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October 18, 2009
Continuing Border Woes Confirm Illegal Market is Huge
In September 1958, I began what would become five years of military service in El Paso as a dispensary officer at Fot Bliss, formerly the Army’s anti-aircraft artillery school; then transitioning into anti-aircraft missile systems. After an interesting year at Bliss, I moved across the highway to William Beaumont General Hospital for four years of training in General Surgery, my original goal in joining the Army in the first place. After completing the residency in September ‘63, I left El Paso for Japan. Although I haven’t been back to the Border, my pre-drug war memories are of peaceful cities on opposite sides of the Rio Grande. Both were safe at night; although parts of Juarez were honky-tonkish and could be less so for the belligerently intoxicated, they were generally OK for everyone else. That’s why lurid reports of extreme violence associated with the drug trade are, for me, utterly convincing evidence that American drug policy is contemptibly stupid.That the commodity now generating the most income (thus the most violence) is low grade Mexican weed (“bammer”) is astounding, but should convince anyone with a bit of analytical ability and a modicum of intellectual honesty that America’s illegal marijuana market has become enormous; exactly what one would predict after half of all high school kids have been trying it since the early Seventies, particularly if a substantial fraction of the initiates had remained loyal consumers.
In fact, from the standpoint of a rational public policy, it shouldn't make much difference whether their chronic use is considered "recreational" or "medical," so long as smoking it was demonstrably less risky than cigarettes (and particularly if chronic users reduced their consumption of both cigarettes and alcohol).
What it all adds up to is an illegal pot market far larger than policy wonks dare to admit. If pot remanis illegal, its market should continue growing until the oldest Boomers are about 80 before stabilizing. For me, the only uncertainty is how long current pretenses can be maintained; in other words, how much longer can such a failing, lame-brain policy be taken seriously?
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at October 18, 2009 06:58 PM