October 4, 1999
Johnson To Call For Legalization
Taking CTBT To A Vote
Enraptured With The Raptor
Sunday In The Post With George
Johnson To Call For Legalization
Gov. Gary Johnson (R-N.M.) plans to call for the legalization of marijuana and heroin in a speech this Tuesday according to a Reuters report. Johnson's office said Thursday that the second term governor will move beyond his call for a national debate on drug policy and instead will come out in favor of legalization as the best way to fight abuse in his remarks at the Cato Institute on October 5. "My goal is like the nation's goal. It is to reduce the use of drugs in our country. We can't continue what we have been doing for the past 30 years and expect different results. Veer from the status quo. Consider legalization, it could actually reduce drug use," Johnson said in a statement. The governor, who is barred from seeking a third term and who has no plans to seek higher office, says that his bold stand on the issue has probably made any political future for him unlikely. More information on tomorrow's conference, Beyond Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century, is available.
In a recent commentary, Cato Institute Executive Vice President David Boaz wrote that "Gary Johnson Is Right": "Gary Johnson has said that he doesn't want New Mexico to legalize drugs on its own, lest the state become a haven for addicts from the rest of the country. That's a legitimate concern. What we should be debating right now is federal policy, and we should start by remembering that the United States is a federal republic, in which the 50 states make most of the decisions. Congress should deal with drug prohibition the way it dealt with alcohol prohibition. The Twenty-First Amendment did not actually legalize the sale of alcohol; it simply repealed the federal prohibition and returned to the states the authority to set alcohol policy… Congress should withdraw from the war on drugs and let the states set their own policies, just as they already do for alcohol. For their part, the states should prohibit drug sales to children, just as alcohol sales to children are prohibited today. Driving under the influence of drugs should be illegal. But beyond such obvious restrictions, states should be free to set the drug policies that make sense to them, up to and including sales to adults by licensed stores, much as alcohol is sold today." Boaz testified before Congress on Drug Legalization, Criminalization, and Harm Reduction in June.
Taking CTBT To A Vote
Senate Republicans have offered to debate and vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty next week, Reuters reports. A vote on U.S. ratification of the CTBT has been held up for more than two years. Last Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) announced that the Senate would debate the treaty for 10 hours this Wednesday and then vote on ratification. "We are asking that we go to a reasonable time for debate and a vote this Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. I think this treaty is bad for the country and dangerous. But if there is demand that we go forward with it as I have been hearing for two years, we are ready to go," Lott said. Democrats, who have pressed for a vote, were surprised by the sudden shift and may seek to lengthen the debate. The treaty requires 67 votes for ratification.
In the Cato Policy Analysis "The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: The Costs Outweigh the Benefits", Kathleen C. Bailey addresses the debate: "The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is now before the U.S. Senate for its advice and consent. The treaty bans all explosive testing of nuclear weapons. Advocates of the CTBT make several arguments in support of the treaty. The reasons reduce to two points: the ban will constrain the modernization and development of nuclear weapons by the nations that already possess them, and it will help prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to additional nations. Both objectives are set out in the CTBT's preamble. Opponents of the CTBT are most concerned about one issue: in the absence of nuclear testing, U.S. nuclear weapons can be neither as safe nor as reliable as they should be. Those deficiencies will diminish the effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. While the treaty will constrain the United States from modernizing and developing weapons, it will be possible for other nations to cheat with little or no risk of being caught because the CTBT cannot be verified."
Ivan Eland expressed doubts about "A 'Grand Deal' on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty" in a recent commentary: "In time, a limited agreement between the United States and Russia to make deep cuts in offensive missiles in exchange for allowing a limited (and thoroughly tested) land-based [national missile defense] is desirable and probably obtainable. But the Republicans should not sell out their opposition to the CTBT to get NMD. As a backup system that is designed to counter a narrow range of threats, NMD is much less important than the ability to ensure the viability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent through explosive testing. As the number of nuclear weapons is reduced and fewer types of warheads are in the U.S. arsenal, nuclear testing is likely to become even more important for ensuring that the weapons will work. At the present time, there is no need for the United States to rescind its voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing; but nor should it be constrained by a treaty from explosive testing if the threat changes in the future. It is vital to U.S. security that the reduced number of warheads that the United States is allowed under any future agreement be modern, safe and in working order." The F-22 issue was discussed at the September 16 Cato Policy Forum "The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?".
Enraptured With The Raptor
Congressional negotiators have cut a deal to keep the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter program alive, Reuters reports. The compromise, worked out last week in a meeting of Republican leaders, would commit about $1 billion to the warplane, cutting the Senate-approved funding by nearly half but allowing the Air Force to purchase more planes for testing.
"At a per unit cost of $187 million per aircraft, the F-22 would be the most costly fighter aircraft ever produced (almost four times the $47 million of an F-15E)," Ivan Eland wrote in the July commentary "Send the Raptor to Jurassic Park". "Because of problems in development, the aircraft's cost has more than doubled and its schedule has slipped. For an aircraft that will be used primarily for attacking ground targets (in the absence of many significant air-to-air threats), the F-22 is exorbitantly priced and not optimally designed for the mission. The United States already has two expensive stealth aircraft designed explicitly to attack targets on the ground -- the F-117 strike aircraft and the B-2 bomber -- and only needs a small 'silver bullet' force of such aircraft to take out dangerous enemy ground-based air defenses and to destroy other targets before such defenses are obliterated. (And the United States certainly doesn't need a stealthy F-22s to escort such stealthy ground attack aircraft to their targets.) Once enemy air defenses are destroyed, non-stealth strike and bomber aircraft can take over the bulk of the air-to-ground missions." On July 29, the Cato Institute hosted a policy forum, The F-22 Raptor: Should It Fly or Die?, on the debate; it can be heard in RealAudio format.
The February Cato Policy Analysis "Hard Choices: Fighter Procurement in the Next Century" addresses the F-22: "It is doubtful that the Air Force needs the expensive F-22 when it is unlikely that any potential opponent could counter the Air Force's existing F-15s. The Joint Strike Fighter should be purchased, but its purchase delayed. And it is unclear whether the JSF can fulfill the Air Force's need to replace the F-16, the Navy's need for a stealth aircraft, and the Marines' desire for an aircraft with short takeoff and vertical landing capabilities. Considering the Department of Defense's other procurement requirements over the coming three decades, it is unreasonable for the Pentagon to procure expensive high-tech fighters in the proposed numbers and at a cost that will severely limit its other weapons purchases. Thus, two of the three fighter programs--the F-18E/F and the F-22--should be canceled and efforts concentrated on the more futuristic JSF."
Sunday In The Post With George
In his latest Washington Post column, George F. Will writes that "in its suit against the tobacco companies, [the federal government] is committing the sin--fraud--that it supposedly is suing about... to prove fraud, government must show that its tobacco policy has been substantially affected by the companies' duplicities, and that the companies prevented government and the public from knowing the truth. Good luck... Various studies demonstrate that government reaps substantial savings because of the premature deaths of smokers who (by the way, cigarettes are the most heavily taxed consumer good) collect few if any retirement, health care and nursing home benefits. When you hear a figure like 427,743 'premature' deaths from smoking (according to the Centers for Disease Control, that is the annual average, 1990-94), bear in mind that nearly 60 percent of those deaths were people 70 or older, nearly 45 percent were people over 75, nearly 17 percent were people over 85. With what certainty in those cases can the government establish 'smoking-attributable mortality'? But, then, one certainty is that accuracy is not the hallmark of the government's tobacco policy."
The Regulation article "Lies, Damned Lies, & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths" (pdf), by Robert A. Levy and Rosalind B. Marimont, examined in detail how the books were cooked and concludes that "[t]he unvarnished fact is that children do not die of tobacco-related diseases, correctly determined. If they smoke heavily during their teens, they may die of lung cancer in their old age, fifty or sixty years later, assuming lung cancer is still a threat then. Meanwhile, do not expect consistency or even common sense from public officials. Alcoholism contributes to crime, violence, spousal abuse, and child neglect. Children are dying by the thousands in accidents, suicides, and homicides. But states go to war against nicotine—which is not an intoxicant, has no causal connection with crime, and poses little danger to young adults or family members."