Ted Haggard's new ministry

Ted Haggard, the disgraced Evangelical megapastor caught doing meth with a gay prostitute and last seen hocking debt reduction software, has started up a new church in his backyard. The whole article is almost too good to excerpt, but I'll try:

He acknowledged grave lapses of judgment in the episode he refers to as "my crisis." But Mr. Haggard also said that in his sorrow and shame, he accepted too much guilt after the scandal broke.

"I over-repented," he said. [...]

He portrays his encounter with the prostitute as a massage that went awry and said he doesn't have same-sex attractions. He dismisses as a "witch hunt" the findings of his former church that he engaged in a pattern of misconduct, including sordid talk and inappropriate relationships. (He said his only fault was cracking a few crude jokes.) [...]

Mr. Haggard plays up his new regular-guy image. At the picnic, he asked a friend whether anyone noticed he had said "hell" in the sermon—and not in a Biblical context.

"I cuss now," he said proudly.

Drug smuggling in 1970

From a Time article published in 1970 about Americans locked up abroad for drug smuggling:

Often the youthful smugglers are suckers from the start. In Lebanon, tourist guides around Baalbek's famous Roman ruins sidle up to adventurous-looking American kids and sell them not only cheap hash but identical cheap cardboard tourist suitcases to carry it in. Airport customs officials are so familiar with the suitcases that they almost yawn as they arrest the tourists who show up with them.

Then there's this:

Beirut's notorious Sands prison, where seven Americans are currently awaiting trial, is filled with rats, homosexuals and filth.

The NYT's shitty drug war coverage

Despite the paper's supposedly liberal slant, the New York Times' drug reporting is oddly deferential to the government's pro-drug war line, and its reporting suffers either as a cause or an effect. Though they line their articles with caveats and doubts, they spend the bulk of their time repeating the claims of the government, and don't seem to look very far to find opposing point of views to include.

Take as an example this article in Saturday's paper about Afghanistan's poppy problem. While opium poppy has been a lucrative crop in Afghanistan for decades, a recent combination of disease and poor weather has stunted this season's yield, shrinking it by as much as half. Rather than a sober discussion of opium's next season (which, let's face it, are good), the Times' C.J. Chivers article starts out by telling us that there's a chance that within months, the shift away from opium is going to begin.

The first paragraph that essentially tells us that Afghan opium farmers have never had it this bad (doubt it). In the second we learn that apparently there's also some program run by the US Marines, and as a result "the start" of a shift away from opium "could be possible" within mere months:

As farmers around Marja, the heart of Afghanistan’s opium industry, confront harsh environmental conditions and new interdiction efforts, they are also receiving offers of aid in exchange for growing different crops. Both they and the military said that the start of a shift to other sources of income could be possible by the end of this year, when poppy planting would resume.

In the third we get a generic affirmation and a rebuttal (opium prices are up because of the shortage). The next few arguments are non-novel and pretty general ones for and against the program's success, and slowly the reader gets the impression that there isn't anything more to learn about the specific programs, and moves on, with the impression that there's a vague government program that might help rid Afghanistan of heroin.

So it's a huge surprise that half way through the second online page we learn that, in fact, an unknown but potentially huge portion of this program that's supposed to transition farmers from opium to legal crops is a huge sham:

Assessing the program’s effect remains difficult. In many cases, according to Marines on patrols who had to verify that poppy fields were destroyed, farmers were paid based on estimates of a field’s size, which Afghans often inflated.

Marines and poppy farmers also agreed that many farmers waited until the end of the season to register for payments. Then they quickly harvested their opium, plowed under the stalks and collected payments nonetheless.

“That was the only bad thing,” said Cpl. David S. Palmer, who led the squad that provided security for the verification team. “A lot of people were double-taking on us, and there was nothing we could do about it.”

The only bad thing indeed. But never fear, because it's the thought that counts – in the next too many paragraphs we learn that it's an important "stepping stone," it might be working because "what began as a trickle of cooperative farmers...became a busy queue," the program's helping them "reseize the moment," it's providing "much-needed assistance to some of the poorest people in the world," and the "ultimate hope" is peace and a drug-free Afghanistan. Oh yeah, and "[t]he Taliban’s murder and intimidation program is still ongoing." But don't worry, because "through the subsidies, groups of farmers have begun to meet and cooperate with the Americans and Afghan troops."

No real background or reference about past efforts at anti-poppy campaigns, and no citation of any critical voices. And obviously the copy editor wasn't paying attention, because the giant gaping hole in the subject of the article isn't even mentioned until three-quarters of the way through a two-page articles. Let's give it up for another drug war hack job from the New York Times.

The Taliban never really banned opium

I often hear about the Taliban's short-lived ban on opium cultivation in 2000, but according to this paper (pdf), the ban likely had nothing to do with religion, morals, or international pressure:

Under the ban, poppy cultivation was reduced by more than 90 percent; it continued to flourish only in areas controlled by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance forces.

Though the West initially applauded the Taliban’s about-face as a sign of a new willingness to join the international community, the enthusiasm was probably premature. Analysts now believe that the Taliban had a large stockpile of opium and heroin on hand from previous years of bountiful production, and that the ban was simply an attempt to use Afghanistan’s monopoly power to raise prices in a weak market.

It looks likely only a profit motive can stop Afghanistan's heroin exports.

€500 note taken out of circulation in the UK

The Brits have withdrawn the €500 note from circulation in the UK, on evidence that the vast majority of them are used by those conducting illegal business:

However, fed up with abuse of the currency, Britain's Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has decided with the Treasury and Home Office to remove €500 notes from circulation in Britain. Soca's ban follows an investigation which revealed that 90 per cent of the €500 notes in this country are being used for criminal purposes. It's the latest of a number of high-denomination bank notes favoured by villains that have fallen out of favour. Richard Nixon halted the circulation of $10,000 bills in 1969 because of their association with organised crime; these days the 1,000 Swiss franc note, while rare, is another popular choice for those engaging in nefarious deeds, and the 1,000 Dutch guilder note was a black-market favourite before the introduction of the euro.

It's not exactly clear to me how they're doing this, since the euro isn't a British currency to begin with – are they forbidding banks from accepting them in transactions?

Would Germany be better off now if it were on the pound rather than the euro?

I don't really feel very qualified to talk about European monetary and macroeconomics, which is why for the most part I've avoided writing about Greece and the Eurozone's crisis, but – and maybe it's just the benzos – I feel like I have something slightly relevant to say.

First of all, Tyler Cowen has a great round-up of recent events and indicators (although I hate his first point) here. Additionally, I hear that even Paul Krugman – someone who, sometime during his transition from serious economist to columnist, turned into a man who never met a bailout he didn't like – thinks Greece is going to be dropped from the euro. (Although later in the article he seems overjoyed at the fact that a Greece back on the drachma would be able to destroy the currency to its heart's content.)

As far as I can gather, the consensus among economists is that debt restructuring (in Krugman's words, "a polite term for partial default") is certain, a more serious default is likely, and Greece leaving the eurozone – an that was seen as very fringe a few weeks ago – is now a distinct possibility. In the end, I think that the quicker Greece leaves the euro, the better. Many in Europe worry about the resultant instability won't be worth the risk – after all, even Greek dogs like to riot. But in the end, Greeks have become too accustomed to capitalism and liberal democracy, and once its leftist protestors no longer have the euro and lack of monetary and fiscal sovereignty to blame, the rioting will stop and the hard reforms will begin. Greek voters are too sophisticated to give into geography and regress to the level of its Balkan neighbors, who despite Greece's problems, they still make it look like Switzerland in comparison.

The big European monetary debate has always been whether the UK and Scandinavia should give up their pounds and crowns in favor of the euro. But it now looks like it would have been better for Germany, the Benelux, and Scandinavia to give up their marks, francs, guilders, and crowns in favor of the pound sterling.

Aliens in America

Quote of the day:

"We have dealt a severe blow to an alien-smuggling industry in Arizona that feeds thousands of aliens into the far reaches of the U.S., including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles," said ICE chief John Morton.

Aliens, you say?

The whole article is about a record ICE raid that dismantled a Nogales-centered human smuggling network that was tied up with shuttle bus services. Interestingly enough, unlike the market for smuggling drugs, the market for illegal entry of humans looks to be more competitive and less oligarchical than drug smuggling (I'm talking specifically about Latin America-to-US drug smuggling, not domestic dealing):

"We have dealt a severe blow to an alien-smuggling industry in Arizona that feeds thousands of aliens into the far reaches of the U.S., including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles," said ICE chief John Morton.

I'm guessing this is because the political barriers to entry in the human smuggling industry are lower than with drug smuggling. Drug cartels and control of certain plazas are determined often times politically, through access to corrupt political figures, which leads to oligarchy. The reason is the nature of the product – drugs are distinct and need to be constantly handled, and when they show up in a marketplace anywhere near the border they're bound to be discovered. People, on the other hand, don't leave much of a mark, and can disappear on their own, it being their mission to go unknown. Also, you don't need much monetary capital to smuggle people – no buying of expensive drugs.

I also like this part, where Janet Napolitano claims this strategy is somehow more humane:

Hitting the smuggling network, rather than the immigrants themselves, is one of the hallmarks of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's approach to border enforcement. Ms. Napolitano, a former Arizona governor, also has stepped up inspections of U.S. companies that hire unauthorized workers.

Alcohol prohibition caused people to go blind and cocaine, heroin prohibition causes people to die of overdoses and shoot-outs over drug territory, and migration prohibition is no different. The laws as they are marginalize immigrants enough as it is – with things like this happening – and further enforcement is just going to drive illegal immigrants further and further underground. As with drug prohibition, sure, some people might choose not to come to America/do heroin, but those people are coming at the expense of those who do continue to come and to use.

Hamid Karzai on drugs

Hamid Karzai, apparently, has a "fondness" for opium/heroin. Which he probably buys from his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, reputed to be the nation's biggest drug dealer.

Cindy McCain was still on drugs during 2008 campaign

Whoa, apparently Cindy McCain was still using painkillers during the 2008 campaign. Quoteth The Exiled in September 2008:

What is it with Cindy McCain’s eyes? Everyone’s noticed that there’s something odd about them. Even Katie Couric was caught in an unplugged moment omigodding about how weirded-out she was by Cindy McCain’s mysterious, odd-looking eyes.

To anyone who has ever enjoyed the opium poppy plant’s many wonderful by-products–Vicodin, Percocet, heroin, morphine, methadone, Codeine cough syrup, or just plain opium to name a few–Cindy McCain’s “weird blue eyes” are about as much of a dead giveaway about her real condition as, say, the folds in Trig Palin’s down-turned eyes are a giveaway about his Down Syndrome.

The clue to solving this mystery lies in Cindy McCain’s pupils, which always, under any light and in every photo, have a “pin-pointed” quality to them. Her tiny pin-point pupils make her eyes seem so freakishly pale and vampiric–which sorta remind one of the eyes that heroin-bard Lou Reed crooned over in his smack-ballad “Pale Blue Eyes.”

The Daily Mail's embarrassingly bad drug reporting

The Daily Mail is certainly no stranger to atrociously uninformed and alarmist drug reporting, but this story from about two years ago about a "schoolboy" in England who died after snorting heroin which he thought was cocaine takes the cake. It's too ridiculous for a summary to do it justice, so I'm going to go through it line-by-line.

Francis Clapham, 16, bought the drug for £1 from a teenager in a park, an inquest heard.

Really? £1? Because that sounds like an incredibly tiny amount of heroin – so tiny that I question if anyone would really go to the trouble to make such a transaction. Your average bag of UK heroin costs £11.13 and contains 200 mg of powder that is, being generous, 50% pure, yielding 100 mg of pure heroin. Divide this by 11.13 and you get a little less than 9 mg of pure dope, which is about equivalent to two Percocets or Vicodins here in the States. Definitely not enough to kill anyone who weighs more than 10 pounds. And all these calculations are generous – how much you get for your money is a hugely dependent on how experienced you are, and people buying £1 bags of drugs of uncertain provenance generally get the dregs, if anything at all (I'd suspect that precisely of 100.00% of all "£1 bags of dope" are entirely baking soda. At most, this kid was getting the equivalent of a little less than one weak pain pill.

But after sniffing the heroin with a friend he collapsed and was taken to hospital where he was put on a life-support machine.

The drug caused organ failure resulting in brain damage through oxygen starvation and he died two months later.

Huh? Overdose deaths happen very rapidly – I've never heard of pure heroin killing someone over the span of two months – and fatalies from overdoses are very low if an ambulance is called and naloxone is used, which appears to have been the case.

The inquest heard that Francis, who did not have a history of drug taking or dealing, was drinking vodka with a friend in a park in Nelson, Lancashire, when he decided to buy the drug.

Ah ha, so the truth comes out! He wasn't only doing [incredibly tiny amounts of heroin] – he was drinking too. Mixing alcohol and heroin (or any painkillers or anti-anxiety medications) is incredibly dangerous – the total risk is greater than the sum of the individual risks – and there is established medical literature that questions the use of the term "heroin overdose" to describe what are really caused in equal parts by heroin and other CNS depressants like benzos and alcohol.

And about that lack of "history of drug taking or dealing" – says who? His friends, who are scared that they're gonna get in trouble? And I dunno how it goes in the UK, but in the US, it's almost unheard of for someone to buy cocaine before they tried marijuana, and given the popularity of ecstasy in the UK, I'm guessing coke generally comes after E, as well. And, as I'll later explain, he was clearly very drunk when this incident occurred, and those 16-year-olds who drink heavily have a tendency to do other drugs as well. So I sort of doubt that he had no history of using illegal drugs (leaving aside the fact that alcohol is definitely a drug, and I'll bet this wasn't the first time he drank).

Pathologist Dr Naomi Carter told the inquest the schoolboy contracted MRSA in hospital and had a reaction to antibiotics but would not have recovered from the brain damage he had already suffered.

Uh, okay, so he actually died of a superbug brought on my endemic overuse of antibiotics.

Not only that, but brain damage? Assuming they're implying that the brain damage "already suffered" was a result of the heroin overdose (and if that's not the case, then he manifestly did not die because of heroin), when the hell in the history of heroin use has anyone ever suffered permanent brain damage from an overdose? A search of Google Scholar reveals some cases of long-term heroin users developing brain damage, but a) it's not at all clear why, or if it even has anything to do with the heroin, and b) this 16-year-old kid, so inexperienced that he bought £1 worth of drugs that weren't even what he thought they were, seems unlikely to have been doing heroin for long.

"I only saw him taking a line of it but he might have had some more in his pocket. We had an argument about the drugs and he stormed out."

"I handed the rest of the package to the paramedics." [...]

Mr Morris added: "The drug was bought for £1 to £2 in the park."

So I guess what the title meant when it said "£1 bag of heroin" was maybe £2 worth of heroin, but really nobody knows. Well, the autopsy could tell us, but either none was done, or the Daily Mail reporter was just too lazy to look for it, or (more likely) too ignorant to even know to look for it, and what to look for. And how do they know that £2 was the maximum amount? Because the dealer, who has an obvious incentive to downplay the amount of heroin he sold the kid, told them so? (Later in the article it mentions that the dealer admitted to what he did and, given that he's a 16-year-old, was not sentenced to any "detention.")

Recording a verdict of accidental death, East Lancashire coroner Richard Taylor said: "It was clearly an accident that he took a substance which he had no idea would end in his death."

"It was entirely down to the heroin he died."

Wow, what an ignorant thing to say. First of all, it was already established that he had been drinking vodka, so to say that it was "entirely down to the heroin" is absurd and shows a total lack of knowledge of the established scientific literature. (Not to mention that 16-year-olds drinking hard liquor in a park is definitely illegal in Britain, and yet the story didn't seem too concerned about this illegal activity (but one that's societally acceptable) which contributed to his death. Secondly, should the antibiotic-resistant infection that he acquired in the hospital that ultimately killed him really get none of the blame?

For my money, I'd say that there are a few possibilities for what actually happened (given, of course, that the proximate cause of death was MSRA – or drug-induced brain damage, if you wanna be generous – not overdose):

1. He actually took a lot more heroin than claimed, and died from complications of the interaction between heroin and alcohol (and possibly benzodiazepines, which aren't mentioned). However, I have never heard of patients getting brain damage from overdoses – even alcohol-enhanced ones. Lethal overdoses are common, but given that he survived the immediate aftermath of the overdose, even the polydrug use theory seems suspect.
2. He drank a lot more than implied, and he was pretty close to death from alcohol poisoning anyway. From what I understand, brain damage is a much more likely symptom of alcohol poisoning than a non-lethal heroin overdose.
3. What everyone thought was heroin was actually something else entirely – perhaps something highly toxic. This seems unlikely, though, given that no dealer would have an incentive to use something lethal as an adulterant as opposed to something simple and safe like baking soda or a crushed aspirin.
4. Some incredibly rare reaction to one of the many substances he may have taken that day.

My money's on hypothesis 2 – alcohol poisoning – but still, the story doesn't make much sense, and the only thing we can say for certain is that the Daily Mail is publishing alarmist misinformation that will ultimately obscure the true risks of drug use and drug prohibition.

Californians to vote on legal weed for all in 2010

I know I've posted about California's 2010 marijuana legalization referendum twice already, but it's a little surreal, so I'm just making sure. But according to the LA Times, the referendum looks like a sure thing:

Supporters of legalized marijuana announced today that they have gathered about 700,000 signatures for their initiative, virtually guaranteeing voters will see it on the November ballot.

They plan to turn in the petitions today to elections officials in some of the state's major counties, including Los Angeles. Supporters need 433,971 valid signatures to qualify the measure.

What's interesting about the whole movement is that it isn't really a popular movement – if you believe the Times, it's the business community that has sprung up in the wake of Prop 215:

Four marijuana legalization initiatives have been proposed, but Lee’s is the only one that appears to have the financial support to make the ballot.

Lee's firm, one of the state's most successful marijuana businesses, has spent more than $1 million on the measure and hired professional consultants to run the campaign. Lee owns half a dozen mostly pot-related businesses in Oakland, including Coffeeshop Blue Sky, a medical marijuana dispensary, and Oaksterdam University, which offers classes on marijuana.

Links: sex, assassination, and drug war wins and losses

I'm gonna try something new – a list of links! This is mostly so that I can practice being concise.

1. Apparently Bill Clinton had a girlfriend during Hillary's presidential campaign. Gawker demands to know who.

2. New Jersey legalizes medical marijuana (first state in the Northeast to do so), but definitely will not go the way of California.

3. "Medvedev tells FSB to 'regularly' kill rebels," quoteth the Moscow Times.

4. Chewing tobacco and snus are "10-1,000 times less hazardous than smoking" says Britain’s Royal College of Physicians, but tobacco companies are legally forbidden from advertising this fact (constitutionality to be determined).

Paris' dead nightlife

Apparently Paris is getting boring (at least according to the New York Times). Here's why:

A sampling of the city’s problems: densely packed, mixed-zoned neighborhoods; a lack of late-night transportation (the last metro leaves at 2 a.m. on the weekends, 1 a.m. during the week); and an unwieldy tangle of rules and regulations on bars and nightclubs, applied with uncommon zeal by a “repressive” police force. [...]

All of these tensions, though, have been exacerbated by the 2008 tobacco ban, which has sent legions of smokers onto the sidewalks at all hours of the night. Noise complaints and fines have increased sharply, club owners say; the Paris police prefecture declined to provide statistics.

This bit is funny/sad:

The club is currently facing another potential closing after the police discovered there was dancing there in October; Mr. Simon does not hold the required license.

Markets in everything: unwitting drug smuggling decoys

RFE/RL reports from the Afghan-Tajik border:

Here, ordinary villagers can be "sold" across the border by drug smugglers without warning. And once they are sold, they may not return for decades.

The "selling" -- as the villagers call it -- works very simply. Smugglers hire the victim to carry a package of drugs, wittingly or unwittingly, across the border. Then, they tip off the Tajik border police to arrest him.

The man and the drugs in the package are the small sacrifices the smugglers make to keep authorities away from their larger-scale shipments.

Naturally, the police are in on it. Kind of a grander version of the big city beat cop arresting a bunch of small time dealers to meet quota and distract from the pay-offs he's getting from the neighborhood gang. In fact, the practice may have its roots in American-style drug war:

The charade also helps explain why despite millions of dollars of Western aid for the regional drug war – including more than $37 million from Washington to help Tajik law enforcement since 1992 – smuggling continues unabated across the border.

I suspect that the intended audience for these arrests is the Americans.

On a totally unrelated note, I liked this bit from the opening of the article:

Even the poor can eke out a living along the highway, filling in potholes with sand in return for small change thrown by passing truck drivers.

The surprising prevalence of medical euthanasia

The NYT has a fascinating article on the apparently quite common practice of physicians essentially euthanizing their patients, with a combination of opioids and benzodiazepines (the same combination that kills so many movie stars, and what Ohio now uses on death row inmates when their first lethal injection doesn't work). The article is interesting throughout, but here's the takeaway:

There is little information about how many patients are terminally sedated, and under what circumstances — estimates have ranged from 2 percent of terminal patients to more than 50 percent. (Doctors are often reluctant to discuss particular cases out of fear that their intentions will be misunderstood.)

Reminds me of this episode of House, where Wilson tells the nurse the override code for the morphine dispenser, but loudly enough so that the patient can hear the code. He then delivers to himself a lethal dose of morphine, and Wilson gives a speech (or at least tries to) at a medical conference about how all doctors do it, but few are brave enough to admit it.

Something else that I find interesting – and this is probably mostly for legal liability reasons – is that doctors and patients seem to be restricted in being blunt about what they're doing, instead cloaking it all in codewords:

Although throughout the half-hour meeting the staff had never explicitly asked to continue sedating Mr. Oltzik, his daughter now gave them tacit permission: “We understand that the inevitable is here, but we wish him to go in peace and to find solace in that,” Ms. Ladin said.

This might be nice for some people, who don't want to face the reality of what's happening, but for others – especially those who the article says "were surprised their loved ones died so quickly, and wondered if the drugs had played a role" – it seems like this euphemistic attitude is far from ideal.

Drug war victories only last so long...

This just goes to show you how shallow drug war victories really are:

More than a dozen hit men carrying AK-47 and AR-15 assault rifles burst into a house in eastern Mexico around midnight Monday, gunning down several relatives of 3rd Petty Officer Melquisedet Angulo, the 30-year-old who was hailed as a national hero last week after being killed in a battle that left drug lord Arturo Beltrán Leyva dead.

The killing was likely ordered by the presumptive heir to the Beltrán-Leyva throne, Édgar Valdéz Villarreal. According to a NYT article from a few years ago, Valdéz Villarreal (nicknamed La Barbie due to his Anglo look) seems to have worked his way up from humble beginnings in the great state of Texas:

He did not have much of a criminal record before he left Texas, according to the Laredo police -- just a reputation as a small-time drug dealer and a drunken driving charge nine years ago. "As far as we're concerned," said Juan Rivera, a spokesman for the Laredo Police Department, "he's nobody here."

Denver beats LA in per capita medical marijuana dispensaries

Despite all the hype about California's medical marijuana dispensaries, it looks like the metropolitan area with the most dispensaries per capita is not even in the state. It's Denver, according to NORML. Denver has about one dispensary for every 3,000 people (200 dispensaries spread amongst 600,000 people), compared with Los Angeles, which has only 1,000 dispensaries serving 10 million people, or one for every 10,000 residents.

According to US News & World Report, Colorado was actually the first state to tax medical marijuana (which ensures that money-habit state legislatures will have an interest in the industry's survival), since California law treats the dispensaries as non-profits, not subject to taxes. The Washington Times, however, claimed that it was "the second state, behind California, to tax and regulate medical-marijuana sales," but I have a feeling they're confusing "and" with "or."

Nevertheless, California may reclaim its title as the most pot friendly state if they outright legalize the drug through a 2010 ballot initiative.

Death by drinking = death on the job, in Communist China

Only in China:

Ran and other netizens were reacting in part to a recent ruling from the People’s High Court in the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, which said government officials who died drinking—often on behalf of their superiors—while at official networking functions, might be treated as work-related injury cases.

Here's how one snarky tweeter put it:

“Netizens are calling for the remains of this battle-hardened hero who has stood the test of booze to be sent to the Babaoshan Cemetery because he is a warrior of the proletariat who has been baptized in alcohol for a lifetime, who finally fell by the wayside,” yuanrch commented.

Could pot be legal in California next year?

Via Reason, November 2010 might be the first big step towards marijuana legalization in the United States...ever:

Advocates of the Regulate, Control, and Tax Cannabis Act say they have gathered more than enough signatures to qualify the initiative for California's November 2010 ballot. The measure would allow people 21 and older to grow marijuana for personal use and to possess up to an ounce. It would also allow licensed suppliers to grow and sell marijuana (up to an ounce at a time) to adults. Public consumption and consumption in the presence of minors would remain illegal. (The text of the initiative is here.) The measure's chief backer, Richard Lee (operator of Oaksterdam University and Coffeeshop Blue Sky in Oakland) told the San Francisco Chronicle "the petition drive collected more than 680,000 signatures in two months, less than half the time allowed for such a drive." Supporters need 433,971 valid signatures to get the initiative on the ballot. The Chronicle notes that "a recent California Field Poll suggested that a majority of California voters, 56 percent, support the idea of legalizing and taxing cannabis."

Of course, even if it passed there would still be some sort of conflict with the federal government, but something tells me that it won't be long after November 2010 that marijuana will be legally cultivated and sold in California.

Mexican cartels' smuggling menu

I found an article from December 2006 by Stratfor* that had an interesting drug war menu. Most of the article is an arcane chronicle of rapid cartel succession, but it's also got a price list for smuggling goods through the southern border's major crossing points (or plazas, in cartel lingo):

In drug-trade lingo, the “gatekeeper” controls the “plaza,” the transhipment point off of one of the main highways on the Mexican side of the border where drugs and other contraband are channeled. In Spanish, the word “plaza” means a town square, though it also can mean a military stronghold or position. In this case, it means a cartel stronghold. A gatekeeper oversees the plaza, making sure each operation runs smoothly and that the plaza bosses are collecting “taxes” on any contraband that passes through. The going rate on a kilo of cocaine is approximately $500, while the tax on $1 million in cash heading south is about $10,000.

Gatekeepers also ensure that fees are collected on the movement of stolen cargo and illegal immigrants — including any militants who might be seeking to enter the United States through Mexico. Regardless of a person’s country of origin, money buys access into the United States through these plazas, though the fees charged for smuggling Middle Eastern and South Asian males into the United States are higher than for Mexicans or Central Americans. The gatekeepers’ primary concern is ensuring that appropriate fees are collected and sent to cartel coffers — and they operate in whatever manner best suits a given circumstance: intimidation, extortion or violence. Of course, one of their main jobs is to ensure that corrupt Mexican police and military personnel are paid off so plaza operations can proceed undisturbed.

The market for smuggling is remarkably efficient – that amounts to a 1% tax on money, but the cocaine tax is a bit more complicated. A gram of pure cocaine (which would be the ideal way to smuggle it, since it weighs the least) retails for over $100, but the person who's taking it from Mexico to the US might only get a tenth of that (rough estimate), which would make the tax around 5%.

* Stratfor is a private intelligence agency with a subscription-only site, but if you search the title of the article in Google and click the link from the search results page, you can access anything you want. This trick also works with the Wall Street Journal.