The Legalization of Drugs

Imagine that you live in a world where you can walk down to the grocery store and buy cocaine, meth, LSD, marijuana, and just about any other drug that you can think of without any repercussions. The police wouldn't have any power to arrest you if you did buy the drugs and you could use them freely and openly in public. Many people would find such a world hellish. They could never live in such a society. Other people would praise this society for being so progressive. In actuallity, this world may not be such a bad idea.

Scholars, politicians, and the general public have all toyed with the idea of legalizing drugs. In theory, many benefits can be derived from legalizing drugs. Society can not sustain the costs of a prolonged war on drugs. Furthermore, drugs don't have to create expenses for society; they can provide a source of revenue to fuel worhty governmental causes. However, many hidden costs exist that may offset the resultant economic gains of legalizing drugs. Also many people could not accept the moral dilema that legalizing drugs would create. Although these arguments present valid concerns, the legalization of drugs is a viable alternative to the current war on drugs because it resolves the same problem quickly and efficiently.

The current war on drugs has proven expensive and inefficient. The U.S. government spends absurd amounts of money each year to enforce the current drug laws. Bertram notes:

"The annual federal budget for law enforcement has grown from roughly $53 million in 1970 to more than $8.2 billion in 1995: since 1970 we have invested roughly $68 billion in domestic andforiegn drug enforcement." (Bertram, Blachman and Sharp)

And this number has continued to grow since Bertram wrote the article in 1995. So what have Americans gained in return for the investment of all that money into the war on drugs? They haven't seen the amount of drug use decline over the past 40 years. In fact the amount of drug users has increased in this time frame. These costs are simply too high. Most Americans gripe over the $173 billion the government loaned to AIG, but don't even think about the tens of billions of dollars that the government spends each year enforcing drug laws. At least with the government's investment in AIG the public can expect some sort of return on the $173 billion. It remains unclear if the war on drugs will payoff in the end.In short the American government uses too much money for the results that it gets in the war on drugs. However if the government legalized drugs it could expect almost instanteous results for a return on investment. The government could tax the newly legalized drugs. Therefore the American taxpayer would have little or no money invested in regulating the drug trade. It could literally pay for itself.

This argument for legalizing drugs raises another interesting argument for the legalization of drugs. The government can regulate a legal substance. It can control when, how, how much and in what doses that aperson can get these substances. Furthermore, by making sure that anyone that wants the drugs has easy access to them at reasonable prices, the government can undercut the blackmarket and remove the motivation for manydrug dealers to participate in illegally manufacturing and distributing the drugs. This type of policy change would promote less violence in neighborhoods. Also the government could control the quality of the drugs ensuring that the drugs weren't laced with harmful chemicals. A change in policy would slash the costs associated with drug law enforcement.

The current policy promotes two costly paradoxes. The legalization of drugs will solve these two problems. First," the Hydra Effect" (Bertram, Blachman and Sharp) ensures a steady growth in the production of these drugs. This effect happens simply because the drug trade has little initial starting costs.

"The key here is that cocaine, heroin, and marijuana are easy products to grow, refine, transport, and sell. The amount of money and skill needed to enter the business is not high - there are low barriers to entry, an economist would say-" (Bertram, Blachman and Sharp)

The ease of entry allows many people to begin dealing drugs. Therefore in the time that it takes the government to stamp out one dealer, two or three more are already on the streets. So the problem continues to grow. Second the "Profit Paradox" (Bertram, Blachman and Sharp) also ensures that the Hydra Effect will continue indefinately. The government tries to raise the price of drugs out of the reach of consumers. As a result this tactic drives up the price, but can't force the price high enough.

"These high profits have a paradoxical effect: they provide a steady incentive for drug suppliers to remain in the trade and for new suppliers to enter.

"Because the drug war raises profits as it raises prices, the stick of law enforcement that is intended to discourage suppliers on the black market simultaneously creates a carrot of enourmous profits-which encourages suppliers."

Thus the government makes a large profit margin for the drug suppliers. However by legalizing drugs the government can take control of the drug trade. It can meet the demands of the market, driving prices down. This policy would eliminate much of the unnecessary spending that occurs in the war on drugs and save society hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

Many times throughout history governments have outlawed certain substances, on the grounds that they are immoral, wrong, and in general bad for society. Later these governments repelled those laws. In the 1920s the United States government outlawed alcohol. The exact same tactics that the U.S. Government used in the 1920s to enforce prohibition are being used currently in the war on drugs. In the 1920s alcohol became a precious commodity. The price of alcohol shot up, and the mob started to rake in huge profits by suppling alcohol to the public.The tactics did not work in the past, and the Hydra Effect and Profit Paradox controlled the market for alcohol. Later the government repelled the law, and began taxing alcohol. This policy proved to be effective. The government began generating revenues from the alcohol, and the mob stopped using alcohol as a means of profit. Therefore the government already has a model that legalization coupled with regulation actually works. The government simply needs to apply the lessons learned in the 1920s, the legalization of alcohol has saved the U.S. government billions of dollars since the 1920s.

Proponents against the legalization of drugs argue that the hidden societal costs would offset any savings gained from legalizing drugs. Admittedly, the legalization of drugs would not just benefit society; it would also cost society as well.

"The consumption of drugs has the effect of reducing men's freedom by circumscribing the range of their interests. It impairs their ability to pursue more important human aims, such as raising a family and fulfilling civic obligations. Very often it impairs their ability to pursue gainful employment and promotes parasitism." (Dalrymple)

These effects that drugs have on people, "the amotivational syndrome" (Henslin), result in a loss of productivity. The loss of productivity would in turn result in other economic losses. Therefore, legalizing drugs would not make sense economically. However, this argument is only valid so long as the economic losses offset or exceed the current price that the government pays to enforce the current laws. Currently, no research exists that could project just how much productivity America would lose if it legalized drugs. Therefore, this argument, although valid, doesn't provide a compelling reason to reject the possibility of legalizing drugs.

The immorality of drugs provides another common argument against the legalization of drugs. Society simply opposes drugs and their spread because the drugs do not have any moral value. Dalrymple compares drugs to the public exhibition of necrophilia. He argues that such displays are inherently immoral:

"Our objection is not based upon pragmatic considerations or upon a head count: it is based upon the wrongness of the exhibitions themselves." (Dalrymple)

Likewise he argues that drugs are inherently immoral as well. "The wrogness" of a certain drug should determine if the drugs remain illegal. Determining "the wrongness" of a drug becomes a problem. Society does not actively oppose all drugs. Americans smoke tobacco and drink alcohol. Both of these drugs have long histories as legal substances, despite many attempts to make them illegal. Therefore an arbitrary and hypocritical threshold would have to exist to determine "the wrongness" of any given drug.

Furthermore, many people suffer because of the social pressure to view drugs as immoral. Judson describes a typical day for herself. She spends the day looking for ways to get high. At the end of the day, she suffers from a case of cognitive dissidence.

"My husband was concerned, but I told him there was nothing he could do. I felt like cockatoo crap and just had to sleep.

"I couldn't sleep, though. I was in agonies of recrimination. I was a weevil, a leech, a chigger." (Judson)

Judson obviously feels some sort of moral dilemma, because what she did throughtout the day was morally wrong, but she felt good doing it. Philosophically, she didn't do anything wrong. Judson didn't hurt anyone. She didn't behave violently or aggressively. She simply used drugs that were "wrong", and accepted the consequences of her choice. By legalizing these drugs she would not feel so bad about using them. Therefore morality is subjective, and does not make a good argument for or against the legalization of drugs.

Even though the morality of using drugs poses interesring arguments against the legalization of drugs, ultimately morals will not stop drug use. Users will continue getting high regardless of the moral dilema of using drugs. Only proper drug education will ensure that certain people never use certain substances or stop using them. The key is the word "proper" drug education. As Henslin notes:

"Drug education must be connected to the realities of the users. Nonusers' ideas about morality and the risks of using drugs are not the same as those of users. For example, emphasizing violence as a consequence of PCP is ineffective if the users do not see violence as a problem. In the same way, stressing a milder consequence - that PCP produces a foggy, forgetful condition - can be effective if that is what the users experience and fear. To try and impose an outside reality onto users is to ensure failure." (Henslin)

Therefore drug education can be used as a powerful tool against the use of drugs. In fact drug education becomes necessary, in a society that legalizes drugs. It allows potential users to understand all of the risks and benefits to using these drugs, and allows them to make an informed decision.

Many supporters of the current policy claim that drug education should play a significant role, however the information supplied should be different. The information that they would provide would be shaped by the paradigm through which they operate. They claim that legalizing drugs would be an admission of defeat. They believe that this issue denominates an actual war. The paradigm dictates that a clear winner and a looser will exist at the end of the issue. Many even admit defeat in this "war". Dalrymple compares the defeat in the "war on drugs" to the defeat in the "war on death".

"Let us ask whether medicine is winning the war on death. The answer is obviously no...And this is despite the fact that 14% of the GDP of the United States of America goes into the war on death."

And so the argument goes that even though defeat in the war on drugs is inevitable we must continue to fight. This paradigm doesn't make any sense. First of all, in the war on drugs there will never be a clear cut winner and loser. One day the government will have success, the next the drug dealers will. Secondly, the paradigm forces one to see the problem as a war rather than a social issue. This thought process doesn't provide an environment conducive to find solutions other than to defeat the enemy. However, drug dealers do not necessarily constitute an enemy. Many of them actively help the citizenry attain better standards of living, as well as protect the citizens of the community. For example in some of the flavelas (ghettos) of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, many citizens actually prefer the protection they get from drug dealers to the protection provided by police and the government. Therefore drug dealers occupy a socially functional position and should not be considered as an enemy to the state. Lastly, a change in policy doesn't signify defeat. Rather the policy change simply means that the government decided to change tactics in the "war on drugs." The current drug policies, and paradigm, therefore, have several flaws.

Despite these flaws the parties opposed to the legalization of drugs may never allow a world where access to drugs is easy. The current policy on drugs creates several interesting paradoxes. The policy doesn't allow the government to make money, rather than spend it. Nor does this policy allow society to validate the humanity of users, dealers, and producers, rather than dehumanizing the entire process. A change in policy would definitely have several societal benefits.

Works Cited

Bertram, Eva, et al. "Three Fatal Flaws in the War on Drugs." Bertram, Eva, et al. Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial. University of California Press, 1996.

Dalrymple, Theodore. "Don't Legalize Drugs." April 1997. City Journal. 25 April 2009 .

Henslin, James A. "Alcohol And Other Drugs." Henslin, James A. Social Problems. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006. 86-125.

Judson, Lois A. "A Day In The Life Of A Nonrecovering Alcoholic." The Sun June 2002: 24-26.