David Grundy

The case against Drug Prohibition

2010-10-18T18:26:00.001-07:00

This post originally appeared as a guest blog I wrote for The Freedom Association.
http://www.tfa.net/the_freedom_association/2010/10/the-case-against-drug-prohibition.html

David Grundy reviews this month's Free Spirits event, 'The case against Drug Prohibition'.

On Wednesday 13th October, around 60 of us gathered in the St Stephens Tavern to hear Dr John Meadowcroft make the case against drug prohibition. This was the October edition of The Freedom Association's Free Spirits discussion series, which take place on the second Wednesday of every month. It was a well attended event with some people having to stand, which goes to show the interest that this subject generates.

Dr Meadowcroft, from Kings College London, outlined two different types of argument against drug prohibition. First is the absolute moral case, which most advocates of freedom will be familiar with. The argument is that fundamental to the concept of individual rights and freedom is the right to your own life; all other rights are built upon and depend upon this. As rational beings, we should be free to act on our own judgement free from force and coercion, pursue our own goals, and reap the rewards accordingly. Readers of philosophers such as Aristotle, Locke and Ayn Rand will know that the moral argument is the only solid foundation for liberty. Individuals have the power to take self-correcting action and recover from their mistakes. Ingesting substances in our own body is a private matter and we must use our own judgement in deciding how to treat our bodies.

This is something that Government force and intrusion simply don’t cater for. Collectivized rights are an arbitrary use of force directed by the flavour of the month and whichever policy a politician thinks will win them enough votes to win a new term. Aside from restricting people’s personal freedoms, the decision making process is divorced from reality and this is only too clear from the reactionary drugs policy decisions that Governments make. Awash with unintended consequences, these populist measures fail to create the intended rational utopia of eternal health.

This leads us to the 2^nd type of argument: the practical. Regardless of your philosophical persuasions, all you have to do is stand outside Brixton Tube Station or the queue of a night club for long enough to see that the war on drugs is a complete and utter failure. Produced in the fields of Afghanistan, heroin and opiates first line the pockets of our enemies then make their way to the UK drug dealers. They’re then diluted with talcum powder, or worse. Inconsistent potencies are sold on street corners and via text message deals and people then begin to smoke and inject who knows what. Even something as simple as growing an illicit cannabis crop in a cellar is not without unintended consequences. The dingy artificial lighting in secret cellars and lofts actually results in the chemical composition of cannabis changing and losing some of its proven medicinal properties.

Further evidence of the practical failure is the sheer quantity of drug addicts in the country. Despite drugs being illegal, the Government spends more than £800m annually on drug rehabilitation treatments. This doesn’t even take in to account the cost of incapacity and unemployment benefit that the people receive during their prolonged course of treatment. The cost of crimes committed by addicts to fund their habit is estimated at £13.9bn annually and this financial burden says nothing of the terror and havoc wreaked on the lives of the victims of these crimes. Although young people are luckily averse to trying the more harmful drugs, the Government is currently in the unenviable position of playing cat and mouse as legal highs are banned, only to be immediately replaced with drugs containing new legal chemical compositions – ones which are so new that there is no scientific evidence of their effects whatsoever and young people are literally acting as guinea pigs.

So what can and should be done? In the spirited Q&A some audience members did see the pitfalls of full legalisation. To put it quite simply: not all drugs are the same.
Not only would advocating a full blown legalisation package deal almost certainly fail, but it equates getting stoned and eating carbs for one evening with the disastrously life changing effects of heroin and crack where addicts literally struggle to come up with new injection sites because their body is already bruised, if not infected. In the process they often share needles and spread blood bourne viruses such as HIV and hepatitis which have clear financial costs to the other members of society.

Despite drugs prohibition, the UK Government is actually very welcoming to individuals who seek support in getting clean. Starting with Thatcher and enhanced under Labour, an addict can come to a treatment centre and matter of factly report the substances they are using. A careplan is then created, the data is collected and interventions are made to wean people off their problematic substances. The data shows that there are currently an estimated 330,000 people in England who are addicted to heroin and crack. Of those, a whopping 60% are involved in the drug treatment system, most of whom came voluntarily because they realised their problem was getting out of hand. By the time they realize their problem they may well have lost their job and descended in to a cycle of deprivation. Having expended all of their resources on their habit, these people do in fact infringe the rights of others by the vast healthcare and intervention costs as well as the crimes they may have previously committed.

The Conservative government will soon be forming a Public Health Department which will govern drug policy. The current policy mood is to seek quasi-religious abstinence to purify the souls of people so they can enter the gates of heaven, but this could end up making things worse and simply mask over the problem. There is a strong case for legalization of many drugs, but in advocating it we must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and risk smearing relatively harmless substances with the obvious disastrous effects of the few substances which do have provably negative consequences on the other individuals in society.

Many would argue that drugs should be legalised because then they can be regulated, taxed and made to consistent quality. Whilst taxing products isn’t often endorsed by advocates of liberty, it would serve to recuperate the costs involved with healthcare and rehab treatment whilst allowing greater personal freedoms than what we have now. One thing is for sure, private charity tends to have little sympathy for these people.

After the Q&A we quickly went downstairs to indulge in legal pleasures: cigarettes and alcohol. How long they will be legal for, we were not certain.

DISCLAIMER: I work in the drug treatment sector. Any views expressed are purely my own.

Microsoft: Death by Antitrust

2009-06-28T17:29:00.000-07:00

A few months from now two new operating systems will be released and consumers will once again be invited to choose between Apple and Microsoft.

In one corner we have Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It will be released in September at a cost of just $29 for existing Apple customers. Its new features include simple integration with corporate email systems as well as a whole host of speed and reliability improvements. The upgrade promises to be smooth and pain free.

In the other corner we have Windows 7. It will be released in October and will cost.....well....that depends. You can easily upgrade....as long as you don't live in Europe. Microsoft are viewing Windows 7 as an opportunity to get right what they did wrong in Vista. To keep Windows a cutting edge operating system they have taken measures to...remove Mail, remove the photo gallery and remove the movie maker. That’s right; if you want to check your emails and organize your photos you won’t be able to do it. You’ll need to choose to go to Microsoft’s website to download these separately. That’s where we hit another snag; they’ve also decided to remove Internet Explorer.

To the average computer user Microsoft’s decisions will seem absurd. With internet penetration as high as 70% in some Western nations, why on earth would they remove a fairly fundamental feature from the OS? You’ll unpack your new Dell and hurriedly go through the set up process to get your daily Facebook fix and check the latest on BBC News only to find that all you can do is look at a pretty new wallpaper and play solitaire.

Who is to blame?

Consumers will no doubt lambast Microsoft and view this as yet another bone-headed move by a company that just doesn’t get it. As people change to Apple they will delight in being able to turn on their trendy aluminium machines and almost instantly be surfing the web with the latest version of Safari. Proof that the Apple enthusiasts were right all along and the Redmond behemoth inevitably collapsed with the weight of their own incompetence. Or is it?

Microsoft didn’t lose this battle, because it was not one they were allowed to fight. For the real culprit we need look no further than our very own Governments. You see, there is nothing fair about this competition. The match was rigged from the start and the perpetrator goes by the name of “antitrust”.

Proponents of these competition laws would have you believe that the success of Microsoft was at the expense of everybody else and that we would be swimming in a utopia of technological progress if it weren’t for their market dominance. What they try to divert attention from is that it was Microsoft who created the very idea of there being a PC on every desktop. At the time that Bill Gates announced his vision that this should occur, the dominant trend was the mainframe – a very large, expensive and centralized system run by only the largest corporations. Even IBM didn’t think that the computer would take off but Bill Gates had a vision and he gave up the opportunity of a Harvard degree to pursue it.

Steve Ballmer put it quite succinctly when he said “We [Microsoft] don’t have a monopoly. We have market share. There’s a difference”. Indeed, market share in the very market which they created. But instead of being able to pursue even further innovations they have been forced to regress to a 1990’s model of computing and ship Windows 7 with pretty much the same functionality as Windows 3.1 (released in 1992) but with the addition of prettier graphics.

The perversion of antitrust

The EU has mocked Microsoft’s decision to exclude Internet Explorer, saying that there was no need to do so and that they could have considered a different option such as “a menu which asks the user whether they would like to install Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera or Google Chrome”. This in itself is absurd because Google Chrome didn’t even exist a year ago and only has 2% market share. There are more than 30 different browsers available and some of them only stick around for a few years so how would a Brussels bureaucrat and legislator have the ability to judge which ones should be appointed as worthy of being promoted by Microsoft?

A blatant example of the perverse effects of antitrust can be seen with the case of “Brown Shoe” in 1962. A shoe company wanted to merge with a competitor to bring about the economies of scale of a larger shoe manufacturer. The lower costs would have meant higher profits for the shoe company as well as lower costs for consumers. But the US Government decided that this would be unfair to the other competitors who would still have to sell their shoes at the higher price. So consumers lost out, and the less innovative companies could pat themselves on the back and sigh in relief with the knowledge that US citizens would have to keep paying the higher price for their shoes. Now we get our shoes from China instead. If antitrust hurts consumers with something as simple as shoes then how on earth can it be of benefit in such a complex and fast paced environment as software development?

This leads us to another perversion: arbitrary whim. At the same time as Microsoft is being cobbled in every move they make, Google has amassed a nearly 90% market share in online search and is using those revenues to fund their online operating system and productivity software platform. Apple, one of the biggest beneficiaries of antitrust action against Microsoft, is not only a software development company but also a hardware manufacturing company and goes as far as mandating that Mac OS can only be used on Apple supplied hardware. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see a problem with it whatsoever, they are merely competing business models. The EU and US governments don’t see a problem with it either.....today....but what about tomorrow?

Nobody wins

Who will be the next victim when the Government needs another piggy bank to tap? Let’s not forget that the Apple OS software has a 100% market share on Apple computers and iPods and Google Android software has a 100% market share of Google phones. Things would be seen a bit differently if the Government mandated that upon opening your new iPod you were faced with decisions such as “Would you like to install Apple, Google OS or Windows Mobile on this device” or “Would you like to sync your iPod with iTunes, Windows Media Player, Real Player or WinAmp?” Well, when the Government decides the winners and not the free market, then that is the end result. To top it off, if you’re a new player in the market and want to develop a groundbreaking new piece of software of your own, well you’re out of luck. The Government decides the “white list” and if you don’t lobby hard enough and pay the right politicians then your name isn’t going to be on the list.

I've been using Windows 7 RC1 for over a month now. Even though it isn’t the final product it has proven to be much faster and more reliable than Vista and I have no doubt that the final release is going to be a very pleasing product that both consumers and corporations will enjoy.

But the antitrust perversion means that I can’t judge Apple and Microsoft merely by the objective benefits of each company and their respective business models. I must instead add a whole series of mundane decisions to the process. Do I live in the US or Europe? Do I want it with or without a web browser? Do I want it with or without a Media Player? Do I want it with or without a photo gallery?

My next computer will be Windows 7, but the one after that, well it looks like it’s going to be an Apple. Thank EU.

To end this note, I invite you to view this short video. It is a story about a bread company and demonstrates how with antitrust, you can’t win no matter what you do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQyh6fzGUvI

Untrue accusations by ONE against Dambisa Moyo and Dead Aid

2009-03-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

As you will know, I have been paying close attention to the economist Dambisa Moyo. She has just released a book called "Dead Aid" which outlines why our current aid policies to Africa have failed to deliver the intended results and have actually created moral hazards that have stifled local entrepreneurship and development initiatives.

Surprisingly, it didn't take long before the supporters of aid caught wind of the success and clarity of her message. The ONE organization, founded by Bono of all people, seems to be leading the charge. I have been informed of their tactics, which consist of creating straw dogs which they can later shoot down. The below correspondence has been forwarded to me, and I am publishing it to show the underhand tactics which the proponents of aid are using to further their already failed objectives.

After having taken so long to achieve so little, maybe it is about time that organizations such as ONE were more responsive to new ideas like those of Ms Moyo.

------------------------------------
From: Iris Mwanza
To: tyler.denton@one.org
Subject: RE: Urgent Help Needed
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 2009 19:24:07 -0400

Dear Tyler,

I have read Dead Aid and have seen most of Dambisa Moyo's interviews in the press. I have known Dambisa for many years and although I do not agree with all of her ideas, I do not think that what you have articulated is a fair representation of her book or her ideas. She has been quite clear in what type of aid she is talking about (multilateral, bilateral aid) and excludes humaitarian or charitable aid.

She has never argued that all aid projects are bad and I like to believe that CIDRZ is an example of a good project. Examples of good projects do not disprove her main argument which is that aid, as a system, has not been successful in alleviating poverty and achieving development. The example of PEPFAR demonstrates this point - yes, many lives have been saved due to ART care and treatment programs - but despite $30 billion to 15 countries, none of these countries have been able to develop a reasonably good or even decent health care system with the capacity to implement ART or other basic health services in a sustainable way. Moreover the health systems remain largely aid based with high dependence on NGO support for implementation and little capacity for government to assume the responsibility in the short or the long term - not a formula for development.

I find it ironic that your organization feels the need to mobilize Africans to speak out against her. If Africans feel strongly against her ideas then they should not need to be "mobilized" by your organization. More effective would would be to open fora for debate where differences of opinion are welcome and discussed fully and fairly or better still engage Dambisa directly - have you for example sent this to her for comment?. You have quoted Paul Collier extensively in your rebuttal; however, Prof Collier and others such as Kofi Annan have given a balanced view on her work which I believe is the more effective and helpful way of moving the debate forward.

Please feel free to use this as one of your quotations.

Iris Mwanza

---------------------------------------------

Subject: Urgent Help Needed
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:05:46 -0500
From: tyler.denton@one.org
To: Iris Mwanza

Dr. Mwanza:

I hope this email finds you well. It was such a pleasure meeting you last year during ONE’s trip to Zambia. Thank you again for your time and help during our visit with CIDRZ. It was a wonderful opportunity to see PEPFAR in action!

I am writing to ask your assistance with a very serious issue.

I am not sure if you are aware, but there is a new book out, called Dead Aid, that is getting a lot of traction in US media at the moment. It’s by a Zambian economist named Dambisa Moyo and she is calling for all aid to Africa to be cut off in 5 years – even for fighting AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases.

Moyo claims that aid has never achieved anything positive in Africa. Before her book went to print, we gave Ms. Moyo statistics on how African leaders have used aid effectively to save millions of lives and put millions more children in school, but she refused to include them. We are concerned that if her book gets traction it could lead to a gutting of assistance to Africa, including for important programs like PEPFAR, the Global Fund, AGOA and education funding.

In making her case, Ms. Moyo argues that she is speaking for Africans on this topic. We are collecting quotes from Africans who might disagree with her call to shut off all aid in 5 years and who can speak to what that would mean for them and their communities. If you are willing to provide us a comment on what that would mean to you, or if you are willing to provide a comment about how aid has helped your community, we would love to include it in our response to Ms. Moyo’s proposal. However, we will need your quote no later than tomorrow, March 27th.

Attached please find a document outlining the main claims in Dead Aid and the facts responding to them.

All the best,

Tyler Denton _____________________________________________________________________________ Tyler Dentont: 501.975.7235m: 202.230.9600f: 202.495.2701--ONEhttp://one.org/--P.O. Box 8003Little Rock, Arkansas 72203 or1400 Eye Street NW, Suite 600Washington, DC 20005