Laissez-Faire Letter

Drug War Appendix

1.) Where are we?
2.) Ok, maybe a "Drug-Free America" was an unrealistic campaign promise�but we�re making real progress, right?
3.) But the National Household Survey shows a drop from 25 million (regular) users in 1979, to 13 million at present. That looks like progress to me!
4.) Fine, maybe right now the drug war isn�t going as well as we might hope. Still, shouldn�t we give it a little more time? As a capitalist, YOU certainly know the value of deferring gratification and waiting for investments to pay off.
5.) Pray tell, how is prohibition a War on Reality?
6.) If the problem is the demand, then why not just focus more on demand-reduction, e.g., education (DARE) and treatment?
7.) Dictatorship in America? Never! It can�t happen here. (And by the way, since when is this a war? We are not at war with ourselves.)
8.) This wasn�t what we wanted! We only wanted to stop people�for their own good�from obtaining and using drugs.
9.) You pose as a defender of liberty, but it�s the other way around. Real freedom is, as General McCaffrey says, freedom from "the tyranny of drug dependence." An addict is not free. Drug dependence is not a choice!
10.) Well, that certainly is a selfish view! You obviously care more about your own personal freedom than helping drug-users.
11.) Legalization will not reduce harm. As the Drug Czar says, "Drugs are illegal because they are dangerous, not vice versa."
12.) What you say might be true if drug users harmed only themselves. But don�t drugs also cause crime and violence? You can�t just ignore all that drug-related crime!
13.) If somebody is almost guaranteed to commit a crime, why must we wait until after the fact to prosecute them?
14.) What about crack babies?
15.) You�re limiting yourself to tangible harms that users inflict on specific individuals. But no man is an island, and drugs also cause intangible harms to the entire community and to families.
16.) If you legalize drugs, use will skyrocket�all hell will break loose!
17.) Even if prohibiting drugs doesn�t do any good, we should still prohibit them as an expression of society�s disapproval.
18.) Won�t legalization send the wrong message?

Endnotes
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1.) Where are we?
Our current drug war was "started" by the Nixon Administration in 1970, and escalated by Reagan in 1982.¹ Three decades and (at least) $68 billion later, it is clear that we are nowhere near a "Drug-Free America."

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2.) Ok, maybe a "Drug-Free America" was an unrealistic campaign promise�but we�re making real progress, right?
That depends which statistics you look at.
Record amounts of cocaine and heroin are being seized, true enough�but record quantities are also being slipped through our borders. Moreover, heavy-usage of cocaine and heroin has remained constant, or even increased, since 1985.
By now, at least 600,000 people are arrested every year for simple possession of marijuana, and the annual federal drug control budget has grown to nearly $15 billion�and yet, marijuana is still fairly or even very easy to obtain, according to 90% of high school students.

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3.) But the National Household Survey shows a drop from 25 million (regular) users in 1979, to 13 million at present. That looks like progress to me!
First of all, this is a GOVERNMENT study, and objectivity is not the defining trait of government�especially during a political crusade! Our own government is certainly no paragon of honesty: it lied to us about casualties during the Vietnam War. There is good evidence it lied to us about its actions at Waco. General ("Drug Czar") Barry McCaffrey has lied (or carelessly repeated the lies of his researchers) on a number of occasions. So while I have yet to find that these particular state studies are outright fabrications, I would believe in the existence of God before I accepted them at face value�and I�m an atheist!
Second, if they are not totally worthless, such studies are next-to-worthless. At most, they tell us that, as drug laws became increasingly harsh, fewer people ADMITTED using drugs. Now, is that because fewer people actually did drugs? Or is it possible that many continued to do drugs, and simply stopped admitting it on surveys and volunteering for interviews? The second possibility is no less plausible than the first (especially if drugs are really as addictive as is claimed). Imagine, dear reader, that YOU had committed a "crime" punishable by five years in jail. Would YOU admit it on some government survey? Would YOU let a government employee in your house for an interview?! For this, and countless other methodological problems, drug-use surveys should probably be taken with a grain of salt (or some other white, powdery substance�).
Finally, even if we were to accept the survey�s reported decline in drug-use as gospel truth, it would still be a stretch to call this "progress." The reader who actually checks the survey will note that the reported decline began in 1979, three years before the drug war was escalated by Reagan. And the decline stopped in 1992, with reported drug-use (especially teenage marijuana use) increasing since then�this, despite the continued escalation of the drug war!
Even taking the government�s figures at face value, the most generous verdict one can give the drug war is: STALEMATE.

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4.) Fine, maybe right now the drug war isn�t going as well as we might hope. Still, shouldn�t we give it a little more time? As a capitalist, YOU certainly know the value of deferring gratification and waiting for investments to pay off.
Yes, but I invest my own money (or money freely lent to me by others). The government, on the other hand, "invests" (wastes) the looted wealth of taxpayers. If there is anything more audacious than "investing" money one has no right to in the first place, it is demanding that the rightful owners "defer gratification" until one of these unchosen investments "pays off."
Besides, there is every reason to believe that prohibition will never pay off.
It is a well-documented historical fact that prohibition has yet to work. We all know the fate of America�s "War on Alcohol" in the 1920s, but this is only the most well-known of prohibition�s failures. Prohibition has also been tried by countries Egypt, Turkey, Bavaria, Saxony, Zurich, China, Russia, Iran, Singapore, Malaysia and Britain. In addition to alcohol, it has been tried on coffee, tobacco, heroin, barbiturates, amphetamines, LSD, cocaine, glue-sniffing and marijuana. It has been tried (with dismal results) no fewer than 25 times in the last 500 years, over half of these attempts made in the last one hundred.²
I wonder how long Americans will "defer gratification" for the drug war once they realize that they�re never going to reach the "gratification" part. I�m sure Drug Czar McCaffrey is thinking the same thing: "The problem of drug abuse, like illness or warfare, will not go away in the foreseeable future," muses McCaffrey. "The so-called �war on drugs� is a poor metaphor because it creates the expectation of a speedy victory and a SPECIFIC END to a campaign. We have suggested the metaphor of �cancer� as more appropriate�" (Emphasis mine.)
McCaffrey�s right about one thing: the war metaphor DOES hide the fact that the drug war won�t be ending anytime soon (not victoriously, at least). In fact, I�ll bet that�s the reason it was used in the first place: "war" suggests a quick, decisive and glorious victory�"cancer," on the other hand, suggests nothing but a slow, drawn-out death.
That the War on Drugs does not conform to the conventional idea of "war" makes it a poor metaphor for prohibition. Nevertheless, it is an accurate description of U.S. drug policy. As I will show later, we ARE waging a war�as we shall see now, it just happens to be a NO-WIN war.

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5.) Pray tell, how is prohibition a War on Reality?
Let us number the ways�
First, take the motivations of drug-users. Drugs, like any product, are used because they fulfill certain needs.3 If users value the satisfaction of those needs above their own health and economic well-being�as many obviously do�then they certainly will not be deterred by any penalty the law might impose. Nor can they be incapacitated: the government can�t even keep drugs out of its own prisons.
Then there are the drug-dealers. With annual profits of $400 billion (8% of world trade), the illegal drug trade is insanely lucrative. This has a number of effects. It gives dealers a much higher incentive than the police, who get your typical public sector salary (and get it whether or not they catch anyone). It makes dealers excellent bribers, giving police a financial incentive NOT to arrest them. It encourages and allows dealers to make more rapid "innovations" in evading the law, than the police can make in enforcing it. This last is also reinforced by the inflexible rules to which police, in a free society, must conform.
Prohibition is ineffective because drugs are so profitable. But here�s the ironic part: drugs are so profitable precisely BECAUSE they are illegal!
Observe. Drug laws scare off most of the people who would sell drugs on a legal market (most notably pharmacists and doctors). But laws won�t scare off everyone�and the few who are willing and able to break them get a monopoly on the drug market. Thus, dealers get to overcharge desperate users for exorbinant profits, often inflating drug prices to 100 times their legal market levels.⁴ These outrageous prices, coupled with the equally outrageous profits from dealing, explain why many users become "dealers" themselves. More generally, they suggest that trying to kill drugs by targetting dealers makes no more sense than trying to kill the mythological Hydra by cutting off its heads: getting rid of one cartel or dealer does nothing but make room for another.
This, then, is one of prohibition�s fatal flaws: it PROMOTES precisely what it�s meant to prohibit. It seeks to overturn the market, but a wave of the legislative wand cannot erase the choices and desires of tens of millions of individuals. A market can be blackened, stifled and distorted�in the end, however, it cannot be denied. So long as there is a demand for drugs, the only question is HOW (and by whom) that demand will be supplied.

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6.) If the problem is the demand, then why not just focus more on demand-reduction, e.g., education (DARE) and treatment?
First of all, I will point out that much what government agencies call "demand-reduction" is simply a euphemism for the promotion of their own political, anti-legalization agenda. Yes, bureaucrats are as free as anyone to express their own political views�with their OWN money. What they are currently doing, however, is the same as stealing from one political party to finance the propaganda of another. It is also an attempt to make government the creator, rather than the implementor, of public opinion. In either case, such thought-control is incompatible with a free society.
That said, I do think education and treatment, properly performed, have a chance of reducing drug use. But this is precisely why they should NOT be performed by the government.
Government-sponsored educational programs like DARE may be popular, but there is no evidence that they prevent drug-use (and some evidence that they increase it!).⁵ There may be several reasons for this, but I think most of them arise from the contradictory nature of "public education."
Education involves motivating students to actively pursue the truth. Public education involves forcing students to sit in a class and passively memorize some state-mandated curriculum. Even if a public school program has the decency to ask parents permission to teach their kids (as DARE in fact does), its dependence on the state still prevents it from teaching politically inconvenient facts (e.g., that some illegal drugs, like marijuana, are nowhere near as harmful as some legal drugs, like alcohol and tobacco). This is no small flaw: if and when students discover their state teachers� duplicity, they will cease to trust the state and may even infect peers with similar skepticism. (Then again, maybe we need MORE programs like this!)
Education, like any other service, can be provided on a free, competitive market�indeed, this is the sine qua non for any progress in the field. Public education, however, is a state-enforced monopoly; and, like all such monopolies, it lacks the incentives and flexibility to innovate and depart from the stale methods currently employed. Maybe DARE currently employs the best educational methods�it probably it doesn�t. In any case, we�ll never know until it is made to compete on an equal footing with non-subsidized competitors.
Education, finally, means teaching Johnny how to think. But public education can�t even teach him how to read!⁶ Education means helping a child develop the confidence to deal with reality, so he�ll be less likely to use drugs to escape it. To be sure, DARE spends lots of time talking about "self-esteem," "independence" and sound decision-making�and they�ve got it half right. The other half, however, is that these traits come from actually exercising one�s autonomy�not from being informed that one possesses it, and then placed in an environment that absolutely stifles it (e.g., any public junior high school).
In the end, although DARE is not beyond redemption in principle, it is worse than worthless in its current, state-subsized practice. A more promising approach would be to eliminate public funding of DARE (which hasn�t shown results, anyway), give the money back to parents, and leave them to teach their own kids about drugs, or to pay a PRIVATE (i.e., non-subsidized!) organization for this purpose. That way, parents would actually monitor the effectiveness of such programs, and the test of a good program would be its actual results�not the feel-good rhetoric of its sponsors.
The same laissez-faire approach ought to be applied to treatment programs. Treatment�i.e., weaning addicts off their addictions�unlike DARE, has actually shown some success in reducing the demand for drugs. However, even this minor "success" does not redeem the drug war, because there is absolutely no reason why treatment could not be completely privatized and voluntary.
If addicts really want to quit, then they will not need to be forced into treatment. Their addiction may not be a "choice," but whether they seek help for it, certainly IS. To seek help, they need to know only three things: one, that help exists; two, that they can afford it; and three, that they will not be arrested when they try to obtain it. This, in turn, requires: one, private advertising; two, private competition (and, if necessary, private charity and future-payment options); and three, legalization.
Nor is this uninformed optimism. The reader need simply observe that the government does not have to "help" alcoholics and smokers kick their habits. There are already PLENTY of private, voluntarily-used programs and products (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous and nicorette gum) for that purpose. Why couldn�t private "12-Step" programs be extended to currently illegal drugs? Why couldn�t Methadone�currently used to help heroin-addicts quit, and even endorsed by the drug czar�be sold like nicotine gum? Were drugs legalized, and private research allowed, we would no doubt see countless other treatment products.
In short, not even the limited success of "demand-reduction" programs can justify the drug war. As we have seen, such programs don�t require the government�s "help," and would almost certainly function better WITHOUT it. There is no excuse for giving the state a task which it is neither required nor desired to perform. (Besides giving some campaign donor's mediocre nephew a "job.")
Besides, there is something unsettling about giving the government the power to forcefully drug innocent citizens. And DARE, even if it did work, could still be used to indoctrinate students with state propaganda. Granted, this is true of public education in general. But DARE has another ominous, police-state feature. Despite vigorous assurances to the contrary from its directors, the program seems to be turning some kids into informants against their own parents.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The War on Drugs, if allowed to run its full course, has the potential to transform America into a totalitarian dictatorship.

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7.) Dictatorship in America? Never! It can�t happen here. (And by the way, since when is this a war? We are not at war with ourselves.)
It IS happening here. Several totalitarian measures have already been passed to enforce drug laws.
For example, the drug war has given rise to the infamous asset forfeiture laws. These allow police to seize ALL property even remotely⁷ connected with the drug trade�innocence is not a defense. The property can be seized BEFORE the owner is charged with a crime�sentence first, verdict afterwards. And if the owner turns out to be innocent or is never charged with a crime at all (as happens 80% of the time), he must still petition the court to get his property back. And HE must bear the burden of proof�guilty until proven innocent. So much for "due process"!
And then there are those "exceptions" to the Fourth Amendment. The drug war has been the justification for: subjecting individuals to all kinds of searches and surveillance without warrant or probable cause; laws, which allow the government to monitor your bank account; surveillance of US mail (which could easily be extended to e-mail), increased wiretapping, monitoring of citizens not currently under investigation, and rectal searches of travelers to the US; Gestapo-style "no-knock" raids based on dubious or anonymous tips (many times the wrong house is raided!⁸); and the frequent, closely-monitored urine tests to which many companies, under state pressure, have subjected their employees.
It is also worth noting that the "Land of the Free" currently has�by far�the highest incarceration rate in the "civilized" world.
Oh, and we ARE "at war with ourselves"�literally.
The drug war has eroded the crucial distinction between the police and military. In a free society, the police deal with fellow citizens whose rights they must respect, while the army deals with foreign enemies using "any means necessary." The Waco Massacre (yes, Massacre) shows what happens when that distinction is lost�when the State deals with its own CITIZENS using any means necessary. Of course, the Branch Davidians were suspected of possessing (horror of horrors!) illegal drugs and firearms, so I guess it was OK to send the military after THEM!
But this isn�t a "war," is it? After all, as McCaffrey puts it, "Wars are waged by armies using weapons to kill enemies." Well, we have armies using weapons, but the Branch Davidians certainly weren�t our enemies. "Nor are drug-taking Americans the enemy�they require our help to break free of their addictions.�[W]e are not at war with ourselves, we are protecting America�s future."
Let me guess: 80+ people were incinerated "for their own good," right? Or maybe they were torched to "protect America�s future." If "cancer treatment" is, as McCaffrey insists, the proper metaphor for prohibition, then perhaps we should view Waco as "chemotherapy"--killing off a few cells for the good of the whole social organism.
We are at war with foreigners, as well. Take the Columbians�the unlucky causalties of cocaine "source control." The Columbian government, at the urging and with the financial backing of Uncle Sam, began its own repressive drug war two decades ago. The result? Columbians have suffered numerous human rights violations from their own government. And worse: they are trapped in a bloody civil war, fought between the government and leftist guerrillas�a war sparked precisely by the crackdown on drugs. Not content with having caused this turmoil, the US government is considering sending troops to Columbia to "fix" it.
Promoting repression abroad and at home, violating privacy and property on an unprecedented scale, turning America into one big prison�these are just some of the highlights of the War on Drugs. Whatever one may say about the "Drug-Free" Americans of tomorrow, this much is certain: they will not be FREE.

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8.) This wasn�t what we wanted! We only wanted to stop people�for their own good�from obtaining and using drugs.
Then you ask for ends without means.
The end of prohibition is to stop activities that, by their nature, take place in private, with the full consent of both parties. Such activities rarely produce any complainants to alert the authorities. Nor do they leave behind any evidence that a crime was even committed, since the participants go out of their way to keep their actions secret. And there are millions of these "mini-conspiracies" going on every day! One would need an Orwellian Police State to detect and prevent all (or even most) of them. To fight "private crime," one must first abolish privacy.
The ends don�t justify the means, but they do determine them.

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9.) You pose as a defender of liberty, but real freedom is, as General McCaffrey says, freedom from "the tyranny of drug dependence." An addict is not free. Drug dependence is not a choice!
Maybe this is so for some severe addicts�but even the worst addict was once a NON-addict who CHOSE to do drugs in the first place. Is it then OUR responsibility to "liberate" drug-users from the consequences of THEIR irresponsibility? Are we to sacrifice the civil liberties of all--to "cure" the follies of a few?

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10.) Well, that certainly is a selfish view! You obviously care more about your own personal freedom than helping drug-users.
Yes�and if this be treason, make the most of it!
To be sure, I will not feign total indifferent to the fate of drug-users. A few are friends of mine, and it certainly DOES bother me to see them engaging in (what I believe to be) self-destructive behavior. That said, however, they and I both know that if�if�I absolutely HAD to choose between free drunkards and sober slaves, I would choose freedom without a second thought.
Fortunately, freedom�as I understand it, at least�does not require such painful choices. In reality, there is no trade-off between legalization and the well-being of drug-users. In reality, it is legalization that would minimize�and prohibition that has maximized�the harm users inflict upon themselves.

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11.) Legalization will not reduce harm. As the Drug Czar says, "Drugs are illegal because they are dangerous, not vice versa."
First, it is interesting to note that some drugs are not as "dangerous" as propagandists like McCaffrey would have us believe. Marijuana, for example, has yet to be cited as the cause of a single death. Its characterization as a "gateway" drug is scientifically suspect. And it may even have certain medicinal purposes.
Granted, drugs like heroin and cocaine are clearly more harmful than Japanese anime. But it does not follow that prohibiting them will reduce harm�just the opposite. If some drugs are illegal because they are harmful, they are also much more harmful BECAUSE they are illegal and sold on a black market.
To begin with, the incentives for quality control that exist on a free market, are absent or severely undermined on a black market. Drug users obviously can�t sue dealers for fraud, leaving dealers free to sell them "designer drugs," which are often several times more deadly than the drugs they imitate. Moreover, a black market dealer has little competition (most of it having already been eliminated by drug laws), and he can simply murder his remaining rivals�no need to compete by selling customers a higher quality product. Nor is there any reason for dealers to maintain a reputation for quality: there are no Consumer Guides and little word-of-mouth advertising for illegal products, and dealers know they probably won�t be around long enough to enjoy (or suffer from) from their reputations, anyway.
Is it any wonder, then, that users are frequently sold drugs that are either poisonous or cause allergic reactions? And that�s just one health risk imposed by prohibition. Another is the greater likelihood of overdose, caused by the lack of labels and standardized dosages for illegal products. Nor does it help that users are forced to use these deadlier drugs behind closed doors, and are less likely to seek medical help for fear of arrest.¹⁰
A comparison with the Netherlands�where drugs are not criminalized and the above dangers are thus minimal�suggests that these black market factors alone account for at least 80% of the deaths "caused" by drug toxicity.¹¹
Add to this death count the diseases contracted from sharing dirty needles. Every year, at least 3500 Americans are infected with AIDS in this way.¹² Such infections are non-existent in Hong Kong, where needles are available without prescription.¹³
And why limit ourselves to death and disease? The economic suffering blamed on drugs should also be pinned on prohibition. Would users be selling their houses for a fix if they didn�t have to pay hyper-inflated black market prices? Would they abandon productive employment and spend their time hustling, stealing and dealing (trying to "get rich really quick") if they could purchase drugs from their local pharmacist at a fraction of the cost�or if their personal habits didn�t earn them a criminal record that made legitimate employment virtually impossible? I think not. (It is also dubious whether an employee�s drug habits impair his productivity as much as propagandists seem to imply. )
Statistics aside, I will also add that one cannot outlaw something simply because it is "dangerous." By themselves, car accidents, sexual behavior, sickness and diet/activity patterns cause (or are reported as having caused) more preventable deaths than illegal drug use. Driving a car, despite the state�s attempts to make it otherwise, is still "dangerous." Engaging in unprotected sex is "dangerous." Walking around sleep-deprived in a densely populated area during cold season�i.e., winter term at Dartmouth�is "dangerous." Even the most mundane behavior, when it all adds up, can be "dangerous": "Poor diet and inactive lifestyles are estimated to have caused 300,000 deaths in the United States in 1990 alone."¹⁴
Does it follow that we should outlaw cars and return to the days of the horse and buggy? Should we create a "Fornication and Disease Agency" (FDA), and require that couples obtain "FDA Approval" before they have sex? Are we to enforce a "national bedtime" (perhaps by breaking into people�s houses every night and shooting them with tranquilizer darts)? Must we tax or outright prohibit candy and fatty foods, and force everyone to meet in the town square at six in the morning for mandatory community exercise drills? While we�re at it, why not make it a crime to be more than ten feet from another person at any given time (we�ll call it the "buddy-system")?

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12.) What you say might be true if drug users harmed only themselves. But what about drug-related crime and violence?
Most of it turns out to be drug-LAW-related crime�a product of the very prohibition it is used to justify.
Recall that prohibition leads to highly inflated prices, sometimes 100 times the legal market price. Not able to afford these prices, users often steal (sometimes killing in the process). It is estimated that about 40% of property crimes are committed for this very reason.15 Obviously, the cause of the crime is not the drugs themselves, but their price. Nor does it help that users are criminalized and forced to associate with criminals on a regular basis.
Another prohibition-related source of violence is organized crime (with all the turf wars, random shootings and corruption it brings). As mentioned before, drug laws reserve the market to a "special few"�the few who are most efficient at illegality, i.e., the Al Capones of organized illegality. The prospect of a profitable monopoly on the drug trade encourages such racketeers�the profits from that monopoly sustain them. It is no coincidence that Capone (and others like him) came and went with Prohibition.
The drug war further compounds all the violent crime it spawns by impairing the ability of law enforcement to fight such crime. Anywhere from 30-50% of the time, dockets and space of police, courts and prisons are wasted on non-violent drug-offenders.¹⁶ In going after potential "criminals," the government has left its citizens at the mercy of real (violent) ones. (Such is the nature of "preventive justice.")
All of which explains why violent crime peaks during the most intense periods of prohibition, and why the homicide rate of the Netherlands is one-quarter that of the U.S.
Even if we pretend for a moment that legalizing drugs would increase violent crime, this is still not a sufficient argument for prohibiting them. Let�s assume�contrary to scientific fact�that intoxication automatically increases the likelihood of harming others.¹⁷ Even then�so what? We already have laws prohibiting people from harming each other. Insofar as users choose to intoxicate themselves, they can and should be held to the same laws as sober people.

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13.) If somebody is almost guaranteed to commit a crime, why must we wait until after the fact to prosecute them?
Because in America, we are innocent until proven guilty. Until we have committed a crime, there is nothing to be proven guilty OF.
Moreover, if it be argued that a user endangers others by becoming intoxicated, I respond that the user can still take precautions against this. At the extreme, he might have others lock him in a room, tie him to a bed, or put him in a straight-jacket (the Odysseus approach). In most cases, simply giving others fair warning, and not operating any weapons or heavy machinery while intoxicated, would probably be enough.

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14.) What about crack babies?
What about them? Studies suggest that the alleged link between cocaine and birth defects is more of a media-driven myth than a scientific fact. In many cases, what has been attributed to drug-use is actually the result of poor pre-natal care, which is correlated, but not necessarily caused by drug-use. This is a classic illustration of the fact that "correlation does not imply causation."

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15.) You�re limiting yourself to tangible harms that users inflict on specific individuals. But no man is an island, and drugs also cause intangible harms to the entire community and to families.
Actually, it is the drug war that destroys communities�especially poor, inner-city communities. Drug-law-related violence has driven out legitimate businesses, and thereby deprived many poor urban residents of decent job opportunities. In such conditions, it should not surprise us that so many inner-city youths drop out of schools (which aren�t safe anyway!), form gangs, and join the lucrative drug-trade. What are their alternatives? Welfare and a dead-end job.
The War on Drugs is also responsible for tearing apart countless families. It is truly appalling how many children have seen their parents ripped and locked away for petty drug offenses. Not that all drug-users are ideal parents. However, if they feed their children and don�t beat them, then they are at least doing the minimum. To be sure, a minimum-care childhood may not be especially pleasant--but I imagine it is far less psychologically damaging than being torn away from one�s parents and shoved through a public "foster-care" system.
And I�m getting really sick of this "no man is an island" crap. If man were a landmass, then he WOULD be an island, and society, an archipelago. But I see no point in comparing living human beings to inanimate, interchangeable piles of dirt�except to justify merging them into one big pile of dirt. Nor can such sloppy metaphors erase the fact that what exist are individuals, who are accountable only to other individuals�not to some undefined "social organism" of which they are merely a cell. If no man is an island, then neither is he a toenail or a flake of dandruff, to be clipped or brushed aside for the "greater good" of some nebulous collective.

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16.) If you legalize drugs, use will skyrocket�all hell will break loose!
Here we have a fine specimen of the "Chicken Little Fallacy." The best way to expose this error is to put things in perspective.
Maybe�just maybe�drug-use will increase if drugs are legalized. But "it would take a 1,275 percent increase in legal drug use to produce as many deaths as drug prohibition�through murder, AIDS, and poisoned drugs�is already causing."18 (And that�s assuming even safer versions of drugs would not be developed on a free market, which is highly unlikely).
Now let�s see�There are currently 13 million (reported!) users. Reported drug use was never higher than 25 million before prohibition. So we might expect�at MOST�12 million new users after legalization. But, as we have seen, use would have to increase to 13 TIMES its current level�to nearly 170 million�for drugs to cause as many deaths as prohibition currently does! I do not know whether drug warriors wish to claim that over half the entire U.S. population will become addicts (or even casual users) if drugs are legalized�but I do know that not even Chicken Little on crack would believe such a claim.

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17.) Even if prohibition doesn�t do any good, it is still an expression of society�s disapproval of drugs.
If "society" has anything to "express," its members are free to do so in a letter to the editor. The law is not a message board for frustrated busybodies.

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18.) Wouldn�t legalization send the wrong message?
What message do we want to send? That the test of a policy is not how well it actually works, but how good it makes its supporters feel? This attitude was the driving force of every blood-soaked crusade of the last millennium�let�s start THIS millennium with a different message.

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Endnotes
1 For the complete sketchy history of the War on Drugs, see Dan Baum, Smoke and Mirrors: the War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure.
2 James Orchowski, "Thinking About Drug Legalization" (A Synoptic History of Failure)
3 I don�t just mean the physical needs caused by addiction�which treatment could overcome�but the psychological needs that lead people to do drugs in the first place. As Ann Landers noted, "The real question is why are millions of people so unhappy, so unfulfilled, that they are willing to drink, snort, inject or inhale any substance that might blot out reality and give them a bit of temporary relief."
4 Orchowski (Street Crime by Drug Users)
5 One this, and other DARE-related points, see "A Different Look at DARE" (especially sections five and six), The Shaffer Library of Drug Policy, and "Just Say Know".
6 On a personal note, I know that public education did not teach ME to read. My mother had to come into class everyday and teach me herself. Unfortunately, many mothers do not take even HALF this much responsibility for their children. Indeed, one of the most tragic effects of "free" (i.e., cost-cleverly-concealed) education is that parents are more likely to just drop Johnny off without seeing what kind of education he's getting. A product�s quality is rarely an issue unless one is conscious of paying for it.
7 Any property that has been used to "facilitate" the drug trade can be seized: land on which drug deals take place, with or without the knowledge of the owner, can be seized. Any property purchased with the "proceeds of crime" (i.e., "drug money") can also be seized: if a single dollar in your bank account has been through the drug trade, your whole bank account can be seized. (Note that 80 to 90 percent of all paper money is tainted with traces of cocaine.)
8 Anyone who believes our government is incapable of breaking into the homes of innocent people and murdering them, need only observe the cases of Pedro Oregon Navarro and Mario Paz--both of whom were shot dead by government agents. Navarro and Paz are only the two most recent additions to the long list of innocent citizens who have been terrorized, beaten and even killed in "no-knock" raids.
10 Basketball star Len Bias was on his third drug-induced seizure before his friends finally went to get help. See Orchowski (Drugs Made More Dangerous and The Consequences of Legalization) on this and other points regarding the impairment of drug safety by prohibition.
11 Dr. Mary J. Ruwart writes in Healing Our World: "If the estimate is correct that 80% of drug overdose deaths are needless, the true U.S. death toll caused by the inherent toxicity of recreational drugs would be closer to 1400 per year. In Amsterdam, where the drug user is not criminalized, there are only 60 drug-induced deaths per year, in a population 20 times smaller than that of the United States. (6) Thus, the estimate of an 80% overkill caused by drug prohibition appears to be very close." (Chapter 15, paragraph 9) Dr. Ruwart cites Robert Lewis, "Dutch View Addicts as Patients, Not Criminals," Kalamazoo Gazette, September 24, 1989, p. A-6.
12 See Orchowski. Note 47 indicates that 3000 is a conversative figure--the real death toll may be closer to 9000.
13 Nicholas D. Kristof, "Hong Kong Program: Addicts Without Aids," NY Times, June 17, 1987, p. 1.
14 By contrast, only 20,000 deaths are attributed to illegal drug use, and, as we have seen--and will see--this figure is itself highly inflated by other factors.
15 Orchowski (Street Crime by Users)
16 Ibid., (Clogged Courts and Prisons). See also the Drug War Factbook.
17 This claim is false for many drugs�notably marijuana and heroin�and simplistic for others. A user�s "personality and setting�make all the difference" in how he will behave when intoxicated. A drug can "make" different individuals violent in different situations. See Orchowski (Do Drugs Cause Crime?).
18 Orchowski (The Consequences of Legalization).

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