No surprises for RBC readers, but a very serious and pleasant conversation. I haven’t spent much time talking to McWhorter in the past; I hope to spend more in the future.
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No surprises for RBC readers, but a very serious and pleasant conversation. I haven’t spent much time talking to McWhorter in the past; I hope to spend more in the future.
Yes, that was a truly informative and thought-provoking discussion. Thank you. And - more please!
There’s one line of speculation I haven’t yet seen explored, atleast on this blog. So far, HOPE seems to have seen limited deployment and remains relatively obscure. Should it become lot more widespread and widely known, what do you expect the emergent response of drug distributors to be?
Mark, dear, you look so pale! Perhaps a spray-on tan?
Very informative discussion. I like McWhorter in a lot of these Bloggingheads discussions because he tends not to pretend to know things he doesn’t know and he usually asks the questions that I have in listening to someone more knowledgeable about a subject. What I would love though would be a discussion between you and Ta-Nehisi Coates, another Baltimore native who grew up with the results of our drug war at the peak of the crack era.
At about 6:40 in the video, Kleiman states, “you’d have to repeal basic economics not to have a very large increase in cocaine consumption [if cocaine were legal].”
Well, according to the ONDCP, the average retail price of a pure gram of powder cocaine (in 2007 dollars), dropped from a high of nearly $700 in 1982 to just over $100 as of 2007. During the same period, the percentage of US high school seniors reporting past-month use of powder cocaine declined from 5% to 2%. So, in reality, a very large drop in price was accompanied by a very large drop in use.
I would assume an academic like Kleiman would be familiar with a basic economic concept like price elasticity of demand. I’m rather astounded that he fails to address the possibility that demand for cocaine is largely price inelastic, particularly since the existing data tends to support this conclusion.
Historical cocaine price data can be found here: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/price_purity/price_purity07.pdf (see graph on p.50)
Past-month use of cocaine by US high scool seniors: http://monitoringthefuture.org/data/10data/pr10t17.pdf
pfroehlich2004,
1) You might find that adopting a slightly less supercilious tone is conducive to a productive discussion.
2) Given the enthusiasm and vigor with which cocaine possession is investigated and prosecuted - considerably more strenuous than for marijuana or underage alcohol, at least as portrayed on television - is it possible that the reason you’re not seeing a big rise in demand following a steep decline in price is that you’re looking at the wrong price? Maybe the right price to consider is not the money, but the legal consequences of getting caught using cocaine. The failure of the cocaine-using population to expand may reflect not that the number of people willing to use cocaine is fixed and small, but that the number of people sufficiently willing to brave a police response is. Also, cocaine simply seems not to be fashionable these days, perhaps because of the rise of other, still-cheaper and highly effective stimulants such as methamphetamines.
@Warren Terra:
Point taken. I was rather annoyed by that particular statement though. Price elasticity of demand is essential for predicting how consumption patterns will be influenced by price changes. To blithely ignore it seems intellectually lazy.
It’s certainly possible that the huge fall in demand was due to the introduction of more severe legal penalties for cocaine possession and trafficking and it’s also possible that people became more concerned about the health risks (the possibility of sudden cardiac arrest can be very dissuasive -even to youths in an experimental phase).
The Bureau of Justice Statistics website has data on average time served by type of offense, but unfortunately they only go back to 1994 and do not differentiate between substances. Average time served (in state prisons) for both trafficking and possession rose through the end of the 1990s, after which trafficking sentences remained fairly stable while time served for possession convictions fell slightly. (You can see the data here: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/dtdata.cfm).
As to whether the drop in cocaine use was due to the arrival of methamphetamine, again it’s difficult to know exactly as we don’t know how many survey respondents used cocaine or methamphetamine exclusively and how many used both. However, reported use of both substances has declined over the last decade suggesting that there is less demand for stimulants in general.
If you happen to have stats on average sentences and time served for cocaine and meth offenses specifically, I’d be quite interested in seeing them.
Anyhow, what do you think would happen if cocaine were legal for adults to purchase, but with all advertising banned? How much of an increase in use (if any) would you expect to see?
Any attempt at less prohibition during the very recent past has invariably lowered consumption - See Holland, Portugal and Switzerland. Conversely, any attempt at Prohibition in the past has invariably raised both availability and consumption. - Here is part of the testimony of Judge Alfred J Talley, given before the Senate Hearings of 1926:
“For the first time in our history, full faith and confidence in and respect for the hitherto sacred Constitution of the United States has been weakened and impaired because this terrifying invasion of natural rights has been engrafted upon the fundamental law of our land, and experience has shown that it is being wantonly and derisively violated in every State, city, and hamlet in the country.”
“It has made potential drunkards of the youth of the land, not because intoxicating liquor appeals to their taste or disposition, but because it is a forbidden thing, and because it is forbidden makes an irresistible appeal to the unformed and immature. It has brought into our midst the intemperate woman, the most fearsome and menacing thing for the future of our national life.”
“It has brought the sickening slime of corruption, dishonor, and disgrace into every group of employees and officials in city, State, and Federal departments that have been charged with the enforcement of this odious law.”
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/judgetalley.htm
And the following paragraphs are from WALTER E. EDGE’s testimony, a Senator from New Jersey:
“Any law that brings in its wake such wide corruption in the public service, increased alcoholic insanity, and deaths, increased arrests for drunkenness, home barrooms, and development among young boys and young women of the use of the flask never heard of before prohibition can not be successfully defended.”
“I unhesitatingly contend that those who recognize existing evils and sincerely endeavor to correct them are contributing more toward temperance than those who stubbornly refuse to admit the facts.”
“The opposition always proceeds on the theory that give them time and they will stop the habit of indulging in intoxicating beverages. This can not be accomplished. We should recognize our problem is not to persist in the impossible, but to recognize a situation and bring about common-sense temperance through reason.”
“This is not a campaign to bring back intoxicating liquor, as is so often claimed by the fanatical dry. Intoxicating liquor is with us to-day and practically as accessible as it ever was. The difference mainly because of its illegality, is its greater destructive power, as evidenced on every hand. The sincere advocates of prohibition welcome efforts for real temperance rather than a continuation of the present bluff.”
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/walteredge.htm
And here is Julien Codman’s testimony, who was a member of the Massachusetts bar.
“we will produce additional evidence on this point, that it is not appropriate legislation to enforce the eighteenth amendment; that it has done incredible harm instead of good; that as a temperance measure it has been a pitiable failure; that it as failed to prevent drinking; that it has failed to decrease crime; that, as a matter of fact, it has increased both; that it has promoted bootlegging and smuggling to an extent never known before”
“We believe that the time has come for definite action, but it is impossible to lay before Congress any one bill which, while clearly within the provisions of the Constitution, will be a panacea for the evils that the Volstead Act has caused. We must not be vain enough to believe, as the prohibitionists do, that the age-old question of the regulation of alcohol can be settled forever by the passage of a single law. With the experience of the Volstead law as a warning, it behooves us to proceed with caution, one step at a time, to climb out of the legislative well into which we have been pushed.”
“If you gentlemen are satisfied, after hearing the evidence supplemented by the broad general knowledge which each of you already possesses, that the remedy that will tend most quickly to correct the wretched social conditions that now exist, to promote temperance, find to allay the discontent and unrest that the Volstead Act has caused, is to be found in the passage of one of the proposed bills legalizing the production of beer of an alcoholic content of 4 per cent or less. We do not claim that it will do away with all the evils produced by attempted prohibition, but it would be a step in the right direction.”
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/HISTORY/e1920/senj1926/codman.htm