Luke Morris

4/22/02

 

 

Research Paper:  The Benefits of Drug Legalization

 

            Drug use and the illicit drug trade is one of the most politically powerful issues in America today.  Politicians from the left, right, and center all support the federal government’s war on drugs, since the belief that drugs are harmful and dangerous runs deep in the public mindset.  However, most of these public figures fail to recognize that drug prohibition itself causes the bulk of the so-called ‘drug problem’, and that the re-introduction of a free market in drugs is therefore the best solution.  Whenever anyone mentions the matter of drug legalization in public, though, he meets vehement arguments from the opposition.  Drug opponents believe, for instance, that the war on drugs must continue in order to reduce drug abuse and ‘drug-related’ crime (Grassley 115).  Though prohibitive actions are counter-productive to these goals, the American people, unfortunately, believe such rhetoric because the news media has indoctrinated them with it for years.  Since drug scare stories make good news, journalists pass along faulty information to the effect that the use of and trade in drugs causes violent crime, ruins the economy, and damages the moral and physical health of the nation (Riggenbach 27), when, in fact, the opposite is true.  Legalizing drugs would actually reduce violent crime by eliminating the profit incentives of the high-priced black market, as well as diminishing the incentives for users to steal to cover such prices; plus, more police officers could pursue violent criminals, instead of wasting their time on non-violent drug users.  Drug legalization would also help the economy by lessening the tax burden, in addition to creating a legitimate, safe, and profitable new market.  And, most importantly, the moral solution to the ‘drug problem’ is to re-establish the free market in drugs and allowing people the rights to their own bodies and property, thereby forcing them to take responsibility for their actions.

            To understand the problem behind drug legalization, those concerned about it must know the history of mind-altering drugs and America’s drug laws.  To begin with, no ‘drug problem’ existed before the creation of drug laws.  Nobody noticed any link between drug use and crime, addiction was not widespread, and those few who became addicts still were able to participate fully in everyday society (Miller 86-87).  The states passed the first anti-drug laws, then, not in response to any particular social danger, but rather to create a legal weapon against certain minority groups.  White Americans in California in the 1870s, for instance, viewed Chinese immigrants as an economic threat, and they passed the earliest drug laws to restrict the sale and importation of opium in order to harass these opium-using immigrants (Miller 88).  Hamilton Wright, a prominent society man and medical doctor at the turn of the century, used such racial fears to his political advantage, creating scare stories of black men who, under the influence of cocaine, became violent, bulletproof rapists of white women.  Although scientific study disproved the alleged links between blacks, cocaine, and crime, and even though drug use was rare among black Americans at the time, Wright’s scare tactics succeeded in making the ‘drug problem’ a national issue (Miller 90).

            In 1906, while Wright was inspiring drug hysteria throughout the country, the federal government passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which required companies that produced consumable substances to properly label the ingredients therein (J. Gray 20-21).  Drug use promptly dropped by over a third, the largest single decrease ever, as people discovered that many of the products they had been using contained opiates (M. Gray 194).  Hamilton Wright, however, continued to push the issue of the dangers of Chinese ‘opium dens’ until Congress passed the first national anti-drug law, the Smoking Opium Exclusion Act of 1909, banning the importation of smoking opium (McCaffrey 38).  This action set the precedent for the government’s further intervention in the drug market.  Five years later, for instance, in response to the public fear of cocaine that the media’s exaggerated reports had generated, Congress passed the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, which required registration for and imposed high taxes on the sale of opiates, cocaine, and other derivatives (J. Gray 22).  Once this Act passed, the Treasury Department began issuing propaganda for drug suppression as it increased its regulatory powers over the medical profession, creating popular opinion for its actions ex post facto, and thereby creating a prohibition law by default. One immediate effect of these policies was the birth of black market dealers, selling diluted heroin and other products on the street at far higher prices than people could formerly have paid for them at a legitimate store.  Thus, drug users who previously were law-abiding citizens became prima facie criminals (Miller 92-93). 

            After the passage of the Harrison Act, and particularly during the Prohibition1 era of the 1920s, the Treasury Department increased its control over the narcotic and opiate markets, prohibiting doctors from issuing opiate prescriptions for non-medical purposes, while the states themselves passed censorship laws on drug use in films (McCaffrey 38).  When the Twenty-First Amendment finally repealed alcohol Prohibition in 1933, Prohibition Unit official Harry J. Anslinger had taken over the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and, in the mid-Thirties, he used his power to create a small oligopoly of legal narcotics manufacturers, who then became his political backers and supported him on his bids for increased drug legislation.  To increase his power, Anslinger first planted falsified scare stories in the press to coax public fears that marijuana was turning Mexicans and young people into violent killers.  The public then pressured Congress into passing the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, although Anslinger and his supporters could produce no scientific evidence of the link between marijuana and violent crime.  Anslinger then augmented his power even further during the Red Scare of the 1950s, when he linked opium with communism and the Red Chinese, which won him public support as he pushed mandatory drug violations sentencing laws through Congress (M. Gray 84-86). 

After Anslinger’s retirement in 1961, drug hysteria on the federal level died down until Richard Nixon came to office in ’68.  Nixon reawakened the national drug war as a part of his campaign promise to reduce crime, feeding on the American people’s pre-existing fear that drugs had inspired the widespread youth rebellions of the Sixties (M. Gray 90-94).  Riding the political wave of public fear, he created the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 1973.  Enacted after Nixon’s resignation, the DEA, comprised of over four thousand agents, quickly became one of the most powerful international agencies of the federal government, with more discretionary authority than the FBI (M. Gray 96-97).  However, politicians’ tampering with statistical numbers and using drugs as a political weapon had eroded respect for the law, so Jimmy Carter curtailed the federal drug war in 1977, though only for a short time (M. Gray 98-99). 

Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter as president in 1981, and he proceeded to give the drug war new life by pouring millions of dollars into law enforcement and anti-drug propaganda.  He then pushed for the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1984, which allowed law enforcement to begin the policy of ‘forfeiture’, meaning that agencies could confiscate the property of anyone accused of trafficking in drugs, thereby forcing the accused to prove their innocence in court to regain their property (M. Gray 101).  The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 then established the White House Conference for a Drug-Free America, a commission of people from committees, businesses, and organizations across the country, to develop strategies for fighting drug abuse and winning the war on drugs at all levels (White House i).  Since then, the federal government has increased spending throughout every presidential administration, so that today it spends over fifteen billion dollars annually to combat the so-called ‘drug problem’ (Grassley 110). 

The history of drug policies and crime provides evidence that opening up the free market in medical substances would reduce violent crime by eliminating the expensive black market for drugs, thereby reducing the incentives for dealers to commit crimes to stay in business and the incentives for users to commit crimes to cover inflated drug prices.  As Hillsdale College professor Kirby Cundiff writes, “the prohibition of alcohol or drugs drives up the prices of these substances which [sic] creates a highly profitable and violent black market” (Cundiff abstract).  In other words, prohibiting a product that people want to buy generates an underground market for that product, in which only those who are willing to risk violent clashes with law enforcement and with other dealers may engage.  The high prices that prohibition creates provide incentives for such criminals to enter the market and protect their claims within it (Cundiff 1).  Therefore, as drug laws or the enforcement thereof get tougher, crime and political corruption also increase, since criminals fight when they need to, but, when possible, they buy police protection for their businesses (J. Gray 19).  Although former Drug Czar William Bennet claims that legalization would not wipe out the black market because criminals could still undercut the prices of drugs on the legal market (Bennet 91-92), his logic fails in view of the fact that the interplay of supply and demand in the market economy determines the selling price for a good, and it is easier and cheaper to produce, transport, and sell a legal good than to pay the costs of hiding that good from the law and selling it underground.  Prohibitionists also assert that drug use causes crime, but even Bennet admits that, “many drug-related felonies are committed by people involved in crime before they started taking drugs” (Bennet 92), which denotes a clear distinction between criminals, who would most likely commit crimes even without the influence of substances, and the large percentage of otherwise law-abiding citizens who use drugs.  Many police officers, in fact, say that tough enforcement of drug laws does not make drugs harder to obtain, but it does make them more expensive, thereby forcing users to commit more crimes in order to buy them (McNamara 97).

In addition to reducing the incentives of dealers and users to commit crimes, drug legalization would also allow more law enforcement officials to focus their efforts on keeping the streets safe from violent criminals, rather than on pursuing the average, non-violent drug user.  As The White House Conference for a Drug Free America  Final Report of 1988 states,

The staggering number of arrests and prosecutions is swamping our

Criminal justice system.  The amount of time and resources diverted to

drug enforcement leave many criminal matters unattended or delayed

because our police, lawyers, and judges are inundated with drug cases.

(White House 2-3).

Police officers now make more than one million drug-related arrests per year, and over sixty percent of the prison population of the United States is composed of drug offenders with no other offenses on record.  None of these actions have slowed or stopped the illicit drug trade or the crimes that go along with it (Boaz 105).  Studies show, in fact, that the State cannot even control illicit drug use in prison, where it has authoritarian jurisdiction (Block 56-7).  How, then, could it hope to outlaw such actions in the streets, where people are free to move around?  However, if the government legalized drugs, crime would pay less, as the 400,000 police officers that currently pursue drug crimes could turn their efforts towards more serious crime instead, and prison space would open up to receive those who truly deserved to be there (Buckley 406-407). 

            Legalizing controlled substances would not only reduce crime, it would also benefit the economy by easing an immense burden on taxpayers.  During Ronald Reagan’s term of office, for instance, the federal government alone spent over $22 billion on the drug war, and George Bush Sr.’s administration raised that number to $45 billion.  By 1997, the federal government was spending more than $15 billion dollars per year to combat drugs, but, no matter how much they increase spending, the numbers of drug violations and other related crimes do not go down (Boaz 105).  The White House Conference for a Drug Free America  Final Report states that, in regard to government expenditures, “Illicit drug use is responsible for a substantially higher tax rate to pay for local law enforcement protection, interdiction, border control, and the cost of investigation, prosecution, confinement and treatment” (White House 4).  The report estimates that , at the time, America on the whole spent more than $100 billion a year for costs related to illegal drugs (White House 3), and national estimates in 1995 showed that federal and state governments combined to spend a total of $75 billion a year in taxpayer funds (Buckley 404).  These numbers include money wasted on treatment and prevention programs that government studies have proven to be ineffective, such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), on which the federal government spends over one billion dollars a year (McNamara 99).  So, as Republican Senator Charles Grassley claims, since America is losing the drug war, the obvious solution is to spend more money and devote more focus on it (Grassley 110).  However, the idea of throwing more money at a problem that only worsens as the government increases spending on it is illogical at best.  At worst, this ‘solution’ results in what psychiatrist Thomas Szasz describes as, “prescribing more of the same poison – statism” (Our Right 148).

            Drug legalization would help the economy not only by easing the drug war’s burden on taxpayers, but also by creating a legitimate, safe, and profitable new industry, making both buyers and sellers better off.  Since trade is a positive-sum game, both parties involved in a transaction gain, since they value what they receive more than what they pay.  A free trade in drugs thereby increases economic welfare by satisfying the demand and supply already present in the market (Block 55-6).  After all, despite the government’s efforts, Americans continue to demand drugs in ever increasing amounts, so the war on drugs has therefore not reduced drug use at all.  Economics dictates that, as long as a demand exists, someone will produce a supply.  Legalization opponents argue, though, that drugs are dangerous substances that destroy the health of economic participants, thereby draining the economy’s resources and stunting potential growth.  Those who use this argument, however, view drugs only as the tainted substance that pushers sell in the black market today.  But, though drugs would by no means become absolutely harmless, legitimate businesses would have incentives, such as ingredient disclosure laws, their own reputations, and potential repeat business, to sell a purer and safer product (Block 56).  Real liquor today, for instance, is certainly a safer and more standardized product than Prohibition-era bathtub gin.  As Auburn University professors Tibor R. Machan and Mark Thornton write, “black markets produce low quality, high potency, and extremely dangerous products” (Machan and Thornton 80).  Legitimizing drugs would therefore reduce many of the problems that drugs cause, as well as opening up a whole new industry and job market, thereby boosting the country’s economic welfare.

            Legalizing the drug market would reduce crime and stimulate the economy, but one of the most important arguments for legalization is that people have a natural and constitutional right to their own bodies and property, and therefore it is the government’s moral duty to protect that right, not to restrict it.  Politicians who support drug prohibition are actually trying to force their own religious morality on others and engage in a ‘holy war’ against drugs (Szasz, “Drug Use” 52-3).  Thus, the drug war is nothing but a tool that puts arbitrary power into the hands of the government in the name of the ‘public good’ (Miller 107).  Christian apologist C.S. Lewis noted the dangers of such a policy, saying, “Of all the tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive” (qtd. in Szasz, “Drug Use” 54).  The claim that prohibition is for the ‘public good’ is a disguise for the roots of totalitarian rule, and an excuse for the government’s continued intrusion into the lives of individuals.  Forcing many diverse people to conform their personal lives to the moral tastes of the majority is, in the words of historical author Richard Lawrence Miller, “an immoral limitation on their lives, on their potential to contribute to our mutual welfare” (Miller 157).  Allowing the federal government the power to take such actions is not only a violation of the Tenth Amendment, which delegates all Constitutionally non-enumerated powers to the states and to the people, but it also sets a dangerous precedent for the violation of individual rights in general.  After all, as Cato Institute Vice President David Boaz writes, “If government can tell us what we can put into our own bodies, what can it not tell us?  What limits on government action are there?” (Boaz 108).  Since drugs are property, as a person’s own body is his property, the people must either confine the government to the protection of such property rights, or allow it arbitrary control over anything a man may call his own.

            Allowing individuals the right to their own lives is morally just, but a free market in drugs also demands that people take responsibility for their own actions.  William Bennet, however, claims that drug use is not a ‘victimless crime’, or simply a matter of personal choice, since users sometimes harm and rob others when under the influence of or feeling the need for a substance.  Americans base their idea of liberty on “self-reliant citizenry,” he asserts, and one cannot be self-reliant and addicted to drugs at the same time (Bennet 93).  This claim, however, contradicts itself, for how can one be self-reliant when the government dictates what he may do in his private life?  In addition, drugs, by themselves, do not cause certain behaviors.  On the contrary, people are responsible for their own actions, and those who become addicted or commit crimes while under the influence do so because they choose to, and the people who form society must hold them accountable for it (Miller 25-6).  Politicians today, unfortunately, view the traditional idea that drug use is a matter of personal responsibility, and that the prevention of drug abuse is a concern for voluntary social action, as an invalid “remnant of ancient philosophy and religion” (Machan and Thornton 79).  Drug prohibition implies that people have no free will, and are therefore unable to make the right decisions for themselves (Szasz, Our Right 146-47).  Outlawing the free market in drugs thus replaces self-control with outside, coercive control, thereby shifting the responsibility for personal actions from the individual to the government (Szasz, Our Right 27).  Once government becomes responsible for the private actions of individuals, it is only a matter of time before it takes control of every aspect of life.

            Drug trafficking and use is a major issue in American politics and society today, and one that will not be resolved any time soon.  People give strong arguments on both sides of the issue, but, while the prohibitionist position is more politically popular, the arguments for legalization outweigh it.  Legalizing drugs would, for one thing, reduce violent crime, by reducing black market incentives to commit crimes as well as allowing more police officers to focus on bringing violent criminals to justice.  A free market in drugs would help the economy, as well, by relieving a wasteful burden on the taxpayers and creating a safe and legitimate new market.  But, most importantly, the government should re-legalize drugs because people have a right to their own bodies and property, and should therefore take responsibility for their own actions.

 

Works Cited

Bennet, William  “Legalizing Drugs Will Worsen America’s Drug Crisis.”  Drug Trafficking: Current Controversies.  Ed. Karin L. Swisher.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1991: 90-93.

Block, Walter  “Legalization of Drugs Is Sound Economic Policy.”  Legalizing Drugs: At Issue. 

Ed. Louise I. Gerdes.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2001: 55-59.

Boaz, David  “The United States Should Abandon the War on Drugs.”  Drug Abuse: Opposing Viewpoints.  Ed. James D. Torr, Scott Barbour, and Jennifer A. Hurley.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1999: 104-108.

Buckley, William F.  “The Drug War Is Not Working.”  Let Us Talk of Many Things: The Collected Speeches.  California: Prima Publishing, 2000: 404-409.

Cundiff, Kirby R.  “Homicide Rates and Substance Control Policy.”  Working Paper #34.  Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute, May 2001

Grassley, Charles E.  “The United States Should Continue the War on Drugs.”  Drug Abuse: Opposing Viewpoints.  Ed. James D. Torr, Scott Barbour, and Jennifer A. Hurley.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1999: 109-115.

Gray, [Judge] James P.  Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001

Gray, Mike  Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out.  New York: Random House, Inc., 1998

Machan, Tibor R., and Thornton, Mark  “Legalizing Drugs Would Have Many Benefits.”  Drug Trafficking: Current Controversies.  Ed. Karin L. Swisher.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1991: 79-81.

McCaffrey, Barry R.  “Laws Against Drugs Protect Society.”  Legalizing Drugs: At Issue. 

Ed. Louise I. Gerdes.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2001: 37-40.

McNamara, Joseph  “The War on Drugs Has Failed.”  Drug Abuse: Opposing Viewpoints.  Ed. James D. Torr, Scott Barbour, and Jennifer A. Hurley.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1999: 94-99.

Miller, Richard Lawrence  The Case for Legalizing Drugs.  New York: Praeger Publishers, 1991

Riggenbach, Jeff  “All the Lies that Are Fit to Print.”  Liberty vol. 16, no. 3, March 2002: 27-32.

Szasz, Thomas  “Drug Use Should Be An Individual Choice.”  Legalizing Drugs: At Issue. 

Ed. Louise I. Gerdes.  San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 2001: 52-54.

Szasz, Thomas  Our Right to Drugs: The Case for A Free Market.  New York: Praeger Publishers, 1992

The White House Conference for a Drug Free America  Final Report.  Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, June 1988

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes