Monday, January 2, 2017

Annapolis Podcast Update

Back in late 2015, I wrote about my interview with the Annapolis Podcast. The host, Scott MacMullan, asked me about a column that I had recently written for a local paper titled, Heroin Arrests Won't Solve Drug Problem. I argued against the drug war.

Not long after that, Scott interviewed Anne Arundel County State's Attorney Wes Adams. Scott invoked my name in one of the questions, but Adams did not respond to any of my points directly.

It is worth noting that over the last year or two, the Annapolis City Police and the Anne Arundel County Police have held several press conferences to announce their various successes in bringing down heroin drug rings. Regardless, it still seems to be freely available. And in 2016, the City of Annapolis had more murders than in all of recorded history.

This was entirely predictable. In fact, I said as much would happen to friends over the last couple years. This was not some original thought. It has been well established that increased drug enforcement increases violent crime. As one study put it:
The association between increased drug law enforcement funding and increased drug market violence may seem paradoxical. However, in many of the studies reviewed here, experts delineated certain causative mechanisms that may explain this association. Specifically, research has shown that by removing key players from the lucrative illegal drug market, drug law enforcement has the perverse effect of creating new financial opportunities for other individuals to fill this vacuum by entering the market. - Werb, D., et al. Effect of drug law enforcement on drug market violence: A systematic review. International Journal of Drug Policy (2011), doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2011.02.002
Will anyone listen or care? Or will people just continue to demand more drug arrests and reward the politicians who agree with them? Will we continue to waste taxpayer dollars enforcing unjust laws while simultaneously destroying our own community? For alternatives, people should consider what groups like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition have to say.

In addition to the podcast interviews with me and the State's Attorney, Scott MacMullan also did other interviews that should be of interest to the legal community. I have linked to them below:

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