ReconsiDer Tidbits

Great Britan is in the midst of a debate over whether to decriminalize or legalize marijuana. This well thought out article from The Economist, July 26th 2001 presents a good overview of the argument for legalization.

OPINION

The case for legalisation

Time for a puff of sanity

IT IS every parent's nightmare. A youngster slithers inexorably from a few
puffs on a joint, to a snort of cocaine, to the needle and addiction. It
was the flesh-creeping heart of "Traffic", a film about the descent into
heroin hell of a pretty young middle-class girl, and it is the terror that
keeps drug laws in place. It explains why even those politicians who puffed
at a joint or two in their youth hesitate to put the case for legalising
drugs.

The terror is not irrational. For the first thing that must be said about
legalising drugs, a cause The Economist has long advocated and returns to
this week (see survey ), is that it would lead to a rise in their use, and
therefore to a rise in the number of people dependent on them. Some argue
that drug laws have no impact, because drugs are widely available. Untrue:
drugs are expensive-a kilo of heroin sells in America for as much as a new
Rolls-Royce-partly because their price reflects the dangers involved in
distributing and buying them. It is much harder and riskier to pick up a
dose of cocaine than it is to buy a bottle of whisky. Remove such
constraints, make drugs accessible and very much cheaper, and more people
will experiment with them.

A rise in drug-taking will inevitably mean that more people will become
dependent-inevitably, because drugs offer a pleasurable experience that
people seek to repeat. In the case of most drugs, that dependency may be no
more than a psychological craving and affect fewer than one in five users;
in the case of heroin, it is physical and affects maybe one in three. Even
a psychological craving can be debilitating. Addicted gamblers and drinkers
bring misery to themselves and their families. In addition, drugs have
lasting physical effects and some, taken incompetently, can kill. This is
true both for some "hard" drugs and for some that people think of as
"soft"too much heroin can trigger a strong adverse reaction, but so can
ecstasy. The same goes for gin or aspirin, of course: but many voters
reasonably wonder whether it would be right to add to the list of harmful
substances that are legally available.

Of Mill and morality

The case for doing so rests on two argumentsone of principle, one
practical. The principles were set out, a century and a half ago, by John
Stuart Mill, a British liberal philosopher, who urged that the state had no
right to intervene to prevent individuals from doing something that harmed
them, if no harm was thereby done to the rest of society. "Over himself,
over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign," Mill famously
proclaimed. This is a view that The Economist has always espoused, and one
to which most democratic governments adhere, up to a point. They allow the
individual to undertake all manner of dangerous activities unchallenged,
from mountaineering to smoking to riding bicycles through city streets.
Such pursuits alarm insurance companies and mothers, but are rightly
tolerated by the state.

True, Mill argued that some social groups, especially children, required
extra protection. And some argue that drug-takers are also a special
classonce addicted, they can no longer make rational choices about whether
to continue to harm themselves. Yet not only are dependent users a minority
of all users; in addition, society has rejected this argument in the case
of alcohol-and of nicotine (whose addictive power is greater than that of
heroin). The important thing here is for governments to spend adequately on
health education.

The practical case for a liberal approach rests on the harms that spring
from drug bans, and the benefits that would accompany legalisation. At
present, the harms fall disproportionately on poor countries and on poor
people in rich countries. In producer and entrepot countries, the drugs
trade finances powerful gangs who threaten the state and corrupt political
institutions. Colombia is the most egregious example, but Mexico too
wrestles with the threat to the police and political honesty. The attempt
to kill illicit crops poisons land and people. Drug money helps to prop up
vile regimes in Myanmar and Afghanistan. And drug production encourages
local drug-taking, which (in the case of heroin) gives a helping hand to
the spread of HIV/AIDS.

In the rich world, it is the poor who are most likely to become involved in
the drugs trade (the risks may be high, but drug-dealers tend to be
equal-opportunity employers), and therefore end up in jail. Nowhere is this
more shamefully true than in the United States, where roughly one in four
prisoners is locked up for a (mainly non- violent) drugs offence. America's
imprisonment rate for drugs offences now exceeds that for all crimes in
most West European countries. Moreover, although whites take drugs almost
as freely as blacks and Hispanics, a vastly disproportionate number of
those arrested, sentenced and imprisoned are non-white. Drugs policy in the
United States is thus breeding a generation of men and women from
disadvantaged backgrounds whose main training for life has been in the
violence of prison.

Legalise to regulate

Removing these harms would bring with it another benefit. Precisely because
the drugs market is illegal, it cannot be regulated. Laws cannot
discriminate between availability to children and adults. Governments
cannot insist on minimum quality standards for cocaine; or warn asthma
sufferers to avoid ecstasy; or demand that distributors take responsibility
for the way their products are sold. With alcohol and tobacco, such
restrictions are possible; with drugs, not. This increases the dangers to
users, and especially to young or incompetent users. Illegality also puts a
premium on selling strength: if each purchase is risky, then it makes sense
to buy drugs in concentrated form. In the same way, Prohibition in the
United States in the 1920s led to a fall in beer consumption but a rise in
the drinking of hard liquor. It took years of education for gin to cease to
be a social threat.

How, if governments accepted the case for legalisation, to get from here to
there? When, in the 18th century, a powerful new intoxicant became
available, the impact was disastrous: it took years of education for gin to
cease to be a social threat. That is a strong reason to proceed gradually:
it will take time for conventions governing sensible drug-taking to
develop. Meanwhile, a century of illegality has deprived governments of
much information that good policy requires. Impartial academic research is
difficult. As a result, nobody knows how demand may respond to lower
prices, and understanding of the physical effects of most drugs is hazy.

And how, if drugs were legal, might they be distributed? The thought of
heroin on supermarket shelves understandably adds to the terror of the
prospect. Just as legal drugs are available through different
channels-caffeine from any cafe, alcohol only with proof of age, Prozac
only on prescription-so the drugs that are now illegal might one day be
distributed in different ways, based on knowledge about their potential for
harm. Moreover, different countries should experiment with different
solutionsat present, many are bound by a United Nations convention that
hampers even the most modest moves towards liberalisation, and that clearly
needs amendment.

To legalise will not be easy. Drug-taking entails risks, and societies are
increasingly risk-averse. But the role of government should be to prevent
the most chaotic drug-users from harming others-by robbing or by driving
while drugged, for instance-and to regulate drug markets to ensure minimum
quality and safe distribution. The first task is hard if law enforcers are
preoccupied with stopping all drug use; the second, impossible as long as
drugs are illegal. A legal market is the best guarantee that drug-taking
will be no more dangerous than drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco. And,
just as countries rightly tolerate those two vices, so they should tolerate
those who sell and take drugs.