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Posted on 12/04/2001 8:22:34 AM PST by fod

The Drug War - A Noble Failure?

by Jonathan Bird

Since President Nixon launched his war on drugs in 1968, the battle to prohibit the use of narcotics and other illicit substances has met with little success. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, 26.7 million Americans used an illicit drug last month. Despite extensive drug education programs, tough penalties for drug possession and distribution, and military interdiction, we are nowhere close to winning the war on drugs. Yet rather than searching for alternatives to prohibition, the response of each president since Nixon has been to escalate the ferocity with which this war has been fought. Most politicians probably support tough enforcement of drug laws because they believe the government has a moral obligation to protect its citizens from their own poor choices. For them, the question is not whether the war on drugs is working, but whether it is right.

Unfortunately, we will never be free as long as the government has the right to protect us from ourselves. Benjamin Franklin, once wrote, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Liberty, in the American tradition of liberalism, means the right to live your life as you choose, provided that you harm no one else. This includes the right to engage in activities that are risky, such as using alcohol and narcotics.

Are Americans responsible enough to handle true liberty? It seems so. Alcohol is widely available, yet we are not a society of alcoholics. And the drug war has done little to restrict the availability of illicit substances. A National Institute on Drug Abuse survey found that 82% of high school students said that marijuana was easy or very easy for them to obtain. There is widespread access to drugs, but we are far from a nation of addicts. Despite the fact that 25 million people have tried cocaine once in their lives, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration found that less than one half of one percent of the population consists of frequent users. Most people do not abuse or even try drugs because they have no desire to, not because they are afraid of breaking the law. A national survey found that only 1.7% of people who currently do not use drugs said that they would try drugs if they were made legal. The legality or illegality of drug use is not an important factor in most people's decisions to avoid or use drugs.

Other countries, which have legalized drugs, have not seen increases in usage. In the Netherlands, which has legalized marijuana, only 2.5% of the population aged 12 and older used Marijuana in the last year. In the U.S. despite tough anti-marijuana laws, 5.1% of the population over 12 used marijuana in the last month.

Rather than decreasing the availability of drugs, the main effect of drug prohibition has been to increase crime. Drugs are not sold in the legitimate marketplace, so there is little competition to hold down prices. Under our current system of prohibition, the cost to manufacture cocaine and heroin makes up only about 2% of the street value of those drugs. This means that addicts must steal large amounts of goods to finance their artificially expensive habits.

Ending the war on drugs would help keep violent criminals off our streets. Drug prohibition has currently created such a strain on our prison system that all criminals are serving shorter sentences. According to figures from the Department of Justice's Urban Institute, the mean amount of time that a criminal spends in jail for murder and manslaughter is 5.14 years. Nonviolent drug offenders, such as people imprisoned for possessing marijuana or cocaine, served an average of 3.54 years in jail. Unbelievably, those convicted of distributing drugs served on average only about one month longer than did those who merely used drugs. By freeing the 400,000 nonviolent drug offenders who are currently rotting in federal and state prisons, we will finally have the resources to make violent criminals pay for their crimes.

The sad fact is that our society will always suffer some harm from substance abuse. Government intervention can either minimize or maximize this harm. In the case of the most commonly abused substance, alcohol, government policy has helped to minimize the damage done to our communities. Alcohol treatment is effective, and largely in the hands of private and religious organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous. State governments have also taken a tough stand on drunken driving and other crimes committed under the influence of alcohol. In addition to being less expensive, alcohol is also safer than it once was. During alcohol prohibition, Tommy-gun toting Mafiosi sold liquor. It was frequently manufactured in dirty bathtubs, and the occasional bad batch of gin could blind or kill its unsuspecting consumer. Now gin is sold by Schnucks and manufactured by Seagrams in sanitary conditions. The black market has no quality control standards. Until we end prohibition, marijuana will continue to be mixed with dangerous chemicals like rat poison.

Conversely, government policies have maximized the harm caused by abuse of narcotics, opiates and marijuana. In his report for the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Alan Leshner found that illegal drugs cost our society about $98 billion dollars in 1992. Surprisingly, about 60% of the cost of the war on drug stemmed from the black market created by prohibition. This included the cost of extra police, drug users in the correctional system, lost productivity of incarcerated criminals, victims of crimes, and lost tax revenue. Only 30% of the social costs were a result of the illness and death caused by drug abuse. Drug abuse is a tragedy, but the war on drugs is a catastrophe.

Jon Bird is a member of Washington University Students for a Sensible Drug Policy.

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