Decriminalize Street Drugs

Ok, my conservative friends, take a deep breath and think about this a little before you have apoplexy. My libertarian roots are sprouting, and I ask that you not stifle them too quickly. Give me a page or two to make my case. This is such a visceral topic that I am unlikely to change anyone’s mind, but it might be interesting for you to learn another viewpoint.

Before I get to the technical arguments, a little perspective might be in order. President Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and coined the phrase, “War on Drugs” in 1973. President Eisenhower had created a committee to stamp out narcotic street drugs 20 years before that, and “Reefer Madness” came out 20 years before that, during the Great Depression – all of which begs the question, “How’s it working?” Well, let’s see. We probably all agree that one of our greatest concerns regarding street drugs is their impact on kids. So how has the War on Drugs impacted kids’ use? Marijuana, cocaine, crack, meth, and whatever the current craze is, are all readily available in High Schools and even Middle Schools; and, in poll after poll, kids indicate that it is much easier to get drugs than booze. If we check out adults, we find that the use varies greatly by how “hard” the drugs are, but the levels of use have remained relatively stable or grown a little for 30 years or so. By any measure, the War on Drugs has been an abysmal failure. It is lost, and perhaps it’s time for a new strategy.

Now, the engineer in me demands a few numbers.

• Depending on the prison, between 50% - 75% of the 2.3 million U.S. prisoners are incarcerated for non-violent drug offenses.
• Since the cost of incarceration is roughly $22,000 per year per prisoner, U.S. taxpayers spend approximately $30,000,000,000 per year (that’s 30 billion dollars) to keep non-violent drug offenders in prison.
• Additionally, the cost of investigating, arresting and prosecuting each drug offender is about $50k, and, since there are approximately 500,000 drug convictions per year, that’s another $25,000,000,000 ($25 billion) out of the taxpayers pockets, not counting the cost of investigating and trying the ones who get off, or never get caught.

That’s a total of around $55,000,000,000 ($55 billion) per year we spend, to accomplish what? Apparently, declaring a War on Drugs is roughly equivalent to declaring war on ants and gnats. It may be a good idea, but no one really knows how to do it.

So, if we can’t win the war, what would happen if we just admit defeat? What would happen if we decriminalized drugs? Let’s see.

• Farmers could grow and companies could process and package the drugs at a fraction of the current street costs, a benefit to farmers and the creation of legal, taxpaying companies and jobs.
• Since the South American, Central American, Mexican, and Asian drug cartels could never compete, they would go out of business, at least in the U.S. – just like moonshine can’t compete with commercial liquor.
• Additionally, organized crime would lose its most profitable business.
• We could regulate the drugs like we do liquor and cigarettes, so the quality and strength of the drugs would be standardized, thus making them much safer.
• We could tax the sale of drugs, thereby generating a government income on what is now a huge financial drain.
• We could set very high penalties for selling drugs to minors (and do the same for booze and cigarettes, by the way).
• Even though adult possession would be decriminalized, juvenile possession could remain an offense, similar to the way possession of alcohol is now.
• Lastly, in addition to relieving the overcrowding, there are some other benefits to the prison sytems:
- since the prisons would be 2/3 empty, we could really concentrate on controlling the violent criminals and gangs that remain; and
- we could try creative ideas like having white collar criminals serve their time by working with addicts.

I know someone out there is screaming, “But the use of drugs would explode – there would be a national epidemic of addiction”. Really? Right now, any adult can get any drugs they want on the street, but only a small percentage do. Ask yourself if you would start using heroin or cocaine. I doubt it. Most adults understand the dangers inherent in drug addiction, and would avoid it, just as they do now. If we decriminalize street drugs, those that don’t currently use probably won’t use; and, those that do currently use, will continue to use. Ok, the use of marijuana would no doubt increase, probably with a commensurate decrease in alcohol consumption, the net effect of which would be the elimination of many hangovers.

We could begin a campaign stressing the negative impacts of hard drugs on your life – similar to the anti-smoking campaigns. It’s critical that we not revert to the hokey claims about marijuana leading to harder drugs (if marijuana leads to hard drugs because it is used first, then so do booze, cigarettes, soda, and even milk). We should stress the negative impacts of hard drugs on your career, earning capacity, family relationships, and health – it’s just stupid to use hard drugs.

Now, what about those empty jails and all that money we saved and the new tax money? Well, to begin, we could use it to fund rehabilitation centers and halfway houses. We could send addicts to rehab instead of sending them to the crime and gang schools that are our current prisons. We might even be able to use some to feed the hungry and house the homeless.

Presidents since Ford have convened blue ribbon panels to study this issue, and panel after panel has concluded that decriminalization is the most prudent solution. Even a conservative blue ribbon panel led by William F. Buckley reached a similar conclusion. So why haven’t Presidents listened? Simply because they’re petrified of the conservative backlash.

Look, the U.S. tried to criminalize liquor during prohibition. This was a War on Booze. During prohibition, those who drank before continued to drink, and those who did not drink before continued not to drink. The only differences were that the cost of booze sky-rocketed, we made criminals out of ordinary citizens just because they wanted a drink, and we created the largest crime syndicates in our history. The War on Drugs has been as great a failure as was the War on Booze.

But, all is not lost. We can’t win the War on Drugs, but we can come to grips with it, if we deal with the problem exactly the same way we dealt with the War on Booze.