TACTICS: How to argue with prohibitionists
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 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.
