The difference between legal drugs and legal trade in drugs
We’re really rather firm in our belief that drugs should be legal. Ingesting adults should be able to ingest as they wish - that’s what being consenting and adult means in a free and liberal society. This is also one of those areas where the Good Fight is being won and we are returning to Victorian levels of liberty. However, there’s a great deal more resistance to our second insistence upon the subject, that this must also mean the freedom for people to produce, package and market those very same drugs. As an entirely legal enterprise.
This being a good example of why:
Buying, selling and importing cannabis is against the law in Spain, as is using it in public - although it is technically legal to grow it for personal use, provided it is not publicly visible, and to consume it in private.
We have that private legality, but not that public. The result of which is:Cannabis resin sold on the streets of Madrid is contaminated with dangerous levels of faecal matter, a study says.
Traces of E.coli bacteria and the Aspergillus fungus were found by analysts who examined 90 samples bought in and around the Spanish capital.
The samples of hashish were wrapped up in plastic "acorns" were the worst offenders, reportedly because of the way they are smuggled into the country.
Some 40% of these also had the aroma of faeces, the study's lead author said.
The technical term for such smuggling is in a “charger”. Not something we ever wanted to be reminded of really. But we do think that it’s fairly obvious that there’s a difference there?
Alcohol, for example, another substance that humans like to use to get a buzz, get a little high, this is legal to produce - under regulation, certainly, significantly taxed - and market and distribute. This means that brands arise, the quality and purity of the product being the very thing that contributes to that brand value.
Smirnoff tends not to get stuffed up a colon to get it across a border. The equally legal to consume - but not to produce, market nor distribute - hashish does. Which is a bit of a difference we contend.
And thus we do indeed argue that drug legalisation needs to mean proper and full such. Exactly so that we do have producers competing by reputation and brand for our custom, this being the very thing which drives up standards.
To return to Victorian times for a moment. Such food brands as Heinz and Campbell’s became popular and famous because they mastered the then new art of canning rather better than many rivals. Leading to rather fewer customers being killed by inadequately produced and transported soups. This is a lesson that could usefully be applied to today. The legality of trade in cannabis and other drugs would lead to better transport of them. Lorries perhaps instead of lower bowels.
Thomas Hobbes, first political scientist?
On this day, April 5th, 1588, Thomas Hobbes was born. He was in his 40s when his thoughts turned to political science. He admired the way in which Euclid's geometry started from first principles and reached its conclusions by deductive reasoning. He wondered if the same could be done for politics, and set about writing "Leviathan," his classic of political philosophy. Leviathan, the Hebrew sea-monster from the Book of Job, refers to the huge creature we call the state.
Hobbes wrote his book against the background of the English Civil War, and published it in 1651, when he was 63 years old. Hobbes looked back to a state of nature in which, without government, life was not worth living. It was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," with everyone against everyone else. To remedy this, people agreed with each other to accept the rule of a sovereign to impose order. Unlike Locke's later version, Hobbes' sovereign did not agree to do anything in return.
Political thought has come a long way since Hobbes. Now we regard government as a two-way process in which rulers and ruled each have their rights and responsibilities. Given the way in which power is abused so often, we seek limitations on that power, and restraints that bring it under the law. Where there is government, though, people will abuse it. They will use it in an attempt to make others live as those using the power think they ought to live, rather than letting them live as they wish to live.
The only was to restrain this process is not, as Plato thought, to make our rulers virtuous but, as Popper thought, to limit what they can do. If constitutional restraints are in place that set limits to authority, and if there are checks and balances to restrain it from infringing the liberties of its subjects, there is a hope that its excesses might be restricted and its ambitions thwarted.
We need to recognize what Hobbes saw, that people seek power over others. He thought the only way to restrain them from abusing others was to put them under a power that would restrain them. In more modern times we seek to put them under laws that will restrain them, and with restraints and limits put upon the power of those who administer and exercise those laws. And we need to prevent Leviathan from growing too mighty.
Time to boogie - English declining as the language of pop
We could mourn the manner in which English is decreasing in importance as the language of pop music. Our gift to the world now declining in importance in a sad reminder of our own relative decline - but we’ll leave that sort of stuff to the worrywarts on the opinion pages. We would rather point to what a glorious event this is:
English losing crown as unofficial language of pop, as streaming sees Asian and Latin American music climb global chart
There are two ways to explain this:
Songs performed in Spanish, Chinese and Korean are enjoying rising success worldwide, an industry report found.
A report from the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry (IFPI) found that while sales of music in Europe grew a very modest 0.1 per cent in 2018, Latin America grew by 16.8 per cent and Asia and Australasia 11. 7 per cent.
“Some of the fastest growing markets are in Asia and Latin America (South Korea, Brazil), it found, “with Asia becoming the second largest region for physical and digital music combined for the first time”.
It could be that those native speakers of other languages are, for the first time, becoming rich enough to be able to actually spend money on music. That would be cheering, given that we know very well that music is a foundational part of what it is to be human. We really do find flutes and the like from the very dawn of homo sapiens’ existence. The other is, if we prefer to concentrate upon streaming, to note that this new technology now means that the billions can enjoy music. Which is just another way of saying the same thing, that they’re getting richer.
That pop music has been English dominated is the result of an historical coincidence. The technology to have it at any level above the immediately live human performance has only been around some century and a bit. A time when it just happened that the English speaking - with a bit of assistance from other European languages - places were the only ones with the wealth for the technology, the purchases or even the leisure to allow both.
That consumption in other languages is growing strongly tells us that peoples with other native tongues are enjoying that same climb up to leisured wealth that we’ve so enjoyed.
That beat combos are becoming popular while performing in non-English languages is not therefore something to mourn it’s just another symptom of perhaps the greatest event in human economic history. The poor are getting rich. Isn’t that something to sing and dance about?
The North Atlantic Treaty reaches 70
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is 70 years old today. On April 4th, 1949, 12 countries signed the treaty that bound them together in a military defence pact. In addition to the countries of the Western Union – the UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg – the other signatories were the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.
The collective defence of the alliance is embodied in Article 5, which states that an armed attack against one member state, in Europe or North America, shall be considered as an armed attack against them all. If one member is attacked, the others will respond. The backdrop to the treaty was the aggressive and expansionist policy of Stalin's Soviet Union. It had incorporated territory and countries of Eastern Europe, reducing them from independent countries to vassal states. Its huge military power could only be checked by an equal or superior power. NATO was the West's embodiment of that power.
The Soviet response to NATO was to formalize the military allegiance of their satellite countries into the Warsaw Pact in 1955, setting the two Cold War alliances to face each other. What some have called 'the Nuclear Peace" kept the Cold War from breaking out into open conflict. The Soviet Union could not move against the Western nations while they were protected under the American nuclear umbrella. NATO did its job, and kept the West protected until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Soviet system collapsed, along with the Communist governments it had sustained.
NATO has grown to 29 countries, with most of the former Communist countries joining it to gain protection from future Russian vengeance or encroachment. At the time of the Soviet collapse, the European countries between them contributed 34% of NATO's military spending, but by 2012 it had dropped to 21%, and there were rumblings elsewhere that Europe was not bearing its fair share of the cost. Members have responded by committing to reach 2% of their GDP on military spending by 2024.
The decision of the Western nations, 70 years ago, to stand united against Soviet military power and to do together what they could not do singly, calls to mind the words that Edmund Burke wrote in 1770: "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." NATO was just such an association. It enabled the countries of Western Europe to live in peace and freedom, and its anniversary should be celebrated by all those committed to the achievement of those goals.
Sure, air pollution's a problem. So, what should we do about it?
A report telling us that large areas of the world suffer from air pollution. The thing being, well, what should we do about this?
The life expectancy of children born today will be shortened by 20 months on average by breathing the toxic air that is widespread across the globe, with the greatest toll in south Asia, according to a major study.
Air pollution contributed to nearly one in every 10 deaths in 2017, making it a bigger killer than malaria and road accidents and comparable to smoking, according to the State of Global Air (SOGA) 2019 study published on Wednesday.
Perhaps the first thing is to understand what the report is actually telling us.
For example, the highest exposure over a large area to the PMI stuff - the little bits that get stuck in the lungs - is in and around the Sahara. As the report notes - give them credit - this is sand and there’s not a great deal that can really be done about that.
More generally it ‘s the indoor use of solid cooking fuels (this is what they measure, agreeing that solid fuel heating will increase the damage) which produces great exposure for near half the world’s population. Next up is the clouds and smogs of an industrial revolution under way. The rich countries have, obviously enough, pollution problems but they’re of a different and lesser kind.
That is, we’ve the environmental Kuznets Curve here. Pollution changes as development occurs. That internal to the home decreases first even as the factories start to belch. Once interesting amounts of income are being widely shared - for which they’ve got to be created first - then pollution declines, significantly. London’s economy is, after all, far larger than it was in 1955 and we’ve not had a killer smog since.
The report itself is here. The correct takeaway being that economic development cleans up the air, as it cleans up so many other things.
So, what do we do? We argue for more hell for leather economic development so that the currently poor places can quickly reach that same clean and pure air (if you prefer, cleaner and purer) we in the already rich places enjoy. Yea, even though there is that bolus of industrial pollution during the process this is more than offset by the reduction in domestic at the same time.
Doctors still don’t understand tobacco harm reduction
Doctors and pharmacists appear to be giving ill-informed advice about reduced risk tobacco products, undermining public health efforts towards smoking cessation.
A new survey has revealed a serious lack of knowledge among healthcare professionals about e-cigarettes or heated tobacco products - making life harder for people who want to quit smoking.
International market research firm, ResearchNow, polled 500 UK GPs and pharmacists. They found that only 29% believe that e-cigarettes are very effective at helping a smoker to quit smoking. This is despite a substantial and growing body of evidence showing this to be the case (including a recent randomized control trial showing that they’re nearly twice as effective as nicotine replacement therapy).
Just 7% of healthcare professionals are aware of Public Health England’s February 2018 statement that e-cigarettes are at least 95% less harmful than normal cigarettes. Few are very familiar with NICE guidelines on smoking harm reduction, which are broadly positive towards e-cigarettes as a component of smoking cessation services. And most don’t even know that heat-not-burn tobacco products exist—nor are they aware of the emerging evidence of their relatively lower risk compared to cigarettes. Unsurprisingly, this means that the majority are unlikely to recommend them to patients who are looking to quit smoking.
This is likely linked to misconceptions about the harm caused by nicotine. Dr Roger Henderson put it best when he explained that “it may be nicotine that makes it hard for smokers to quit, but it is smoke and tar that puts them in the ground.”
Previous research has demonstrated widespread ignorance among healthcare professionals about the relative risk of nicotine compared to other constituents of cigarette smoke, and this new evidence is just as concerning: 34% of GPs and 25% of pharmacists surveyed believe that nicotine is very likely to contribute to the development of smoking-related diseases.
To their credit, our public health authorities have broadly accepted the case for liberal harm reduction policies for tobacco. But the message still hasn’t got through to healthcare professionals on the frontline, who are an important source of information for many people looking to quit smoking. Every effort should be made to provide GPs and pharmacists with accurate information on this new wave of smoking cessation technology. Leaving the EU could give us greater scope to reform advertising laws, spreading this information to even more smokers.
In the meantime, if you know someone who works in smoking cessation, link them to Public Health England’s evidence summary and the latest NICE guidelines. You might just save a life. And what’s more, you’d be doing so in a way that embraces liberalism and the fruits of free market innovation!
Beginning the Marshall Plan
The postwar Marshall Plan, aimed at helping Europe’s war-shattered economies to recover, ran for four years from April 3rd, 1948. Generous as it was of the US to give away $12bn, part of the motivation behind it was to prevent the spread of communism. It was not just money, but the dropping of barriers to trade and the ending of damaging and unnecessary regulations.
Some have claimed it as the basis of the German economic recovery, but the statistics don’t support this. The UK received about 26% of the total, and France 18%, compared to West Germany’s 11%. Yet neither the UK or France recovered as fast or as far as Germany did. Furthermore, it accounted for only 3% of the combined national income of the recipient countries (1948-1951), meaning it increased their GDP by only 0.3%. It was Ludwig Erhard’s “bonfire of restrictions” that gave birth to the German Economic Miracle.
The Soviet Union not only declined to participate, but prevented its satellites such as Poland and Hungary from receiving any of its largesse. It formed its own Molotov Plan, which later merged into Comecon. It also exacted huge reparations from countries that had sided with the Axis powers. Stalin took the view that the plan was American imperialism, designed to make the European countries economically dependent on America.
The Marshall Plan was immensely generous of the US, representing about $100bn at today’s values. It was not without its critics, however, with some saying that it encouraged countries to keep going with outdated and failing industries. They did this largely for political, rather than economic, reasons. Giant industries such as coal and steel constituted powerful constituencies, and it is claimed by some that Marshall Plan money enabled governments to keep open some plants that should have been replaced by more modern ones.
These seem to be minority views, with the general consensus being that the Marshall Plan helped, but played a less significant role than did the Erhard reforms in Germany, and similar economic liberalization in other countries. There is a similar discussion today about the role played by development aid in helping to boost the economy of poorer countries. Some say it helps, but others instead urge poorer countries to cut tariffs and regulations, and liberalize their economies, while we should open our markets more to their produce.
So, how much of this government stuff should we have then?
An interesting if not wholly entire paper looking at how much government is actually necessary. The answer is, which will surprise those to the left of us, not just more than we have. In fact, about 35% of GDP is all that is necessary. Which is, amazingly, about the amount we have and rather less than many of our soon to be no longer confreres in the European Union.
Governments across the rich world squander billions every year on inefficient spending and could slash budgets without harming either services or the economy, new research has found.
Good performance in almost every area, from health and education to infrastructure and economic performance, can be achieved on relatively low levels of spending.
Efficient government can provide the best of both worlds with a budget amounting to less than 35pc of GDP, according to a report from EconPol Europe, a network of universities across the continent.
That paper is here. The reason the paper’s not wholly entire is that it makes certain unwarranted assumptions. Government should be responsible for the financing of health care and education for example. As Singapore shows about health care this isn’t necessary. As most poor countries show with their entirely dire public education systems, that may not even be desirable.
It’s also true that we can have an entirely functioning state - even a generous one - with more like 15 to 20% of GDP. Everything beyond that is tax and redistribution rather than the provision of goods and services. We can even provide a basic safety net within that 20%.
But one point that leaps out at us:
Institutions matter in particular. A country with an effective and less distortionary tax system can finance a bigger government at the same cost as another country might with a less efficient tax system (OECD, 2018). Countries with well-functioning institutions and trust in government can afford a larger government than a country with weak institutions and a tendency to corruption and rent seeking.
As so often we’ve things operating in opposite directions and the trick is to find the optimal point. We’re particularly taken with that “less distortionary tax system”. Having one of those means you can have more government - if that’s what you wish as we don’t - for the same loss in wealth and income caused by having the tax take to pay for more government. Which is interesting.
For we know that wealth taxes, say, are distortionary. We know that high income tax rates are distortionary. We also know that land value taxation is less so, that consumption taxation like a VAT is less so. This is just the old point about the different deadweight costs of varied taxes again. From which we also know that things like a financial transactions tax are hugely distortionary.
That is, if you actually do desire that larger state you need to be arguing against an FTT, wealth and high rates of income taxation. In favour of more VAT, more land taxation. Which isn’t, of course, the way the argument does run. Which means that those engaging in that demand for a larger state through such forms of taxation are misguided, inconsistent or plain just ignorant.
Cross-party group backs ASI's latest paper on drug consumption rooms
A cross-party group of Conservative, Labour, SNP, Green, Liberal Democrat, & Crossbench politicians have written a letter to The Telegraph in support of the Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper on drug consumption rooms.
The letter read as follows:
"Britain's approach to illicit drug use is failing," explain a cross-party group of Con, Lab, SNP, Green, Lib Dem, & Crossbench politicians. They all back the ASI's latest paper on drug consumption rooms in the @Telegraph today. pic.twitter.com/69wUaEX07d
— Adam Smith Institute (@ASI) April 2, 2019
Reducing drug harm
SIR – Britain’s approach to illicit drug use is failing. Communities are being ripped apart, criminal networks are profiting and thousands of people are dying every year. Drug consumption rooms are an evidence-based harm-reduction intervention, allowing people who use illicit drugs to do so within a medically supervised environment. They help save lives.
A new paper from the Adam Smith Institute finds that drug consumption rooms also relieve the burden on the NHS, and reduce public injection and syringe litter. They engage individuals who are otherwise hard to reach with treatment, counselling, legal advice and housing services. By helping people into treatment, they reduce substance use and therefore undermine the illegal market.
These rooms have proved successful in many countries, including Germany, Canada and Australia. As it stands, they sit in a legal grey zone. It’s time for Britain to catch up with the rest of the world by providing a clear legal framework to trial drug consumption rooms in areas with high levels of drug-related harm.
Crispin Blunt MP (Con)
Chairman, All-Party Parliamentary Group for Drug Policy ReformLord Ramsbotham (Crossbench)
Co-chairman, Drugs, Alcohol and Justice Cross-Party Parliamentary GroupJeff Smith MP (Lab)
Thangam Debbonaire MP (Lab)
Dr Philippa Whitford MP (SNP)
Caroline Lucas MP (Green)
Tom Brake MP (Lib Dem)
Baroness Lister (Lab)
Stuart C McDonald MP (SNP)
Ronnie Cowan (SNP)
Dr Daniel Poulter MP (Con)
Alison Thewliss MP (SNP)
Sverdlovsk anthrax leak
Forty years ago, on April 2nd, 1979, there was a major leak of deadly anthrax spores from the Soviet biological warfare facility at Military Compound 19 on the edge of Sverdlovsk. The strain of the pathogen, Anthrax 836, was the deadliest. For effective military use it was dried to a powder that could be dispersed as aerosols. These could arm warheads for their SS-18 intercontinental missiles to target American cities.
The filters that kept the anthrax dust from leaking into the environment had to be cleaned with the drying machines turned off. A subsequent investigation found that a technician had removed a filter, leaving a note to that effect. The note was not seen when the machines were later switched back on, and it was several hours before the mistake was spotted. During that time, anthrax dust leaked from the plant and was carried by the wind.
Estimates put the number of people killed at over 100, together with unknown numbers of livestock. They were all downwind of the release. Had the wind been blowing in the opposite direction, most of the city’s population could have died. An official cover-up pointed to tainted meat as the cause of the fatalities, but all medical records of those affected were removed.
The existence of the facility was in direct violation of the Biological Weapons Convention, and it was only after the fall of the Soviet Union that the incident was investigated by an international team of inspectors. Their 1992 findings tallied with a release of anthrax downwind from the site.
Despite the events of 40 years ago, the facility still exists, with its work moved underground. Reports say they have made anthrax more deadly still through genetic engineering. Even though the Soviet Union is no more, one of its KGB lieutenant colonels is now Russia’s president, and authorizes continued work on internationally banned biological agents. The poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter by GRU agents in Britain last year with the deadly nerve agent Novichok shows that Russia continues to develop these banned pathogens, and is prepared to release then on civilian populations. A country that shows so little regard for international agreements and conventions should be treated with considerable reserve when treaties are proposed. The West might start by demanding that facilities such as those at Sverdlovsk be dismantled and inspected before any deals can be agreed.