Introduction
To many the idea of overturning the laws prohibiting various plants and substances known as “illicit drugs” would be sheer lunacy.
The mere suggestion that marijuana be legalized, let alone harder drugs like heroin or cocaine would be a sign to many of the degeneracy of our society.
Also, I understand that some of my Christian brethren are not entirely used to hearing a theologically-conservative Christian question the “war on drugs”.
And yet the litmus test of the negative effect of these plants and substances on society is NOT their legal status, but instead how they are enslaving people and wrecking their lives. And the reality is that laws against drugs at the best have allowed these problems to flourish, at the worst have made them exponentially worse. A question which I ponder but will not answer here is: Why do people so tenaciously hang on to drug laws when they have done so little for the cause against drugs?
Before I continue, I wish to refer to the great Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises, who said the following about drugs and other potentially dangerous substances:
“No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian must therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora’s box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.”
Three Nuances
It is my observation that the people who are most gung-ho about the government’s “war on drugs” have ignored at least three nuances which are very critical to this matter:
1. The difference between a vice and a crime.
2. The difference between condoning an activity and advocating its legality.
3. The difference between the mere presence of enforcement and actual prevention.
Unfortunately, there is a basic inability or perhaps purposeful desire to not understand
these nuances.
Nuance #1 (Vices vs. Crimes)
Ignoring #1 is the ideological foundation of all Nanny States. When criminal law
turns vices into crime, things get foul very quickly. As Lysander Spooner noted, “Crimes
are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another”. He then went on
to show how “Vices are simply the errors which man makes in his search after his own
happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice towards others, and no interference with
their persons or property”. He then goes on to conclude that
“For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth”
The state does not throw adulterers into jail, and yet the adulterer is actually
violating a covenant (or contract) with their spouse. Then why should it throw those in jail whose only offense is against their own body? Drug abuse should be seen as a vice, not a crime.
Nuance #2 (Condoning Use/Abuse vs. Condoning Legalization)
The most insideous aspect of ignoring nuance #2 is the way it reframes the discussion
in an impossible and ridiculous way. Since the distinction between condoning something
and legalizing it is ignored, of course those of us who support legalization are
falsely portrayed as “advocates of vice”. Since the vast majority of people see drugs,
in some sense, as being dangerous, being an “advocate of drugs” is a losing position in
the public square. However, wanting something to be legal is NOT the same as condoning it.
And yes, it is possible to be “ridiculously anti-drug” (in the words of Office Space) and yet
be against the state enforcement of laws against drugs.
My stance against drug abuse is by no way decimated or called into question by my opposition to prohibition. In fact, the governments “war on drugs” and the laws it entails are in reality more
“friendly” towards the drug cartels and pushers than they are to those citizens concerned with
the drug problem. Those who want to see less of a drug problem” should, for the sake of their
cause, call on the government to withdraw from the “war on drugs”, for the “war on drugs” has at the best not slowed down the explosion of the drug problem and at worst caused it.
Implicit in the ignorance of this particular nuance is the assumption that the government
“war on drugs” is the only way to try to combat the ill social effects of drugs. It blindly
assumes that anyone who opposes coercive, statist government efforts would propose no other
voluntary methods, such as voluntary organizations, churches, non-coercive campaigns,
education, etc.
My plea to those in favor of the government “war on drugs” is to stop ignoring this nuance.
When you misrepresent pro-legalization people by assuming their advocate drugs, you are being intellectually dishonest. Being against throwing people in prison for drugs no more makes one pro-drugs than being against throwing adulterers into jail makes one pro-adultery. There are many ways to address social problems, and the violence of the state is not the only one.
Nuance #3 (Enforcement vs. Prevention)
By ignoring nuance #3, many errors are also made. The drug laws and the “war on drugs” are put forward as the “finger that stops them dam”. Stop the war on drugs, the reasoning goes, and
the floodgates of drug abuse and societal problems will come forward. But, in reality, that is
not evident. The evidence suggests that at best, these laws things are a poor restraint and have
a very marginal restraining impact on the overall existence of drug abuse. At worst, these laws
are actually making the problem worse. There is, within the evidence, some room to dispute over whether the best or worse case scenario would be true. However, the evidence gives us no room to suggest that the “war on drugs” and the drug laws are having any major success is
stopping or restraining the societal problem of drug abuse. Sure, there have been minor
improvements and shifts from one drug to another as supply changes due to raids, but nothing
permanent or worth writing home about.
For instance, the war on drugs has been a factor (if not the sole cause) of a 50-fold increase
in the price of cocaine. This has undoutedly resulted in making it more enticing from the
perspective of pushers, and certainly has driven more users/addicts to more overtly criminal acts in order to obtain the drug. And, if this increased price has discouraged some users, they most certainly found other, cheaper drugs to consume. Governments do tend to brag about a decrease in cocaine use, but where the rubber meets the road is what we are hearing from the hospitals–they are telling us that over the past 8 years, cocaine overdose cases have quadrupled.
Quite frankly, it appears that in many cases the “cure” is much more harmful than the problem in the first place. For instance, what has a more likely to have a problematic impact on a kids future: experimentation with or selling of marijuana, or being locked up in a prison for 10 years?
Some Concluding Thoughts
Although the drug legalization movement has had some very limited successes, due to many factors including the societal climate, the dominance of the “Nanny State”, and the heavy bureaucratic machinery of the drug war, the government’s war on drugs is unlikely to end any time soon. So for the time being, we will see that in the name of “protecting” us from vices, our governments will violate liberties and crowd prisons with people serving inordinately long sentences for either abusing a substance or trying to sell it on the market. And while they do that, the governments will spend themselves into debt during already shaky economic times and conversely they will continue to make drug dealing a particularly lucrative business, and generally make the problem worse.
In the words of Abraham Lincoln to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1840:
“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
This is not intended to be any sort of comprehensive treatise, and many others are far more educated on the subject and can provide more “linking” facts. But this will at least introduce the topic, I think, and lay some groundwork for understanding this issue more precisely.
Recommended Readings
- The War on Drugs is Lost from the National Review
- Vices are not Crimes by Lysander Spooner
- The War on Drugs, a chapter from a book by the Cato Institute
- Prohibition and Drugs by Milton Friedman (from Newsweek, 1972)
- It’s Time To End the War On Drugs by Milton Friedman
[...] All Things Expounded ? The Folly of The Government?s ?War on Drugs? By admin The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are … All Things Expounded – http://www.allthingsexpounded.com/ [...]
Interesting. So would you recommend having drug producers get licenses and pay taxes just like other law-abiding businesses? Would that be feasible? From what I hear, during the Prohibition many people produced substandard and dangerous moonshine because of the fact that quality could not be policed because moonshine was illegal.
I’m not sure that I get what you say about laws exacerbating the problem. If the price of cocaine went higher, I think that indicates that the price to distribute it was higher too. So I don’t think it quite follows that somebody is making a killing off of it. However, I don’t know too much about economics, so I’ll take your word for it.
From a Utilitarian point of view it would seem that there would be some reason to be stopping drugs. As a neighbor I don’t really want somebody next door who is tripping. Even more, as a patient I don’t want a doctor who is strung out.As an employer I wouldn’t want my employees held back from their potential by drugs. During the Opium Wars of China, the Chinese leaders wanted the Western nations to stop selling opium to the Chinese because it was paralyzing the nation.
However, I guess the same argument could be used for alcohol, but I would not agree that we should make alcohol illegal because people might become drunks. I guess the question is if drugs are really more dangerous than alcohol.
Syme,
I don’t see any reason why the transition to the free market would not work for drugs. I’m not a huge fan of regulation, but it would be a step up from prohibition, at least.
My guess is that there would be an instant spike/increase in supply/demand, but it would quickly taper down. Of course, economics is complicated, and I don’t think anyone knows precisely what would happen, though we can get a general idea. I suspect a reversing of what happened when drugs were illegalized would occur. After cocaine was made illegal, cocaine use went down for a number of decades and then it spiked WAY WAY WAY up. I would suggest that after legalization drug use may go up for a few years or a few decades, and then go WAY WAY WAY down.
With the amount of risk that is involved with running something like cocaine from South America, obviously someone is making a killing. No one would do it otherwise. Sure, no one individual makes the 50x profit margin. But at least a few middle men are making a killing. In a normal industry, a 1.2x profit margin would be amazing. Even if illegal cocaine takes 20x more to distribute, that’s still 30x left over for various people to take their cut. And when you multiply that into millions, thats a lot! Put it this way, cocaine alone has generated more revenue in 2005 than the Starbucks chains.
You said that “As a neighbor I don’t really want somebody next door who is tripping. Even more, as a patient I don’t want a doctor who is strung out.As an employer I wouldn’t want my employees held back from their potential by drugs.”
I share those exact same desires. However, the question we all must ask, is: Does the government’s “war on drugs” prevent any one of those things? The answer is no. Neighbors (not mine, but neighbors in general) continue to trip. So do doctors (ever here of the notorious Dr. Snow?). So do employees. Let’s take the example of neighbors. Given that neighbors can potentially be users/addicts, what would you prefer:
Scenario A: Your neighbor feeds his habit at a 50x markup from shady people who need guns to protect their industry. Your neighbor is a running financial disaster because of the expense of his habit. Your neighbor also runs the risk of violence by running in such a crowd, and also runs the risk of being locked up for 10-20 years. Your neighbor exibits justified paranoia and if he desires to seek help, he must do so with the risk of admitting illegal activity (much more risky than admitting your are an alcoholic). Your neighbor is likely to hide this activity from you.
Scenario B: You neighbor feeds his habit at a 1.5x markup from a large corporation with stringint quality standards. Quite frankly, gangs are generally not interested in the stuff because the market and corporations already run them at such a small profit margin. Your neighbor can easily maintain his habit. It’s cost is not neiglidgible, but certainly maintainable with his current job. He can go to a local licensed dealer, or he can order it mail order, or what not. If your neighbor exhibits paranoia, it is the result of his drugs and not in any sense the legality of it. He is free to get help from anyone without any worries, unless of course he is worried about being classified as an addict in general (perhaps sort of like the stigma of being an alcoholic). Your neighbor is far more likely to admit his activity to you.
Which addiction scenario (granting that both of them are NASTY addictions) would you prefer? B seems so much more preferable that I’d venture to say it seems it might remain preferable EVEN IF it meant an increase of 1% more likelyhood that a neighbor would be an addict (which I doubt would happen).
I think in light of that, even from a utilitarian perspective, legalization works.
But that doesn’t even begin to the address the issue as to whether one person has the right to determine what his neighbor is allowed to injest in the privacy of his own home. So, while I may not like my neighbor doing X, Y, Z, if it does not have a direct effect on me, who am I to restrict him/her?
Regarding employers, if government prohibition worked, why would many employers still do drug testing? Government prohibition simply does nothing to prevent drugged employees. And employers KNOW that if they really want to avoid drugged workers, they must do their own testing anyways.
Thanks for your feedback and comments. Very helpful and insightful. These are just my thoughts.. definitely not the final answer. Let me know what you think.
I wrote another reply commenting on doctors, but I scrapped it, because there were some flaws in it and I sort of changed my perspective as I thought about it some more.
So here is the revised version…
Government prohibition does not help the situation with doctors. Doctors are given additional incentive to hide their habit if it is illegal.
This concern could be resolved if we are go the regulation route. First, insurance/licensing could demand, before insuring or authorizing doctors, that they submit to regular drug testing. And then they could either have their status revoked, OR alternatively, there could be merely disclosure laws. So a using doctor could keep practicing, only it would have to be disclosed to patients.
And a lot of the same things that apply to neighbors also apply to doctors. Sure, almost anyone would prefer a non-addict doctor to an addict doctor. But, in choosing between an illegal addict doctor and a legal addict doctor, I’d suspect that there are a few minor advantages to the later.
Debaters debate the two wars as if Nixon’s civil war on Woodstock Nation did not yet run amok. The witch-hunt against the half-a-million strong witches assembled in August 1969 hasn’t been, and can’t be, good for America, the world-leader in percentile behind bars. If we are all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance credibility.
Stop throwing good money after bad. The witch-hunt doctor’s Rx is for every bust to numerate a bigger tax-load over a smaller denominator of payers. Spend more on prisons than on schools. My witch’s second opinion is to grow your own. More consumer discretionary dollars will stimulate the rest of the economy when they are not depleted by prohibition’s black market.
Only a clause about interstate commerce provides a shred of constitutionality. The commerce policy on the number-one cash crop in the land is no taxation; yes eradication. But money to frustrate enforcement grows on trees. Did the authors of the Constitution intend to divert Treasury revenue to outlaws? America rejected prohibition, but its back. Swat teams don’t seem to need no stinking amendment.
The demonized substances never had their day in court. Nixon promised to supply supporting evidence later. Later, the Commission evidence didn’t support, but no matter. The witch-hunt was on. No amendments can assure due-process under an anti-science law that never had any due-process itself. Science hailed LSD as a drug with breakthrough potential, until the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) halted all research. Marijuana has no medical use, period. Lives are flushed down expensive tubes.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) makes an exception to the CSA, allowing Native American Church members to eat peyote. A specific church membership should not be prerequisite for Americans to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. Denial of entheogen sacrament to any American, for mediation of communion twixt the soul and the source of souls, violates the First Amendment.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate a governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common Law must hold that the people are the legal owners of their own bodies. Socrates advocates knowing your self. Mortal law should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Those who appreciate their own free choice of personal path in life should not deny self-exploration to seekers. The right to the pursuit of happiness is supposed to be inalienable by government.
Simple majorities in each house could put repeal of the CSA on the president’s desk. The books have ample law on them without the CSA. Americans are already liable for damages when they screw-up. The usual caveats remain in effect. Strong medicine requires prescription. Employees can be fired for poor job performance. No harm, no foul; and no excuse, either. Replace the war on drugs with a frugal, constitutional, science-based drugs policy.