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During the 1920s, the “progressive” movement in
America successfully established a prohibition on all forms of
alcohol, saying it would create a better society. It failed
miserably.
Sound familiar? It should. For the past 20 years, and most
intensely for the past 10, policy makers in Washington have waged
the so-called “war on drugs,” which was supposed to
cripple the black market drug trade by 1995. To say this plan was
sidetracked would be a grand understatement.
A simple lesson in Economics 101 tells us that the entire
strategy of the drug war has been flawed from the beginning. Any
degree of government intervention will inevitably cause a black
market to develop to fill the demand of consumers. With an
estimated 40 million addicts and casual drug users in this country,
that demand is much higher than drug warriors would like to
admit.
Given the degree to which the drug trade has been attacked, it
is easy to see how this very powerful black market has expanded out
of control, even beyond the ability of the almighty Drug
Enforcement Agency to handle it. The multi-billion dollar domestic
effort has led to hugely over-inflated market value for narcotics,
particularly coca leaf and marijuana plants.
In fact, L. Jacobo Rodriguez of the Cato Institute estimates
that as much as 90 percent of the value of the average narcotic in
the U.S. is added after it enters the country.
You guessed it ““ the United States’ harsh anti-drug
efforts have actually increased the profitability of the demonized
drug cartels, and thus their ability to expand and assert
themselves as powerful political entities, not to mention increase
security measures for their products. Sounds like a successful
war on drugs. Well, not really.
Given these powerful security measures used by the cartels,
officials directly involved in the war on drugs have even admitted
the failure of anti-drug efforts.
According to former DEA agent Michael Levine, “enforcing
criminal laws against dealers has about as much chance of making
any impact on the drug problem as a Honda Civic has of breaking the
sound barrier.” Unless Honda has begun a top-secret jet
engine program, we won’t see an end to the drug trade anytime
soon.
So where exactly do the many billions of drug war dollars go
every year? Apparently, nowhere. According to New Mexico Gov. Gary
Johnson, the drug war is an “absolute failure,” given
the vast amount of resources that have been expended. But please,
governor, do tell us how you really feel.
In fact, in the first 10 years of the drug war, the amount of
coca leaf output in Peru, for example, grew by a factor of 10.
Sigh.
If the frivolous misuse of valuable funds represents the
fundamental failure of the drug war, then the huge increases in
crime due to drug-related offenses represents a severe threat to
the safety and stability of our society. In 1997, the Geopolitical
Drug Watch backed this opinion by saying that anti-drug legislation
has “greatly contributed to a rise in violence and to the
criminalization of vast sectors (especially the African American
population) of an increasingly fractured society.”
In other words, even if the drug war were to eventually succeed,
it would be the quintessential Pyrrhic victory, destroying society
in the process.
Ask yourself, is the policy really worth the occurrence of what
David B. Kopel of the Independence Institute identifies as
“unnecessary shootings and killings?” I think not.
Furthermore, since the drug-related crime rate has been steadily
increasing, yet the overall crime rate has been declining, it
represents a very alarming trend. The war on drugs has actually
created a huge amount of crime. Enough joking, it is time to end
this war.
Perhaps the most tragic outgrowth of the drug war has been the
use of mandatory minimums: an excessively harsh and, not to
mention, unconstitutional form of sentencing applied specifically
to drug offenders.
It works like this: a conviction for possession of the smallest
amount of marijuana, which, given certain circumstances, is much
less dangerous than a financially equivalent amount of alcohol, can
land an offender in prison for five to 10 years. Either that, or he
is sentenced with the mandatory minimums intended to safeguard
against drug sales even if intent of such a sale is not proven.
Regardless, rights are violated.
So, what we have here is hypocrisy ““ the government
decides that a person has acted in a manner detrimental to him or
herself, and proposes to punish that decision by ruining his or her
life with five years of prison.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that the United States
hasn’t also dragged other countries into this mess. Even the
threat of de-certification as an ally in the war, as determined by
the almighty United States, can mean disaster for burgeoning
democracies, particularly in Latin America.
Focusing on Mexico, the possibility of de-certification over the
past few years has caused the inherently corrupt police force to
employ military style weapons and tactics to fight the drug trade
(not that any progress was made, either ““ Mexico is no
stronger a drug ally than Columbia). And at least before
Vicente Fox became president, any additional power granted to the
Mexican police was a formula for disaster.
According to Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute,
“the United States is asking Latin American governments to do
the impossible: wage war on a drug trade that now represents a
vital part of their economies and around which have arisen powerful
political constituencies.” Good luck, America.
Whenever a strategy to solve a certain problem has failed, we
inevitably find ourselves in the unwanted position of finding a
solution. One of the more popular answers to the drug problem
is crop substitution, which the United States and other governments
will utilize to compensate narcotics growers as they switch over to
a legal product.
Let’s be honest, this strategy has been tried and has
failed. Anti-drug policies have created inflated black-market
premiums for narcotics, which represent far greater profits than
sugar, for example. In addition, coca-leaf plants typically
are ready to be harvested 18 months after the initial planting of
the field, whereas most other crops take several years. Econ 101,
my friends, Econ 101.
With that out of the way, let’s handle the more
politically charged issue ““ legalization of all
narcotics. I will make this brief and relatively painless. If
someone wants to abuse drugs, let them. The choice to use narcotics
should be an individual one, not a government one. If we ever hope
to achieve a point in our society where people are encouraged to
think for themselves, our government must stop doing the thinking
for us.
Most importantly, this must include the ability to make mistakes
and learn from them, but not in prison, for lessons are rarely
learned there; but rather, from the harsh reality of a life ruined
by drugs. After all, the only way for individuals to improve
themselves is to let them be individuals in the first place.