He called it Wildfire

Cute. The A-Team of Prohibition, Al Gonzales and Karen Tandy held a press conference today in an attempt to justify their continued employment. They were declaring their huge success in combating the "meth epidemic" and the culmination of their signature offensive, Operation Wildfire.

Most of the press release focuses on a really sad story of a child who was the victim of their prohibition policies. They don't mention if the penalty for drug addiction wasn't so severe, the parents might not have run and if the drug wasn't illegal, the parents probably wouldn't have bothered making it themselves. Only this administration would run such an example of failure and tout it as a success.

The facts on the actual dent they made in the meth market are buried deeper into the release.

As a result of Wildfire, we arrested 427 people. We seized 208 pounds of methamphetamine. We took 524 pounds of precursor chemicals off the street. That’s more than 200,000 tablets of pseudoephedrine, 158 kilograms of pseudoephedrine powder, and more than 220,860 tablets of ephedrine – enough to provide 284,000 people with a hit of meth.

Assuming their numbers are real, which I'm not, who does one hit of meth? Even if you're trying it for the first time and only do it once, you' re likely to take at least five hits in the course of an evening. If you do like it, how many hits a day does an addict do? 10? 20?

Do the math, you know I can't, but I bet they spent in the hundreds of millions of dollars for this photo op, to make it harder for about 30,000 addicts to get their dope. And that will only inconvenience them, not stop them from getting it from somewhere else.

Think about it, they arrested 427 people. I doubt they were all "big dealers."

I don't know the statistics on meth consumers these days, but I would venture a guess there's at least 427,000 meth dealers left in the country. Doesn't feel like much of dent to me.

[hat tip to Tim Meehan]


Update: It's uncanny how Pete and I so often post on the same story at the same time. Drug WarRant posts quotes from Tandy and Walters, not to mention the fabulous logo. I have a feeling Pete made that one himself though.