Reason.com has a recent entry in their Hit & Run blog concerning the The Donald and Paula Smith Family Foundation Medical Marijuana debate back in January between Bob Barr and Ethan Nadelmann. Interestingly, as Reason noted, it turned out not to be much of a debate but rather a "heated agreement." An interesting development to be sure, given Bob Barr's previous reputation as a drug warrior.

For you're convenience, I have posted the video on my own web storage space for viewing without having to navigate the Smith Family Foundation website.

Although I was aware that Barr had recently bolted the GOP for the Libertarian party, I was not aware of the extent his views on the matter of the Drug War had shifted to the point where there is virtually no daylight between his position and Nadelamann's. Although Barr has not reached the point of advocating outright legalization (for that matter, neither really does Nadelmann except for marijuana), Barr made the observation--although in his case, not a prescient one--that "the power to control these substances" is a 'gateway power' that leads to bigger government and escalating violations of civil liberties" While Reason.com scolds Barr a bit for his dilatory acceptance of this fact, Barr, nevertheless, deserves credit for perhaps crafting a succint talking point that should be henceforth readily repeated when countering the "gateway theory" nonsense of the drug warriors.

In the case of Barr, he finally made the connection that the War On Drugs battering of the 4th amendment,civil liberties, and federalism made it easy pickings for the Patriot Act to come along and extend the abuse. And this realization now has Bob Barr making public statements that the Federal government should neither be in the business of prohibiting or even regulating controlled substances, which, of course, would then leave it all up to the states. As i mentioned above, Barr is not at the point where he is advocating legalization at the state level but, nevertheless, this is a radical shift on his part.

Unfortunately, as Nadelamann passionately pointed out in the video, the effects of a 35 year old Drug War have ensconced the US deeply in the hooks of the Leviathan state. The Great American Experiment now is responsible for 25% of the world's prision population, and indeed, fosters an economic dependence of sorts on a "prison industrial complex.(e.g., private prisons hiring lobbyists to lobby for mandatory minimum sentences)." Our incarceration rate of minorities in this country is 6 times the rate of incarceration of blacks in South Africa when under Apartheid. There is no surprise, then, when we read that islam/radical islam is the fastest growing religion within our prison system. Our next door neighbor, Mexico, is one the world's leading Black market exporting Narco states. By far, Mexico's black market narcotics trade into the US supercedes their largest legal export, oil. Is it any wonder, then, given the utter resulting political corruption in Mexico, why we read polls that half the Mexican population would opt to immigrate to the US if given the opportunity? The illegal immigration across the border has become so pervasive that now we are resorting to building fences, militarizing the border, and tolerating the prospect of National ID cards and centralized federal datbase tracking and data mining. The US preaches to the world about WMD while actively spraying Columbian coca farms from the air with chemicals from military planes in our Plan Columbia operations. The list can go on and on here.

Nadelamann, near the end of the video, cites a rather disturbing statistic. 60% of those between ages of 18-29 favor federal prohibition of cigarettes. The federal drug propaganda in the school systems may not be resulting in decreased usage, but it is apparently is paying off in terms of engendering federal prohibition sentiment in the coming generations.

The drug policy alliance has this video on their myspace site. Although, at this point, we do not have federally mandated drug testing in the public school system, the feds/drug czar go around actively promoting and encouraging school systems to adopt such programs. I was particularly struck by the parent("Maureen") who expressed support for school drug/alcohol testing as a "parenting tool" to apparently ease her anxiety when her kids are parties or hanging out with friends. When the anchor pressed her about what business is it of the school/state to be serving as a surogate parent, "Maureen" appealed to the authority of previous drug/alcohol testing.

From that video, I couldn't help but be reminded of Gary Becker's (Nobel prize economist) highly technical 2004 paper, The Economic Theory of Illegal Goods: The Case of Drugs, available here, that establishes that while legalizing drug use and taxing consumption would be more effective than continuing to prohibit the legal use of drugs, it's not undertaken as policy because the middle and upper classes are more than willing to tolerate prohibition as a means to reduce overall consumption among their ranks. And as Becker demonstrates, it's not the middle and upper classes which bear the brunt of the consequences of prohibition, but mainly the poor.

It's hardly surprising then to see "Maureen" comfortable with the idea of mandatory school drug testing as a "parenting tool." Of course, in keeping in with the Becker model, as long as the consequences to her children are restricted to their athletic participation. In all likelihhod, "Maureen's" children are not relying on an athletic scholarship to be able to afford/go to college. Now if the penalty instead involved mandatory expulsion or ,say, a mandatory reduction in their GPA, "Maureen" probably would have a different perspective in regards to mandatory alcohol/drug testing as a "parenting tool." Because, then, in terms of her children's futures, the consequences of "being caught" would far outweigh any inherent risk that they might incur from a toke or swig.

The same principle applies for the overall war on drugs--as long as it is minorities and the poor who are going to jail, the mostly white middle/upper classes will tolerate prohibition, no matter what evidence of harm is demonstrated to the contrary.

But even as the likes of Bob Barr have come to admit, there is no free lunch when it comes to Leviathan. There is always a price ultimately to be paid, and it ultimately ends up being too high. And, ultimately, everyone ends up footing the bill.