The War on Minorities

Quiz: What the most second most commonly seized "illegal" drug in pounds in the US?

From the VillageVoice:

Later, I find that over the past year khat (pronounced "kot") was second only to marijuana in total pounds seized by U.S. Customs agents nationwide—more than double that of cocaine, and 28 times more than methamphetamine.

Even a New York DEA official admits:

There's no real related spin-off crime (burglaries, robberies, shootings); it's traded and consumed in private, not out on the street; and there's no proof it has spread beyond the small Somali and Yemeni communities scattered throughout the United States.

So what are tax payer dollars being wasted?

"We've had so many funny, funny cases," says Moore, set to be the lead prosecutor in the Operation Somali Express case next summer in New York. "It's been like Keystone Kops ever since 9-11. . . . For some reason when these local police forces encounter anyone named Mohamed they're going to consider him a terrorist until proven otherwise." His comment brings to mind the case against the tall, lanky, bearded Somali wedding singer who looked so much like Osama bin Laden, his musician friends took to calling him that. A hotel clerk heard "Osama" and saw the resemblance.

A Dirty Shame – US Drug Policy in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has agreed to poppy-spraying measures in a desperate bid to deflate the soaring drugs trade, America's anti-narcotics tsar announced at the weekend.

The move was urgently needed to prevent Afghanistan becoming a narco-state, said John Waters, the head of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. "We cannot fail in this mission." - The Guardian

The US tends to be a serial cry-baby about the drug trade but this latest move will be an even more embarrassing failure than usual.

The laughable failure of the US to control the drug flow even in our own prisons doesn’t stop the bold moves of declaring war on crops around the world. The opium trade is about 50% of the GDP of Afghanistan and the US has no ideas for alternatives to make up for it.

We addressed this earlier: Record Opium Crop

Eliminating supply drives up the price of the crop and the incentive to produce it. In other words the more the US can destroy, the better off they make the drug traffickers.

Potential spray victims may want to buy stock in Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, whose chemical Roundup is going to be used to destroy their property.

Records Opium Yields in Afghanistan – Another Drug War Failure

…economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics. – Ludwig von Mises

The United Nations' anti-drugs chief announced a "staggering" 60% rise in opium cultivation in Afghanistan this year, and demanded the government arrest scores of major traffickers and remove corrupt officials and police who are profiting from the trade.

If the supply of any good declines while the demand remains constant, what happened to the price? Its goes up of course! So how did the anti-drug policy cause a rise in production in the first place?

The rise comes despite an injection of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid to fight the drug over the past two years.

This should actually start off, “The rise comes because of…”. In other words the supply was restricted and caused a rise in prices. The rise in prices gave growers more incentives to raise opium. The actions taken to eradicate the supply of the drug provided the price incentives for supplies to grow more of it. There is no victory when you battle the market.

The record crop yielded 6,100 tons of opium -- enough to make 610 tons of heroin -- outstripping the demand of the world's drug users by a third.

I’m not sure what the WSJ means by this. Likely this is just a sloppy comparison to last years consumption figures and may portend a price fall.
The benefits of eradication are a windfall to the growers and intermediaries involved in the drug trade. The drug war is better thought of as a massive transfer of wealth from the US taxpayer directly to the traffickers. With out the Leviathan spending so much to keep the price of drugs high the suppliers and dealers of narcotics wouldn’t have so much incentive to advance and perfect their trade.