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July 18, 2010
Disasters, Databases, & Stubborn Beliefs
In today's United States, most investigations of major accidents and natural disasters are eventually made public. As computer technology has evolved, such investigations have become increasingly dependent on relational databases into which pertinent items of information (data) are entered, thus automatically arranging important events along a time-line and clarifying their relationship to each other while calling attention to possible additional areas of importance. In fact, the contributions of databases to empirical Science have been a major factor in the recent acceleration of scientific progress. Unfortunately, control over just how that progress is employed has remained with the same old fallible human institutions as before.Also unfortunately; any public policy based on creation of illegal markets is nearly impossible to study with database technology because of intrinsic human dishonesty. In essence, such laws render all data about illegal commerce immediately unreliable; whether generated by market participants or, as is now painfully obvious, by involved government entities.
So obvious has been the tendency of humans to take advantage of the opportunities for exploitation offered by any public policy of prohibition that a key modern implication: namely that there is enough difference between the rapid failure of America's experiment with alcohol "Prohibition" and the more protracted failure of its contemporary Drug "Control" Policy to justify its continued enforcement as a "war" on drugs. In other words, there's an assumption that we have nothing to learn from the past because Al Capone and his rivals were merely fighting to control alcohol, while murderous Mexican cartels are struggling for a drug monopoly.
That distinction is now so painfully unrealistic as to represent an indictment of the conceptual human thinking that still supports it. Since that includes all branches of the US federal government and most state bureaucracies; to say nothing of the nations bound by UN treaty, I don't expect much public agreement with my heretical conclusions and have long since abandoned any notion that such a huge error as the drug war can be corrected rapidly. The baggage of the past is simply too heavy.
However, I have gained some perverse pleasure from pointing out the errors of our ruinously destructive drug policy while legally gathering data from its victims. As I've learned from them, I've also derived satisfaction from helping pot users understand why they have found their use of cannabis helpful; which is why I intend to continue gathering their data and commenting on related events for as long as possible.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at July 18, 2010 11:30 AM