Tuesday, November 02, 2004

"Super coca" as a result of prohibition A couple months ago, several mainstream media outlets picked up a story about a new breed of coca plants that were supposedly genetically altered to gain resistance against the effects of herbicides that have been dumped on Colombia by the ton. A few people over at the Narcosphere picked the story apart and suggested it was simply prohibitionist hype. Wired has now published a further investigation, with a dramatic flourish at the end. I'm going to spoil the end of the story here, so don't read on if you want to be surprised while reading the whole thing.... The Wired story implies that there is a new strain of herbicide resistant coca, but that it has not been genetically altered by sophisticated drug cartels. Apparently, it's natural selection at work (with a little help from knowledgable growers): Which points back to selective breeding. The implication is that the farmers' decentralized system of disseminating coca cuttings has been amazingly effective - more so than genetic engineering could hope to be. When one plant somewhere in the country demonstrated tolerance to glyphosate, cuttings were made and passed on to dealers and farmers, who could sell them quickly to farmers hoping to withstand the spraying. The best of the next generation was once again used for cuttings and distributed. This technique - applied over four years - is now the most likely explanation for the arrival of Boliviana negra. By spraying so much territory, the US significantly increased the odds of generating beneficial mutations. There are numerous species of coca, further increasing the diversity of possible mutations. And in the Amazonian region, nature is particularly adaptive and resilient. This is a bit far afield from marijauna decriminalization, but it's a wonderful example of how prohibition causes an unintended effect, and then prohibitionists try to capitalize on that effect as the evil of drugs and drug dealers. 5:46:39 PM | permalink | comment [] Looking beyond decrim in Canada Canadian legislators have been tinkering with a bill that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, and it has now been reintroduced, worse than ever. The bill has a lot of problems, from forced treatment for users, to increased penalties for growers, as well as questionable constitutionality, but this commentary from today's Globe and Mail seems to make sense. The author argues that the bill shouldn't be the final goal, but one step to toward true legalization, a policy that would be superior to both prohibiton and watered-down decrim. At the federal level, Bill C-16, which was also introduced yesterday, will expand police powers to compel blood, saliva or urine tests for suspected drugged drivers. Both laws may well offend the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Today, the Mounties begin a two-day conference on the problem of grow-ops and what to do about them. They are unlikely to grapple with the real solution. We are rapidly moving to the point where the state will have no choice but to move beyond decriminalization and toward legalization and regulation. Otherwise, we could be back to the 1920s and the challenge to state power that accompanied Prohibition. According to Statistics Canada, 12 per cent of adult Canadians in 2002 admitted to smoking pot at least once in the previous 12 months. (The real number is probably higher.) That doesn't make it a good thing, but it does make it a common, socially acceptable, thing. Opponents of legalization point to the many safety hazards of pot consumption: It can be far worse for your lungs than cigarettes; it is addictive (psychologically, if not physically); and putting it in the hands of Labatt or Imperial Tobacco would offer societal sanction of a dangerous drug. Except that society already regulates tobacco and alcohol because they're dangerous. Banning them is impossible, given their widespread use, and so governments permit their sale under strict conditions, accompanied by heavy taxation to mitigate their societal cost. Regulating cannabis would provide a cash crop for the struggling agriculture sector that, rest assured, would not require government subsidies. Strict laws and punitive taxes would make sure the weed would be no easier for underage tokers to obtain than it already is. Legalization would be a blow to organized crime, would improve health and safety conditions among cultivators, would increase tax revenues, and would relieve governments of the temptation to violate the Constitution in their futile efforts to shut down the industry.   9:18:01 AM | permalink | comment []

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