http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-sullum-stimson21apr21,0,7060990.story
April 21, 2008
By Jacob Sullum
The main disadvantage of "drug legalization" is the implication that
the natural course of things, the default position, is for the
government to dictate which substances people may put into their
bodies. In 1933, when Americans were once again free to manufacture,
buy and sell alcoholic beverages, people did not say that alcohol had
been "legalized"; they said that Prohibition, an invasive, disastrous
attempt to get between people and their intoxicants, had been
repealed.
Americans understood the problems associated with alcohol abuse, but
they also understood the problems associated with Prohibition, which
included violence, organized crime, official corruption, the erosion
of civil liberties, disrespect for the law, and injuries and deaths
caused by tainted black-market booze. They decided that these
unintended side effects far outweighed whatever harm Prohibition
prevented by discouraging drinking. The same sort of analysis today
would show that the harm caused by drug prohibition far outweighs the
harm it prevents, even without taking into account the value to each
individual of being sovereign over his own body and mind.
The problem is that our current prohibition has been in place for so
long -- more than 90 years, compared with the 13 that the national
alcohol ban lasted -- that people have trouble distingui****ng between
the costs of drug use and the costs of drug prohibition. Hence, they
talk about "drug-related violence" when they should be talking about
"prohibition-related violence"; they treat deaths caused by the
unpredictable purity of black-market intoxicants as an inevitable
consequence of drug use; they do not pause to consider why heroin
addicts steal to sup****t their habits much more often than alcoholics
do; and they speak of drug users subsidizing terrorism, when in fact
it's the government that subsidizes terrorism through the price-
sup****t program known as the war on drugs.
"Decriminalization" does not address any of these problems. As it's
generally understood in this country, decriminalization amounts to
treating users leniently while continuing to arrest, prosecute and
imprison producers and sellers. In the states that have
"decriminalized" marijuana, for example, possession of small
quantities for personal use is generally a citable offense punishable
by a modest fine. That policy is certainly an improvement over
arresting pot smokers and putting them in jail, but it leaves the
black market, with all its attendant problems, in place. What we call
decriminalization is not even as tolerant a policy as the U.S. had
during alcohol prohibition, when mere possession and consumption of
alcoholic beverages, as opposed to manufacture and distribution, were
not subject to punishment at all.
I also have a problem with the moral justification for decriminalizing
drug use while continuing to imprison people for drug sales. If drug
use is the evil the government is trying to prevent, why go easy on
those who commit the offense but throw the book at those who merely
assist them? Isn't that like puni****ng someone who sells a gun to a
murderer more severely than the murderer himself? This inconsistency
in the treatment of sellers versus buyers, which is widely practiced
and sup****ted by drug warriors, is a clue to the fact that the
government is trying to prohibit something it has no business
prohibiting.
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times
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