Saying this current drug war has been a failure is an understatement. Since ramping up in the 1970s, incarceration rates are up (we have the highest total and per capita, the number quadrupling since 1971), drug use is up (we lead the world!), law enforcement budgets are only increasing, and all those with no end in site. Not to mention, our country learned the folly of banning another substance, alcohol, in 1920 and took only 13 years to realize how large a mistake that was. Sure, historians now argue that the era did curb American drinking habits, but any modest gains made were offset by the sheer amount of carnage wrought by indirectly creating a massive black market and criminal presence by banning a popular substance that has a strong demand and a strong market.
Perhaps that is what irks me the most. I used to think Republicans wanted to "run the government like a business" and we are always espousing the ideas of adapting to markets and being savvy businessmen, willing to change to the demands of commerce, trade, and capitalism, but that is not the case of late, especially with Wehner and his ilk. This current War on Drugs fails where the era known as Prohibition failed in that it refused to acknowledge basic economics: supply, demand, and how markets work.
So when alcohol was banned in 1920 with the implementation of the 18th amendment, did demand for alcohol suddenly go away? It did not, and despite the best efforts of Federal Prohibition agents, the criminal element adapted to demand and the now open market. They saw room to make a profit and the era we all know as the "roaring twenties" was ushered in with the likes of Al Capone and the Purple Gang. The 18th amendment created these villains, empowering them since they had no legal competition to compete with. Just as with any product, as long as there is demand, a business be it legal or from the black market, will accommodate.
Not much is different in today's prohibition, today's war on drugs. The cartels that are giving the governments of Mexico and the United States so much trouble were created by prohibition laws passed by those very governments. This is is the ugly truth that drug warriors such as Wehner do not want to admit. The cartels are "Frankenstein's Monster" and the United States is a bewildered Dr. Frankenstein indecisive on how to act against its own creation. These cartels, just like Al Capone and his cohorts, came to be by addressing the demand in the marketplace, demand created by outlawing substances instead of taxing them and regulating them, as any sound government should.
So we have a senior Republican, someone who has been involved in politics and shaping drug policies for several decades, that would have trouble passing a high school economics exam. To make things worse, by attacking supply without reducing demand has only made the Cartels more money. These voices arguing for the continued drug war simply are not reasonable and this issue transcends allegiance to political parties, it is an allegiance only to logic.
It is about looking at the facts. One of their worries is that drug use will go up. I am sure it will, as people will want to experiment, as it probably did with alcohol when prohibition was repealed. But you know what? Things will normalize. On that subject, two of the most profound arguments I have found for ending this prohibition come from a former Judge in California, Jim Gray:
And the group known as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP:
Former judge Jim Gray mentions that the Dutch managed to do something pretty amazing with Marijuana, they made it boring. Like any legal drug, people use it as part of their daily lives and move on. No moving on to the next drug or going on a crazy bender or any of the "gateway drug" nonsense (Not to mention a new study points to tobacco actually being a gateway drug). Also more profound are the former law enforcement personnel in the second video, talking about how all their efforts to fight this drug war were fruitless as the people they arrested were immediately replaced, often by even more ruthless criminals. Why you ask? It is just economics! These organizations, the drug cartels in this case, will still find a way to accommodate demand as long as there is demand to accommodate. So arrest all you want, conduct raids all you want, spend all you want, kill all you want, the market will not go away because some people still want to do drugs.
When do we get the chance to be pragmatic? When can we say that, at the very least, some drugs are worse than others and should be prioritized? Not with Wehner. They are all bad and their usage "shatters lives." The thing to realize, as our forebears in the 20s and 30s realized, is it all worth it? No. People didn't stop drinking then and the government just ended up shattering more lives by trying to enforce the ban on alcohol. It is the same now. This drug war has raged for 40 years and we have prioritized locking up nonviolent offenders over those who harm others. Our SWAT teams and police forces have been militarized, the former now conducting more raids against nonviolent offenders and the war on drugs costing nearly a trillion dollars. For our neighbors to the south, close to 60,000 people were killed fighting the war in just six years leading up to December 2012.
All of this is despite the fact that, especially with our current economic woes, legalizing drugs could save close to 76 billion dollars a year, as estimated by Harvard Economist Jeffrey A. Miron.
So what does a drug warrior like Wehner do, in spite of such overwhelming evidence? Nothing. Unwilling to look at the costs, the burdens placed, the lives "shattered," the economic and academic data (Yes, I am going to trust Milton Friedman over Wehner) or just the fact that this drug war has failed and as I mentioned in a previous post, the government just doesn't know better when it comes to individual freedoms. I think the role of government should be to ensure that its citizens have access to information to educate them about the potential affects of their personal decisions, not dictate and incarcerate people for harming only themselves.
Wehner argues in his op-ed, "GOP should stand firm against drug legalization" but I argue, the "GOP should stand firm against Drug Warriors." We need to get back to being businessmen, we need to get back to being fiscal conservatives, leaving the moral issues for those who have the time to ponder such things. We also should look at history and acknowledge that for nearly the first 150 years (1783-1920) in this country, factories were staffed, bills were passed, bridges spanned, railroad tracks lain, and articles written all despite the fact that most drugs were legal on a federal level. The fabric of society did not tear apart, quite the opposite actually.
Maybe when drug warriors like Wehner get their heads out of the clouds, they can look down at their hands and see them covered in blood. Blood from the innocents, blood pouring from wounds caused by misguided morality, a hatred for the facts, and a phobia towards sound economic policy and the pillars of small government.
References:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gop-should-stand-firm-against-drug-legalization/2013/04/02/32bd5f7a-915c-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_story.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/04/03/postscript-wehner-on-re-criminalizing-drugs/
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0404/Support-for-legal-marijuana-may-have-reached-tipping-point-poll-finds
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500368_162-4222322.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_capone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNN-SBkAym4
http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/november2011/11212011nicotine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Drug_Abuse_Prevention_and_Control_Act_of_1970
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Drug_Abuse_Act_of_1986
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/aclu-police-militarization-swat_n_2813334.html
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/06/opinion/branson-end-war-on-drugs
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/11/01/mexican-daily-nearly-60000-drug-war-deaths-under-calderon/
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2008/12/03/einstein-insanity-and-the-war-on-drugs/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution
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