February 26, 2006
WSJ Ed Page on Drug War
I've always looked to National Review (and Instapundit) for common sense about the "War on Drugs" feeling that The Weekly Standard and the WSJ Ed Page were on the wrong side of this issue.
Today, Ed Page Editor George Melloan has a "Featured Article" (free link) that makes me think my favorite economic folks are coming around.
Economist Milton Friedman predicted in Newsweek nearly 34 years ago that Richard Nixon's ambitious "global war against drugs" would be a failure. Much evidence today suggests that he was right. But the war rages on with little mainstream challenge of its basic weapon, prohibition.
[...]
Milton Friedman saw the problem. To the extent that authorities curtail supplies of marijuana, cocaine and heroin coming into the rich U.S. market, the retail price of these substances goes up, making the trade immensely profitable--tax-free, of course. The more the U.S. spends on interdiction, the more incentive it creates for taking the risk of running drugs.In 1933, the U.S. finally gave up on the 13-year prohibition of alcohol--a drug that is by some measures more intoxicating and dangerous to health than marijuana. That effort to alter human behavior left a legacy of corruption, criminality, and deaths and blindness from the drinking of bad booze. America's use of alcohol went up after repeal but no serious person today suggests a repeat of the alcohol experiment. Yet prohibition is still being attempted, at great expense, for the small portion of the population--perhaps little more than 5%--who habitually use proscribed drugs.
Melloan also discusses the rise of leftists in Latin America and the corruption of drug gangs in Mexico: anti-freedom movements exacerbated by the US position.
I hope this "libertarian" issue will come out into the mainstream (not only because my MS might get much worse). This is as issue of basic freedom and economics to me. Freedom because people should be allowed to do very bad things if they don't hurt anybody else. Economics because criminalization funds the street gangs and their high-end lifestyle.
Prohibition has failed twice now; let's try something else.
I'm all for ending prohibition. But I can't get past the "victimless" angle. Even for liquor.
If you abuse it, you may screw up your own life. Since there is a dearth of responsibility in this country, we're all going to be stuck trying to fix you, or at least making your last days "not as bad."
And MADD didn't get to be as powerful as they are/were because alcohol "didn't hurt anybody else."
If we could get more personally responsible in this country, I'd say smoke 'em if you got 'em....
Until then, "smoke 'em if you got 'em, then stay right where you are."
Posted by: AlexC at February 26, 2006 3:26 PMNot sure we disagree. If the police are not chasing down possession charges, I'd suggest that they'd have a lot more time to catch those who are hurting other people. This is similar to my (and the NRA's) stand on guns. Put away an armed robber or a stoned driver. I'm all for it.
And, yes, we'll probably spend more government $$ on treatment and rehab. Stepping out of pure libertarianism, I'd say if you're going to spend money on anything beyond national defense, that's a pretty good place to put it. It would be humane and a much better value than the drug war.
Like Melloan, I'm against drug use. But I am more against capricious, un-Bastiatian, enforcement of unavoidable drug laws and of propping up gang economics. The novel "Clockers" by Richard Price cemented my position: the use of drug money to recruit a good kid to sell drugs really hit home. Let's take that tool away.
Posted by: jk at February 26, 2006 3:41 PM | What do you think? [2]