By
John Stossel
|
Forty years ago, the United States locked up
fewer than 200 of every 100,000 Americans. Then President Nixon
declared war on drugs. Now we lock up more of our people than any other
country — more even than the authoritarian regimes in Russia and China.
A war on drugs — on people, that is — is unworthy of a country that claims to be free.
Unfortunately, this outrage probably won't be discussed in Tampa or Charlotte.
The media (including Fox News) run frightening
stories about Mexican cocaine cartels and marijuana gangs. Few of my
colleagues stop to think that this is a consequence of the war, that
decriminalization would end the violence. There are no wine "cartels" or
beer "gangs." No one "smuggles" liquor. Liquor dealers are called
"businesses," not gangs, and they "ship" products instead of "smuggling"
them. They settle disputes with lawyers rather than guns.
Everything can be abused, but that doesn't mean
government can stop it. Government runs amok when it tries to protect us
from ourselves.
Drug-related crime occurs because the drugs are available only through the artificially expensive black market.
Drug users steal not because drugs drive them to steal. Our government
says heroin and nicotine are similarly addictive, but no one robs convenience stores to get Marlboros. (That could change with confiscatory tobacco taxes.)
Are defenders of the drug war aware of the consequences? I don't think so.
John McWhorter, a senior fellow at the Manhattan
Institute, indicts the drug war for "destroying black America."
McWhorter, by the way, is black.
McWhorter sees prohibition as the saboteur of black
families. "Enduring prison time is seen as a badge of strength. It's
regarded (with some justification) as an unjust punishment for selling
people something they want. The ex-con is a hero rather than someone who
went the wrong way."
He enumerates the positive results from ending
prohibition. "No more gang wars over turf, no more kids shooting each
other. ... Men get jobs, as they did in the old days, even in the worst
ghettos, because they have to."
Would cheaper and freely available drugs bring their
own catastrophe? "Our discomfort with the idea of heroin available at
drugstores is similar to that of a Prohibitionist shuddering at the
thought of bourbon at the corner store. We'll get over it."
The media tell us that some drugs are so powerful
that one "hit" or "snort" will hook the user forever. But the
government's own statistics disprove that. The National Institutes of
Health found that 36 million Americans have tried crack. But only 12
percent have used it in the previous year, and fewer than 6 percent have
used it in the previous month. If crack is so addictive, how did 88
percent of the users quit?
If drugs were legal, I suppose that at first more
people would try them. But most would give them up. Eventually, drug use
would diminish, as it has in Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs,
and the Netherlands, which allows legal marijuana. More young men would
find real jobs; police could focus on real crime.
When the public is this divided about an issue, it's
best left to voluntary social pressure instead of legal enforcement.
That's how most Americans decide whether to drink alcohol or go to
church every week. Private voluntary social networks have their own ways
of punishing bad behavior and send more nuanced messages about what's
unacceptable. Government's one-size-fits-all rules don't improve on
that.
"Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty
of the government to protect the individual against his own
foolishness," economist Ludwig von Mises wrote, "why not prevent him
from reading bad books and bad plays ... ? The mischief done by bad
ideologies is more pernicious ... than that done by narcotic drugs."
If we adults own our own bodies, we ought to get to
control what we put in them. It's legitimate for government to protect
me from reckless drivers and drunken airline pilots — but not to protect
me from myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment