These guys literally have gold-plated machine guns. Bought and paid for by American Marijuana Prohibition (and, perhaps, walked into Mexico while the ATF watched).

FOX News Latino is reporting news of a huge drug ring bust with the headline “Arizona Busts Billion Dollar Drug Ring Tied To Mexican Cartels“. Based on the report, over 99% of the drugs seized in what was called “Operation Pipeline Express” was marijuana.

The ring is believed be tied to the Sinaloa cartel — Mexico’s most powerful — and responsible for smuggling more than 3.3 million pounds of marijuana, 20,000 pounds of cocaine and 10,000 pounds of heroin into the U.S. through Arizona over the past five years, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Their efforts in that time generated an estimated $2 billion, according to ICE.

In the three busts combined, the agencies have arrested 76 suspected smugglers and seized more than 61,000 pounds of pot, about 160 pounds of heroin, about 210 pounds of cocaine, nearly $760,000 in cash, and 108 weapons, including assault rifles and shotguns. The other busts came in mid-September and mid-October.

Remember during Prop 19′s legalization campaign in California when everybody was arguing about just how much marijuana legalization would cripple the Mexican drug traffickers?  Arizona’s Attorney General was saying “The violence that we see in Mexico is fueled 65 to 70 percent by the trade in one drug: marijuana.”  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quoting the Drug Czar’s 2006 National Drug Control Strategy that said, “61 percent of that revenue, or $8.5 billion, is directly tied to marijuana export sales” (page 36).  Then the RAND Corporation was studying how much Prop 19 would hurt the Mexican drug traffickers and said, ”This 60% figure is a truly mythical number, one that appeared out of nowhere and that has acquired great authority.  This figure should not be taken seriously.”  The Drug Czar also scoffed at the notion that legalization would hurt eat into Mexican drug traffickers’ profits, saying the marijuana revenue data “was based on 1997 information… we strongly believe we see significantly less than the numbers cited from 14 years ago.”

So how does that jibe with the numbers from this “Operation Pipeline Express”?

By weight, then, over 99% of what was seized and what was estimated to have been trafficked overall was marijuana.  However, there is more profitability in cocaine and heroin than marijuana.  Let’s figure that out by throwing in the ONDCP’s own estimated street value of illegal drugs, as of 2007.  In that report, they place the price of a pound of marijuana between $250 – $6,000, a pound of cocaine at $6,500 – $10,000, and a pound of heroin at $24,000 – $56,000.  If we use the lowest figures for all three drugs, then we only get a total of about $1.2 billion – remember, they said this was a ring responsible for “an estimated $2 billion”.

So let’s give the prohibitionists the best possible scenario: cocaine and heroin that fetch the highest prices recorded in 2007 and the cheapest schwag Mexican brickweed priced at a level that will get us a $2 billion total ($375.76/lb… thanks Excel Goal Seek!)

It’s entirely possible that the Mexican drug trafficking organizations like the Sinaloa cartel make significant profits through other criminal activities not listed here.  It’s also tough to make perfectly accurate claims about an unregulated market.  Based on this “Operation Pipeline Express” data, however, it appears that our prohibition on American grown and sold marijuana is an enormous financial benefit worth at least half or more of the Mexican criminal gangs’ profits.

By definition, if you legalize the sales of marijuana, you've reduced crime.

Maybe I’m being too pedantic here or maybe I’ve just developed an autonomous reflex from reading reefer madness every day that compels me to swat at logical fallacies.  The latest comes by way of Hamilton Nolan writing for a blog called Gawker in a piece entitled “Oh, Weed Spots Don’t Actually Reduce Crime“:

You see, the respected Rand Corporation did a big study of crime data and put out a fancy report last month saying that hey, these weed stores sure do bring down crime! It’s probably all the surveillance cameras they have, was the theory, although of course the real reason would have been the marijuana smokers all having the “munchies” too much to do crime—hey, why do crime when there are Chips Ahoy! brand cookies to be eaten while intoxicated on the THC found in marijuana, am I right?

Well well, what do you know, “stoner” marijuana apologists try to throw together a report using whatever they could find on the internet, only to find out that their data was incomplete, likely because Rand researchers were too overcome with the intoxicating effects of the THC found in marijuana to properly focus on their work! Just joshing you, Rand Corporation. Seriously everyone, we could all stand around making jokes about marijuana on the internet all day, but let’s just remember that medical marijuana leads to crime and move on with our lives—we need to go smoke more marijuana!

Let me walk you through the logical fallacy here, HamNo.  First off, RAND never asserted that “weed stores bring down crime”, they asserted that closing weed stores increased crime.  No mention was made of the crime levels before the dispensaries opened.

Second, incomplete data do not equate to incorrect hypothesis.  Suppose I told you there were close to seven billion people in the world because I counted them all.  Then you discovered later I only counted the people in my living room and made a wild-ass guess.  That doesn’t mean my guess wasn’t correct.

Maybe RAND goes back and gets complete data and discovers the hypothesis was correct: crime did increase when dispensaries were shuttered.  Maybe they’re wrong and crime decreased when dispensaries closed.  The jury is still out, HamNo.  But the LAPD has commented before that dispensaries haven’t really increased crime.  Similar studies of dispensary operations in Denver and Colorado Springs have also shown no correlation between dispensary operations and crime.

By the way, these “stoner marijuana apologists” at RAND?  A number of them have won the Nobel Prize.  Call us when you’re up for a Pulitzer.

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• Prohibition addicted cops can’t believe that closing dispensaries INCREASES crime!

Actual slide from "Summit on the Impact of California’s Medical Marijuana Laws" presentation for law enforcement in 2009. (click for entire presentation in PDF format)

A new study by the RAND Corporation takes a look at the effect of the recent closure of numerous Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries.  Opponents of dispensaries, most notably law enforcement, have long argued that marijuana dispensaries increase crime in their neighborhoods.  However, the data revealed by RAND today shows the opposite:

(Los Angeles Times) In a study of crime near Los Angeles dispensaries — which the investigators call the most rigorous independent examination of its kind — the Santa Monica-based think tank found that crime actually increased near hundreds of pot shops after they were required to close last summer.

Police have been desperate to show the public that acceptance of marijuana commerce leads to greater crime and danger. In Los Angeles, the “pot shops cause crime” mantra was a subject of a PowerPoint presentation entitled “Summit on the Impact of California’s Medical Marijuana Laws - Dispensary Related Crime” delivered by Cmdr. Michael Regan to over 400 law enforcement officers attending in July 2009.  Regan’s slides (download here) included such terrifying claims as:

• “Worse than combining a liquor store and a casino – lots of cash, lots of guns”
• “…a CHP officer was paralyzed by a marijuana impaired driver.”
• “…a group of suspects entered the dispensary, tied everyone up and robbed the place of about $50,000.”
• “…a masked gunman fired four shots into a dispensary worker’s car as he pulled into the parking lot.”
• “…one of the club’s customers was ambushed, robbed for his marijuana and killed at a nearby gas station.”
• “Crimes related to dispensaries may not be associated or recorded as such.”

Yet even as these individual anecdotes were sensationalized in this 2009 presentation, just two months earlier the LA crime statistics reported by the LA Times told a different story:

[Crime is d]ramatically down. And here in Los Angeles, the drop is particularly stunning. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, compared with the same period in 2008, homicide is down by 32%; rape 12%; robbery 3%; burglary 6%, and grand theft auto a shocking 18%.

Should we tax pot? – Los Angeles Times
Now, as we’re desperately trying to reinvent the economy, should we consider marijuana?

We’ve dipped a toe in those waters already in California. Sales of medical marijuana are taxable — $11.4-million worth for 2005-2006, the most recent (though admittedly murky) figures available.

Marijuana is a huge component of the nation’s underground economy. A couple of years ago, the legalize-it forces estimated that the U.S. marijuana crop was worth $35 billion a year. California’s share of that was $13.8 billion.

If the number is even half that, any tax windfall, on top of money saved by not prosecuting marijuana crimes, would mean a bonanza, wouldn’t it?

Sacramento would be doing the backstroke in black ink. With all the new parks and health clinics, we’d have more ribbon-cuttings than a baby shower. Is this just a pipe dream?

Rosalie Pacula says that in all likelihood, yes. She’s a senior economist at the Rand Corp. and co-director of its drug policy research center. Here’s how she burst my bubble:

First, you have to consider that legalizing it would have its own costs. Recent research, Pacula says, shows marijuana to be more addictive than was thought. Because marijuana is illegal, and because its users often smoke tobacco or use other drugs, teasing out marijuana’s health effects and associated costs is almost impossible. And more people would smoke it regularly if it were legal — Pacula estimates 60% to 70% of the population as opposed to 20% to 30% now — and the social costs would rise.

She takes issue with figures from Harvard’s Jeffrey Miron, among others, who says that billions spent on enforcing marijuana laws could all be saved by legalization. Rand’s research, Pacula says, finds that many marijuana arrests are collateral — say, part of DUI checks or curfew arrests — and many arrestees already have criminal records, meaning they might wind up behind bars for something else even if marijuana were legal.

Legalization also wouldn’t do away with pot-related crime entirely. There would likely be a black market, just as there is in other regulated substances, such as cigarettes and liquor. That means police and prosecution, which cost money.

As to the tax benefit, that’s partly a function of the price point for legalized pot. If everyone could legally grow and consume dope, then the crop probably wouldn’t be worth $35 billion and the taxes wouldn’t be anything to write home about.

How many ways do you think we can debunk Pacula’s premise, which seems to be that arresting 872,721 Americans for marijuana-related offenses and eradicating hundreds of millions of marijuana plants every year is cheaper than not legalizing marijuana?  Did you find all seven?  Read on…

1) Marijuana is more addictive?  Please.  Increases in treatment admissions for marijuana “addiction” are due to increases of arrests for marijuana where pot smokers are sentenced to drug rehab.  Pot is no more addictive now than it was in the ’60s because THC is THC – the chemical has not changed.  More potent marijuana does not make it more addictive – the effects are the same, just less pot is used.  NIDA even rated marijuana about as addictive as caffeine.

2) There are plenty of marijuana users (like myself) who do not use tobacco or other drugs.  I might drink one alcoholic beverage per month, on average, and don’t even use aspirin, acetominophen, naproxen, nose spray, eye drops, or cold medicines.  The National Survey on Drug Use and Health tells me there were 19.8 million Americans who used some illicit drug in the past month.  Of those, 14.4 million used marijuana.  9.2 million used drugs other than marijuana.  If I’m figuring this right, that means there are 3.8 million who use both marijuana and other drugs.  Then there has to be 10.6 million monthly pot smokers who use no other drugs.

3) 70% of the population would smoke pot if it were legal?  Right now, the NSDUH figures say just 8% of the population use any illicit drug, with only 5.8% smoking pot monthly.  70% would smoke this “more addictive” legal pot, when only 28.6% smoke highly addictive legal tobacco and 51.1% drink highly addictive legal alcohol?

4) The social costs would rise?  What are those costs?  These nebulous assertions are often based on lost wages, productivity, crime, and health care costs that are associated with heroin, cocaine, or meth abuse, that end up lumping in marijuana as well under the umbrella term “drug abuse”.  It’s interesting to me that Pacula says it’s tough to “tease out” the costs of marijuana because its users use other drugs, but then in the same paragraph claims legalizing only marijuana would cause social costs to rise.

5) Some marijuana arrests are collateral to other arrests, true.  But most are collateral to what would normally be violations, like speeding, improper lane change, or broken taillight.  If some pot smokers might have been arrested anyway for curfew or DUI, then many more would’ve just gotten tickets instead of wasting a cop’s time with an arrest and booking.  Besides, if marijuana arrests have tripled over the past sixteen years, while both violent crime and property crime have declined, doesn’t that mean that you’ve had to arrest more people for nothing but marijuana?

6) There might indeed be a black market in marijuana when it is legal, just like the black market in cigarettes and liquor.  A 2000 study says that 3-4% of tobacco sales are black market.  Wouldn’t the enforcement costs on tobacco be much higher if 100% of its sales were black market like marijuana?  And we can look back to 75 years ago to determine whether the enforcement costs were higher on 100% black market sales of alcohol vs. whatever small percentage of black market booze sales may exist today.  Then you’d have to compare the enforcement costs on few remaining black market marijuana sales against the economic benefits and the tax revenue that would be generated by the white market marijuana sales.

7) As for the tax benefit, while everyone could legally grow their own, people like the writer and Rosalie Pacula have never actually tried to grow marijuana and must thnk you just drop a seed in some soil and forget about it.  People are allowed to brew their own beer, too, but they seem to be willing to buy beer commercially and pay higher-than-normal taxes on it.  Growing quality marijuana is a lot harder than home brewing beer.  Marijuana’s value in a legal market may be less without the risk costs of prohibition, but it won’t be worthless, either.  Suppose the price of an ounce dropped to 20% of current prices – say, from $300/oz. to $60/oz.  Even at just 20% of its current projected $35 billion in value, it would still be worth as much as wheat in this country, and the taxes on wheat are something we could write home about, huh?