Take this article, for instance: "Experts say U.S. soldiers likely will suffer emotional trauma." This article discusses the shell shock (now called PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome) that will need to be dealt with in the aftermath of the war. This issue has never been a factor in the post war reconstruction from previous wars. In so many ways, we are doing much better in this war than previous wars. What this article fails to mention is that a lot of PTSD sufferers turn to drugs such as pot, heroin, or alcohol to ease their pain. The Israelis get it and are trying to do something about it.

Soldiers aren't the only ones with this problem. We also have victims of sexual abuse. About 70% of female heroin users are victims of sexual abuse.

Police have this problem as well. It causes drug use, alcoholism, and divorce. It is a huge problem for them.

This whole drug enforcement and anti-tobacco regime amounts to a kind of genetic discrimination against pain sufferers. Some people get over their PTSD in a short amount of time. For others the problem is life-long. The time it takes for pain memories to decay depends on the severity of the trauma and the genetic make up of the individual. About 20% of the population can have long term problems.

Here are some good articles on the decay of pain memories. It varies with the level of pain and the genetic makeup of the individual. All humans show fear reactions to dangerous situations. However, in the case of one out of ten people (surprisingly the same percentage of people who are susceptible to substance addiction) the fear does not die down in the absence of the dangerous situation. The fear stays at debilitating levels even in the absence of danger. These people have a definite, if ordinarily invisible problem.

Here is what the professionals think. What they think is that there are two components of addiction (as opposed to habituation which is a short term phenomenon and is fixed by a detox regimen) trauma and genetic susceptibility.

Of course, if as I posit addiction is just another form of self treatment for pain, then what the DEA is doing is simply malicious rather than helpful. That concept comes through most clearly when The DEA makes war on sufferers of physical pain to "protect" them and others from addiction... for example, their prosecution of "medical marijuana" cases where the drugs are used by cancer and AIDS patients. I contend that the difference between these cases and "ordinary" addiction is merely one of circumstance.

Look at what people other than drug addicts do for their pain. Think endorphins. Think runners high. Think food. Greasy sugary food. It ain't pretty.

On Wednesday, you heard what a police officer familiar with all the above material had to say about the drug war.

The drug war is unwinable. People in pain will do almost anything to relieve their pain. That's why torture gets confessions. Even untrue confessions.

Drugs are about relief from pain. Any one who believes that after 80+ years of fruitless effort we can now succeed in reducing the flow of drugs is delusional. All we accomplish is to provide a price support mechanism for drugs, which by its very nature funnels significant funds to all kinds of criminals and terrorists.

The whole drug business is a perfect example of socialism vs capitalism. The capitalists are winning. Supply always meets demand at a price. No surprise there. What is so surprising is that so many pro-capitalists support the socialist system of prohibition. Ironic. Do they misunderstand the nature of drugs, or the nature of capitalism?

(c) M. Simon - all rights reserved. Permission granted for one-time use in a single periodical/web site. M. Simon is an industrial controls engineer for Space-Time productions, and a Free-Market Green.

UPDATE: WizBang Blog has some additional comments, with an interesting angle. Do you have back pain?

« ok, I'm done now

I came to this conclusion via a lot of different evidence. I had seen people take drugs in public and high school and they didn't go nuts and start killing or raping folks. When I was about 8 yrs-old a very close family member of mine was arrested for international trafficking in narcotics. Naturally his actions were very unpopular within the family. It was a bad time - lots of anguish and embarrassment. Yet to me he was still someone who I loved unconditionally. I couldn't understand why he was in trouble for buying the oil of a plant. He hadn't hurt anybody or stole something. I had another relative who became addicted to FDA approved, Doctor prescribed happy pills that ruined her life - yet the Doctor worked out a full career and then retired to Miami. After I became a police officer, I saw more first hand examples that confirmed the laws weren't working.

MS: What do you think about drugs being used as self medication?

JG: This speaks to the heart of the very important question; why do people take drugs. The situation of people in chronic physical pain through injury or disease using drugs to relieve it speaks for itself and is a no brainer. We desperately need to stop interfering with these people. We are not helping them by arresting them.

The deeper question involves recreational drug use by seemingly otherwise healthy individuals. I'm no scientist, but I believe many people use drugs and alcohol to alleviate a whole host of what are widely referred to as anxiety problems. Whether the severity of these anxieties warrants drug use versus cognitive therapy, or better yet prevention, is a valid question. Another thing I wish I knew more about was whether or not these anxieties are part of a self-perpetuating cycle caused by drug addiction itself, or whether people are masking over a mental trauma or pathology. It may be a chicken or the egg scenario. I guess looking at it on a case by case basis would be the best approach, but our current response involves helping all the case subjects by arresting and then fining or imprisoning them. I wish there was more research in this area, although the point is kind of moot as far I am concerned & who the hell is society to tell people what they can or cant do to themselves, so long as they don't hurt others?

MS: If you could say anything to all the children who have broken families due to non violent, drug related, law violating, what would you tell them?

JG: Been there and done it. If its a case involving a hopeless addict who is unable to care for themselves and has sold everything in the house to buy drugs, I tell the kids that the person is ill. I tell them that their sickness has made them do crazy things. In some ways, that is the easiest situation to deal with.

The worse situation occurs when you are partnered with a gung-ho officer who insists on arresting a mom or dad in front of their children after he finds a small bit of marijuana or blow. What the hell can you say to a kid then? It is beyond hollow to tell them that their folks arent really bad people, its just that theyve broken the law. What does that tell a kid about their parents? What does it tell them about the law? Its the police that are breaking the home up in that case. What a mess.

MS: Tell us a bit about LEAP. What is your member base?

JG: We started up in March of 2002. We recruit current and former members of law enforcement who believe the current drug policies have failed in their intended goals of addressing the problems of crime, drug abuse, addiction, juvenile drug use, stopping the flow of illegal drugs and the internal sale and use of illegal drugs.

The mission of LEAP is:

(1) To educate the public, the media, and policy makers, to the failure of current drug policy by presenting a true picture of the history, causes and effects of drug abuse and the crimes related to drug prohibition;

(2) To create a speakers bureau staffed with knowledgeable and articulate former drug-warriors who describe the impact of current drug policies on: police/community relations; the safety of law enforcement officers and suspects; police corruption and misconduct; and the financial and human costs associated with current drug policies;

(3) To restore the publics respect for law enforcement that has been diminished by its involvement in imposing drug prohibition;

(4) To reduce the multitude of harms resulting from fighting the war on drugs and to lessen the incidence of death, disease, crime and addiction by ultimately ending drug prohibition.

We went public with http://www.leap.cc in July and in eight months have gained over three hundred members. LEAP has twenty-five speakers scattered among 15 states of the U.S., and in Canada Australia, Colombia, and England. Concerned citizens who have no law enforcement background have also joined us as Friends of LEAP. We have had little time to recruit members because our directors and speakers were immediately invited to speak at international drug policy conferences in Albania, Austria, Belgium, Costa Rica, Italy, Mexico, Russia, and the United States. By the end of May 2003, we will have also conducted at least 82 speaking appearances at business, civic, benevolent, and religious organizations, as well as at universities and colleges.

MS: What is the biggest obstacle preventing officers from changing their minds about the drug war?

JG: Except for the most ardent drug warriors, a large percentage of officers will privately admit that the war on drugs is flop. Their minds don't need changing, they just need motivation and an outlet to do something about it enter LEAP.

For those who understand the failure of the WOD, there are a few factors at play that keeps them from admitting it publicly or doing anything about it.

Firstly, the policing profession is a paramilitary environment. There is a rank structure. Those wanting to climb the rank ladder require the approval of those above them on the ladder before they are allowed onto the next rung. Achieving and maintaining each position on the ladder is somewhat dependant upon toeing the line. (As an aside, I feel this requirement for conformity is a major, though hidden cause of work related stress for officers: knowing something is one way but having to say it is another is not good for your psycho-emotional health.)

Anyway, I guess the biggest obstacle to be overcome is to get officers to think about the consequences of the WOD in relation to the way it negatively affects their profession. Like Ben Franklin said, logic is often not the best persuader - self interest is. Unconvinced officers need to see the harms to their image and profession that the inherently contrary nature of the WOD is creating.

You can contact John at:

John A. Gayder, Secretary
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP)
gayder@leap.cc
http://www.leap.cc/

M. Simon is an industrial controls engineer for Space-Time Productions and a Free Market Green

(c) M. Simon - All rights reserved. Permission granted for one time use in a single periodical. Concurrent publication on the periodical's www site is also granted.

« ok, I'm done now

A good place to start is batteries. Twelve volt batteries are easy to find. Twelve volt lamps are manufactured by the billions. Twelve volt accessories like radios and heater fans are commonplace. Where do you get 36/42 volt equipment? Right now, you don't get it anywhere. Now the engineers need a 42V-12V converter and an auxiliary 12 volt battery. Thirty six volt batteries? Fuggedaboutit. In the initial production models they will likely be made from three twelve volt batteries strung together.

The battery design also will have to be different from the current design. A battery called on to make 5-10 starts a day is very different from one that can reliably deliver 500-1,000 starts a day. So the car companies must go to the battery companies with a specification, then ask them to design a battery that will fit in a currently produced 12V case and still do the job. The battery company then asks their battery engineers to take a whack. They come back with a design after a few months of effort. Then the prototype shop comes back with a few copies after a few months more of effort. More back and forth with the engineers.

Now the real fun begins. The battery must be cycle tested. Charged and discharged 1,000 times a day to simulate operation in the new vehicle design. There are problems. There are always problems. So the engineers come up with a new set of compromises (otherwise referred to as the revised design), and the testing begins again. The months tick by. Finally, the design works acceptably at the normal temperature range.

As well all know, however, cars do not operate in a normal temperature range. They must work reliably from a -40 degree arctic environment to a 120+ degrees summer desert environment. More testing. More redesign. More compromises. After 18 to 30 months the battery company finally has a pre-production prototype lot of a few hundred batteries to deliver to the car companies.

Now the serious fun begins. All the suppliers to the car company have been going through a similar drill to get their parts ready for the preproduction prototypes. The parts are all there, and they are then hand assembled into a few hundred pre-production prototype vehicles. Any problems in assembly are noted for further revisions in the delivered parts. Time to live test. The vehicles are first test driven on the auto company's proving ground tracks to shake out the bugs in the hardware and software.

Did I mention software? Most of the function of a vehicle with an ISA system are controlled by software. So now not only do the parts have to work as specified but they also have to work in the way the software commands. If not, either the parts or the software must be modified.

Finally everything passes the track test. The pre-production prototypes can now be parceled out to the auto company executives and their families for a year of test driving in all weather conditions. A few more are parcelled out to writers in the field to test drive and give their opinion. During this year, known modifications are being made and possible changes are being anticipated from the early driving reports. If all goes well, 3-6 months after the year of test driving is done the new component designs are ready for production.

Home free at last? Not by a long shot.

Now the factory designers must come in and design a factory to produce the newly designed and proven components. Orders must be placed for the special tooling required. Orders for plastic cases and plastic grid separators goes out. Orders for lead of a certain chemical composition and thickness. Orders for lead oxide paste.Orders for tank cars of sulfuric acid. Even orders for new software to track the manufacturing process. Orders for machines. Orders for punches and dies. Orders for bins to recycle the scrap produced by the production process. Orders. Orders. Orders.

Now of course, you would like to compress this schedule where possible. It costs money to keep all these testing facilities and engineers and technicians and designers on a project. So it would be good if the design of the factory could be started while final testing was going on. Yet this entails real risk. What if testing reveals that the final design needs to be radically altered? Suppose a light went on in some really bright engineer's head and he found that with a different factory design he could shave ten million dollars off the production of a million batteries for 350,000 cars and reduce the scrap produced by one half million pounds, or because of a serious design flaw it was found that all the batteries built according to the original factory design would be scrap after six months on the road. To accomplish such a change, the battery company would need to adjust it's factory design, take a three month schedule slip, and order two million dollars of new tooling. Ouch. Maybe they'd rather play it safe istead, and start the design of the factory a bit later.

What I've presented here is just one component of a radically new car design, most of whose engineering parameters are reasonably well known from over 100 years of manufacturing experience. I haven't even begun to cover the power electronics required to make all this a going proposition, and we don't have a hundred years or more of experience with multi-kilowatt power electronics on mass produced vehicles. Instead., we have is roughly zero years of experience. This is not a trivial problem.

Especially if these problems lead to designs whose flaws are not immediately obvious. What happens when they have a problem that shows up in one out of every 300 vehicles after two years on the road, and they have made a million of them due to strong demand? Disaster. They now have 3,000 odd dissatisfied customers, and a million vehicles to recall.

It's not easy for an auto company to put a brand new design into the field. The risks are huge. Which is why the changes will not come all at once except in research and development vehicles. So when your favorite greenie asks why we can't have in the show room tomorrow the vehicle he read about in a magazine yesterday you can give him or her the one word answer:

Logistics.

P.S. The good news is that such American made vehicles will be available in the 2004 model year. Happy driving.

M. Simon is an industrial controls engineer for Space-Time Productions and a Free Market Green. He also acts as a guest-blogger at Winds of Change.NET.

(c) M. Simon - All rights reserved. Permission granted for one time use in a single periodical. Concurrent publication on the periodical's www site is also granted.

« ok, I'm done now