GUESTWORK | Sheldon Richman
Much is made of how President Obama’s position on same-sex marriage has “evolved” to an endorsement of legalization. One hopes his position on the atrocity called the “war on drugs” is evolving.
It’s not really a war on drugs. It’s a war on people, most of whom have committed no violence or other aggression against person or property. Those who do commit violence are encouraged to do so by the very “war on drugs” that Obama and other enlightened leaders so enthusiastically support. Black markets often feature violence – precisely because they are illegal. Decriminalize the activity, and the violence goes away.
America had a natural experiment in this principle: Prohibition. When the manufacture and sale of alcohol were made illegal by constitutional amendment in 1920, booze didn’t disappear from society. It simply went underground to be dominated by those with a comparative advantage in thuggery. Ending prohibition brought alcohol into the legitimate market (although unfortunately regulated and licensed). The violence related to the manufacture and sale of alcohol went away.
Thus the violence perpetrated by Latin American drug cartels and gangs in the United States is not an argument against decriminalization. It’s an argument for it.
It’s well known that an unconscionably high percentage of the American population is in prison. We can thank the government’s persecution of drug commerce for that shameful fact. It is also increasingly understood that militarized police drug raids terrorize people every day, often killing individuals who were not even intended as targets. The American people should demand that this systematic oppression be stopped. The police have become the enemy of Americans, mostly but not exclusively members of minority communities.
The raids that end in death at least make the headlines and perhaps upset people for a short while. But another part of the war on drug commerce gets less attention. When consenting people buy and sell drugs, there is no victim to complain. So to make arrests, police need to trap people – many of them young – in drug transactions and then threaten them with long jail terms unless they become informants. Many take these deals – against their deepest beliefs – for fear of having their lives destroyed by felony convictions and time in the hell holes we call prisons. They proceed to set up drug deals with friends and family members just so they can produce cases for the cops and leniency for themselves.
But drugs are dangerous, people say. It’s about time this empty slogan was thrown on the trash heap. Illegal drugs are not illegal because they are dangerous. Other substances that can be used in harmful ways – most obviously alcohol – are legal. Many legal activities that people love to engage in are highly dangerous.
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