Connecting the War on Guns & Drugs [my title]

SHOTGUN NEWS ^ | 1/11/03 | Amicus Populi

[robertpaulsen]

"The commerce clause, concerning regulating commerce "among the several states" was meant to encourage free trade, not prohibit commerce.."

Sure. At the time, that was the primary concern.

But the courts have ruled that "to regulate" includes "to ban". As early as 1884, Congress banned the interstate shipments of infected cattle.

[Drammach]

Thanks for that info..

Any references you have on the commerce clause and it's history would be appreciated..

I will readily admit, I don't know a lot about it, and what I remember is some 40 years old, from elementary and high school history classes..
I have found the commercel clause doesn't come up very often during normal social converstations.

[Ken H]

While many would concede that the drug war is an abject failure, (something I will not), the inevitable answer to fighting that war more effectively has been a continuing erosion of the rights of all against unreasonable search and siezure, not just in the venue of controlled substances, but in the realm of firearms as well.

I can find no evidence that drug prohibition, begun in the early 1900's, has helped.

The addiction rate to opiates dropped by over 60% from 1880 to 1900 while still legal. Since 1900, the number of people addicted to either opiates or cocaine has tripled.

[Ken H]

Meant to ping you, not Willam Terrell, to post #603

[Ken H]

The commerce clause, concerning regulating commerce "among the several states" was meant to encourage free trade, not prohibit commerce..

I'm sure James Madison would agree.

"Yet it is very certain that it [the power to regulate commerce among the several States] grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government"

--James Madison

[Drammach]

Great supporting quote.. Thanks..

[Ken H]

Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Gibbons v Ogden:

Inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description, as well as laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c., are component parts of this mass."

"No direct general power over these objects is granted to Congress; and, consequently, they remain subject to State legislation."

Somehow, we have nuanced our way from Gibbons to Wickard.

I have found the commerce clause doesn't come up very often during normal social converstations.

Are you kidding me? All I have to do is mention Gibbons v Ogden and I get transformed into a chick magnet.

[Drammach]

Chick magnet... LOL !!!

[Smokin' Joe]

IF that is the raw number of people, it should be corrected for population growth and presented as a rate (i.e. 1.35/100000) in order to have a valid comparison.

If the actual rate of addiction is up, it may well be a combination of factors.

Availability, certainly, could be one. More likely, though, is that the behaviour of addicts, once obvious to any who could see, is now relegated to areas not travelled by many who might become addicted, thus parents cannot point out the down side of addiction to their children as effectively as before. Pictures on the internet do not strike home like a sweating shaking junkie with the jones'.

Anonymity (gained largely with the demise of the more rural environments--small towns) has no doubt contributed as well, along with the erosion of the supoport of extended family as the culture has become more 'mobile'.

The previously unthinkable can be done without fear of sullied reputaion or familial retribution.

Children (adolescents) used to rebel in more tame ways, and one of the fruits of a society where the merely outlandish and dangerous has been replaced by progressively more extreme variants of 'extreme', is that rebellion now takes forms either unthinkable or unheard of a mere 40 or 50 years ago.

WHat prohibition has done, is drive the use, sale, and distribution, of drugs underground, create tremendous profits for the most ruthlessly lawless, and cause the deaths of both active participants, law enforcement personnel, and innocents caught in the crossfire.

At some point our society must weigh that toll against the presumed toll of deregulation, and decide.

[P_A_I]

WHat prohibition has done, is drive the use, sale, and distribution, of drugs underground, create tremendous profits for the most ruthlessly lawless, and cause the deaths of both active participants, law enforcement personnel, and innocents caught in the crossfire.
At some point our society must weigh that toll against the presumed toll of deregulation, and decide.
609Smokin' Joe


______________________________________

The power to regulate v. the power to prohibit
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1419654/posts

[P_A_I]

WHat prohibition has done, is drive the use, sale, and distribution, of drugs underground, create tremendous profits for the most ruthlessly lawless, and cause the deaths of both active participants, law enforcement personnel, and innocents caught in the crossfire.
At some point our society must weigh that toll against the presumed toll of deregulation, and decide.
609Smokin' Joe


______________________________________

The power to regulate v. the power to prohibit
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1419654/posts

[Ken H]

Good pick up on rate vs number. I meant to write that the rate tripled from 1900-2000. I made another error, which I need to correct. The addiction rate to opiates alone in 1880 was 0.8%, so the drop from 1880-1900 was greater than 37.5%. The census of 1880 counted about 50,000,000 Americans.

The addiction figures are from the USDOJ, including the following mistitled article:

Legalization has been tried before, and failed miserably.

~snip~

It's clear from history that periods of lax controls are accompanied by more drug abuse and that periods of tight controls are accompanied by less drug abuse.

In 1880, many drugs, including opium and cocaine, were legal — and, like some drugs today, seen as benign medicine not requiring a doctor's care and oversight. Addiction skyrocketed. There were over 400,000 [=0.8%] opium addicts in the U.S. That is twice as many per capita as there are today.

By 1900, about one American in 200 [=0.5%]was either a cocaine or opium addict. [end excerpt]

http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/demand/speakout/06so.htm

My calculations show that opiate addiction dropped from 0.8% in 1880 to at least 0.5% in 1900. If you toss out cocaine addicts included in the 1900 figure, the drop would be even greater. Now on to 2000:

_______________________________________

"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999, 50 percent more than the estimated 630,000 hardcore addicts in 1992." [980,000 is about 0.33% of the population]

--www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/heroin.htm

"The demand for both powdered and crack cocaine in the United States is high. Among those using cocaine in the United States during 2000, 3.6 million were hardcore users who spent more than $36 billion on the drug in that year."

--http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/cocaine.htm

_______________________________

Using year 2000 figures from the USDOJ, and a population of 290,000,000, the rate of addiction to either cocaine or heroin is about 1.5%, or triple the rate in 1900.

[Skywalk]

How the hell did tpaine get banned but Roscoe(while not posting since 2004) and CJ still exist?

[clamper1797]

I considered tpaine a friend ... and i do miss him

[freepatriot32]

Libertarian ping.To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here

[robertpaulsen]

"There were an estimated 980,000 hardcore heroin addicts in the United States in 1999 ..."

Where did the DOJ get that number?

[Ken H]

Where did the DOJ get that number?

As I said before, you'll have to ask the DOJ, but it is the agency which should know. Do you have a more authoritative source?

[robertpaulsen]

One would have thought that the DOJ would have footnoted where it got the number. As far as we know, it could simply be an estimate.

"Do you have a more authoritative source?"

More authoritative than a DOJ estimate? Of course.

"The estimated number of current heroin users was 216,000 in 1996, 325,000 in 1997, and 130,000 in 1998."
-- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Office of Applied Studies, Results from the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, p. 18.

Wow! What a difference from your undocumented guess of 980,000. That really throws off all your comparisons, doesn't it?

[Ken H]

"Cautious evaluation of this data is necessary because the NHSDA cannot accurately measure rare or stigmatized drug use, relying as it does on self-reporting and on people residing in households. In alternate research, the number of hardcore* users of heroin in 1998 was estimated to be 980,000,"

Since the USDOJ chose the 980,000 figure to put on its website, is it not reasonable to conclude it thinks the figure more accurate?

[robertpaulsen]

What's "alternate research" mean? Where's the details on that? Where's the disclaimer for those numbers?

"Since the USDOJ chose the 980,000 figure to put on its website, is it not reasonable to conclude it thinks the figure more accurate?"

IMO, the DOJ used those numbers for the same reason you did -- to support some previously reached conclusion.