Time to Declare Victory in the War on Drugs?
This is the first time since the revolution of 1914 a Mexican border state has been occupied by the armed forces of Mexico. That fact alone should get everyone’s attention.
The drug cartels operate in Mexico but they sell most of their drugs in the U.S. And they obtain most of their advanced weapons here. The crisis has caused authorities on the U.S. side to begin preparing contingency plans for what they will do when the Mexican drug violence spreads across the Rio Grande. The fact that these plans are even necessary has already begun to terrify the population in the border regions of Texas, California, and Arizona.
So the war on drugs has come full circle for me since I first heard President Nixon proclaim it when I was a high school student in 1969. What Nixon meant as a metaphor has now become real. And we are about to be drawn into the fighting.
Given the extreme level of threat we face, and the clear failure of drug prohibition to eliminate this threat, we must think anew. We must change course before the drug-related violence spreads across the Rio Grande and infects our own country. The best approach – and the only approach that will enable us to wipe out these drug traffickers once and for all – is to legalize the drugs they traffic in, removing their source of income.
This would also pay huge dividends in our efforts to discourage drug abuse. Under a legalized “harm reduction” approach to drug control, illegal drugs would not be prohibited. Rather, they would be regulated, taxed, and distributed through legal channels, like alcohol after 1933. Harm reduction will not solve the problem of drug abuse, of course, but then we have overwhelming evidence that drug prohibition doesn’t solve that problem, either.
Harm reduction would minimize the social cost of drug abuse, minimizing its impact on our police, our criminal justice system, and our prison system. One of the primary reasons we incarcerate more people in the United States than any other country – in both absolute and per capita terms – is that we have insisted, for more than 40 years, in jailing so many drug offenders. If we end drug prohibition many of these people could be set free without undue risk to society. The revolving door that keeps drug dealers flowing in and out of prison could stop spinning. If we end drug prohibition, drug dealers will be shopkeepers, like drug and liquor store proprietors today, and they will become allies of the police, not their mortal enemies.
In a recent editorial, the editors of The Economist, a conservative, respectable British magazine read by bankers and businessmen, has called for drug legalization, calling it “the least bad alternative.”
I strongly agree. I regard drug legalization the same way Churchill regarded democracy – as the worst alternative except for all the others that have been tried. If we could waive a magic wand and make all illegal drugs disappear – along with the knowledge about how to grow or make them – I would waive that wand. But until such a wand finds its way into my hand, I favor legalization of all illegal drugs.
In my favorite scheme, the government would legalize, tax, and regulate previously illegal drugs. Some of the proceeds from the taxes would go to a fund to pay for drug abuse counseling and hospitalization. In this way we can induce drug abusers to pay for their own treatment, rather than transferring many of those costs to public assistance or to hospitals. This makes me angrier than anything else about the present silly system. Why should we have to pay – through our taxes or through higher health insurance costs – for the treatment and hospitalization of irresponsible drug abusers? Let those who abuse drugs pay for their own treatment, through taxes!
This scheme would not be perfect, and it will not end drug abuse – nothing will – but it would be a lot better than what we are doing now. And it would put the drug cartels out of business permanently, as the trade in these previously illegal substances would become as peaceful and uneventful as trade in any other legal good.
Reduce the harms of drug abuse, force drug abusers to pay for their own treatment, and wipe out the drug cartels. Legalize drugs now.
for further reading:
LA Times March 21, 2009: http://projects.latimes.com/mexico-drug-war/#/its-a-war
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/world/americas/09mexico.html
The Economist: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13237193
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