Drug Seizures and Body Counts

Three or four news stories this week have trumpeted large drug seizures by police across the country. Usually they will announce the capture by a police agency (or combination of several agencies from differenct jurisdictions) of marijuana -- usually over 1000 pounds, cocaine -- 50 Kilos or more, heroin -- a few ounces to a pound or so, and now a few pounds of methamphetamine as well. Usually they will also include $10,000 - 100,000 or more -- and often guns as well. The implication is that the police are winning the War on Drugs.

But to those of use old enough to remember the 1960s and 70s, they sound very much like the Pentagon's Viet Nam war body counts. Each week the Pentagon would release the number of Viet Cong or North Vietnamese soldiers killed, implying that the enemy was being steadily reduced to ineffectiveness. Then, in january, 1968, the North Vietnamese unleased their Tet Offensive, staging over 100 simultaneous attacks. These attacks led, ultimately, to the disillusionment of Walter Cronkite and the decision of Lyndon Johnson not to run for reelction.

For, you see, reporting the number killed said nothing about the number of new recruits or the remaining strength of the enemy. In fact, the reports possibly served as a recruiting tool for those eager to replace the losses. What they did accomplish was to establish a culture of dishonesty in the American Army as field commanders, eager to please their superiors and gain promotions, exaggerated or even fabricated their kills or planned operations, not for their strategic value, but to maximize body counts.

The Drug War works the same way. Police departments plan operations to grab headlines, not to lower the demand for drugs. Even worse, they plan them to maximize money seized because that money goes into their operational budgets without governmental oversite or budgetary discipline.

The worst part is that seizures don't work. From the time Nixon first originated the War on Drugs, the idea was to suppress sources and interdict shipments so that the street drugs would become so rare and so expensive that users couldn't buy them. It didn't work. The Customs Service (now ICE) has always admitted that, at best, they could intercept 5 - 10% of the incoming drugs. In effect, higher seizures are only a measure that shows a greater amount of imports, just like greater body counts were only a measure of the greater size of the Vietnamese forces (come to think about it, this sounds a lot like the reports of the number of insurgents killed or captured in Iraq today).

They certainly don't affect the amount or quality of drugs on the streets. The price and availability of drugs will be the same the day after the seizure as they were the day before. I still remember one time when Customs announced the seizure of ten tons of cocaine in the Port of Houston. The local head of the Customs Office, however, was quick to point out that no one should expect to see any results on the streets.

The seizures get people killed; they spend a lot of tax dollars in carrying them out; they just don't do anything about the availability of price of drugs on the street.