Let's Get Real Already About Ending Drug Prohibition

[MwKid19]

David Borden

The annual FBI Uniform Crime Report came out last week, and the news it brought about drug arrests in 2006 was no surprise. Unsurprisingly, drug arrests again hit a record level -- 1,889,810 this time, 829,625 for marijuana, more than eight out of ten drug arrests for just possession. Almost nine out of ten marijuana arrests were for possession alone.

This all transpired in a year when violent crime was on the increase, 1.9% over 2005 and the second year in a row after a decade's decline. One should not exaggerate a relatively small number like 1.9%. But at a minimum an opportunity may have been lost to reduce violent crime. Why do we continue to plough such vast resources into drug enforcement that could otherwise be used to protect us from attacks -- attacks of whatever kind?

Despite a small uptick in the street price of cocaine recently -- due only to short-term operational challenges facing the industry -- all of this drug enforcement has been a massive failure. On Wednesday I attended a lunch talk at a DC-based foreign policy think tank given by Arnold Trebach, founder of our modern drug policy reform movement (he started the Drug Policy Foundation) and a professor emeritus of American University. In order to make the point about the futility of drug war, Arnold called a friend of his who is knowledgeable about the heroin scene prior to coming downtown for the talk. He wanted to know where one would go now in order to acquire heroin. After all, it's been awhile since he researched his 1982 work, The Heroin Solution.

Things have indeed changed since then, but despite perhaps millions of drug arrests over the years (10 million? 15? 20?), heroin has not become less available. In fact, it's easier to obtain it than ever before, at least if one knows the right people. According to Arnold, his friend told him that now you wouldn't go out to buy it, you'd just call the delivery service, and if you have any references to vouch for you, they would get it to you in about 20 minutes.

20 minutes. We could have finished our lunches, listened to half of Arnold's talk, then ordered some heroin, received it before the end of the talk and consumed it with dessert. (Of course for a variety of reasons, not limited to our need to get work done the rest of the day, we didn't do that and instead just took Arnold's friend's word that we could have.)

The diversion of resources away from more important -- and more feasible -- tasks is only one of many reasons to go with legalization. The money being spent on the illicit drug trade -- estimates globally are in the hundreds of billions of dollars -- is fueling violence, both global and local. I don't know whether the increase in drug arrests in the US played a role in the increase in violence last year, but it's clearly possible. Far more importantly, a chunk of the violence that we have suffered with throughout the years is directly or indirectly related to the drug trade.

And the money is warping society. How many young people have been lured into lives of criminality through the promise that the drug trade appears to offer? Most of them don't end up making great money doing so. But it's there, there's a prospect for advancement, and depending on your outlook it's glamorous and it lets you be part of something larger than yourself. Money from the drug trade is also helping to support those who want to carry out terrorist attacks, and in some places is fueling civil wars. All of this is happening because drugs are illegal, not because of any intrinsic properties of the drugs.

But would the sky fall if drugs were legal? Would so many more people use and get addicted to drugs that the harm would be greater from that than from the criminality created now by prohibition? Arnold told the audience that he believes we can devise a system for controlling a licit drug trade; that it would not be unduly difficult to do so (we do this already for the currently legal drugs, after all), and "we would survive." We could still help people with drug problems, we can regulate the drugs any number of different ways, we can face that challenge.

I in fact think the overall public health harm from drugs would decrease, not increase, even if more people experimented with them. After all, most people don't destroy themselves with drugs today, legal or illegal, despite their widespread availability, simply because they don't want to destroy themselves. For those who do get addicted to drugs like heroin, but who don't earn a fairly generous personal income, the artificially high prices that prohibition brings about for the drugs is a big part of making the habit so disruptive to their lives. I believe that on the public health side as well as on the criminal justice side, legalization will overall be a winning move, despite the harms that some drugs can have.

It can be hard to advance this discussion in circles of power. Arnold commented that at least eight people in US officialdom told him they would be glad to meet with him, they appreciated what he was doing, but they preferred not to meet him in their offices. They wanted to meet at one restaurant or another, where they hopefully would not been seen with him and thereby get in political hot water. That was a long time ago, but it is still the situation in many ways today.

And yet we do advance -- this organization and newsletter are here, for example, and the movement is growing in diversity and experience and size. Now it's time for the leaders to get real -- drug legalization is viable and it's the right thing to do. So stop demonizing it and start talking about it. Because sometimes leadership means actually leading.

[750rider]

good article..

so:

[Fred S]

Originally Posted by MwKid19

David Borden

Almost nine out of ten marijuana arrests were for possession alone.

Since most people do not use MJ in public this does not surprise me. I'm sure if more people just walked around smoking marijuana the arrest percentage would me much different.

[Breakin_Blues]

Regulate it, tax it and reap the sweet economic boon yeah!

[MwKid19]

Originally Posted by Breakin_Blues

Regulate it, tax it and reap the sweet economic boon yeah!

Nah they'd rather prohibit it, lose billions of dollars, incarcerate otherwise law abiding citizens, and spark worldwide conflict. Seems like a much better solution than legalization.

[mike honcho]

What countries have marijuana legalized? This would be a good place to start if you want to build a case to legalize weed. Gather some statistics that can help you. There are stats to make anything seem logical. I'm sure that more people would listen to you if you brought that to the table instead of just complaining about it all the time.

That was interesting what the article said though, that it would be easier to control drugs if they were legal, that way we could regulate them more closely.

[MwKid19]

Originally Posted by mike honcho

What countries have marijuana legalized? This would be a good place to start if you want to build a case to legalize weed. Gather some statistics that can help you. There are stats to make anything seem logical. I'm sure that more people would listen to you if you brought that to the table instead of just complaining about it all the time.

That was interesting what the article said though, that it would be easier to control drugs if they were legal, that way we could regulate them more closely.

HOLLAND

A particular country, as you know it, is the Nederlands. Even if it is seen in the US as a kind of "marijuana-heaven", The Neds have no anarchic legal systems regarding soft drugs.

YES: private use and cultivation of marijuana leaf IS free. BUT the law says, however, that you can be prosecuted, and condemned to 1 month of jail, if you "possess" up to 30 grams of marijuana. In practise, if you possess an sell less than 5 grams you are not prosecuted.

What is legal and controlled is the commercialization scheme of coffee-shops. And in theory, cannabis consumption should be reserved to these places. And it is also illegal and fiercely condemned to sell even soft drugs outside of this scheme.

So, Holland is a safe country for basic smokers, but its law system has more to do with decriminalization than with full legalization.

European Laws on Marijuana

"The Law Revision Commission has examined laws from other states that have reduced penalties for small amounts of marijuana and the impact of those laws in those states. ... Studies of [those] states found (1) expenses for arrest and prosecution of marijuana possession offenses were significantly reduced, (2) any increase in the use of marijuana in those states was less that increased use in those states that did not decrease their penalties and the largest proportionate increase occurred in those states with the most severe penalties, and (3) reducing the penalties for marijuana has virtually no effect on either choice or frequency of the use of alcohol or illegal 'harder' drugs such as cocaine."
- Connecticut Law Review Commission. 1997

[MwKid19]

I could dig for hours. I've done research on the topic and that is how I have formed my opinion on it. I think a lot of the drugs are bad mmmmkay arguments are based off of either faulty research, see the RICAURTE research debacle, or outright ignorance. For example when Jai bird said ,"a bad batch of ecstasy can kill you." For one I should point out that ecstasy is the street name for MDMA for short and the correct chemical name is 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine. There is no such thing as a bad batch. It is either real MDMA or not. A lot of times people will sell pills that contain other things than MDMA though. That is a risk you take when you buy from an unregulated black market. There are test kits you can buy to help screen pills to reduce the chances that you would get a fake or adultered pill. The deaths that do occur are very rarely directly caused by consumption of MDMA and even the causal deaths are pretty rare. The causal deaths are things such as heat stroke, hyponatremia from too much water, car accidents, adultered pills, or a drug interaction. If you are taking an MAOI and you take MDMA it can kill you. It pays to educate one's self when participating in risky and new activities. Granted, I am not saying that there aren't risks from drugs and there are very real health and social risks but most of those stem from the fact that they are illegal not the drugs themselves.

[Choco]

hell, i spent 2 weeks in amsterdam doing "research".....turns out there's hot girls too....

[blowfishBx1]

I love being Dutch....No other nationality on this earth is as realistic and cool...Hoes and soft drugs..

[360]

Originally Posted by 750rider

good article..

so:

This isnt a crack it's an HERB!

[blowfishBx1]

That our brains were naturally designed to accept...THC receptors...They were put there for nothing...Right.