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John Quiggin 
I just wanted to set the record straight and refute Pr Q’s Keysnian triumphalism, which is certainly unjustified in the case of Australia.
Pr Q’s argument that the Rudd government’s fiscal stimulus saved the Aus economy from the GFC is only partially true, and not a very big part of the truth. The Australian economy did not really suffer much in the way of ill-effects from the GFC. Therefore the fiscal stimulus did not really mitigate its ill-effects.
In reality, the Howard governments factoral policies regulating the fundamentals of the housing market and the RBA/APRA’s financial management of credit issuing and interest rates played the major role in insulating us from an economic downturn.
The GFC signalled an amazing revolution in the mechanism of economic downturns, inverting the normal relationship between the economy and property. Once upon a time in the age of industrialisation a credit crisis would cause a recession which would then cause an property collapse. Now, in the age of financialisation a collapse in property prices causes a credit crisis which causes a recession.
But Australia never really suffered a property crash, mostly because the fundamentals of the Australian property market were sound, as indicated by the low non-performance ratio and the Australian banks sky-high international ratings in the lead-up and aftermath of GFC.
What saved Australia was primarily Howard’s factoral and RBA/APRA financial policy, followed by Rudd’s fiscal stimulus as a distant third. The most important safeguard of the Australian economy was the underlying strength in our property market, and therefore our banks balance sheets, caused by extraordinary confluence of factoral conditions:
– high demand for housing: housing users increased by record immigration of students and skilled workers plus influx of capital mainly from Asian property investors;
– low supply of housing: housing stock limited by skills shortage (tradies down mines, land zoning restrictions on height and urban sprawl)
The market fundamentals on housing pushed up rent which more or less tracked the rising trend in prices. The rent acted to service debt on residential investment property which turned most of our mortgages into blue-chip rather than sub-prime.
As I said, in the US case it was Austrians who posited the causes, Keynsians who prescribed the cures.
So its way past time for Pr Q to himself come clean on this issue. There are no grounds for Keynsian triumphalism in the analysis of the sub-prime crisis in the US case when the record shows that Austrian economists, following a more or less Hayekian approach to credit inflation, did correctly predict the housing bubble, property crash, credit crisis and economic recession. This can be proved by examining the predictions of Ron Paul and Peter Schiff.
Their predictions were far closer to the truth than those generated by Pr Q’s model. Whats more their predictions were based on largely true assumptions, namely that it was the combination of reckless expansion by financial suppliers of credit and high riskiness by political demanders of credit that caused the credit crisis.
It would be interesting to compare the fundamentals of the AUS housing market to the fundamentals of the US housing market. However that job must be left to commenters with more liberal commenting privileges than I now possess. NTTIAWWT!
I don’t usually agree with Andrew (or Milton Friedman) but there isn’t any good reason to oppose the legalization of those drugs which are currently illegal despite being much less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. America’s “war on drugs” is a crime against humanity
@Gerard
On the basis that marijuanna and MDMA are less harmful than Alchohol and tobbacco, I might agree. (in the same vein that a .22 caliber bullet is less harmful than a 9mm one)
BUUT, personally I neither smoke nor do I drink, and I wouldn’t be adverse to seeing both of those substances go the same way as the Dodo.
Drug legalization is a slippery slope, my friend. You see, I agree with the others when they say you have to focus on the users… here’s where they mess up:
Left-wing thought is that trying to make a societal chage by encouraging (on a large scale) others NOT to want to drink or smoke, or have pre-marital sex for that matter, is a breach of a person’s “right to choose” and call it “indoctinization”. So rather than DO what they SAY they believe (to wit: reduce the demand instead of the supply) they would RATHER make the supply more available and tax it, then spend more for government run rehabilitation.
Does that make sense to you? It sure doesn’t to me. It seems that when you get right down to it, it ALWAYS comes down to the left wanting to make a population DEPENDANT on government rather than independant (which would greatly increase their freedom of choice, but hey, you can’t tax freedom of choice yet, can you?)
Doc
Doc
Jack Strocchi is right not to give primary credit to the Rudd government’s fiscal stimulus for Australia’s relatively smooth sailing.
Primary credit should, in fact, go to Communist China, for the undertaking the biggest fiscal stimulus in the history of Keynesianism.
As for the housing/debt bubble, it’s true that most neoclassical economists had their heads in the sand. But it wasn’t just the Austrians who saw the warning signs.
Folks, that appears to be the wrap up for the late night section of our entertainment, direct from our gun toting brethren in the Great US of A. Remember, drive carefully, carry a BIG gun and if worse comes to worse, the US and the 7th Cavalry will save us.
Doc, in one breath you talk about freedom of choice and independence from the government, while in the other you support the government jailing people and ruining their lives for consuming a naturally occuring herb (with, incidentally, many recognized medicinal properties). This is the main reason why America has the world’s largest per capita prison population. It ought to be abhorrent to anyone that believes in the so-called “conservative” ideal of limited government and personal responsibility.
And yes, you might want alcohol and tobacco to “go the way of the Dodo”, but unless you think they should be criminalized, then you have no good reason why the others should also be criminalized.
The “slippery slope” argument is just pure garbage. Treat each substance on a case by case basis according to the scientific evidence.
@gerard
Looks like a good paper. Truth is plenty of people saw it coming, that is numerically a reasonable number, although vastly in the minority. Unfortunately, they were decried as nutters. Good point about China. I had expected China to have done their fiscal stimulus quicker. Good thing that they weren’t hide bound by libertarian ideology.
@gerard
Marihuana is pretty dangerous. Cocaine is also bad. It would be far safer to legalise Heroin, which can be managed if used long term. I’m not for legalising any of them, but my demand solution is a bit less simple than simply throwing them in jail. Marihuana use for terminal illness is my only exception. Cocaine is supposed to be pretty darn good and I am contemplating taking it up when I am about 80. I don’t think the rapid damage it does will be much of a concern then.
Sorry Freelander but I think you’ve got your drugs the opposite way around. How can you call a substance which is extremely physically addictive and carries a real risk of death by overdose less harmful than a substance which is not physically addictive and on which it is impossible to overdose? According to all the available scientific evidence, marijuana is just about the least dangerous “drug” that exists. Heroin on the other hand is extremely dangerous.
Heroin is addictive and you can overdose but otherwise the long term risks from Heroin use are much lower than for other drugs.
Portugal recently (2005 I think) decriminalized personal use of all drugs. I think we should go the same way. They still criminalise supply which I think is somewhat mad but still they are still at a better point than we are at. I agree with Gerard that the US war on drugs is a phenomenal waste of lives and resources. And at least when then banned alchole they had the grace to do it via referendum rather than via stealth taxes.
@gerard
Heroin is quite safe. It is important not to try to boost the impact with alcohol. Alcohol is often an important factor in overdose. Marihuana has been known to be quite dangerous for a couple of thousand years. Also, because people usually smoke it, others find themselves breathing it in. I am annoyed when ever that happens because if you phone up the cops, because they are no so concerned, they don’t come out and through the culprits in jail. Cocaine is supposed to be great according to reports and research but burns you out pretty quick and has other non trivial side effects.
@Freelander
You might want to rethink this. Having a stroke at age 80-something would not be a great way to spend your final days.
You’re also wrong on the other drugs too. Marihuana is comparatively innocuous, and if THC were supplied via a patch (as with proprietary nicotine) safer still. Heroin is probably a better analgesic than its sister drug, morphine. Again, delivered via non IV methods and in prescribed doses, it would be comparatively safe and manageable and not open to easy redistribution. There are even ways of telling about the provenance of such preparations by placing marker molecules in them, so that one could identify balck market operations.
p.s. US foreign policy and their war on drugs are the two most objectionable things about the USA.
Heroin used to be available over the counter at the chemist in Australia pre 1960s. Addiction was not uncommon but there was not a massive social problem associate with it.
@freelander
To be more accurate (in the terms of our previous discussion) the US of A ~DID~ save you. (Past tense) 🙂
Doc
Didn’t save me.
Doc,
I would suggest that you have a read about Australia’s involvement in WWII before you come back too hard with the “US saved everyone” line. Sure – Australia, if it had been facing the entire might of Japan alone would possibly not have survived as an independent country – but there is also a good argument that, without the actions of the US prior to the war, Japan would have felt no real need to attack either the US or Australia. The actions in alternately succouring and then punishing Japan did not make for an understanding relationship. You also seem to have missed that it was Australian servicemen that stopped the Japanese (for the first time in the war) in PNG – and were hindered in this by the decisions and actions of Macarthur. So – to F.D. Roosevelt – thanks, but if there is a next time try and get your foreign policy right first.
.
I find it interesting that you seem to think that the decriminalisation of currently illegal drugs is a left wing idea. The bulk of the issues with these drugs (which were all legal for a very long period) arise simply from the facts that they are illegal and yet in high demand. Treat substance abuse for what it is – a health issue – and the problem is much reduced. The US (and many other nations, like Australia) can then get a huge number of people out of prison and into useful productive work. As gerard points out this is much more consistent with an ideal of small government.
Cocaine, heroin and alcohol are all physically addictive. Marijuana isn’t.
Cocaine, heroin and alcohol can all kill you if you take too much. Marijuana can’t.
Where is the evidence that marijuana is more harmful than any of these? There isn’t any. That’s not controversial, scientists have been studying this question for a long time.
Which isn’t to say that marijuana is harmless in absolute terms. But in comparative terms it is.
And anyway, we don’t ban risky activities such as skiing. Or driving cars.
Really Freelander I can’t tell if you’re being serious here or just taking the piss.
@Andrew Reynolds
In practice that is true because most non-leftists are social conservatives which the comparative handful of pro-capitalist libertarians find convenient block-partners.
In practice, the issue is seen as the exclusive province of left-liberals, which in the lexicon of the US means the far left.
In an Australian context, take a look at the brouhaha around this issue in Tasmania comeing from the ALP wanting to cast the Greens as leftwing extremists.
I say all this despite not disputing the argumentation you use.
@ Andrew Reynolds
I am well aware of Australia’s role in WWII, and don’t get me wrong, I am NOT saying that “America saved everyone”. That said, it CANNOT be dismissed that it was the intervention of the US in WWII that ultimately led to a victory by the Allied powers (who were on the ropes and going down fast at the time of our being “dragged into the war”)
You make the case (wrongly) that it was at the US’ impetus that Japan felt the need to attack the US and Australia. It was NEVER a case of IF, but when. Apparently you have never read any of the missives written by various japanese leaders of that time. Japan had ALWAYS planned on taking Australia and had planned to invade the US at a time subsiquent to Germany conquering Europe if the US remained out of the war. Germany too, had plans for the US. Fortunately for the Allied powers (unfortunate for those at Pearl Harbor) Japan chose to try to make a pre-emptive strike and take America off the Pacific playing field for six months to a year and failed.
If Japan HAD been able to paralyze the US Pacific fleet, what do you think their next move would have been? A peace treaty with Australia?? I think not.
There seems to be a lot of animosity about me bringing up some of these facts, but it seems to me that this whole discussion started out with a couple of rounds of “America bashing.”
What did you expect? Again, as I said before, it’s easy to hate the “Top Dog”. It’s easy to point at the strongest kid on the block and go “He’s the bully!” whether those allegations have a foundation or not. Let’s get real… when something really bad happens somewhere, the World (usually) looks to the US first for money and might. I remember the muti-national aid sent to Malaysia and the Pac-Rim after the tsunami, and the aid sent to Haiti, even the aid sent to Iran (a large portion of which came from the US) after the earthquake… but, you know… for the life of me, I CAN’T remember the multi-national aid efforts for Katrina or 9/11. Hmm I wonder why that is?
Doc
wow, you go away for a few hours and all hell breaks loose, what a rollercoaster,
doc, you and i might as well be on different planets, your understanding of america’s role and motivations is just about the opposite to mine,
in one regard i do agree with you up to a point, given the choice between america, russia, germany or china dominating the globe over the last century i would have chosen america, but i dont know what value that thought experiment really has,
as for america saving the world in WWII thats just not true, Russia destroyed the Nazi war machine and payed the heaviest price, and i also suspect that America purposely stalled its entry to make sure its ‘friends’ the British were wel and truly screwed before it got involved,
all major wars are trade wars, whatever that twat Dawkins says
as for drugs, the only people that should be allowed to legislate on drugs are people that have tried them, ha, ha
Doc,
Don’t get me wrong. I have no inherent problem with the US and I have many great relatives over there – some of whom I will be visiting soon.
You will note (if perhaps you re-read) I made it plain that I see the problem was not with most of the US’s conduct during the war (although Macarthur got a lot wrong in with respect to New Guinea and the rest of his South Pacific bailiwick). Once the war had started then it was unlikely that Australia could have survived independently without US assistance. The point I was making was to look at the US foreign policy before the war. To me, much of Roosevelt’s (and the Republicans before him) foreign policy and, to a great extent, trade policy, made war more and more likely. That’s all.
.
Fran,
I understood that before I made that comment. Perhaps I should have made it more general to make my position on this clearer. I do not understand how anyone espousing small government can also similtaneously espouse views involving big government for social control without substantial cognitive dissonance. The same, BTW, goes for social democrats who tend to hold opposite views.
On drugs – can I say that it as dangerous to get your “facts” on drugs from casual discussion on the net as it is to get your climate science.
About one in four of those who try heroin go on to become addicted. Of the addicts, about forty per cent die within 15 years, another forty go on to long term maintenance (read can manage the basics with continual assistance), and another twenty recover. These figures are pretty much the same world over, and pretty much the same under any drug policy.
Powder cocaine shows up in medical problems after about 10 years use – earlier if you are a heavy user. Heavy use of crack cocaine and crystal methamphetamine frequently lead to paranoid psychosis after a few years – the users are dangerous to themselves and anyone around them.
Socially constrained use of marijuana seems to be socially tolerable. We don’t know too much about mass long-term use of ecstasy.
UN figures on drug profits are very misleading (far too large) – as are most MSM pieces on drug criminality.
I can supply a range of references, but this is drawn from ten years working with drug experts (academic, policy and law enforcement).
Peter T, long term results of heroin use in terms of health and addiction may not vary, but associated criminality does, in places where governments assist addicts with rent and food like they do in switzerland, addicts tend not to get involved in a criminal spiral which makes everything worse,
cystal meth is by far the most dangerous drug on the streets and is the most addictive,
it is so much more dangerous than heroin because of the aggression it produces,
ecstasy is relatively harmless, as is marijuana,
people take ecstasy every weekend for years and experience no physical withdrawal symptoms at all, most harm comes from dehydration when you dance for 10 hours, or taking dodgy pills which contain some sort of poison which occurs as a result of it being illegal,
i am 36 years old and have gone out in a lot of clubs, pubs and parties in many different countries for the best part of the last 18 years, i have taken all the drugs i know of except crytal meth and without doubt the most harmful drug i have seen over that time is alcohol,
alcohol is involved in almost all the violence i have ever seen, it is involved in almost all the behavior that is truly regrettable, drunk-driving, casual sex, inappropriate boorish behavior,
and culture has so much to do with it,
go to a spanish town on a saturday night and you dont see gangs of young men staggering abusively through the streets, they look down on drunkeness even though they enjoy having a social drink
Peter T,
I do not think many here would disagree with the notion that these are Bad Things. The question is how to minimise the damage they do – both to society and to the individual. To me, the record of prohibition and criminalisation of users is a sorry one, with no seeming end to this “War” in sight, just more and more resources devoted to investigation, arrest, trial and imprisonment of the users and, occasionally, the suppliers.
In the meantime we (even for those like me that have never used any of them) put up with intrusive government powers and other impositions in a (AFAICS) impossible to win “War”.
To me, the whole thing is not only useless but counter-productive. If abuse of these substances were treated as a health issue then there would be no need for any of it.
GFC: PREDICTIONS, CONTRADICTIONS AND VINDICATION
gerard#3
First off, we need to bring some accountability to the social scientific process. Every claim I make is backed up by a check of my predictive record, which in this area of late is much better than average. What is gerard’s predictive record in this field, and for that matter, what is Pr Q’s? Nothing much to shout about otherwise we would have already heard it.
Primary credit for staving off the GFC, at least in so far as it impacted AUS, should not go to the PRC’s fiscal stimulus, welcome though it was. AUS survived the credit through a combination of good luck (proximity to Asia and good relations with PRC) and good management (Howard-Costello, Macfarlane-Stevens, Rudd-Swan in that order).
The major domestic management credit goes to Howard’s factoral policies, basically through the nineties attracting high input of labour (immigration) and capital (investment) from Asia. Plus APRA/RBA financial regulatory agencies did a pretty good job managing the financial sector, curbing its more reckless and profligate tendencies through tighter capital adequacy ratios, better quality control on lending portfolios, a limit on oligopolistic securitization and finally a series of welcome interest rate cuts.
Howard-Costello also deserve significant credit for leaving the fiscal balance in reasonably good (in the black) shape. Could have done better, particularly with regressive tax policy. But all things considered not too shabby compared with OECD levels benchmarks.
The key fact to keep in mind with the GFC is that it depended on the liquidity, and therefore solvency of the banks. So long as AUS banks cash flow was positive and asset base was solid with a small ratio of non-performing loans then there would be no credit crisis and therefore no recession.
In late 2008 the AUS banks showed great resilience, with all four of the big banks climbing into the global top 20. This was well before the announcement of the PRC’s fiscal stimulus. In FEB 09 I quoted the Australian on the key role of our solvent banks in averting the GFC:
So by the end of 2008 our banks were ready to ride out the GFC without the prop of fiscal stimulus to either our domestic or internationally traded economy. Mainly on the basis of having a solid portfolio of mortgage assets.
Of course one reason our banks were liquid and solvent was because the RBA had cut interest rates by more than half in the lead up and immediate aftermath of the GFC. If AUS was on the verge of a classic Keynsian depression this would not have worked due to liquidity entrapment.
But it did work. The RBA’s long loosening bias in interest rate levels, cutting the base rate from about 7% in MAR 2008 to 3% in DEC 2008 proved a great boost to householder budgets and banks balance sheets. A 4% cut on 1 trillion dollars in mortgage debt equals $40 billion stimulus pumped into the economy well before the worst of the GFC hit and targetted right at its most vulnerable sector, namely bank cash flows. (Timely, Targetted and Temporary). And interest rates have stayed pretty low since then. This financial stimulus dwarfs Rudd-Swan’s domestic fiscal stimulus.
Of course Pr Q steadfastly refuses to give Howard-Costello any credit despite the fact that his own economic models predicted that AUS would be amongst the worst sufferers from the GFC. Whereas the US, with a relativel smaller property bubble, should have come off much less scathed. He puts our good record down to Costello’s “luck”, which as Jack Nicklaus once observed in another context, seemed to improve with more practice.
Pr Q’s Keynsian models were deficient as far as AUS political economy is concerned (we did not fall into a liquidity trap or have a balance of payments crisis as he predicted). Yet he wants to publish a book patting his models on the back whilst ignoring the contribution of Howard-Costello’s prudent management of AUS’s fisc. I’m sorry, but that just does not cut it with me at any rate. I strictly monitor my predictions, patting myself on the back or beating my self around the head and shoulders as the case may be. I do not think Pr Q is being a sufficiently harsh judge of himself.
I should add that my model of the property-fiduciary-economy nexus was more or less the same as Pr Q’s until 2008. Although I called the US property bubble half-heartedly through the second half of the noughties it did not appear to be as bad as the AUS property bubble. Therefore through the second half of the noughties. I expected AUS to crash faster and further than the US.
Back then I was wrong, at least about the US and AUS property markets.
It was only in 2007-08 when I started to look seriously at the fundamentals of both markets that I saw there were significant micro-economic differences between the two jurisdictions that were not detected by the dominant macro-economic orientation of neo-classical economics. The US, relative to AUS, has much more liveable land – it is four times less densely populated than the EU. But it also had much larger marginal pool of more credit-risky borrowers which made lending dodgier. AUS has relatively less liveable land and a much larger marginal pool of more credit-worthy borrowers/servicers. The devil is in those details.
That is why in 2008 I turned from being a strong bear on AUS property to being weak bear and even mildly bullish. (In 2010 I finally re-entered the property market after being absent for the better part of the decade.) Looking back I am reasonably proud of my anti-bearish 23 OCT 2008 prediction, made at the height of the panic:
Undoubtedly some credit for mitigating the GFC should go to the CCP of the PRC. But my OCT 2008 prediction was made independent of that policy
In MAR 2009 I gave upper bound worst-case predictions of the severity of the GFC on AUS, stating that metro property prices would not fall more than 10% and unemployment would not rise above 10%. I foolishly neglected lower bound best-case predictions which would have made my record look much better:
I predicted that the the GFC’s flow on to the PRC that AUS would manage the hit to our Terms of Trade through currency depreciation, given the likelihood of a successful PRC recovery policy:
There has been a hit to out ToT and our currency has come off its record highs. I predict it will eventually settle a little lower against the basket of tradeable currencies.
In FEB 09 also predicted that the PRC would not be greatly hamstrung by the GFC, mainly because it would switch from a coastal export growth oriented strategy to a hinterland domestic catch-up strategy:
I was right and Pr Q was wrong on the PRC. But we are not seeing much action regarding error correction on this score.
One thing for sure, to get to the bottom of the GFC we need to understand what were the characteristics of housing finance in the US that made it much more vulnerable to property crash off a much lower level. I have already made my view clear on this and thats enough said by me. I will give one hint: the CRA was heavily implicated, but indirectly, since it only directly regulated banks under the definition of the Act.
Most of the sub-prime mortgage action in the US property market was being driven by non-banks such as Washington Mutual and Countrywide, who were part of the “shadow banking system”. However non-banks still needed federal authorisation and guarantees and FMx2 co-operation to issue mortgages and sell securities. So they had to play ball by CRA rules if they wanted to get big and get ahead. These non-bank financial institutions were indirectly subject to CRA oversight and intervention. What was it about their portfolios that made them so subject to crash and burn?
Just askin’.
I’m not a qualified doctor or the like, so do not rely on the ramblings below as a substitute for medical advice.
That disclaimer aside, here goes.
Heroin is dimorphine and active almost immediately if injected, and this is where the high comes from. Slowly released doses, such as slow release capsules like those used with morphine, vastly reduce any high feeling to at best a mild lift. Many chronic pain patients take morphine in this manner without it adversely interfering with cognitive function, compared to the interference due to unrelieved chronic pain. So, if the purity is controlled, and the dosing regime is established in same way as dosing regimes for morphine and other pain-relieving medications in the opioid class, then the risk of overdose is extremely low. Furthermore, the morphine-like opioids, ie those that eventually metabolise to the active metabolite of morphine, may have their effects on the nervous system blocked by the opiate antagonist naloxone. Once the naloxone is injected, recovery of the patient is usually very quick. Finally, plenty of studies have followed (legal) morphine consumers as part of chronic pain research. The results indicate that while dependence is very common – indeed, it is virtually expected with long term use – actual addiction is extremely rare. Those patients who decide to stop using the morphine generally have some physical side effects of withdrawal (if they stop cold turkey rather than tapering off) for a few days, but once that period is over they rarely have signs of addictive behaviour. Addictive behaviour includes trying to get increasing doses (but with pain patients this is often a sign of inadequate relief so it is an ambiguous sign for chronic pain patients), buying and selling scripts/opiates, claiming to have lost their supply, script, on multiple occasions, continuing to consume it in spite of severe side effects like extreme nausea and dizziness, a marked drop off in engagement in regular activities and hobbies, etc. However, it takes a good assessment to establish whether a cluster of signs like the above actually are primarily effects of the morphine, for a specific individual.
Opiates are strong but under a sensible dosing regime, and with easy access to naloxone, there are good reasons for thinking that the two issues of addiction and overdose may be greatly reduced among consumers, if it they were legalised. [However, in this comment I’m not advocating legalisation as necessarily the best policy.]
I am aware of only one death due to marijuana, ie with “marijuana overdose” as the agent of death. As pointed out above, it is extremely difficult, to the point of being absurd, to think that a person may consume an overdose of marijuana. But one person has. Compared with all of the other people who have used it regularly, the odds of it happening are truly microscopically small.
Alcohol does have acute toxicity as an unfortunate cause of death for a small number of consumers – think Bon Scott of AC/DC fame. Many more deaths occur by misadventure, getting into fights, falling down onto pavement. Long term overuse does cause alcohol-related deaths through liver cyrrhosis, kidney failure, cancer. Car crashes, usually involving other innocent parties, is a classic area where alcohol-impaired drivers have caused either their own deaths and/or others. The injuries left behind are a big impost upon all concerned.
Over the counter (OTC) medications can and do cause a significant number of deaths each and every year. Paracetomol, also known as Acetaminophen, is the most common OTC medication causing death. While overdose is easy (10g, which is 20 capsules of standard paracetomol, can be enough), detecting the overdose is usually very challenging until liver failure causes yellowing around the eyes. A doctor may detect it soon enough to apply a partial antidote, but often the o/d is symptomless until too late. This is one reason why doctors caution patients not to take multiple OTC/prescribed medications that have a combined amount of 3-4g of paracetamol, although for long term users of such medications, even that might be a risk in some.
Tobacco is a long term killer through various lung diseases (eg flu virus) and cancer. To die from acute toxicity is hard to believe however, although a couple of “Camberwell Carrots” might do it.
Without providing a policy, let me just say that each and every medication has benefits and drawbacks. Personally I think opioids and morphine/heroin in particular have the safest profile if used in a controlled manner and may be swiftly rendered inert even in the case of an o/d. It is a subset of the OTC pain medications, illegal batches of drugs of questionably purity, and the two legal drugs of tobacco and alcohol, that are the biggest problem, in my opinion.
my dad recently had a double knee oepration and was prescribed some kind of opiate pain killer which he took for about 8-10 weeks following the operation and he said it was really difficult to get off it,
it took him three attempts to stop, on each of the two failed attempts he felt so weird and deranged without the drug that he took it again to ‘get back to himself’
And one may add Donald, that there is an international shortage of morphine for pain relief at the moment. If good chain of custody and stewardship could be established over opium production in Afghanistan and elsehwere that the crops grwo readily, (and there are some interesting models for this) one could earn hard currency for the countries in question, deprive the jihadis of funds, and meet medical pain relief needs in the wider world.
One problem with assessing the effect of unprescribed drug use, is that users self-select. Effects are extremely difficult to disentangle without good independent theory. The term self-medicating is used to describe drug users who are trying to relieve negative mental and physical symptoms. The symptoms may range upwards from boredom to serious mental and physical problems. Forty percent of heroin users may be dead within fifteen years, but we never know what would have happened to those individuals without the drug. If we were forced to play Russian roulette most of us wouldn’t load extra bullets. The experiment where 1000 people are randomly assigned to heroin-injecting, placebo-injecting and control groups won’t occur.
I’m not advocating drug use or legalisation but I would like to see the the treatment of drug offenders handled less on the basis of moral responsibility.
Interesting paper on free will and culpability in PNAS which I’d agree with:
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/10/4499.full
the opium didnt grow readily under the taliban, it has exploded in its cultivation since the two great dealers took over
@smiths
Doubtless true, but these days the insurgents are certainly using these funds to run their murderous campaigns
insurgents really is a strange term though fran, and murder is a term usually associated with aggressor rather than the defender,
the warlords who maintain power use the proceeds certainly, you will also find that they are tied closely to karzai
The issue with heroin and crystal meth is not the physical addiction, but the changes in brain states they induce – which make people less than fully functional socially. I am not arguing for any particular policy – although I think a mix of policies tailored to the drugs and the users is most sensible. Just putting out there some often overlooked facts.
Yes, provision of heroin to hard core addicts (as in the Swiss experiment) works – it improves social amenity, and makes the remainder of their lives less miserable. But it’s palliative care, not a general prescription. Yes, controlled prescription works – at the cost of the controls (which have to be pretty tight). You hear the stories of the users who can control their addiction. You do not hear from those who can’t – they are disfunctional or dead.
There have been a series of natural experiments with widespread availability of heroin over the last century or so. Currently running in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and before that in the Shan States in Burma, and before that opium in China. Usage rates run up to 8% of the population (they hit just over 2% in Australia at the height of the heroin boom in the 90s). Above that they seem to be limited by the inability of families to maintain heavy users – they get thrown out of the house/village and die off rapidly and miserably. A rural society simply cannot afford people who are asocial a lot of the time.
no matter what statistics you look at for treatments, usage, death and rehabilitation for various drugs, the irrefutable point remains, making drugs illegal increases thier trade value, and increasing their trade value increases their growth and trade,
the war on drugs is a scam and always was,
does anyone else think it slightly odd that the US agency that deals with it is the Drugs Enforcement Agency, or is that just a weird sort of slip of the tongue,
anyone interested should look into the life and death of Gary Webb
I think legalising the admisitration of the narcotics, amphetamine based stimulants and THC is part of the solution. It means mostly that these drugs are then admistered under controlled /informed conditions. Having said this from a health point of view you are better of without them other than when used for management of chronic pain (in the case of opiods and THC). Stimulants for ADHD.
For those who want to use them for recreational means, they must be well informed of the immediate and potential long lasting affects. You would also want to be sure of what you are getting exactly, what you expect (drug and dose) for contingency/ responsibility reasons.
They are all higly addictive, mainly because of the combination of their short half life which can enhance withdrawal effects unless you “top up’ and effects of certain “feel good” neurotransmitters. The addictive behaviour can have detrimental social consequences on society, thus the adoption of such strategies as the methadone program. Methadone has a half life of over 25 hours rather 15-30minutes like Heroin. It provides a stable environment without the highs and lows of Heroin.
From an individual point of view, getting the buzz may be desirable, but the after/side effects can lead to depression, memory loss, halluicnation and other physical and mental dysfunction. It is costly to society and the individual.
I would agree that the opiods such as morphine and heroin are the safest of the bunch, but this quickly changes when you add alcohol and other stimulants to the cocktail which is ususally the case.
I see the drug issue as akin to the gun problem issue. In a Utopian world we would have no need for drugs and guns, but in the real world they are so firmly imbeded in our culture we have to deal with them starting with the assumption that they exist and are readily available, and ocassionally used inappropriately.
@smiths
What would you call them?
No. It’s a term asociated with killing someone outside of the usages of established protocols covering military conflicts, UCMJ etc or the criminal law.
fran, are you serious?
collections of farmers in localised areas who are sick of foreign invaders trashing thier country,
thats what i would call them,
the reason that i wouldnt call them insurgents is because i would try and avoid using the terminology of the oppressor wherever i could
but what do i know, i never believe the NYT with anything else so why would i believe this,
he’s probably not helping the CIA and the Afghan warlords, grow, harvest, refine and transport heroin via Russia and the Balkans into Europe
@smiths
Smiths…
In a laundry (strange plave to meet) in Waikiki….I once asked a young soldier fresh from Iraq, washing his army attire in the washing machine, about the insurgents in Iraq giving them so much trouble.
He looked me in the eye, laughed and said
“these arent insurgents…these are brothers, fathers and relatives who are seeking honour killings for the people they have lost….thats what most insurgents are. People dont understand this part of the Iraqis.”
I went away chastened for even believing the news in the first place and realised exactly that there wasnt as much organisation from “organised insurgent enemy groups” as was and is suggested by the media.
Basically …bedlam arising from war and disorganisation rules.
So we wrecked Iraqui infrastructure, caused chaos, havent rebuilt it and now the Iraqis are killing soldiers and their own kind in attacks more random than most can imagine.
I think that means basically “chaos prevails.”
Am I surprised? Not – it was all so tediously predictable. So how many arms producers and military suppliers made mmoney off the US taxpayer?. Lots..by inflicting a mess in a country millions of miles from home. Nice one.
@Jack Strocchi
Jack you insinuate that the so-called Austrians were the only school to spot the danger in the build up of credit in the economy. Had you had actually read any Keynes (rather than the cartoon version) you would know that the GFC was a textbook Keynesian financial bom and bust scenario.
That the Australian financial sector has so far escaped relatively unharmed is in no small measure due to a combination of aggressive monetary and fiscal policy keeping a lid on the unemployment rate. China’s appetite for commodities also had an impact but considering national income fell around 2.6% YOY during the middle of 2009, it certainly wasn’t the be all and end all of our outperformance after all the A$ value of our imports fell 35% from the peak. That the unemployment rate peaked at 5.8% in a period when income was falling at such a rate is nothing less than extraordinary.
While monetary policy was no doubt the frontline in the stimulus the impact of the fiscal stimulus has been grossly under-rated. It is highly doubtful that without government spending the labour market would have come out of the downturn in the shape it has. Direct payments early on in the piece helped sustain consumer spending at a time when the rest of the world was on its way to the worst global downturn since the 1930’s. Since then we have of course had the less immediate stimulus come on stream, via the boost to the first homebuyer grant, schools spending and the investment tax breaks. The effects of the schools spending and FHBG will continue to be felt into the middle of this year.
To suggest our housing market is on solid ground ignores the household debt to disposable income ratio of around 160% which makes Australian households and the banking sector extremely vulnerable to higher unemployment. That Aussie bank balance sheets remained solid was the result of the quality of their assets due to the low level of delinquencies. Had unemployment risen to say 8% or above would have put a huge amount of stress on those balance sheets (which just so happen to be chock full of residential mortgages) spreading the disease to Australia. As it was monetary and fiscal policy as well as the government ADI guarantee insulated us from the worst of the fall out.
It can be argued that the stimulus was wasteful and poorly conceived and has perhaps increased the vulnerability of the household sector via the FHBG however that it played a major role in our apparent outperformance to this point is really beyond question.
@smiths
A few of things
1. The least bad idea that is plausible right now for the ISAF to pack its kit and withdraw immediately
2. They never should have invaded in 2001
3. The US should not have meddled in Pakistan during the last 3 decades
4. The Taliban and the NA and the warlords are all creatures of the Pakistan/US collaboration even though not all the parties had the same vision of the project and it changed during the Soviet intervention
5. The “farmers” are farmers in the same sense that the pro-Slavery and KKK forces in the US were “farmers” who didn’t want “carpetbaggers” meddling in their business. The difference being that in so far as they have beliefs, they belong to the 7th century
They are insurgents however, though it is not clear that they have any object but to make the jurisdiction ungovernable. Certainly, they are in no sense a national movement — that is part of the problem. They are a collection of warring clans and tribes protecting their bailiwicks and maintained by the ISI in order to soften up India in Pakistan’s military conflict with India over Kashmir.
And they are mass murderers. No famrer, even the most illiterate one, can suppose that the law of war can permit indiscriminate targeting of non-combatants. As muslims, they are not supposed to kill fellow muslims either.
While one should choose one’s words carefully, and using the language of the oppressor is to be avoided where it entrenches their interests, here the language is apt. The Taliban and jihadis are also oppressors. Any bona fide secular national liberation movement would have to fight these characters arms in hand. In Afghnaistan at the moment though, there is simply no nation to liberate, and it is misleading to map western concepts onto this region.
absolutely right alice,
in terms of propaganda about the wars you cant do much better than the recent assault on the ‘city’ of Marjah, turns out Marjah is a loose community of huts where the locals are farmers,
it was PR from start to finish,
even the so-called sectarian violence was almost non-existent at the beginning of the Iraq war
smiths
Actually, drug usage is highest where drugs are readily available and cheap (ie in source countries and along the drug trade routes.
Drug law enforcement does not seem to change drug prices much. Prices reflect local demand and ability to pay, so are driven by social factors more than anything else. What drug law enforcement does do sometimes is limit availability.
Noone has yet figured out how to reconcile giving people ever larger amounts of harmful substances with responsible medical practice (the old UK policy of maintenance for registered “addicts” was just that – a maintenance dose).
None of this supports the US war on drugs. Just means that there is no single solution for all parts of the problem.
And if you think education is the answer, look up what happens when you inject gels into your veins. Do you think the people doing this had no idea it was bad to push glue into oneself?
gerard#1
You can’t help your liberal instincts on culture, can you gerard? I do not trust them in myself.
Lets see what would drug liberals have in store for us. We legalize pot, coke and smack. And all go down to the local pharma for our dose of soma while we are at it.
A recipe for solipsism and nihilism, as if we don’t have enough of that already. And do we really need the next generation of teenagers to have legal access to dope so they can really get down to some serious couch-potatoe surfing? Not obese enough for you now, are they?
Lets be clear about this: hard drug usage is immoral. Drug use goes against two thousand years of morality which enjoins man to see the world with a clear mind, act freely with good will and live long with a healthy body.
It is a toxic form of self-harm. “Harm minimization” is a bogus justification as it ignores the great harm done to drug-abusing selves. Self-harm is still harm.
The push to liberalise drug laws is yet another indicator of our civilizations suicidal tendencies. Of course Portugal and Argentina might escape the worst of the Crack Wars with a little luck and good management. But their culture will suffer yet another source of white-anting when really they need to be heading in the opposite direction.
And there is a real risk that drug liberalisation could go badly wrong, as de facto forms of it did in the US during the eighties and early nineties. Since then the US has waged a massive war against drug crime and drug criminals and seen its crime rate more than halved.
And have you been to the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan recently? My fo-co friends have and they tell me some interesting stories about the wild North-West frontier. Lets just say that drug liberalisation there has made for some interesting times.
And back in the homeland, which groups of the population have the most flimsy social safety net to protect them when things go wrong. You figure it out, I’ve already seen it with my own lyin’ eyes. I dont need a liberal to tell me whats right from wrong.
More generally drug liberalisation goes against a pervasive trend of professional life which is to ensure that workers are not under the influence in their work-place. How are we going to manage that when hard-core drug usage becomes legal and wide-spread. I see a lawyers picnic in the offing here.
Do we want to risk that just to appease some post-modern liberals with their repugnant free-for-all philosophy, which rightly earned the condemnation of our elders?
Oh thats right, people of the post-war generation are just silly old fools who simply arent hip to the new thang. Yes we dont need no stinkin’ old folks philosophy when all they ever did was actual real work, you know building things, bringing up families and actually fighting for whats right. What would they know?
You really need to take a good long hard look at your moral compass.
Papillion
It actually isn’t that convenient. And part of why I support the LDP is because I don’t want to team up with conservatives. The thing is though that if you team up with conservatives you might just achieve the occassional tax cut but if you team up with leftists you are still unlikely to see drug laws relaxed.
@Doc_Navy
“That said, it CANNOT be dismissed that it was the intervention of the US in WWII that ultimately led to a victory by the Allied powers (who were on the ropes and going down fast at the time of our being “dragged into the war”)”
Interestingly, Hitler viewed the USA’s constant sending of supplies to Britain as a sign that the USA had been intervening all along. The war was being won in the Atlantic by the ever growing U-Boat Wolf Packs hindering supplies to Britain, and merchant seamen were the main casualties.
After Pearl Harbour the US was at war with Japan, but not with Germany. The US was only at war with Germany after Hitler declared war on the US in support of his ally, and not the other way around. America was given no choice but to enter the war, even if unwillingly.
That said (and don’t take this as a left-handed compliment, it’s not intended that way), if the US had not been given no choice but to enter the war then the Axis powers would have most likely maintained the upper hand and won, and the hotel above Liverpool’s Lime Street train station would probably still be Gestapo Headquarters today.
@ J Bowers:
Everything you just said is 100% true. I haven’t maintained that anything different.
The American people did NOT want to enter into WWII. At the time, the US was in the throws of the Great Depression, and having recently participated in WWI many of those in charge still had the memories of war in their head.
You are also correct in stating that had the US NOT entered the war until it was forced on them by a German invasion, it is entirely probable that the US would have lost. Although it is my belief that if that scenario had come to pass, there would be a similar situation here in the States in our Rocky Mountain, Cascade Mountain, and Sierra Nevada Mountain ranges as we see in the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan.
That western cowboy type of independant American spirit so hated and reviled by the rest of the world would have led many living the the western United States to “Run for the hills”, and all those gun-toting, christian conservatives would be holed up in those mountains waging an eternal resistance; not unlike what we see today in Afghanistan.
@ Smiths
You are also entirely correct when you say that we could be living on different planets because our viewpoints are so divergent. My viewpoint is based on my studies in military history and 14 years active duty in the US military (and still ongoing) with Combat deployments to Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, East Timor (with a return deployment to render Humanitarian aid), and anti-terrorism Ops in the Southern Philippines.
There are so many things posted on this thread about the United States, Iraq and Afghanistan the are so off-base, it boggles my mind. Then I remind myself that this is an Australian Environment blog favored by those who are of the Green/Labour party type mindset and the references to pro-drug, pro-AGW, anti-America, anti-military, anti-conservative views make perfect sense.
In fact… I think it was YOUR comments that started this whole discussion. 🙂
Doc
By the way… an interesting article has been making the rounds in the British Newsies…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/7458105/Liars-cheats-thieves-the-terrible-truth-about-the-mean-greens.html
It’s about a psychological experiment done in Canada, although the conclusions aren’t really a shocker or a suprise, made me laugh though. Common sense here in the States really.
(and no, before the flames start, I do not believe that one scientific paper make something a fact.)
Doc
Excellent Smithers!