Posted on 12/17/2002 9:39:06 AM PST by Joe Bonforte
In a little noticed hearing of the House Government Reform Commnittee last week, Indiana Congressman (my homeotwn's Congressman actually) and longtime drug warrior Dan Burton made some stunning comments. In a hearing entitled "America's Heroin Crisis, Colombian Heroin and How We Can Improve Plan Colombia," Burton stopped just a hair short of advocating the decriminalization of drugs. Watch the video here (cut forward to 1 hour, 18 minutes into the hearing). Here's the transcript:
Dan Burton: I want to tell you something. I have been in probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty hearings like this at various times in my political career,. And the story is always the same. This goes back to the sixties. You know, thirty or thirty five years ago. And every time I have a hearing, I hear that people who get hooked on heroin and cocaine become addicted and they very rarely get off of it. And the scourge expands and expands and expands. And we have very fine law enforcement officers like you go out and fight the fight. And you see it growing and growing, and you see these horrible tragedies occur. But there is no end to it.
And I see young guys driving around in tough areas of Indianapolis in cars that I know they can’t afford and I know where they are getting their money. I mean that there is no question. A kid can’t be driving a brand-new Corvette when he lives in the inner city of Indianapolis in a ghetto. You know that he has gotta be making that money in someway that is probably not legal and probably involves drugs.
Over seventy percent of all crime is drug-related. And you alluded to that today. We saw on television recently Pablo Escobar gunned down and everybody applauded and said “that’s the end of the Medellín cartel. But it wasn’t the end. There is still a cartel down there. They are still all over the place. When you kill one, there’s ten or twenty or fifty waiting to take his place. You know why? Its because of what you just said a minute ago, Mr. Carr, Mr. Marcocci (sp). And that is that there is so much money to be made in it there is always going to be another person in line to make that money.
And we go into drug eradication and we go into rehabilitation and we go into education, and we do all of these things... And the drug problem continues to increase. And it continues to cost us not billions, but trillions of dollars. Trillions! And we continue to build more and more prisons, and we put more and more people in jail, and we know that the crimes most of the time are related to drugs.
So I have one question I would like to ask all of you, and I think this is a question that needs to be asked. I hate drugs. I hate people who succumb to drug addiction, and I hate what it does to our society. It has hit every one of us in our families or friends of ours. But I have one question that nobody ever asks, and that is this question: What would happen if there was no profit in drugs? If there was no profit in drugs, what would happen. If they couldn’t make any money out of selling drugs, what would happen?
Carr: I would like to comment. If we made illegal... what you are arguing then is complete legalization?
Dan Burton: No I am not arguing anything. I am asking the question. Because we have been fighting this fight for thirty to forty years and the problem never goes way...
....Well I don’t think that the people in Colombia would be planting coca if they couldn’t make any money, and I don’t think they would be refining coca and heroin in Colombia if they couldn’t make any money. And I don’t think that Al Capone would have been the menace to society that he was if he couldn’t sell alcohol on the black market and he did and we had a horrible, horrible crime problem. Now the people who are producing drugs in Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia and Colombia and everyplace else. They don’t do it because they like to do it. They don’t fill those rooms full of money because they like to fill them full of money. They do it because they are making money.
At some point we to have to look at the overall picture and the overall picture and I am not saying that there are not going to be people who are addicted they are going to have to be education and rehabilitation and all of those things that you are talking about - but one of the parts of the equation that has never been talked about because politicians are afraid to talk about it this is my last committee hearing as Chairman. Last time! And I thought about this and thought about this, and thought about this. And one of the things that ought to be asked is “what part of the equation are we leaving out?” And “is it an important part of the equation?” And that is the profit in drugs. Don’t just talk about education. Don’t just talk about eradication. Don’t just talk about killing people like Escobar, who is going to be replaced by somebody else. Let’s talk about what would happen if we started addressing how to get the profit out of drugs.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if, twenty years from now, we could look back at law-and-order Dan Burton's conversion as the "Nixon goes to China" turning point of the drug war?
When is the last time you had a little crack with your meal?
That justifies FORCING me to pay those costs (monetary and otherwise)? If you think that, you're no conservative.
Hoo boy. Wait'll the race hustlers get through with Neville Lott. They'll have a field day with this one.
"So, a kid driving a vette through the ghetto must be a crook if he has money, huh?"
However, that is not the main risk I fear from rampant drug use. I fear a community full of addicts.
It's much easier to turn down that fix when you must venture to some back alley, afraid for you life, spend more money, and risk getting a fake product, as opposed to walking into CVS pharmacy and grabbing one of the shelf.
It's obvious that you, or anybody you know and love, never needed a fix.
So, while you may have remedied the supply side, killing off the cartels and giving the job of production over to corporations, you INCREASE the motivation of users and non users to use MORE.
I don't see that as a good thing.
Hear, hear!
When is the last time you had a little crack with your meal?
Is making the argument in terms of the extremes on either end really rational? When was the last time you enjoyed a little Everclear with your dinner? Do people ever responsibly use codeine, even if it isn't prescribed to them?
Not the youth. Youth think that they are immortal.
And how much of that fear is derived from the fear of crime and violence that follows the drugs?
I don't think anyone here is advocating that any of the drugs being discussed be made more easily obtainable than alcohol, especially to the young.
Exactly! Corporations that are licenced and forced to operate within narrowly defined guidelines. If they step out of line they lose their license and someone else gets to make the profits, marginal as they are. Again, the idea is to legalize and regulate the traffic to the degree that it wipes out the profit motive. I'll go a step further and suggest something else in addition to my first proposal.
From what I have learned from the history of drugs in society, it is that there are two extreme conditions that can lead to a majority of any given population ending up addicted to any given drug.
The first extreme condition arises from attempts to prohibit all drugs. This leads to extreme demand from a small percentage of the population that leads to very high prices and profits being realized by those who supply said demand. The profit incentive leads the suppliers to want to expand their markets, and it's off to the races.
The second extreme condition arises from oversupply of drugs, as happened with the "nickel gin" plague that hit England in the 18th century. Because gin was so plentiful and so cheap, a large percentage of the population became addicted.
So, getting back to my proposal, I have to amend my suggestion to include the idea of setting prices high enough to discourage addiction, while keeping them low enough to short-circuit the black market.
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