According to a new report, not only is the global war on drugs a failure, but unless governments shift their focus from criminal justice to public health the problems will just keep getting worse.posted by Trurl at 2:08 PM on June 2, 2011 [3 favorites]
The damning conclusion was arrived at by a 19-member commission that includes former heads of state, a business mogul and the current prime minister of Greece.
Acting under the banner Global Commission on Drug Policy, theirs is the highest-level panel to ever reach such conclusions on the international approach to curbing illegal drug use.
"... The biggest moonshine bust in the United States occurred not during Prohibition but in 2001.According to some sources, about 1 in every 300 Americans makes some moonshine:
Dubbed "Operation Lightning Strike", it resulted in the arrest of 26 people in an operation that stretched from North Carolina to Philadelphia.
The group had dodged $20m in taxes on 1.5 million gallons of alcohol. ..."
"Making and selling moonshine is outlawed in every US state and the police treat distilling liquor without a license as a serious crime.It's a big enough activity to have spawned a resurgence in small scale "artisan" pot still production:
But while official figures are hard to come by, experts believe as many as a million Americans could be breaking the law by making moonshine - also known as white lightning and white dog.
Moonshine has held a place in America's folk memory since Prohibition days
'There's been a huge increase in the number of people making moonshine,' says Max Watman, whose book, Chasing the White Dog, chronicles moonshine's colourful history.
He says that in recent years, the image of moonshine 'has changed dramatically'.
'The stigma has gone. It's become cool.' "
"Colonel Vaughn Wilson is one of America's best known builders of copper stills. He has seen demand double for his stills in recent years.And yet, the U.S. Federal government, and every one of the 50 state governments, still spend millions of dollars a year fighting illegal distillation and distribution of beverage alcohol:
'I can't keep up with my orders,' say[s] Col Wilson, who lives in Arkansas and whose stills range from $300 to $11,000 in price. 'I've shipped stills to every state in the US.' "
"Because prosecutions tend to be made on a state rather than federal basis, there is no record of the number of moonshine convictions made in America annually. But arrests have been made in Kentucky, Georgia and Arkansas in the past month.And from the Feds:
A man in Bell County, Kentucky, was arrested in June [2010] after police discovered 100 gallons of moonshine (378 litres) and 500 gallons of mash on his property.
Police said it was part of an ongoing investigation and added that they hoped to make more arrests.
'It will be a relentless pursuit until the end,' said Doug Jordan, of the Bell County Sheriff's Department.
A number of states have set up special moonshine task forces to combat the problem.
Arrests are usually made following tip-offs from neighbours or from local stores who report sales of unusually large quantities of sugar, a key ingredient, to the police.
Nathan Jones, of the Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, says: 'We get cases every month or so. The ones that come to our attention are the big ones.' "
" 'If someone is producing illegally distilled spirits and not paying tax then we'll go after them'The reason for the continued Federal and state efforts to control moonshine production and distribution is fairly simple: Tax collection. The current Federal excise tax on distilled spirits is $13.50 per proof gallon (a proof gallon being 100 proof liquor, or 50% alcohol). On top of this, Federal licensing for legal distillers and distributors can cost thousands of dollars more per year in special occupational excise taxes, not to mention the tens of thousands of dollars an initial distilled spirits production license costs.
Arthur Resnick
Federal spokesman "
"Mario Ramos thought it was a bad joke when he received an anonymous email at the start of this year demanding $15,000 a month to keep his industrial tubing business operating in Monterrey, Mexico's richest city and a symbol of progress in Latin America. ..."What's going on in Mexico and Latin America is that organized gangs are directly challenging the governments for economic and political control of the region. There are a lot of cultural causes and drivers for this, only one of which is drug activity, as the FPP cited Reuters article attempts to describe. Accordingly, I think it's not at all clear that "legalizing, taxing and regulating drugs" in the U.S. is shortly going to end the problems the FPP article discusses. I got into the discussion of the moonshine business in the U.S. simply to point out that our current model of alcohol taxation leaves plenty of room for illicit activity, as it does, as practical refutation of your insistence that the terrible situations in Latin America can only be solved by collapsing U.S. drug policy along your suggested lines.
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posted by dunkadunc at 1:55 PM on June 2, 2011 [4 favorites]