In April, Robbinsense addressed the state budget, focusing primarily on amending the state constitution. Though there is now some discussion on that possibility, this would take years, if we had the political will to undertake it. We touched, then, on legalizing drugs as a solution.
Legalization of opiates, cocaine and marijuana, which comprise the vast majority of illegal drugs, would remove the “trafficking” element from the economy that supports gangs, removing the money which drives the industry. Many (including Kevin A. Sabet) believe that legalization, even of marijuana, should be avoided simply because it provides additional avenues for the social ills of drug use, with attendant health care costs and workplace problems. But at what cost, I beg you, do we infringe upon our own freedom when the price of admittedly ineffective restrictions appears to exceed the value we place on liberty?
The actual extent to which drug use would increase is, after all, moot, and there are many elements to the discussion that should be addressed. In the first place, we are not advocating legalizing drugs for teenagers or amphetamines under any circumstances. We advocate that opiates, cannabis and cocaine be available legally, essentially as alternatives to alcohol and tobacco. Availability of cocaine at an affordable price would likely displace much of the market for amphetamines, which are probably the most dangerous of all the "recreational" drugs.
All of these drugs are readily available, legal or not. In The United States, the “social” cost of loss of productivity in the workplace from alcohol is estimated at $148 billion annually. This doesn’t include the cost of medical problems, traffic injuries, psycho-trauma to children of alcoholics or domestic violence that arise from alcohol abuse. While the social costs of alcohol and tobacco dwarf those of the other drugs, we’ve seen that the social cost of prohibition is far greater. Consider the general lawlessness and expansion of organized crime networks produced by the Volstead Act (Prohibition).
Regarding marijuana, in 1988, The Drug Enforcement Administration's own Judge Francis L. Young, after two years of hearings, deemed marijuana “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. In strict medical terms, it is far safer than many foods we commonly consume.” Young went on, “…nor is it physically addictive, unlike your daily burst at Starbucks, as anyone who has suffered from a caffeine withdrawal headache can attest.” Beyond that, there are many therapeutic cases made for this drug.
Much of the allure of drugs, especially to young people, comes from their illegality. For an analogy we can look at the diamond market. Diamonds are perhaps the most plentiful of the precious stones. Their great supply should make them inexpensive; but DeBeers controls world supply---by coercion or force---and limits that supply to keep prices up. Illegality of narcotics restricts that trade as well, leading to high prices generated by underground distribution networks. While the allure of diamonds is enhanced by their presumed scarcity, the same applies to illegal drugs. Economists recognize "negative elasticity of demand" for certain products---that is, as the price of a commodity increases, the demand increases. This is in direct opposition to a normal demand profile; it applies to diamonds, as well as, perhaps, drugs.
Legalization would remove the “criminal” aspect of the distribution networks, leaving us with only the social problems. It’s a stretch to speculate that this would be greater than the total cost that we face now, especially considering the law enforcement aspects. Legalization would result in normal suppliers with low prices and the prospect of substantial tax revenue, as with alcohol and tobacco.
Why do we handle these different classes of drugs differently? The sad answer is politics and special interests. We have been conditioned to accept this policy, much as for decades we were conditioned to believe that Communism was a mortal threat to our society. We’ll look more closely at the “logic” behind this policy later.
We have a lengthy and confusing legal history with Cannabis as well as opiates. A brief history will ensue---in italics for those wishing to skip it.
In Jamestown Colony, Virginia, 1619, all farms were required to grow Indian Hempseed. Farmers who failed to comply were jailed. We've been led to believe that George Washington was a tobacco farmer, but hemp was the primary crop at Mt. Vernon, and secondary crop at the Jefferson’s estate.
In 1909 opium smoking was outlawed, while the 1914 Harrison Act regulated opiates.
In 1919, Congress overrode President Wilson’s veto (one of the few intelligent things he did) to pass the Volstead Act, outlawing alcohol .
The 1933 repeal of Prohibition did little to end the madness that it created. Organized crime had a small impact on this nation prior to prohibition. Prohibition gave mobs the foothold from which to establish a vast industry supplying alcohol. Repeal of the Volstead Act simply transferred this industry to the supply of anything else that might be prohibited, including drugs.
States began as early as 1910 to outlaw cannabis. Utah’s prohibition of marijuana was said to have resulted from wide-spread use by Mexican inhabitants. But the truth is that its use was becoming common among Mormons, who were bringing it back from travels. The church's reaction to this contributed to the state's marijuana law.
Other states quickly followed suit with marijuana prohibition laws, including Wyoming (1915), Texas (1919), Iowa (1923), Nevada (1923), Oregon (1923), Washington (1923), Arkansas (1923), and Nebraska (1927). These laws tended to target the Mexican-American population. When Montana outlawed marijuana in 1927, the Butte Montana Standard reported a legislator's comment: "When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff, he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies." In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy."
Again, racism was part of the charge against marijuana, as newspapers in 1934 editorialized: "Marijuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men's shadows and look at a white woman twice."
In 1930, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was added to the Treasury Department and Harry J. Anslinger was named director. This marked the beginning of the all-out war against marijuana. Anslinger was an ambitious man, and recognized the Bureau as a career opportunity---a new government agency giving him the opportunity to both define a problem and deliver the solution. He realized that opiates and cocaine wouldn't generate enough “business” to fit his ambition, so he latched on to marijuana and started to work on making it illegal at the federal level.
Anslinger used themes of racism and violence to draw national attention to the problem he wanted to create. He also promoted and frequently read from the "Gore Files" wild reefer-madness-style exploitation tales of ax murderers on marijuana and sex and... Negroes.
There was wide-spread contention and discussion over Anslinger’s claims by the AMA as well as others. But he became essentially the first Drug Czar, though the term didn't exist until William Bennett's position as director of the White House Office of National Drug Policy. There are parallels between Anslinger and many of our current administrators. He had carte blanche to demonize drugs and drug users. He had resources and a large public podium to promote his personal agenda, with attendant ears of law makers. He was a racist. He lied constantly, often when unnecessary, and realized the extent to which he could persuade with lies, particularly if he could pressure the media into squelching or downplaying any opposition views. Anslinger had 37 years to solidify his propaganda and stifle opposition.
With the repeal of prohibition, the huge bureaucracy of law enforcement agencies were left without a mission. So in 1937, Marijuana was taxed and demonized, leading to criminalization on a national scale to give the large apparatus a mission.
In 1938, Mayor LaGuardia of New York appointed a committee to study marijuana's affects. The committee found that it did not act as a "gateway drug". It also found no scientific reason for its criminalization. In 1972 the Shafer Commission, appointed by President Nixon, similarly concluded that cannabis should be re-leaglized. '72 was an election year; Nixon, under the political cloud of continuing war and the break-in at the Watergate office complex not only failed to act upon the recommendations, he didn't even read the report.
Moving forward forty years, President Obama has cracked the door of legalization, stating that he favors “decriminalization” of marijuana, and “rethinking” the whole war on drugs. Savings to the US by replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and $14 billion per year, finds a June 2005 report by Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University. Jon Gettman's report on the consequences of outlawing marijuana show similar statistics: interdiction costs at $10.7 Billion, lost revenue at $31 Billion.
These reports have been endorsed by more than 530 distinguished economists, who signed an open letter to President Bush and other public officials calling for "an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition," adding, "We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods." Chief among the endorsing economists are three Nobel Laureates in economics: Dr. Milton Friedman of the Hoover Institute, Dr. George Akerlof of the University of California at Berkeley, and Dr. Vernon Smith of George Mason University.
Revenue from taxation of marijuana sales would range from $2.4 billion per year if marijuana were taxed like ordinary consumer goods to $6.2 billion if it were taxed like alcohol or tobacco.” This is only the beginning of the benefits from legalization. Beyond that, decriminalizing drugs would relieve enormous law enforcement capacity for the persecution and prosecution of serious criminals, both blue and white collar. We could empty out our prisons, as only a small percentage the prison population is now considered violent. The courts would be freed up from the never-ending stream of drug-related infractions. Justice statistics for 2007 showed that nearly 60% of the state prisoners serving time for a drug offense had no history of violence and 80% of arrests were for possession, not sales.
Brian O'Dea, author of High: Confessions of an International Drug Smuggler, with an acute perspective from both sides of the controversy says, "A cascade of bad outcomes follows a policy of prohibition. The worst may be the dangerous, bloody criminal activity it promotes." "...now guns are a large part of the picture. The illegal drug trade is the currency that funds and inspires a vast, violent and well-armed gangster class." "Take away the currency of illegal drugs and you take away the guns, the violence and corruption."
Lastly with revenues from increased taxes and scale-backs in law enforcement, we could balance budgets, offer free drug treatment programs, better schools and health programs for children, if not all of us.
Let’s look more closely at the roots of our drug policy:
As we moved through the industrial age and into the 20th Century, America was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. By the end of WWII, the United States had close to half of the manufacturing base of the entire world. We financed the Marshal Plan, extending aid and resources to many of the countries destroyed by the war.
With the emergence of the “global market”, our manufacturing base has withered away, leaving large pockets of unemployment. Through labor cost disparity, a great network of international transportation and government indifference to budget and trade imbalance, the third world has stripped our economy of manufacturing jobs.
We now see economic chaos as well as wide-spread unemployment. Where a generation ago, we might see an unemployment rate of 3 to 5 percent, now 7 to 8 percent is considered normal, and that only counts those “looking for work”. As one might expect, the lower classes have borne the brunt of these job losses. We currently have a population of approximately 15 million people who face chronic unemployment; they have been effectively phased out of our economy. With poor education in their neighborhoods, only the most gifted and motivated are able to escape.
The stark truth that America doesn’t want to face is that there is no profit in bringing the marginal classes on line; they have effectively been declared “surplus”, casualties of the modern age. In the absence of a normal economy of goods, services and jobs in these ghettos, we offer the drug economy. A child growing up on the streets discovers that this underground economy provides his only chance for a decent life. The street culture of drugs is fueled by the “war on drugs”, with which we distract ourselves and perpetuate the lie that we care. The drug war represents “bread and circuses” offered up by the modern age to distract the masses from their misery.
If we ended the “war on drugs” the inner city economy would have to be replaced by something. The “establishment” resists this change with enormous financial and political energy. Much of the enormous savings presented by putting a stop to the interdiction, prosecution and imprisonment of these people would have to be invested in services for this population: rehabilitation, education, job training. Law enforcement agencies, as well as the “corrections” industry vigorously opposes this policy, not because it’s bad policy, but because it would put so many of them out of work. (See an interview with David Simon for more material on this aspect of the “war of drugs”.) “The drug war is a war on the underclass. That's all it is. It has no other meaning.”
Any politician attempting to change this dynamic faces tremendous political risk. Undermining “the war on drugs” will produce a chorus of outrage claiming that drug-use will increase. This concern is not directed toward inner city culture, of course, rather at drug use in the suburbs.
According to Brian O'Dea, "It is time we stopped treating drug addiciton, a medical condition, with law enforcement. It's time to repatriate the vast quantities of money that are being hidden, removed from the country and going untaxed, and it's time we keep those same vast sums from funding violent crime. It's time to end modern prohibition. It didn't work for alcohol; it isn't working for drugs."
If this argument for ending our war on drugs is not compelling enough, it pales next to the international aspects of the madness. Next month we’ll look at that.
Jackson Dave is a Robbinsense staff writer
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