Well, in the midst of all the other bad news I get to watch on the nightly news, drug-related violence is on the rise in a big way in Mexico. It must be pretty bad "bad news" if that made it onto the nightly bad-news-athon.
Now, full disclosure here, I must tell you that a) I do not use drugs, legal or otherwise, other than sugar, chocolate, aspirin, Motrin and an occasional drink, b) it is my opinion that the "war on drugs" has been and continues to be a total failure, and c) this is really the criminalization of a public health issue.
I’ll get right to my main point: are we getting a decent ROI (return on investment) on what we’re spending on this "war on drugs"? If pot, meth, and cocaine were legally available at low prices (with restrictions similar to those placed on alcohol use), would the worst-case scenario you can come up with possibly be worse than the prohibition-era violence , financing of organized crime, and massive numbers of people incarcerated that we have right now? I say this simply could not be possible.
I went to this site called http://www.drugsense.org. According to them, the "war on drugs" is costing something like $50 billion a year. That does not include the cost of incarcerating close to half a million people on drug related charges, nor does it include the amount of cash flowing out of the country to buy the drugs themselves.
It is not the use of drugs that causes drug-related violence. It is the illegality, and the attendant increase in price, that causes the violence. Much of drug-related crime is caused by people stealing in order to pay for the inflated-by-illegality high costs of these illegal substances.
I did some work in some Massachusetts prisons once, and virtually every prisoner I encountered there was an active participant in the "NA," that is, narcotics anonymous 12-step program. Yes, they had drug and addiction problems, but is incarceration the right solution? I don't accept that.
When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, one of the justifications for it was pure economics. It was felt that if the breweries went back to doing business, they would employ people. They were right. Just think of all the people who are employed in the alcohol business today, and think of all the tax money that’s been collected because alcohol is now legal. If drugs were legalized, instead of a net loss of 100 billion or more, you would see a net gain in tax revenue, in the billions of dollars, as they would of course be taxed like alcohol and cigarettes.
Granted, there are drunk drivers and kids dying of alcohol poisoning, but prohibition was a cure worse than the disease. The failure of the war on drugs was called a threat to national security by the some high federal official on the news last night, I think the Secretary of Homeland security. But this is a self-induced threat to national security.
A few interesting quotes from wikipedia:
Many social problems have been attributed to the Prohibition era. A profitable, often violent, black market for alcohol flourished. Racketeering happened when powerful gangs corrupted law enforcement agencies. Stronger liquor surged in popularity because its potency made it more profitable to smuggle. The cost of enforcing Prohibition was high, and the lack of tax revenues on alcohol (some $500 million annually nationwide) affected government coffers. When repeal of Prohibition occurred in 1933, organized crime lost nearly all of its black market alcohol profits in most states (states still had the right to enforce their own laws concerning alcohol consumption), because of competition with low-priced alcohol sales at legal liquor stores.
At the end of Prohibition some supporters openly admitted its failure. A quote from a letter, written in 1932 by wealthy industrialist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., states:
When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before.
And by the way, the high price of heroin and not only funds organized crime, it is also a major source of funding for the Taliban in Afghanistan. If the price of poppies dropped to actual market price, which is probably something like two cents a bushel, they would go broke in a week.
Is all this death and corruption worth stopping a few people from getting stoned? Thsi is not a perfect world, never will be, maybe it's time to accept that.
In conclusion, instead of accepting the blanket demonization of these controlled substances, I ask you to think in your own original independent way as to whether or not we couldn’t come up with a better system for dealing with the problem of substance addiction. Yes, we would need to monitor and regulate and counsel and educate. But anything would be better and cheaper than the denial we're in right now.
© Justin Locke
