Khat. Not a problem until laws made it one.

Most of the readers here know what I think about the Drug War. I'd like to end it, and I'd love to roll back the drug laws -- not all the way to the Middle Ages, but to the days when my father was a kid. Say, back to 1913 -- the year Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" was first performed. It seems that in the haste to modernize the world, busybodies decided that the government ought to get into the business of deciding not only how much of our money we're allowed to keep, but what we are allowed to put in our bodies. In a flurry of "progressive" legislation, they abolished the founders' taxation philosophy with the 16th Amendment, changed way the Senate is elected with the 17th Amendment, passed the Harrison Narcotic Act, and then finally enacted Prohibition with the "telltale" 18th Amendment. At least income taxation, the Senate change, and Prohibition were enacted in a constitutional manner; the criminalization of drugs was simply unauthorized Big Brotherism, and probably the biggest single leap towards Nanny State government that the country had yet seen.

I realize that people disagree with me on the drug war, and I know that repealing the laws is almost utopian thinking.

But do we really need to be expanding them?

An innocuous shrub with relatively mild effects, Catha edulis (known as "khat") has been chewed for countless centuries, mainly in the Mideast. Its effects are similar to drinking strong coffee, and it has never caused any major problems anywhere. Had it not been for the Gulf War (and the war in Somalia), the only Americans who even knew about it would have been Mideast scholars and a few travelers. But servicemen discovered it while they were over there, and one thing led to another. In 1993, headline-grabbing bureaucrats added it to the endlessly expanding "Schedule 1" controlled narcotic list.

And so today I opened the Inquirer to see a scare headline -- "Exotic shrub a choice of cabbies. Seizure of 'khat' a first encounter for Phila. police." I don't know whether the idea is to get us all on board with more anti-drug hysteria and yet another newly created criminal problem, but I do so tire of reading -- and blogging -- about these things. Yet if I don't complain, who will?

So, on to the "problem":

An ancient drug has found a new illegal market in Philadelphia.

The drug, khat, is a stimulant with varying degrees of potency. It is found in the leaf of an evergreen shrub from East Africa and the Arabian peninsula, both places where it is widely used.

Philadelphia police said yesterday they seized 740 pounds of khat wrapped in burlap and packed in 17 boxes in a house in East Falls on Wednesday.

Inspector Aaron Horne said nobody had been arrested but investigators had a "person of interest." The seizure apparently was the first of its kind in Pennsylvania.

"We've never experienced khat before," Horne said, adding that police contacted their counterparts in New York to determine what they had found.

Horne said that authorities believe the market for khat is within the city's African immigrant community but that they wanted to alert the public to the drug's existence because it is cheap and may have moved outside its traditional market.

"Unsuspecting parents might not recognize it as a drug," he said. "One tip-off is if you see your kid take a sudden interest in 'chewing tobacco.' "

I guess it's necessary to stir up the mommies, and in the interest of "society" to have them worry that junior might be chewing something which "may have moved outside its traditional market." Whether it has, who knows. Soon it will, because in our monkey-see, monkey-do culture, all you need to do to stimulate interest is make something illegal, run a few scary looking articles, and every young delinquent looking to be cool will line up to be the first on his block. Voila! More laws mean more crime! (But surely they knew....)
The active chemicals in khat - which predates coffee - are ingested by chewing the leaf or brewing it as tea.

Abdelgabr Adam, a gastroenterologist from Sudan, said he knew khat was being consumed in Philadelphia.

"It's used here all the time, especially by those who drive cabs, those who want to stay up all night," he said.

He said that despite its acceptance in some communities, khat is still a dangerous substance. "Like any other amphetamine, it is dangerous," Adam said.

In one West Philadelphia neighborhood yesterday, a man from Burkina Faso, who asked not to be identified by name, also confirmed khat's presence in the city.

"A lot of people use it, a lot of taxi drivers," he said.

In the places where the shrub Catha edulis is grown, khat is often sold by roadsides and is widely used by truckers.

But it is banned in the United States and other countries because it contains the stimulant cathinone when it it is fresh, or cathine, when it is dry.

No, it's not banned because it contains cathinone; it's banned only because the U.S. troops brought some back and the busybody bureaucrats who wanted more power were shocked to learn that a little known shrub which might keep you awake was not illegal.
Cathinone is a powerful Schedule 1 narcotic under federal law, and cathine is a less potent Schedule 4 narcotic.

Horne said the seized khat was dry and qualified as a Schedule 4 narcotic.

Besides acting as a stimulant, khat can induce a sense of euphoria and sometimes psychosis, officials said.

British researchers earlier this year reported that out of 20 addictive substances, khat ranked last in harmfulness as assessed by health, crime and science professionals surveyed.

Yes, and what the article fails to point out is that the study ranked khat as less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco.

Furthermore, khat is a cultural tradition, and persecution of khat users runs afoul of now-traditional multiculturalism! (Hmm... There might even be a religious issue, akin to peyote. Um, yes, there was. But it wasn't explored.)

Anyway, color me unimpressed by the "danger" factor. But there's the newly inflated "street value":

The 740-pound khat seizure has a street value of $140,000 compared with $100,000 for a kilo - or 2.2 pounds - of cocaine, said Horne.
Is it really worth that? I don't think it should be, but if it is, we have the DEA, drug hysteria, and a newly manufactured black market to thank.

I really think that if tobacco and coffee were newly discovered and brought back U.S. troops, they'd be put in Schedule 1 by the geniuses who want to run our lives.

The fascinating thing about khat is I have seen it go from no problem at all to a front page headline "problem" with all the "street value" nonsense that goes with it, in just 14 years.

The War on Khat strikes me as the Drug War in microcosm.

UPDATE: As a commenter has pointed out that khat can have side effects, it's worth noting that reports of psychosis are rare.

Should exceptional reports of psychosis be enough to justify adding a substance to the drug war?

Well, what about the numerous studies confirming caffeine psychosis?

posted by Eric on 09.29.07 at 06:06 PM





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Comments

When are they going to go after Starbucks for dealing espresso?

Coffee is such a dangerous stimulant that the English at one time made it illegal. Tobacco too.

Personally I think we ought to outlaw vegetables. They seem to make vegetarians insufferable.

M. Simon   ·  September 29, 2007 06:56 PM

Cuba - Similar to espresso, café cubano is an extremely strong coffee that is not sipped -- it is shot, like tequila. In restaurants, Cuban coffee is served at the end of the meal in tiny tacitas, cups smaller than demitasse cups.

Coffee

Slugging down coffee? A sure sign of addiction - like binge drinking. Something must be done.

M. Simon   ·  September 29, 2007 07:02 PM

Methcathinone, a related chemical, is easier and safer to make from cold medicine than methedrine. About ten years ago there was this big scare that it was going to sweep the country. Much to the disappointment of the narcs, it never caught on.

triticale   ·  September 29, 2007 08:30 PM

Yay, an idealogical screed that refuses to put forward proof for any statement! The War on the War on Drugs really needed another one.

Kath was not made illegal because of 'busybody breaucrats'. It was made illegal because the damn thing has a fairly long half-life (at least three hours) during which it causes maniac and unrealistic behavior, and is known to lead to hallucinations as an individual's body works the stuff out.

But, hey, by the same metric there we should allow opium. It's a cultural thing, right? There weren't too many negative reports about the drug until after it was banned, there, too.

I'm sorry. I know a lot of ways the War on Drugs has gone ugly. But I don't have to advocate breaking down doors and shooting grannies over a dime bag of pot to think that, just maybe, the vast majority of uses of PCP have enough of a negative effect on random bystanders to justify a ban. I find it hard to agree with the use of significantly impairing drug that can suddenly bugger someone's judgement over when they're driving six hours later.

gattsuru   ·  September 29, 2007 11:47 PM

careful gattsuru

waxing pragmatic about dangerous (to innocent victims) drugs vs beneficial pharmacuticals (like bloodpressure medicine) is going to have you labeled as an accomplice to murder or even an advocate of mass murder

cuz, ya know, the tweaker who kills their kid is no different than Anne Frank.

Darleen   ·  September 30, 2007 01:17 AM

Reading the excellent book right now The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes. Most of it is not new to me in the department of economic data, but she does a terrific job of uncovering Hoover's busybody-ness.

Point being that it was in the same general time frame that socialism - the nannystate if you will - was in coming to full flower. It was almost dead in America though until Hoover revived it with his intrusive brand of governing, and paved the way for FDR and the modern nannystate.

Ray G   ·  September 30, 2007 02:18 AM

Darleen, for the life of me I cannot understand how there can be victims of drugs, any more than there can be victims of alcohol, tobacco, guns, cars, cell phones, or pornography. People who do bad things (either to themselves or to others) are in no way excused by what they use, nor are the things they use any defense to their actions. I don't see a glue sniffer behind the wheel as more excusable than a drunken driver, and I don't see what the driver's conduct has to do with whether what he misused should be made illegal. Might as well maintain that a neglected spouse is a victim of pornography, or a gambler's family is a victim of a slot machine. (Or a deck of cards.)

Eric Scheie   ·  September 30, 2007 08:51 AM

Ray, a major busybody was Harry J. Anslinger -- a tireless self promoter who gave marijuana a permanent place in the American culture war machinery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger

Personally, I think hatred is a natural human need, and stigmatizing drugs gives people an outlet for it. (It could be argued that this is good for society, but I'm not feeling up to an essay which would be misunderstood by all sides.)

Bear in mind that prohibition of alcohol was made possible largely because of anti-German sentiment.

Eric Scheie   ·  September 30, 2007 09:00 AM


Wow, cocaine goes for $1000 a gram in Philly? I may have to change careers and relocate.

yours/
peter.

peter jackson   ·  September 30, 2007 10:37 AM

As a commenter has pointed out that khat can have side effects, it's worth noting that reports of psychosis are rare.

Psychosis itself is relatively rare, and cathine or cathinone-related hallucinations are poorly studied enough that I can't argue about them. Unrealistic thinking and mania, however, are common with any large dose of cathinone, such as might be achieved by getting a normal sized dab of very fresh leaves.

Those aren't exceptional reports, and the results are significant compared to most legal drugs.

It's easy to pretend it's similar to caffeine, but both chemically and physiologically the drug is much closer to amphetamines. They're all classified as stimulants, but the results of actual use are a bit varied.

Well, what about the numerous studies confirming caffeine psychosis?

The ones that require long-term use of toxic doses or high doses mixed with other drugs? Yeah, that's comparable to something recorded to happen with a single normal dose while tired.

gattsuru   ·  September 30, 2007 11:49 AM

I don't think Khat is comparable to amphetamines in the way they are normally used, because the dosage and ingestion methods are so different. It's like comparing beer to vodka or chewing coca leaves to smoking crack.

But I don't think amphetamines were dangerous enough to prohibit. Crank -- and meth labs -- are the result of years of criminalization, with ever more draconian penalties. My mom used to take amphetamines to study in college, and they were widely prescribed in the 1960s and 1970s. Once they were made into a Schedule II drug, doctors stopped prescribing them, and the illicit manufacture began in earnest.

Whether the criminalization approach is worth it is highly debatable. Few people will ever be convinced to change their minds. (My opinion is that criminalization creates crime, and that it is immoral to imprison people for self harm.)

The point is, now we have created Khat criminals. Did we really need them?

Eric Scheie   ·  September 30, 2007 12:08 PM

Most amphetamines aren't that destructive, either, at least not in the ways typically associated with them. They are stimulants, and in very low doses, are quite useful as such. Form of use doesn't really mean much outside of injected drug use (which has that whole STD risk thing). It's about concentration in blood serum, rate of intake, and cultural schema regarding acceptable times of use.

Meth and a few other subtypes are particularly nasty, but the vast majority of 'straight' amphetamines are nearly identical chemically to cathinone, and many were administered orally.

Criminalization creates criminals... well, that's a truism. Criminalizing murder makes criminals, but it's seldom considered a bad thing. I have little difficulty 'making criminals' when the alternative is ignoring folk who use a drug known to cause mania, unrealistic thinking, and hallucinations when tired, particularly when the drug's popular use is for when users are tired and active.

I'd like to take a more libertarian viewpoint on this sorta stuff, but even Randian Objectivism relies on folks having the ability to make their own decisions.

gattsuru   ·  September 30, 2007 03:07 PM

I have eaten betel nut many times, and it gives a mild stimulation (a rush), but can also blur your vision and cause sweat.

If khat is similar, I don't think I'd want taxi drivers to be eating it. (In Taiwan, taxi drivers love betel nut, too.)

Aaron   ·  October 1, 2007 05:15 AM

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