover officer I spent a great deal of time getting to know these people.
===
I have been saying that for over 12 years.
What I’m looking for now is a Christian explanation for making war on abused children.
Let’s try this. Assuming drugs are every bit as bad as the drug warriors have been telling me, how, exactly do we stop it? 40 years of the drug war hasn’t done it. Throwing drug users in jail hasn’t done it. The Egyptian government used to execute hashish users. Didn’t work. The Japanese used to execute heroin users, with a samurai sword, and it didn’t work.
Funny how conservatives like to claim they believe in human nature, yet they deny that people naturally want drugs.
What will work? Exactly how much blood and treasure is it worth? Some sort of combination Spanish Inquisition / HUAC? “Have you now or have you ever hauled the smoke?”
A new Albigensian Crusade? What? I’d like to see a credible plan for elimination of all drugs deemed “icky-yuckypoo” by the authorities. Spread sheets, Gantt charts, the whole 9 yards, like a business proposal. Convince me.
Heroin is inherently an inexpensive product. Probably worth a few dollars a kilo on the open market absent the drug war. Why not drop bags of H out of helicopters and let anyone who wants to drug themselves to their heart’s content so the rest of us can get on with life while they chlorinate themselves out of the gene pool? Could it be any worse than the present regime?
And Frank,
There are no drugs that grab users and won’t let go. None.
There is a simpler explanation:
People in chronic pain chronically take pain relievers.
Just because the pain wasn’t identified doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
But there are some problems. Because of the larger dose required heroin is safer than fentanyl and related substances. And opium is safer than heroin. But that runs into this law:
The Iron Law of Prohibition. “The stronger the enforcement, the stronger the drugs.”
Your close family member was a victim of government.
Frank,
Drug dealers are evil incarnate?
They are businessmen (in a Black Market) serving an under served population.
It comes with all the defects of a Black Market. The way to remedy those defects is to make the product legal. Then you can get some quality control. And antidotes widely distributed.
Frank,
Portugal solved the problem without the need to murder anyone. As did the Swiss (on their second try).
You might want to have a look at how they did it.
OK Frank.
If you think there is a government solution – why is the US Government guarding the opium fields in Afghanistan?
I have had some thoughts on that:
The Trillion Dollar A Year Drug War Scam
Totally off topic”
Another music legend dies.
Good work. You should look into how England, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Japan–even Holland, Switzerland and US companies and outfits–dumped opiates on China. The only thing that can stop addictive narcotics is freedom, that is, competition from things that are recreational, rather than addictive stupefacients. All of the severe economic crises since 1893 have been caused or worsened by prohibitionist looting. Learn about how prohibitionism makes the economy falter and collapse in much the way communism makes economies falter and collapse.
One of the things Western observers of Asia generally miss is that the stated justification is even less likely to be the real motive than it is in the West. Which local family factions benefit here? Is there a foreign thread that runs through the drug trade? Is it just a matter of local balance of power, with drug traders getting too much against weak competition?
Kind of like white city liberals pushing gun control because they’re afraid of black people and want to disarm them. But their religion doesn’t let them say that directly, so it’s somehow all about rednecks they’ve never met with guns they’ve never seen.Uh-huh.
The other thing is that the language of diplomacy needs to be considered. It’s not like Trump is going to say:
“Yeah, you’re a bit nuts, but we have zero interest in bothering you about your internal affairs, which would get us nothing and make our position in the Pacific harder to deal with once you ally with China. ‘Cause unlike the last guy, we actually care about America’s strategic position. Filipinos? If they’re in the Philippines, that isn’t our circus. So fine, whatever, knock yourself out.”
But that is the basic translation into English.
Hank,
“If the trade is ever legalized, it will cease to be profitable from that time. The more difficulties that attend it, the better for you and us.” — Directors of Jardine-Matheson
http://www.ctrl.org/boodleboys/boddlesboys2.html
Another data point:
https://thefederalist.com/2017/05/25/surprising-link-broken-families-americas-opioid-crisis/
This resonates with a landmark study by the Centers for Disease Control that strongly linked addiction to childhood stressors in the family, finding a link stronger than that between obesity and diabetes. Childhood stressors like child abuse, drug abuse, divorce, and dysfunction in the household were usually combined in the extreme cases on the streets of Vancouver East-Side, or in “The Jungle” of Seattle. This tracks closely with those tormenting stories of Mate’s patients, and the daily caseloads of forensic experts and addiction specialists of the front-lines.
study by the Centers for Disease Control:
http://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(98)00017-8/fulltext?cc=y=
addiction specialists:
https://acestoohigh.com/2017/05/02/addiction-doc-says-stop-chasing-the-drug-focus-on-aces-people-can-recover/
Hillary was right!
http://classicalvalues.com/2011/08/hillary-was-right/
I thought Vermont was cool…
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/2017/05/30/vermont-governor-ruins-states-pot-party-vetoes-legalized-weed/
Interesting comments/reaction on Insty to some anti-pain-killer hysteria from NBCnews.com.
I think you need to stop assuming all of the right is pro-prohibition.