Update on the war on drugs

Posted by Marc Hodak on December 20, 2007 under Unintended consequences | Comments are off for this article

The Coast Guard gives a helpful update of their success this past year. They celebrate a record year for cocaine seizures “with 355,755 pounds seized, worth more than $4.7 billion.” They trumpet these high-profile achievements:

* In September, the Coast Guard and its partners interdicted a vessel loaded with 3,600 gallons of cocaine dissolved in diesel fuel, a technique used by smugglers to avoid detection. The liquid cocaine could be converted into 15,800 pounds of pure cocaine.
* In August, Coast Guard, Navy and Customs and Border Protection crews interdicted and boarded a self-propelled, semi-submersible vessel loaded with an estimated $352 million of cocaine.
* The Coast Guard made its largest maritime cocaine seizure when it intercepted the Panamanian vessel Gatun carrying more than 33,500 pounds of the narcotic — or approximately 20 tons — in March 2007.

Cmdr. Robert Watts, chief of Coast Guard drug and migrant interdiction, said, “The more we push them to adopt extreme measures, the more difficult we make it for them to succeed.” The drug warriors have been making these statements for over 30 years. So, what is the end result of all these achievements?

The source for those figures is the Office of National Drug Control Policy. John Walters, that agency’s director, was certainly not operating above the legal limit for economic literacy when he touted the success of this agency:

Every load of drugs seized represents that much less that can be used to poison our young people and harm our nation.

Not exactly the perspective of consumers, who seem to have no problem getting the stuff now versus before the drug warrior heroics. Maybe that’s why the drug warriors are continually grabbing more and more power.

Bilateral agreements negotiated with 26 Caribbean and South American nations allow the (Coast Guard) to conduct operations and stop illegal smuggling [ed.: and disrupt any other type of ocean-going transport] far outside U. S. territorial waters with suspected smugglers operating on foreign-flag vessels. Dramatic improvements in intelligence and information sharing among international and interagency partners have also strengthened anti-smuggling efforts.

I have obvious questions about the “improvement in intelligence” part.