I wrote yesterday about an absurd report in The Philadelphia Inquirer which valued marijuana at over $100 per joint. As I pointed out, boastful law-enforcement sources frequently collaborate with slothful reporters to produce wildly inaccurate news coverage of the drug war.
Obviously, it is just unacceptable to have major news sources reporting frivolous and false information. The laugh-out-loud craziness of implying that a joint costs $100 just shouldn’t have made it to print, and we can all gaze at this spectacle and shake our heads as we recognize that the incompetence which made this report possible is perfectly typical. It explains volumes about the media's neglectful role in permitting drug war indoctrination to permeate our collective consciousness each day. It is 2007, and we shouldn't even be reading celebratory drug bust stories anymore, because each new one is a mere exhibit of the failure of those that came before it.
But, beyond all of that, it stands to reason that such coverage has a remarkable potential to entice individuals to enter the drug trade in the first place. The theoretical deterrent value of reporting on major drug busts and the fate of the perpetrators is surely undermined when profit margins are overstated so dramatically.
If one believes The Philadelphia Inquirer that 16 pounds of high-grade marijuana can be sold for $812,000, and one subsequently stumbles across an opportunity to acquire that amount for the (more likely) price of $50,000-80,000, they might be intrigued. By routinely exaggerating the street value of illegal drugs, the press renders itself an inadvertent advertising campaign for the lucrative business of black market drug distribution.
I've heard, but cannot confirm, that the Canadian press has sought to scale back this exact behavior after a revelation that constantly reporting on multi-million dollar marijuana seizures was having the effect of convincing people that it's easy to make a million dollars growing pot. I have no idea whether this is accurate, but it's certainly amusing to consider the possibility that all of this reckless drug war reporting is simply emboldening prospective marijuana entrepreneurs.
One wonders, therefore, how many more of these drug bust press conferences our intrepid journalists are willing to snooze their way through before becoming overcome with déjà vu and finding themselves compelled by the distant call of journalistic integrity to do anything other than cut and paste the predictable pontifications of the proud pot police into the morning paper.
Obviously, it is just unacceptable to have major news sources reporting frivolous and false information. The laugh-out-loud craziness of implying that a joint costs $100 just shouldn’t have made it to print, and we can all gaze at this spectacle and shake our heads as we recognize that the incompetence which made this report possible is perfectly typical. It explains volumes about the media's neglectful role in permitting drug war indoctrination to permeate our collective consciousness each day. It is 2007, and we shouldn't even be reading celebratory drug bust stories anymore, because each new one is a mere exhibit of the failure of those that came before it.
But, beyond all of that, it stands to reason that such coverage has a remarkable potential to entice individuals to enter the drug trade in the first place. The theoretical deterrent value of reporting on major drug busts and the fate of the perpetrators is surely undermined when profit margins are overstated so dramatically.
If one believes The Philadelphia Inquirer that 16 pounds of high-grade marijuana can be sold for $812,000, and one subsequently stumbles across an opportunity to acquire that amount for the (more likely) price of $50,000-80,000, they might be intrigued. By routinely exaggerating the street value of illegal drugs, the press renders itself an inadvertent advertising campaign for the lucrative business of black market drug distribution.
I've heard, but cannot confirm, that the Canadian press has sought to scale back this exact behavior after a revelation that constantly reporting on multi-million dollar marijuana seizures was having the effect of convincing people that it's easy to make a million dollars growing pot. I have no idea whether this is accurate, but it's certainly amusing to consider the possibility that all of this reckless drug war reporting is simply emboldening prospective marijuana entrepreneurs.
One wonders, therefore, how many more of these drug bust press conferences our intrepid journalists are willing to snooze their way through before becoming overcome with déjà vu and finding themselves compelled by the distant call of journalistic integrity to do anything other than cut and paste the predictable pontifications of the proud pot police into the morning paper.
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the value of marijuana
From the Inquirer story:
The reporter isn't telling us how much the drugs are worth. She's telling us how much THE POLICE SAID they were worth. I have no reason to doubt that this is exactly what they told her. And it's perfectly legitimate for a newspaper to report on what the police are saying about a pending case.
If there is a problem, it's that the reporter isn't checking the police statements against another source. Perhaps they could follow the above paragraph with something like this:
Then the newspaper reader will be left with two conflicting sources, and have to decide which to believe: the police, or some guy running a "pro-drug" blog who quotes from High Times magazine. Me, I would be more inclined to believe High Times, but I imagine that many readers would give more credence to the police.
In recent years, the press coverage has gotten better. More and more often, I've seen the other side being presented, from DPA, MPP, LEAP, or some other outfit. LEAP would have the most relevance to the article presently under discussion. I hope that we get to a point where reporters will routinely call up one of these sources on this kind of story. We've still got a long way to go, but we're moving in the right direction.
A useful tactic is the letter to the editor. If the Inquirer gets twenty letters from different people complaining about the inflated prices of drugs, they might print one of them. In recent years, I've seen a lot more such letters voicing criticism of the drug war. I can't say I recall seeing any on these exaggerating valuations of seized contraband, but it wouldn't surprise me to see one.
I've seen this kind of stuff for years, and I put most of it down to the desire of the police to puff up their own accomplishments. An $800,000 drug bust is a lot more impressive than one of $50,000. Frankly, I've got to say that of all the lies and distortions brought forward by the drug warriors, this is among the least objectionable. If I was launching a PR campaign against the drug war, I would give other issues a higher priority than this.
Complaining that reporters are lazy or appealing to some non-existent code of journalistic integrity won't get you anywhere. Reporters are going to act like reporters; cops are going to act like cops; politicians are going to act like politicians. Any campaign that is dependent on these things changing is doomed to failure.
rachelrachel
Public Relations
I agree. Excellent comment.
We need to understand that basically in the minds of the voting majority, we are the bad guys, prohibitionists are the good guys (i.e. we support hurting children so we can get high, and they're out to protect children from us, SWAT-raid victims and the like being collateral damage - 'small' losses to prevent 'larger' losses).
Because of this perception, the mainstream spotlight generally avoids shining on us in a positive manner, perhaps in fear of losing their mainstream audience (who thinks we're bad), or perhaps because they are paid off to avoid us.
As long as this is the case, our movement's ultimate goal of full legalization supported by an effective system of abuse prevention and treatment remains distant.
To generate a strong public response supporting our cause, we need an effective megaphone to reach that public. The mainstream spotlight by its nature is that megaphone.
We need a continual public relations campaign that first shines a light on the positive side of what we're about (finding an effective means to handling substance abuse, while supporting freedom), then secondly shines a light on how utterly destructive the freedom-violating Controlled Substances Act really is.
We need a better public image, and that can only come from being an entity that strongly sets out to build a better society, not just complain about current efforts.
That's why I believe we should set out to assess and improve the current national system of abuse prevention and treatment. One, it definitely needs improving (at least on the prevention front), and we're most qualified given our experience, knowledge, and candor. Two, it shows the majority of society that we're helping to do good (as long as they're aware of our efforts via the mainstream spotlight). Three, an effective system removes the main argument against legalization, the inevitable rise in substance abuse. While we need to be careful regarding the law (avoid encouraging illegal behavior), it's not illegal to improve this system now.
In short, it's not enough to be the good guys, we also need to be perceived (by the voting majority) as the good guys. Once this happens, we should be on the fast lane towards achieving our goal.
If there's a public relations expert reading this, do you have any suggestions on how to improve our image?
distortion
I disagree that 16 lbs of marijuana is only worth $50000. It gets sold many times over. Here are my unscientific figures.
1st buyer: $50,000/16 lbs/16 ozs/28 gms = $6.90 per g
2nd buyer: $64,000/16lbs = $4000 per lb = $8.83 per g
3rd buyer: $133,120/16 lbs = 2048 8 balls at $65 = $18.37 per g.
4th buyer: $217350/16 lbs = 7245 grams at $30
Grand total $464,405/16 lbs = $64.1 per gram
I realize that some of the pot gets smoked for free, and each dealer will keep some for themselves. But, there is now way that 16 lbs of weed is ever worth only $50,000. Whatever your agenda is, key words are 'YOUR AGENDA', things will always get distorted towards your side of the story.
Somewhere in the middle of two arguments there is the truth. That is what the liberal press should be looking for.
Bad math
We don't compute the value of used cars by adding together all the different prices they've been sold for. This is nuts. When you add it together like that, you're treating each sale as pure profit. Your chart should stop at $217350/16 lbs = 7245 grams at $30. But that's still wildly unrealistic. Unless you're full-time delivering small bags to super rich people who don't give a fuck.
Propaganda and Returns on Investments
Exaggerating—almost always by a common factor of ten—the retail prices of drugs, while ignoring the wholesale prices, keeps all the big numbers in stark public view. Among its other advantages, this propaganda technique provides a handy little tool to hide an awkward situation where, for example, a municipality might spend $5 million per year to seize drugs that are really only worth about $500,000 on the wholesale or even retail markets.
A ten-to-one ratio of money spent to drugs seized would make any drug war look dysfunctional. Even a one-to-one ratio is unsatisfactory. A one-to-ten ratio of money spent versus wholesale value of drugs seized starts to look better to the taxpayers and to congress people who are subsequently conned into funding the drug war farce.
Nevertheless, as the supply side prices reflect a very negligible cost of materials and labor needed to produce illicit drugs, an estimated hundred-to-one ratio, or more, of money spent for drug enforcement compared to the wholesale or even retail value of drugs seized is probably a truer and thus more useful economic model of drug war folly.
Giordano
the inky sucks more every day
i love how the cops made up the whole thing about people landing in the ER from the weed too. all i can say is with philly's murder rate being out of control, it is amazing that they would spend a penny on busting a pot dealer, especially one who (it looks like) doesn't even sell in philly, and lives on the very outer edge of the city (across the street becomes suburb). i don't know, maybe they just decided they had to nail a white guy to even things out. blackburn's the same tool who got his panties in a knot over the candy that looked like crack.
and just look at the list of most viewed and most emailed stories and tell me if the readers of this paper have the intelligence necessary to make up their own minds about things.
Legalization could be comming sooner than we think!
Look back at the 1920's the stock market was booming and alcohol was illegal!
now look at the 1980's to 2000! same thing only with "drugs"
The government was consolidating it's trade in liquor and when it was finnished
the crash of 1929 came! Then they "legalized" it to generate revenue.
Now what about today? Has Uncle Sam monoplized the "drug" trade?
He is in Afganistan... cut off/established routes in Iraq. And now the
USA is in the midst of the Second Great Depression! How will the
Government generate income? Maybe legalization is right around the
corner! By the way if you price the stock market from 2000 to today
in tearms of Euros instead of dollars it has gone down in value %7 a year
every year! The USA is in a depression and the Bush administration has
done a fantastic job of covering this up!(by devaluing the currency).
Is a Democtatic president and "drug" legalization the next step for the US?
Seems logical to me... America is aging and there are far fewer "children"
to "protect" against "drugs"! What do ya think?
DEMOCRATIC?
Do you mean Democrat? I don't see that they made any difference, after winning the majority in 2006. And they are not saying anything different than any of the politicians, Democrat and Republican, alike! (EXCEPT Kucinich Gravel and Paul). They wiill continue the failed drug war because it is what they think their constituants want. More government waste! If I had a business that did as well as the DEA, in their drug war, it would not last a year!
Almost reminds me of pyramid scheme adverts
Reminds me of all those companies out there that offer commission only jobs and say you can make thousands of dollars a week just by sitting at home, but in reality you make 1/10 or 1/100 of that and run your ass off...
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