As the great societal commentator Alonzo Bodden observed, “Drugs are bought because they work.”
Just to be clear, personally, I’ve only been drunk once and didn’t like it. Only tried pot a half dozen times to be social and never thought much of it, never felt high but did feel nauseous and asphyxiated. And I’ve been put under the influence or benumbed in hospitals and dentist chairs with ether, novocaine, laughing gas, and cocaine concoctions, none pleasurable in any way.
But some people like all of those things. If freely available, would they become popular, or basically be the same level of interest as now?
Reversing the question, have current restrictions cut drug use? Since the drug wars seem to have failed, with as much drug use now as any time in the past, do they make any difference?
The citations given in this wikiaticle suggest that legalisation does not increase use in this specific case. I see no reason why other countries or drugs would necessarily be so different.
The War on Drugs is largely a waste of money for just this reason:
Making drugs illegal does not substantially change the propensity to use them.
Actual use by those so inclined is somewhat diminished to the extent that these substances are more expensive and more difficult to obtain, but this comes at the cost of criminalizing personal choice. And that criminalization has devastated our inner city communities, created a giant prison/court/law enforcement industry that wastes huge resources, and has had minimal effect on dissuading individuals from desiring the pleasure of recreational drugs.
I believe it was Tribune columnist Mike Royko who made the observation that de-criminalizing drugs would not precipitate a stampede of new users (my paraphrase) and I agree with that sentiment wholeheartedly.
But it raises the opportunity costs of using them.
It is trivially easy for an adult to obtain alcohol, which is legal. By far the most abused drug in the US is alcohol, largely (IMO) for that reason. People talk about how easy it is to buy crack in some neighborhoods, but I doubt strongly there is anywhere in the US where crack is as available as beer. Or is advertised on TV with the Swedish bikini team.
It seems funny to try to reduce smoking by eliminating advertising and restricting places where one can smoke, and also argue that increased access will not increase use of other kinds of drugs.
This is really completely unsurprising. Most people will not do something criminal, even if they have a mild propensity to do it. I drink alcohol in moderation. If it were illegal I probably wouldn’t. If I could get a criminal record from it, it definitely wouldn’t. There are probably tens of millions like me, people who drink but are not in any way addicted to alcohol. If you raise the cost of alcohol enough (either in terms of money or risk and severity of punishment) we will just forego it.
When my daughter arrived (I am the dad) I didn’t drink for a year. Basically the combination of alcohol consumption and sleep deprivation was not a good one. I never had a “craving” of any kind, neither did my wife, who was dry for over two years.
Drugs are available now to anyone who really wants them. But many people start because of “pushers” who have an interest in getting them to start. That would be gone through legalization.
Drug money corrupts, police, pols , the armed forces, and many governments. Taking the profits out of drugs would clean up much of society. A street person with a 200 dollar a day habit has one way to feed his drug monkey. It is not pretty.
I didn’t have time to read the entire study, but I thought of a couple of questions that I want to know if it answers. Did consumption return to pre-Prohibition levels following its repeal? Was Prohibition really the only way to achieve such results. The study mentions that prohibitionism was the result of 100 years of trial and error within the Temperance movement, but I am not sure how much weight they gave to things like education of the effects of alcohol nor do I know how effective such a campaign could be in an era before mass communication. Note that tobacco consumption has fallen dramatically in the U.S. without prohibition (although I guess that is really an apples and oranges comparison).
Also, I don’t have a cite, but I recently was introduced to the example of Norway vs. Sweden. These two countries are remarkably similar culturally and have about the same levels of drug abuse. Norway apparently has a rather liberal drug policy whereas Sweden’s is very strict.
Prohibition is a bad example, because it made a readily available thing illegal, so people used to drinking were more likely to keep it up.
However, there is a good logical argument for expecting increased drug use. First, how many people using now are going to decrease consumption when it is legal? I don’t think drug use is that anti-Establishment any more that people will stop just to spite the Man. Second, at least some people who would try aren’t because it is illegal, and harder to get. During Prohibition the cops turned a bind eye to speakeasies in many places, which is not true here besides college towns.* I assume the price would go down also. Simple economics - increase advertising, make it more available reduce inhibitors, lower the price, and more consumption.
It’s still the right thing to do, given the costs of the Drug War and our need for more taxes.
It seems that in San Francisco the cops took over the alcohol business, in order to keep the mob out. It worked very well.
But, for the most part, who cares if those people are using alcohol or drugs? The people who ARE harming themselves and others aren’t going to think about it that way, just the responsible, nonaddicted people. I would stop drinking too if it could get me a criminal record, but that wouldn’t help society any because my moderate drinking isn’t hurting society.
Generally speaking, criminalizing a substance prevents low-risk people from using it and makes high-risk people criminals and creates barriers to them getting the help that they need. It creates an opportunity–or rather a NECESSITY–for a black market to thrive, along with all the other associated crime that is inherent with that.
Let’s not just say “what if we legalized drugs?”; let’s say “what if we took a substantial portion of the billions being spent on the futile War on Drugs and used it to help addicts improve their circumstances instead of locking them up and increasing their likelihood of future criminality?”
(I know the question at hand here is just whether drugs would become more popular if they were legal, but I think that question is meaningless if you don’t look at who would be using them and the implications of that.)
One point I learned today (watching this past weekend’s Book TV Tivos) was that LSD has become scarce due to the war on drugs raiding the main US manufacturer hiding in an old missle silo, and their eastern european source for the main ingredient, a derivative of morning glory seeds. So at least for a while the feds won on that front.
LSD is extremely difficult to produce, requiring expensive equipment and considerable experience(PhD level) in chemistry. Due to the fact that there is a very limited and non-addicted market, it isn’t very lucrative to produce for the risk and difficulty involved, unlike almost every other drug out there. So basically, LSD is nearly unique in the circumstances that make it easy to discourage, and making it scarce for a few years is the best case scenario for any drug prohibition.
I don’t smoke pot because I don’t know where to find it and even if I did, I wouldn’t want to associate with the people who sell it. Obviously, those wouldn’t be problems if it were legal.
I think one of the reasons people are so obsessed with drugs (and sex) in our culture is because they’re so taboo. Legalization works in a relaxed, liberal country like the Netherlands because of attitude. Here I think people would go absolutely nuts at first, and it would probably stay that way for a long time unless cultural attitudes changed, which they might-- though at a glacial pace. It would probably take at least a generation to see a net benefit, but I doubt legalization would last that long. I see it being one big embarassing, failed experiment.
What I’d like to see (which will NEVER happen, I know, because government and the lobbying industry are too greedy) is everything but the sale of drugs legalized. If you want to grow your own weed and smoke it in the privacy of your own home, have a field day.
