Most, if not all, major urban school districts are horrible. Yet crime has declined in most cities.

“Anywhere from 30,000 – 50,000 heroin addicts in Baltimore, and Buprenorphine treatment, which can be prescribed at individual doctors’ offices is tangled in red tape such as low Medicaid payments, bureaucratic hassles such as pr-authorization requirements, and confusing regulations”

Unless Baltimore in particular has some very much larger problem with heroin than other cities(which is possible, but seems improbable), the problem with heroin addiction is very common in all other major urban centers.

“Too few officers to follow through on preventing crime” because of…..”Hopefully the tax base will return to the city” precisely.

The schools are bad because Baltimore’s economy is weak.

The tax receipts are low because Baltimore’s economy is weak.

There aren’t enough police because Baltimore’s economy is weak.

There are many drug addicts because Baltimore’s economy is weak.

Baltimore’s crime rates look like Detroit’s because……..ok, enough of the broken record. The core cause is that Baltimore’s economy is weak, and imprisoning 50% of the population wouldn’t make it any stronger.

First, you are of course correct that I should not have said “instant death”, since very few substances on this earth kill instantly. I should have said “random, rapid and unpredictable” death.

You argue based on Darke et al that polydrug interactions are present in “only” 25-75% of drug overdose deaths, but this does not in itself defend your claim that purity is the sole problem, or that “knowing one`s dose” could prevent death. The same studies by Darke and Zador have shown that those who died had lower blood alcohol concentrations of heroin than those who do not die of overdose. This is why the url you provide has a heading “A new perspective: polydrug use theory.”

This is also why the world of Drug and Alcohol research is focussing so heavily on polydrug use and its consequences.

Your comment regarding whether or not heroin users are unwilling to call for help for their fellows is dependent upon out of date research. In the UK and Australia at least, extensive education efforts have been “considered and implemented”, and have vastly reduced the unwillingness of heroin users to call for help, and police no longer “ambulance chase.” Now the main reason heroin users in Australia do not call an ambulance is irresponsibility, or a mistaken idea that their friend is “just sleeping it off” (and health promotion has been implemented to reduce this phenomenon as well).

You claim my point that criminality precedes drug use is “unsupported and unfounded”, but sadly you are wrong. Lee Robins is famous for this work, which is perhaps well summarised in her Thomas Okey lecture (published in Addiction).

You go on to argue that this theory is contradicted by historical experience of opium use in the UK. But in the 19th century opium was smoked or administered through a tincture, administration routes with almost zero chance of ovrdose. Even then there were concerns about the effect of opium use on social cohesion, and it is telling that supporters of opium legalisation never cite the Chinese experience, which is generally considered to have been quite bad.

You then go on to state that criminalisation is associated with high rates of HIV. This is also not true, since in pretty much every developed nation except the US and Sweden, clean needles are available free even though heroin is illegal. As a consequence Australian heroin users have very low rates of HIV, even though heroin use is illegal.

Finally, as regards police corruption: just because it is associated with illegal drug use does not mean that it is because of illegal drug use. Police are corrupt for many reasons, and corruption is as old as the force. Corruption has also been shown (in Australia at least) to be a systemic problem, caused by lack of proper management of police culture, and not a consequence of individuals giving in to criminal pressure. Obviously because police exist to prevent illegal activities, corruption must involve those illegal activities, and so long as heroin is illegal corruption will exist. However, with a proper police culture, this corruption can be minimized. Since the Wood commission in New South Wales, Australia, the police service has been reformed and it was coincidentally 3 years after the reforms of that commission were implemented that the heroin shortage struck. Coincidence? Maybe…

As for the issue of drug money funding terrorists and cartels, I don`t really believe that terrorism is a serious problem worldwide – more Australians die every year of heroin overdose than of terrorism, for example. Also the reason that people in Afghanistan grow poppies is because other crops are not as profitable. Were those crops as profitable as opium, I`m sure no-one would be arguing that wheat money funds terrorism (which, in fact, in Iraq, it probably has). It`s a furphy. Legalising heroin tomorrow won`t change the structure of poppy growing markets in Afghanistan, and it won`t change the allegiances of the farmers or the behaviour of the middlemen.

True, but that doesn’t mean it can’t make a U-turn if it wants to.

Nevin found that 1941-1975 gasoline lead use explained 90% of the 1964-1998 variation in the USA violent crime rate, and paint lead trends from 1879-1938 explained a 10-fold rise and subsequent fall in the USA murder rate from 1900-1959. His new study reveals a similarly stunning relationship between lead exposure trends and USA burglary and index crime rates (mostly property crime), and shows the same relationship between lead exposure and crime in other nations with very different lead exposure and crime trends.

More chillingly, recent literature suggests that even slight lead poisoning alters brain development, and the damage is not reversible. Which, if this study holds up, means if lead poisoning isn’t dealt with, the crime rate will remain as long as children live in older, poorly maintained buildings, with old water systems, and near freeways, all pretty likely occurrences in poorer neighborhoods in most older city centers.

So the war on drugs, as problematic as it is, might be a side show to the real problem.

Second, decriminalization in the US is almost impossible given that the US has catalyzed and funded transnational criminalization and the militarization of narco-policing since the mid-1980s—switching tracks now would mean admitting that we’ve been a bad global citizen. Our government’s record on admitting it was wrong is abysmal. Imagine: “whoops, guess we’ll just shut down all those international police training programs, eliminate the DEA, INL, etc etc, and stop threatening to use our IMF and World Bank vetos against countries that won’t cooperate with our program, oh and also USAID …” This country is seriously in need of voter education before anything like that could happen. The drug war has expanded because the people it affects the most are politically and economically disenfranchised, don’t matter to the politicians and politics. Political mobilization in the US on this issue rests on an alignment of fiscal conservatives with social liberals around this issue.

Care to provide links to your claims on 1), 2), 3), and 4)?

You said:

proper criminalisation of drug use has not been properly tried in many countries due to the extensive corruption in modern police forces. I would argue that it has recently begun to work in Australia (since 1996, the Woods commission) and the consequences of effective policing have actually been quite positive (see: the heroin shortage)

You said:

It is not the case (as suggested by say Russell at comment 40) that legalising heroin will prevent it`s main negative side effect, which is instant death. The main cause of overdose death in heroin users is not “high purity”, but combining alcohol and heroin (and to a lesser extent benzos). Legalising heroin means that it will be much easier for drug users to mix alcohol and heroin, and may actually increase their risk of death.

Another variable of interest, the interval of time between the final injection of heroin and death, has been estimated in several studies (Garriot & Sturner, 1973; Monforte, 1977; Nakamura, 1978; Manning et al., 1983; Zador et al., 1996). Instant death following heroin administration does not appear to be the norm. Manning et al. (1983) reported that only 23% of cases collapsed immediately after injection. Only 14% of cases in the study by Zador et al. (1996) were classified as instant, with 22% estimated to have died over a period of time longer than 3 hours. An interval of more than 3 hours was reported in over half (52%) of cases studied by Garriot & Sturner (1973), while Nakamura (1978) reported 44% of cases having an interval of greater than 2 hours. Although figures were not given, Monforte (1977) also commented that instant deaths in the cases he examined appeared rare. The fact that most heroin-related fatalities appear to occur over a period of time presents an important opportunity for intervention.

It would seem that a large proportion of deaths attributed to overdose occur in the presence of other heroin users, who are often reluctant to seek help. Interventions to address the fears preventing users from calling an ambulance need to be considered and implemented. Heroin users need to be encouraged to call an ambulance as soon as they recognize the signs of acute narcosis. Police also should be approached to refrain from making arrests at sites of suspected overdoses, as this dissuades heroin users from seeking help.

generally in junkies the criminality precedes the drug use. This has been known since the work of Lee Robins in the early 70s, and is abundantly evident to anyone who has spent any time working with heroin users. Their problem is extreme poverty, abuse, childhood institutionalisation, lack of edcuation, and dangerous peer networks in about that order. They aren`t generally criminal junkies – they`re junky criminals.

Opiate use was also frowned upon in some circles as immoral—- a vice akin to dancing, smoking, theater-going, gambling, or sexual promiscuity. But while deemed immoral, it is important to note that opiate use in the nineteenth century was not subject to the moral sanctions current today. Employees were not fired for addiction. Wives did not divorce their addicted husbands, or husbands their addicted wives. Children were not taken from their homes and lodged in foster homes or institutions because one or both parents were addicted. Addicts continued to participate fully in the life of the community. Addicted children and young people continued to go to school, Sunday School, and college. Thus, the nineteenth century avoided one of the most disastrous effects of current narcotics laws and attitudes—- the rise of a deviant addict subculture, cut off from respectable society and without a “road back” to respectability.

You mentioned HIV—the only reason heroin users spread HIV is because it is illegal to obtain fresh needles without a prescription, so they share needles. In fact, I doubt heroin would be used at all if it weren’t for the black market. Heroin, biochemically speaking, is exactly the same as morphine (it is hydrolyzed to morphine in the brain)—just more potent, and therefore more easily smuggled. Under a decriminalization scheme, morphine (or even raw opium) would be so cheap that it wouldn’t be worth it to make it into heroin, moreover, addicts could eat or smoke their drugs rather than inject them, so the transmission of HIV and hepatitis via this route would be virtually eliminated.

My main point is that many of the dangers of drugs are inextricably tied up in the fact that they are illegal, and these dangers would be vastly reduced if drugs were decriminalized.

You didn’t mention, by the way, anything about my point of drug prohibition supporting criminal cartels and terrorists. Care to comment?

This sums it up nicely.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Crime/wm1355.cfm

http://www.ncpa.org/studies/s219.html

If you look at murders per 100,000 that stat has declined as the prison population has increased. Could that be becuase more potential perps are in jail, or that chance of getting caught is higher?

This chart is interesting. As involuntary commitment to mental health facilities came to an end the prison population shoots up.

Another chart:
http://dcj.state.co.us/ors/images/stats/Violent_vs_Offense/2004_violent_vs_incarceration.gif

More links that show putting criminals in jail reduces crime:

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/crime.html

People may not like this method in fighting crime, but it does work.

Reasons for our problems:
1) Horrible, horrible schools, while officials accept that status quo. This erodes the tax base, as many potential residents flee to the counties the second they have kids.
2) Anywhere from 30,000 – 50,000 heroin addicts in Baltimore, and Buprenorphine treatment, which can be prescribed at individual doctors’ offices is tangled in red tape such as low Medicaid payments, bureaucratic hassles such as pr-authorization requirements, and confusing regulations
3) Too few officers to follow through on preventing crime through a visible presence, and city leaders refuse to take the NEEDED steps to get more officers, and retain the ones we do have. High presence prevents crimes from ever happening.
4) Weak sentences for violent criminals (note in above comments I do agree that low level drug offenses such as pot should not be imprisoned, and I would rather just give h-addicts their drugs). Our state’s attorney refuses to use successful initiatoves such as project exile, and routinely does not try violent cases as policy.
5) Every violent crime I read about each day is committed by someone who previously served time for a violent crime maybe 1 or 2 years
6) Legacy of mass public housing, which damaged the community immensely.

Tough enforcement, and imprisonment is the short term solution. Hopefully the tax base will return to the city, and then the other long term solutions (fixing horrid schools) will have the needed resources (monetary, and community resources).

I have never claimed that imprisonment is the only solution, but only a part. I have several posts above that acknowledge other causes, and solutions.

There are too many Black men in prison because their society, to a great extent is poisoned. The fact is, Black men commit significantly more crimes than their white, Hispanic, or Asian counterparts.

Here’s what Bill Cosby has to say: “In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on… People in jail, and women having children by five, six different men… these people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education, and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English.

The full article is here: http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_black_america.html

Like upright, law-abiding Muslims who stand up to the lunatics in their midst, it’s time for standup, respectable Blacks to call bullshit on the evil that’s an unfortunate, but very real, aspect of their culture.

I live in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. I used to live on the South side of Chicago.

Sure, there’s a lot of crime in Baltimore. I have no doubt that that’s the case. The questions are:

1. What are the causes of crime? If the causes of crime aren’t cured or reduced by higher imprisonment levels, then more imprisonment could be actively negative (as well as spending huge amounts of scarce resources on a non-solution).

2. A preferred solution of high levels of long-term imprisonment implies that the crime problem is caused by a relatively small number (even the US can only imprison 1% of the population) of criminals who are effectively sociopathic (i.e., they won’t be deterred by rehabilitation, short jail sentences or other non-jail punishments even before they initially enter the criminal justice system).

3. Baltimore has already been trying for decades to use the solution of higher levels of imprisonment to combat high rates of crime, and hasn’t succeeded. Meanwhile, crime rates in many other urban areas have fallen substantially. What does it imply that Detroit and Baltimore have continued to have high crime rates while other cities have not?