GELFAND ON … DRUGS AND THE LAW-If you want to cut crime, you might start by abolishing the drug laws. Make it possible for people to buy and sell marijuana and opioids for use in the privacy of their own homes. We could continue by regulating cocaine and the amphetamines outside of the criminal law. Instead of arresting and jailing cocaine and amphetamine users, we could opt for a civil commitment procedure that concentrates on saving peoples' lives rather than ruining them.
Of course any such suggestion is met with a derisive howl about the dangers of addiction, brain damage, and deaths due to overdoses. My reply to this is, "So what else is new?" Maintaining the status quo doesn't deal with what is a much worse addiction in my view, the addiction to imprisoning people -- mostly minorities -- for nonviolent offenses.
We could deal with the personal and public health issues of drug usage on a rational basis in a way that would offer hope to some drug users, leave others to go to hell in their own way, and leave the rest of us alone to live our lives absent the intrusive police state that the "war on drugs" has created. To be blunt, if heroin were legal, an addict could maintain his habit for a few dollars a day. Criminality is not a requirement for buying bread or shoes, and it need not be a requirement for buying over the counter drugs.
First, let's consider the drug sentencing laws, and in particular, mandatory sentencing rules. The ACLU has recently published a report [https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/living-death-life-without-parole-nonviolent-offenses-0] on life imprisonment without parole (aka LWOP) that is being endured by large numbers of people in the federal system and additional numbers in the states. The report has been getting lots of comments on the liberal side of the internet. I'm willing to discount arguments that treat third strike offenses as trivial, but when you look at case reports of people without prior offenses, whose crimes only involved drug possession or trafficking, then I think the argument is pretty clear.
Put it this way. Most of us have been aware of people using marijuana, cocaine, or amphetamine at some point in our lives, and most of the time we didn't think of it as a matter of personal danger. In those few instances in which someone may be legitimately suspected of being dangerous, it is a different matter, but for the most part, no.
There is another non sequitur that requires refutation. At one time, it was popular to argue that we should be compassionate to drug users, but be hard on dealers. The argument is totally patronizing to users, implying that they are naive victims who need to be protected. If you accept the socially libertarian idea that people ought to be free to put whatever they want into their own system, then the argument falls apart. Even if you are willing to make a distinction -- as I am -- between the sedative drugs such as marijuana and heroin vs. the stimulants cocaine and amphetamine, the argument continues to hold.
There's one more argument that needs to be dealt with. Some would argue that open sales of marijuana or other drugs are detrimental to the community as a whole, because they bring in the wrong sort of people. I would argue that it is the criminality, as defined by our current legal structure, that is the problem. Back in the old days, the same argument was used about alcohol sales. They were officially illegal, and the kind of people who sold alcohol were also known for carrying machine guns and bribing the police. Nowadays, if I want to buy a bottle of gin, I can go to Vons or Ralphs. I don't think of Vons as a den of criminality. The redefinition of the law called Prohibition redefined this whole line of argument.
We are left with that most hoary of cliches, the argument that we have to protect the children. It is dusted off by demagogues for every manner of infringement on our liberties, whether it be inappropriate arguments in favor of requiring that schools hold official prayer ceremonies, or the more appropriate argument that public schools should not be the places for open drug sales. Extreme overreaction to perceived dangers is itself inappropriate. Yes, people should be able to expect that their children are not being offered drugs in junior high school, and we should have some manner of enforcing the rules. But this argument should not be extended to make all of adult civilization into a police state, and that is what the so-called war on drugs has accomplished.
I mentioned making a distinction between the sedating drugs such as marijuana and heroin vs. the extreme stimulants cocaine and amphetamine. I think that we do have to make this distinction, because one of the known effects of the stimulants is to make people crazy, and sometimes violent. Another effect of cocaine is to do damage to the heart muscle and, tragically, to the heart muscle of unborn children who are exposed to cocaine in utero. All the overreaction of the legal system doesn't seem to have made much difference in drug availability. Rather, it has served mainly to export violent criminality to other countries.
I think that some addicts, particularly those people who are literally killing themselves with stimulants, would benefit from some intervention. I propose that we institute a civil commitment procedure for such individuals, a process in which friends and relatives, or even the police and social welfare agencies, could call for an intervention. We already have a procedure for the mentally ill, in which a 72 hour hold can be imposed for those who are suicidal or otherwise dangerous. It's not a pleasant experience for the person who gets held, but it can be life saving. It has the advantage of avoiding the criminal enforcement system, and concentrating on the rehabilitative aspects. Why not consider applying a system like that to people who are seriously drug impaired? The only impediment would be the cost.
Yes, the costs. The ACLU report mentions the costs of incarcerating people for nonviolent drug offenses. It's a lot of money. In general, I don't believe that we liberals ought to be trotting out cost arguments over matters of principle. If it costs a lot of money to feed the starving or send help to a hurricane damaged region, we support spending the money. Making arguments against capital punishment on the basis of price strikes me as disingenuous at best. But when you can make an argument that combines principle with price, I think it is a fair argument. Saving money by not enforcing drug prohibition fulfills both of those criteria. The war against drugs as carried out by the US government has taken on a multi-billion dollar, international character. We would be better off scrapping the whole thing and inviting our people to make adult choices on their own.
Some of the money saved could go into rehabilitation and treatment.
When you think about it, it's a remarkably conservative argument, isn't it?
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
