Tag Archives: drug trade

High Costs: Corruption Scandals in America’s Legal Marijuana Industry

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The movement to legalize marijuana in the United States has been gaining momentum. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia have currently legalized marijuana to some degree, and of those, eleven states and D.C. have legalized recreational use of marijuana.  (Selling, possessing, consuming marijuana remains illegal under federal law, but the federal laws against marijuana are rarely enforced, which creates a rather odd situation in the states that have legalized marijuana: those who participate in the marijuana market are still technically engaged in illegal activity, even though that market operates out in the open.) In the absence of uniform federal regulation, those states that have legalized marijuana have adopted different regulatory approaches; most states issue a limited number of licenses to sell or supply marijuana, but have capped the number of licenses in order to limit the amount of marijuana on the market. This makes each license extremely valuable, given that the total value of the marijuana market is estimated to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $52 billion. Additionally, in most states the license evaluation criteria, and the evaluation process, are extremely opaque, and local government officials frequently have substantial discretion regarding who receives these licenses.

Given this combination of factors—state and local officials with the power to issue a small number of extremely valuable licenses through an opaque process—it should come as no surprise that the legal marijuana market has become a hotbed for corruption. Consider just a few examples: Continue reading →

Violence Is Not the Answer: The Case Against Rodrigo Duterte

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The life of Rodrigo Duterte, mayor of Davao City in the southern Philippines, reads more like that of a mob boss than a mayor. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has investigated Duterte for his alleged links to a vigilante group called the Davao Death Squad (ties he later admitted), as well as threats made to kill village chiefs who did not support his government programs. He has expressed his support for extrajudicial killings as a means to fight corruption and crime. And in case you don’t think he’s serious, suspects have turned up dead after Duterte issued an ultimatum to all drug dealers to either leave his city within 48 hours or be killed. The man is rumored to have pushed a drug dealer out of a moving helicopter, and has openly stated that he would like to kill all criminals himself and throw them into Manila Bay. The most terrifying thing about him? He’s running for President, and he’s winning.

Duterte’s success can be explained by a number of factors, but one of the most troubling reasons for his popularity is that Filipinos have become so disillusioned by corruption in politics that they’ve become attracted to dangerous, zero tolerance policies. Duterte has stated that he would like to bring back the death penalty for the crime of plunder, and while he back-pedaled on his support for extrajudicial killings in the last presidential debate, Duterte still admits to having killed in the past, with a new ominous and unclear caveat: “It’s always bloody, but I never said extrajudicial.”

The popularity of these extreme policies reflects how frustrated citizens are with corruption in the Philippines. Corruption is incredibly widespread, and plagues the country’s politics, courts, and police forces at the local and national levels. Many voters view Duterte’s approach as necessary to combat this immense problem, which persists despite years of promises from many so-called anticorruption candidates.

While I understand this frustration with Philippine corruption, Duterte’s zero-tolerance approach is short-sighted, misguided, and incredibly dangerous. As voters prepare for the election next month, they should consider the troubling implications of Duterte’s violent approach to the fight against corruption.

Continue reading →