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July 19, 2002
Keep drugs illegal
See this piece in the WSJ on the perils of legalizing drugs. I tend to break with many libertarians on the subject of drugs. First, drug usage is not a victimless crime and society bears a huge burden for the costs inflected by drug users. So the point that it isn't the government's business is just false. Second, drug laws, despite fanciful claims to the contrary, actually work. When prohibition was ended, alcohol usage tripled. The government can protect (in part) its citizens from the dangers of drugs and spare taxpayers much (though not all) of the burden of caring for a drugged up society--and it should.
NCPA summarizes:
CASE AGAINST LEGALIZING DRUGSRecently, Britain went one stop closer to legalizing drugs by decriminalizing the possession of cannabis. John P. Walters argues that legalizing drugs will merely trade a crime problem for a public health problem.
Pro-legalization arguments sound persuasive:National Office of Drug-Control Policy
- Legalizing drugs would lower prices and eliminate the gangs and organized crime associated with illegal drugs.
- Drug offenders would not flood the prison system.
- Governments could regulate and tax drugs, increasing quality and raising tax revenue.
Walters argues that these benefits are mostly illusionary and are easily outweighed by the health costs. He points out that drug abuse alone cost an estimated $55 billion in 1998, not factoring criminal justice costs. Moreover, deaths directly related to drug use have more than doubled since 1980. When British physicians were allowed to prescribe heroin to certain addicts, the number skyrocketed from 68 in 1960 to over 20,000 in London alone by 1982. Legalizing drugs would increase use, abuse and death according to Walters.
Furthermore, Walters argues that the benefits are illusionary:
- For example, drug legalizers claim that 1.5 million American are arrested for drug crimes, flooding the prisons. However, Walter argues that most of those arrested do not serve jail time, and those that do, deserve it.
- Some 24 percent of state prison drug offenders are violent recidivists, while 83 percent have prior criminal histories.
Pointing out a New England Journal of Medicine article in 1999, Walter notes that cocaine use raises the risk of domestic violence by a factor of four. Other studies indicate that up to 80 percent of our child welfare caseload involves substance abusers.
Walters asks if society could trust legal drug addicts to works nurses or even bus drivers? And, what of female cocaine addicts becoming pregnant?
Drug Use and Control from NCPA
Even if the "cost to society" could be conclusively proved (and you might argue: some cost to society in personally dangerous activities can always be proved by those who have the mind to do so), the legalization of drugs would be worth it because it would tend to limit the criminalization of vast swathes of society.
Also, drug policing tends to be racially unbalanced. No one really believes that blacks and hispanics are more inclined to use drugs than whites. And yet richer whites are vastly unrepresented in drug trials.
Finally, I would remind you of John Stuart Mill's words in On Liberty: "Over himself, the individual is sovereign." Society has no right to legislate over the individual for his own good, even when it can be conclusively proved that it is acting in an individual's interests. It can only legislate over him in order to guarantee the "negative liberty" of other people.
Your inconsistency never ceases to amaze me. You argue for strict CO2 emmissions laws because people driving SUVs might, in 100 years, harm society in some way, but the harm to society, so tangible, profound, and current, of drug usage apparently carries no weight with you. To your points: your first point is not really true. The vast majority of people (over 80%) in prison for "drug related" crimes have committed crimes other than drug usage crimes (violent, theft, etc.) The number of drug-related crimes & prisoners would INCREASE were drugs made legal (because inevitably usage would increase.)
The racially unbalanced point is not really relevant. It may be true (I'll not argue it either way), but that is a reason to change enforcement practices, not the laws themselves. You could make the same claim for murder but would that be an argument for legalizing it? Hardly.
As to your third point, again, drugs are not victimless crimes. Drug violence is a huge problem that would be made worse with legalization and the healthcare costs of drug usage are massive. Non-drug users already bear a huge social and financial burden for drug users, and legalization will only make it worse. "Society" does have an interest.
ok if we dont keep drugs illegal they WILL do it more, because the people who already do it will be able to do it more and influence more and more people to do it....because they can get it even easier if we make them leagle then if we keep it the way it is!
Danielle age 15
I agree with Danielle!
i think that drugs should be illegal always
Ok listen.. when you say by making drugs legal will raise the crime and murder levels by having it easier from "drug users" to get it.. that isnt so true.. say we do make it legal.. it wood be alot easier for the government to monitor all the activites of the dealers and whose buying what from who..