“If one abolishes man’s freedom to determine his own consumption consume … one takes all freedoms away.”
Ludwig von Mises
There’s little question most “illegal” drugs can be both dangerous and habit-forming. Their use and abuse is lamentable, as are the wasted lives of those individuals who succumb to addiction-related problems.
Correspondingly passionate arguments were made relative to the evils of alcohol. Yet, only after America’s entry into World War I, when Prohibitionists convinced Congress and a gullible public grain, an ingredient in most alcoholic beverages, was an essential food commodity for the “boys” overseas did they succeeded in outlawing booze.
Similar laws were contemporaneously enacted regulating such substances as opium and morphine. As with our thirteen year experiment with Prohibition, America’s eight decade, high profile war on drugs has been an unqualified and expensive failure.
Its heavy-handed focus has been on the interdiction and destruction of supply network. Education designed to engender reasoned behavioral change, the one proven mechanism for reducing substance abuse, has taken a back seat and received proportionally inadequate funding.
Meantime, Americans have voted with their wallets and life styles. During prohibition they drank, today many use drugs. Drug enforcement efforts have fallen prey to market economics, transforming the narcotics trade into the most lucrative industry on the planet.
Related street crime, gang violence, and corruption have become pandemic, threatening the integrity of urban, suburban and rural neighborhoods alike. Backlogged courts, prison overcrowding and a growing indifference toward law and order have followed.
While Prohibition’s legacy was “organized crime” … the drug war threatens to leave an indelible scar on our nation’s social fabric; one more ominous than the drugs its generals so piously seek to eliminate.
Governments in a free society have no inherent mandate to regulate their citizen’s private activities which do not infringe other’s rights … no matter how self-destructive or foolish. Unfortunately, once given the license to protect individuals from their own stupidity, further governmental encroachments are inevitable.
Tragically, “drug crisis” hysteria has created an atmosphere in which large segments of the public indicate an enthusiastic willingness to relinquish not only their constitutional rights … but everyone else’s as well.
Today, the military is used in civilian drug interdiction efforts, opening the door to the types of abuses Jefferson sought to prohibit when drafting the Fourth Amendment.
Drug forfeiture laws permit seizure of personal assets on the merest suspicion of drug involvement. Accused are frequently obligated to prove such possessions were legally obtained. The presumption of innocence, previously subverted by the IRS, is again threatened.
Roadblocks and Coast Guard/DEA boardings, obviating probable cause protections, are now an accepted practices.
Finally, the Supreme Court, allegedly the ultimate guardian of our fundamental rights, has gradually permitted greater governmental intrusions to address social maladies.
The combined impact of ineffective and misdirected policies, together with a clear and present danger to individual liberties demands new directions. One such approach is the decriminalization of our current drug laws.
Clearly, decriminalization is neither a panacea nor as politically saleable or emotional satisfying as today’s hard-line approach. Moreover, it implies the notion of individual responsibility for one’s decisions and actions. Yet, neither does it equate to an “official” endorsement of drug usage.
Sales of tobacco and alcohol products, both legal, continue to drop. Meantime, driving under the influence smoking around nonsmokers have become unacceptable conduct. These changes have resulted, less from invasive or Machiavellian measures, than from the effects of education, persuasion and reason.
While decriminalization holds inherent risks and may encourage a few people to experiment, it represents a key to many desired social changes. Among other benefits, it would …
- Reign in individuals and governmental institutions ever ready to subvert the fundamental rights of American citizens;
- Cease making criminals out of Americans who use small amounts of drugs recreationally;
- Free up prisons for violent and dangerous felons, frequently released to make room for “criminals” guilty of little more than growing, selling or smoking small quantities of pot;
- Remove the profit motive and most of the related violent crime associated with drug trafficking; and
- Permit the redeployment of billions of dollars and other precious resources for education and treatment programs … finally confronting the demand side of the equation.
As with most complex social problems, eliminating drug abuse has no simple answers. But, continuing current and outdated policies which feed rather than cure the problem is irrational. A new approach must be tried.
