- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. His definition fits America’s war on drugs, a multi-billion dollar, four-decade exercise in futility.
The war on drugs has helped turn the United States into the country with the world’s largest prison population. (Noteworthy statistic: The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population and around 25 percent of the world’s prisoners). Keen demand for illicit drugs in America, the world’s biggest market, helped spawn global criminal enterprises that use extreme violence in the pursuit of equally extreme profits.
Over the years, the war on drugs has spurred repeated calls from social scientists and economists (including three Nobel prize winners) to seriously rethink a strategy that ignores the laws of supply and demand.
Under the headline “The Failed War on Drugs,” Washington’s respected, middle-of-the-road Brookings Institution said in a November report that drug use had not declined significantly over the years and that “falling retail drug prices reflect the failure of efforts to reduce the supply of drugs.”
Cocaine production in South America stands at historic highs, the report noted.
Like other think tanks, Brookings stopped short of recommending a radical departure from past policies with a proven track record of failure such as spending billions on crop eradication in Latin America and Asia while allotting paltry sums in comparison to rehabilitating addicts.
Enter Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization started in 2002 by police officers, judges, narcotics agents, prison wardens and others with first-hand experience of implementing policies that echo the prohibition of alcohol. Prohibition, now widely regarded a dismal and costly failure of social engineering, came to an end 75 years ago this week.
As LEAP sees it, the best way to fight drug crime and violence is to legalize drugs and regulate them the same way alcohol and tobacco is now regulated. “We repealed prohibition once and we can do it again,” one of the group’s co-founders, Terry Nelson, told a Washington news conference on December 2. “We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.”
FROM AL CAPONE TO DRUG CARTELS
“In the 20s and 30s, we had Al Capone and his gangsters getting rich and shooting up our streets,” said Nelson, who spent a 32-year government career fighting drugs in the U.S. and Latin America. “Today we have criminal gangs, cartels, Taliban and al-Qaeda profiting from the prohibition of drug sales and wreaking havoc all over the world. The correlation is obvious.”
The before-and-after sequence is so obvious that the U.S. Congress passed a resolution in September noting that the 1933 repeal of alcohol prohibition had replaced a “dramatic increase” in organized crime with “a transparent and accountable system of distribution and sales” that generated billions of dollars in tax revenues and boosted the sick economy.
That’s where advocates of drug legalization want to go now, and some of them hope that the similarities between today’s deep economic crisis and the Great Depression will result in a more receptive audience for their pro-legalization arguments among lawmakers and government leaders.
The budgetary impact of legalizing drugs would be enormous, according to a study prepared to coincide with the 75th anniversary of prohibition’s end by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron. He estimates that legalizing drugs would inject $76.8 billion a year into the U.S. economy — $44.1 billion through savings on law enforcement and at least $32.7 billion in tax revenues from regulated sales.
Miron published a similar study in 2005 looking only at the budgetary effect of legalizing marijuana, the most widely used illicit drug in the United States. That study was endorsed by more than 500 economists, including Nobel laureates Milton Friedman of Stanford University, George Akerlof of the University of California and Vernon Smith of George Mason University.
“We urge…the country to commence an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition,” the economists said in an open letter to President George W. Bush, congress, governors and state legislators. “At a minimum, this debate will force advocates of current policy to show that prohibition has benefits sufficient to justify the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues and numerous ancillary consequences that result from marijuana prohibition.”
The advocates of current policy, led by outgoing President George W. Bush’s drug czar, John Walters, never took up the challenge to discuss cost-benefit equations. His Office of National Drug Control Policy has focused, with the single-minded determination of a moral crusader, on doing the same thing over and over again.
But the United States is not alone in pursuing drug strategies that are based more on wishful thinking than on sober analysis. If you put faith in declarations by the United Nations, a “drug-free world” is an attainable goal and the war on drugs all but over.
In 1998, a special session of the U.N. General Assembly forecast that the illicit cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy would be eliminated or significantly reduced by the year 2008, a deadline that also applied to “significant and measurable results in the field of demand reduction.”
The clock is ticking towards midnight, December 31, 2008.
— You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com. For more columns by Bernd Debusmann, click here. —
Want to debate? Send in your written submissions to debate@thomsonreuters.com.
Why should pot be illegal? Because the only companies poised to grow, package and sell it are the tobacco companies. Look at how they bastardized tobacco by adding so many additives and chemicals that American cigarettes have been banned in many countries. If Marlboro is allowed to sell joints we will end up with marijuana that is addictive and cancerous.
I'll take mine home-grown, thank you.
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Happy this is the 75 anniversary of legalized booze? 12 years ago this past Thanksgiving my brother died from his drug and alcohol addiction. I am against legalized street drugs and I think alcohol sales and advertising should be further restricted. What is needed is more education about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse and addiction, especially for young children. My brother started with pot in Jr. high school and ended at 40 a heroin user and an alcoholic. Both drugs and alcohol are addictive substances and that does include pot. Having known a couple of pot heads I can tell you they need their pot as much as any drunk or “druggie” needs their drug. One has graduated to other drugs.
You mean all drugs? Crack, heroin, meth, cocaine and pot? Are you nuts! Meth addiction is THE most addictive street drug out and has, I believe, some tragically low recovery rate, 15%. Most addicts die. I regret voting to legalize medical pot in California. I thought this was going to be a legit use of medication but, instead these “clinics” are little better than pot dens run by drug dealers. Some look more like opium dens for pot addicts rather than medical clinics. What a joke. Your article only points to the profit margin drug sales will produce. Are you a Milton Feedmanite? Profits at any cost. You and advocates for drug legalization are not looking at social consequences. Happy booze is legal? You should add up the cost of alcohol related illness, injuries, family disfunction, countless people in counseling because of growing up in alcoholic families, ect. ect. The price tag I am sure is far bigger than the profits from booze sales. Now imagine legalized street drugs.
I don’t do drugs and I am against using them, However, I don’t support anything that tells me what I can or can’t do to myself, even if I know it is harmful.
Milk can clog arteries and cause a heart attack and death. Is the Government gonna start a war on Milk? Where does it end?
If people want to kill themselves my doing crack I say let em. Spending my taxpayer dollars on locking up people for doing things that should be no ones business anyway is insane.
I have a pot smokin female friend with a teenage child. When she declared to me that she thinks pot should be illegal I asked her this question;
“You smoked pot in high school right? she said yes”
“Did you tell your parents? No
“When you ask your son How was school today, do you think he is gonna say, Ah great mom I smoked some pot and screwed a chick today!………….?….Uhhhhhhhh”
Our children are NOT going to be honest about drug use… That is the reality. Lets put the money to use in fighting terrorism and rehabilitation of drug users and make a legal drug industry with sensible controls and with the new jobs and taxes, put some big money into the economy as a result. At the same time we make room for real criminals who commit violent crimes.
At the same time, this would put gangs and organized crime out of business. They would be forced to get real jobs like the rest of us instead of making fortunes and protecting those fortunes by killing thousands of people.
Lets wake up to reality here and get into the 21st century. The so called Drug War is the colossal failure of the 20th century. Time to get smart.
I have long been a supporter of legalizing marijuana however as a parent I now think perhaps decimalizing the possession of small amounts, instead of legalizing it, would be a better solution. (Friends in Switzerland tell me horror stories of young kids high in class because it is easy to purchase it legally there) This way people who grow for their own use, and people who possess small quantities, would not be in danger of prosecution, therefore cutting down on the cost of arresting and prosecuting individuals who use it socially. There would still be a cost to prosecuting large scale growers and dealers. But if you can grow your own plant at home why bother paying the street cost. Perhaps we’d see more people take up gardening as a hobby again, that wouldn’t be so bad. ….
Just as prostitution was leagalized, the users of the legal drugs and services will seek out legal channels of distribution simply becuase they will be controlled and likely to be safer than buying drugs from the corner skeezer high on xxxx and risk getting mugged or shot.
As far as “giving drug dealers licenses,” stop it. Big Tobacco is ready right now to start mass producing marijuana cigarettes. Where do you think people are going to go to buy them? From the guy on the corner or at the state store? Alcohol was legalized and where do you buy it now? At the state store, liquor store, etc. I have yet to find anyone going out to buy whiskey from a back alley.
“…find a new #1 leading killer of Americans. Drunk driving has been at the top of the list for too long…” - B-rad
Interesting claim. The CDC disagrees with you… http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/lcod.htm
#1 Heart Disease
#2 Cancer
#3 Stroke
Alcohol or related deaths isn’t in the top 3.
Why should pot be illegal? Because the only companies poised to grow, package and sell it are the tobacco companies. Look at how they bastardized tobacco by adding so many additives and chemicals that American cigarettes have been banned in many countries. If Marlboro is allowed to sell joints we will end up with marijuana that is addictive and cancerous.
I’ll take mine home-grown, thank you.
What I’ve always found odd is that it took a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol, yet they were able to make every other drug illegal without one. The Federal government doesn’t have the authority to make drugs illegal.
I hope the majority of People in America are as rational as Leman Russ and not as irrational and ill-informed as b-rad.
Daren, you are correct but, to a prohibitionist, who believes in controlling other’s lives for their own good, the first time you use a drug you are hooked and that one use debases your character so horribly you need to be removed from decent society so as not to infect their children. You see how b-rad just promotes ways to punish them based upon the absolute assumption that drug use is bad and for their own good they should “straighten up.” I think he would thrive in a dictatorship.
Greg has similar beliefs. He thinks that for some reason not sending drug users to prison is going to cost him more in hospital costs than he is current paying in prison costs where, by the way, that user is still using. Yes Greg, you can get drugs in prison. He thinks like b-rad that just because they use drugs their character will be so debased they will wind up “lying in the gutter because they simply had too much fun.” Thank god our forefathers didn’t succumb to smoking marijuana! Wait a minute. Yes they did and I do not remember seeing any reports of Washington lying in the gutter. Anyhow, like Duncan Fowler stated in his last paragraph many good people out there have been convinced by exaggerations and lies that MJ is just “Bad” and using it is “Wrong.” We live in such a judgmental society it is a wonder we can tolerate each other. I think the Constitution and the Federalist Papers should be taught as a high school course. I think reality about our society and history needs to be taught in our schools so we know and can see the mistakes of the past and understand that to continue to make them is Wrong. To take the freedom away from someone who has not violated a right of another is Wrong. And we need to recognize when people and organizations demonize something in order to achieve and end for what it is. The ends justify the means. The same philosophy Hitler used in his campaign to control the world. And one of the biggest mistakes a government can make. To the prohibitionists I say look around you. See the Gangs, the organized crime. One Million people are being released from prison each year and even more are entering. One million people, ex-cons with no right to protect them selves; no right to vote or to representation; many of whom are very bad people. People who murder, rape, steal, and molest children make up many of this tsunami of disenfranchised sub-culture. Why? Because, drug use has been demonized to the point that there are mandatory minimum sentences that keep the drugies in jail while, to make room, we release the most dangerous elements back into our society. Thank YOU Mr. and Ms Prohibitionist! You have saved us all.
The “war on drugs” will never succeed as it is a phenomenon driven by demand, not by supply. No matter what the price, you will have demand. Unless you are willing to imprison most of the upper class, the issue will continue to exist no matter how successful one is in the eradication of supply. This is likely known by most in government already. IMHO, the “war on drugs” is most likely being driven in the hopes of expanding government power.
There are other, serious effects of the ‘war on drugs’. The Mexican government fights and ongoing, losing battle with corruption that permanently mires it in third world status. Columbia, too, must fight our war on drugs, with government corruption, and violence in the streets a commonplace thing.
Once drugs are legalized, resources can be turned to treating addicts and dealing with the social damage that drugs have already done to our society.
T grow and maintain a police state,the current drug laws are required.
Policy makers should look at law enforcement as an industry. Drug laws and their enforcement represent the major source of revenue for this industry. It is unlikely, given the strong lobby of corrections, judges, police and all others who derive their income from this failure in social engineering, that any rational policy will ever evolve.
Welcome to the welfare state.
The initial resolution to the issue of drug prohibition
lies with states’ rights. If enough individual states decide to temper or change drug enforcement laws, then it might become a national trend and ultimately federal law. The financial benefits, in terms of taxes and less
demand on law enforcement are obvious. There must be a
way of creating fair and sustainable legislation that
would allow for ‘free drug use’ IE: marijuana, but at
the same time protect the populace from the harder, more dangerous illicit drugs that pervade our country.
Indeed, sealing up our borders against massive traficking would be a good start.
By the way. Are the heavily armed Hispanic drug cartels
still growing huge amounts of ‘weed’ in our National
Forests?
I have never used an illegal drug in my life. If it were legalized tomorrow, I still would not. With that being said, I find it ludicrous that the government can tell me what I can and cannot do to my body in my home.
Justifying the need to outlaw drugs by saying what people “might” do is absurd. By that rationale, should it be illegal to sell candy bars to diabetics? They might go into a sugar coma while driving.
Hold people accountable for their actions that affect other people. If they go out and drive high, stoned, whatever, punish them severely, the same as a DUI.
As far as “giving drug dealers licenses,” stop it. Big Tobacco is ready right now to start mass producing marijuana cigarettes. Where do you think people are going to go to buy them? From the guy on the corner or at the state store? Alcohol was legalized and where do you buy it now? At the state store, liquor store, etc. I have yet to find anyone going out to buy whiskey from a back alley.
Yes, let’s legalize drugs the same way when we repealed Prohibition. That way instead of tolerating bad behavior in hiding, we can get it out in the open and find a new #1 leading killer of Americans. Drunk driving has been at the top of the list for too long…
I do agree that we shouldn’t do the same thing over and over again - How about we seal off the border that 90% of our drugs are imported across? That’s a doable action, and costs far less than incarceration.
Businesses also should do their part. If more businesses either required their employees or were mandated to be drug free, people would straighten up. Look at what Arizona did with illegal immigration - denying jobs to people involved with committing crimes is pretty effective. Not saying I’m condoning this, but it’s food for thought.
A major argument that is being overlooked here is that not all drug users are drug addicts. It was said here that the only reason that alcohol is a top killer is because its legal -> that can’t be right! there have been numerous studies done over the past year that have demonstrated that drivers under the influence of marijuana are safer than those under the influence of alcohol. Recently there was an anonymous study that found that approx. 30% of adults in the U.S. smoke on occasion marijuana (and that’s just those that admitted to it). Most of those 30% have legitimate jobs and are living amongst non-smokers who probably don’t have much idea of this. Should we lock all those people up? Maybe it would be more financially sound (as well as moral) to pull our heads out of the sand an wake up to reality.
I don’t advocate the legalization of all drugs, some stuff out there is really harmful. But there is also stuff that while illegal is more of an infringement on human rights than a governments attempt at protecting its populous. One thing that’s for sure, is that if we do change our drug policies, we have to do it in a rational and sustainable manner (we don’t want a bunch of dutch tourists coming here to get hopped up on mushrooms). Radical change can lead to pandemonium, so for now - one step at a time. Lets start with letting each state decide what to do with medical marijuana…
Anytime something is prohibited an underground market for that thing is created. Current drug policy seeks to wipe out this illegal economy by feeding it more customers.
Has “Change” truely arrived at the White House? I doubt it.
Society will laugh at our policies in 20 years. Tobacco and alco-bevs are legal but marijuana is illigal. Seriously…we are very stupid beings. Wake up to reality and legalize everything. The war on drugs is not being fought correctly. Legalize it and then deal with individuals with help not prisons…..
Hey, Craig; you have some idea of giving drug dealers a pharmacists license??
You’ve already decided it can’t be done, huh?
What is going on right now can’t be done. Isn’t being done and won’t be. Just a continual drain of resources, time and money and the problem gets continually worse. But you like that route, eh?