TACTICS: When you are debating a true drug warrior... someone who
actively defends the current system, the best tactic is to ATTACK !
How do you do that? Make it clear that the problems commonly
associated with drugs are actually problems caused by prohibition,
and that your opponent is responsible for those problems.
Read these pointers below.
(with thanks to Bruce McKinney)
-As a supporter of the current system,
he's responsible for its results.
Kids can get marijuana and other drugs in public schools. This is not an
effect of legalization, since we don't have that. It's an observable and
predictable result of prohibition. He's responsible for the other effects
including increased crime, cheap unregulated drugs, and waste of taxpayer
money.
- He's naïve. Like the foolish people who
thought alcohol prohibition would
stop alcohol use, he keeps on with the same dumb policy despite overwhelming
evidence of its failure. This failure comes because he can't make the simple
distinction between drug use and abuse. He's never noticed that drug abuse
increases as a result of prohibition.
- He's either a hypocrite or a prude. Maybe
you can find out. If he drinks
alcohol, he's a hypocrite. It's as if he were a scotch drinker who wants to
put bourbon drinkers in prison. He simply wants to put people in prison for
using a different drug than he uses, even though his drug is far more
dangerous. On the other hand, he may be a prude like John Ashcroft, who
would probably bring back alcohol prohibition if he thought he could get
away with it. It's harder to attack those who consistently believe that all
drugs are bad. But if you can pin him down and get him to admit that he
would like to put most people in your state in prison for using alcohol,
he'll be in trouble. But most likely he'll get off by saying that alcohol is
bad, but culturally acceptable. He'll say it's impossible to ban without
coming out and saying he'd like to ban it.
- He's immoral because he preaches
the evil doctrine that the government
knows best about how people should live their private lives. This is a
particularly insidious doctrine to teach kids. Any kid who actually accepts
that the he or she should defer their moral decisions to the government is
doomed to a sterile life as a bureaucrat, assembly line worker, or
politician. Prohibition is incompatible with personal responsibility because
it teaches that we are responsible not for what we do, but for what we might
do if possible drug use had some theoretical effects. Over the years of
prohibition this policy has undermined many American values that seem to be
unrelated to prohibition. Most Americans have a vague feeling that American
morality is in decline, but they can't quite put their finger on how and
why. Prohibition is a major cause of that decline.
- He refuses in advance to
perform one of the most important duties of a
legislator-to regulate and control potentially dangerous products. While
marijuana is one of the least dangerous drugs, it can certainly be abused.
He maximizes the potential for abuse by refusing to regulate distribution.
While he may argue that prohibition is control, the observable reality is
that prohibition creates anarchy. Demand real control over the sale and
distribution of these potentially dangerous drugs.
- He is an ally of drug dealers. They
want drugs to be illegal. He wants
drugs to be illegal. He's one of their suckers, their unpaid lobbyists. He
wants to put something like ten percent of drug dealers in prison and make
the other 90 percent rich. That's a deal they'll take any day.
Remember... the United Nations puts the illegal drug market as the eighth
largest in the world's economy, roughly equivalent to the textile industry.
That kind of revenue will not just dry up. There are three possible parties
who could control the sale and distribution of these drugs... the government,
the free market, or organized crime. By supporting prohibition he chooses
to turn over control of that vast market to organized crime.
Whatever side of the political spectrum you're on it's obvious that
organized crime is not the best choice of the three.
- He is an opponent of capitalism who
refuses to recognize economic reality.
Like communists and socialists, he believes that government is capable of
controlling economic behavior. In fact government is capable of nudging
economic behavior in the desired direction through taxes and regulations,
but it is not capable of repealing the law of supply and demand. Defying
economic laws creates effects opposite to those intended.
In most cases we in the drug policy reform movement have been on the
defensive
about drug reform. We say that drugs may be bad, but that prohibition is worse.
We push treatment rather than incarceration. We say that current policies are
ineffective and a waste of money. But we haven't really been in a position to
attack
prohibition as evil. While prohibitionists aren't necessarily evil as
people, they support
a system that does evil, and thus they are unconsciously evil. They try to
escape
responsibility for their actions by opposing some imaginary system of
legalization.
We need to hold them responsible for the real effects of their actions.
