Dear Log,
An interesting fact as part of this one opinion piece:
«It is hard to assess the size of the international drugs trade, but in 1999 the UN Human Development report estimated it to be around $400bn a year, equivalent to the GDP of a country the size of Spain and representing, at that time, about 8% of world trade. This makes it second only as an industry to the arms trade at $800bn a year, and ahead of oil and gas, and chemicals and pharmaceuticals.»
I've always thought the term "war" is such a rotten way to describe this mess because all too often it's a war on our own people. Perhaps "Drug Civil War" would be a more appropriate description. And while we're on one of my personal pet issues, I have my own opinions about the stupity of the drug war. What's curious about that article is that many people who have read it assume that I am pro-drug or am in favor of legalizing them, which is simply not the case. I'm more interested in finding solutions that minimize the damage, but try to explain that to people.
Interesting piece of Ovid trivia regarding that article: while in college, I studied the drug war quite intensely and have a decent sized collection of books on the topic (pro, con, and in between). I quickly discovered that no matter what class I had a paper due in, I could usually find a way to rewrite the above paper. I managed to submit it for two classes in English, classes in statistics and philosophy and tried to fit it into an international relations class only to discover that, at the time, there was very little international information about the subject that was readily available to me (the Internet was merely a curiosity to me back then). It was a very easy way to get an 'A' for a class
Regarding economics, part of the reason that I didn't pursue a career in economics is because I was focusing on (say it quickly now!) "negative externalities stemming from government suppression of illicit markets". In other words, what bad things happen to society because the government wants to stamp out all of the "immoral" activities? I realized that this was not going to get me a job and somehow slimed my way into computers.
