At age twenty-three, James Frey awoke alienated. Frey found himself seated in an airplane, with no recollection of the immediate past. The former drug addict requested no explanation. Yet again, concerned parents were sending Frey to a rehab facility, this time, a vastly renowned clinic in Minnesota. Frey describes substance sensation as following, “For the briefest instant I feel complete. The pain I carry with me disappears. I feel comfortable and at rest, confident and secure, calm and composed. I feel good.” (Frey 43)
Make no argument. Drugs can be addictive. They are mind-altering. They are not however evil, nor are the people who use them. The violence and squalor American’s might witness on a television episode of Cops exemplifies a depiction that might make one think otherwise. Certainly, the truth stands ignored and isolated. Drugs and drug consumers are not the problem. Realistically, the illegality of these substances is. If the United States legalized drug use and trafficking, crime would drop, terrorist organizations would be ratified, and murder rates would plummet.
There are three major reasons why drugs should be legalized. Foremost, enhanced law enforcement generates low supply and high demand, drives prices upward, and creates the market itself. Subsequently, the government’s inability to monitor production, transporting and sales has made the drug business greatly unsafe. As a final point, the United State’s designation of particular drug illegality over others is irrational and absurd.
Following the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a “war on terror.” Ironically, money made from drugs bought in the United States funds the terrorists Bush is fighting. Joel Miller, senior editor of WND Books, and author of Bad Trip wrote the following, “Having the muscle and moxie to back up their middle finger to established authority either at home or abroad, terrorists and insurgents naturally excel in illicit markets.” (Miller 45)
In the past, governments have instituted prohibitions for a mixture of reasons. These rationales to forbid are as intoxicating as the substances they’ve disallowed. While condemning violators, prohibition causes increased misdemeanors and corrupts society. It is apparent history’s relentlessness has failed to give the United States a clue: Obtaining Utopia is futile.
Drug illegalization is not the first substance prohibition America has seen. In 1920, the United States government banned the purchase or sale of alcohol. For thirteen years, organized crime and corruption peaked. Normal, law-abiding citizens became criminals in the eyes of law enforcement.
Particularly in Chicago, Prohibition was regularly disobeyed. Freakonomics, a book exploring “the hidden side of everything,” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Duber, reports that, “Chicago alone had more than 1,300 street gangs, catering to every ethnic, political, and criminal leaning imaginable.” (Levitt, Dubner 111) Infamous gangsters such as Al Capone and Bugs Moran made millions on the high-priced alcohol Prohibition created. John D. Rockefeller Jr., a prominent philanthropist of the time, wrote in support of a national referendum to repeal Prohibition, “Respect for all law has been greatly lessened; that crime has increased to an unprecedented degree.” (Miller 179) The law was not revoked until 1933. The illegality had only hurt supply. Demand was still there. Simple economics show when supply is down and demand is up, prices rise.
There is a distinguished parallelism between alcohol Prohibition and drug illegality. In particular, increased crime. Logically, unlawful businessmen applaud the United States government for prohibiting drugs. Organized crime leaders can do extremely well in the drug industry, and they yield unprecedented profits using commercial franchise-like marketing schemes.
In Bad Trip, an informative book about “how the war against drugs is destroying America,” author Joel Miller remarks, “When Pfizer has a problem with a client or competitor, it calls the lawyers. But for those dealing in an illegal trade, contracts become enforceable with guns not lawsuits.” (Miller 21) Without legislative protection, drug dealers have to take opposition into their own hands, and sufficiently fit for the occasion, those hands hold firearms.
In 1989 Sudhir Venkatesh pursued a PhD in sociology at the University of Chicago. After spending three months following the Grateful Dead around the country, he decided to visit Chicago’s ghetto. Venkatesh worked to understand how crack gangs function. After describing his findings to Steven D. Levitt, the co-writer of Freakonomics, Levitt wrote the following, “If you were to hold a McDonald’s organizational chart and a Black Disciples organizational chart side by side, you could hardly tell the difference.” (Levitt, Dubner 99) This big business approach is the reason crime becomes conspicuous in an illegitimate trade.
In addition, illegal drug enterprises are unrestricted. Drug dealing is free-for-all. Anything goes, and altered products are often distributed. These procedures make otherwise safe drugs unsafe. Many dealers attempt to maximize the potency of narcotics in a process called freebasing adding ammonia and ethyl ether to cocaine hydrochloride or powdered cocaine, and burning it to free up the “base” cocaine. As Steve D. Levitt puts it, “This could be dangerous. As Richard Pryor famously proved he nearly killed himself while freebasing chemistry is best left to chemists.” (Levitt, Dubner 109)
Illegal drug income has skyrocketed into a $150 billion per year market. Because the trade is unlawful, transporting drugs to the United States is an expensive procedure. Smugglers run a risk of being captured, imprisoned, or killed.
Naturally, the United States’ main targets are major drug insurgents and leaders. The inefficiency of law enforcement has resulted in the opposite effect. Such a bold accusation is seemingly unfeasible to diagnose and especially difficult to validate. Steven D. Levitt marks an important point. “Drug dealers are rarely trained in economics, and economists rarely hang out with crack dealers.” (Levitt, Dubner 93) There is, however, stark statistical verification backing this claim. The United States Sentencing Commission conducted a survey of cocaine convictions between 1995 and 2000. “Contrary to the general objective of the 1986 legislation to target serious and major traffickers, two-thirds of federal crack cocaine offenders were street level dealers.” (Miller 37)
The current “crack crackdown” drug war is a failure. It not only packs prisons but also fills them with harmless offenders. Moreover, this housing process is exceptionally expensive. The huge increases in federal and state prison populations during the 80s and 90s (from 139 pre 100,000 residents in 1950 to 482 per 100,000 in 2003) were mainly for drug convictions. In 1970, 589,000 Americans were arrested on drug charges. By 2003, that figure had ballooned to 1,578,200. Ex-cop Norm Stamper, states in the Seattle Times, “We’re making more arrests for drug offense than for murder, manslaughter, forcible rape, and aggravate assault combined. Feel Safer?” (Stamper) Later, Stamper declares, “It’s not a stretch to conclude that our Draconian approach to drug use is the most injurious domestic policy since slavery.”
Today, America has senselessly illegalized specific drugs including marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and LSD. Perplexingly, equally harmful substances such as nicotine (a toxic alkaloid found in tobacco), and alcohol are legal. In the Seattle Times editorials, Norm Stamper, a former cop and police chief commented, “I’ve never understood why adults shouldn’t enjoy the same right to use verboten drugs as they have to suck on a Marlboro or knock back a scotch and water.” (Stamper)
Benson B. Roe, MD, Professor Emeritus, and previous Chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of California, informs, “350,000 die from alcohol-related cirrhosis and caffeine is the cause of cardiac and nervous system disturbances. Why certain (illegal) substances are singularly more evil than legal substances like alcohol has not been explained. The widespread propaganda that illegal drugs are “deadly poisons” is a hoax, especially uncontaminated marijuana. It is frequently stated that illicit drugs are bad, dangerous, destructive or addictive, and that society has an obligation to keep them from the public, but nowhere can be found reliable, objective scientific evidence that they are any more harmful than other substances and activities that are legal.” (Benson)
With certainty, if drugs were legalized, society would see colossal improvements. Primarily, with fewer battles to fight, United States law enforcement could focus on fighting crime instead of Americans. The exclusive secrecy of a high priced drug market would cease to exist. Government regulation could then institute, making drugs safer while annihilating gang warfare and terrorism.
In 1845, Fredric Bastiat, a French theorist, and political economist said, “The government offers to cure all the ills of mankind. All that is needed is to create some new government agencies and to pay a few more bureaucrats. In a word, the tactic consists in initiating, in the guise of actual services, what are nothing but restriction; thereafter, the nation pays, not for being served but for being disserved.” (Miller vi) Legalize drugs all of them.
Works Cited
Benson B, Roe “Why We Should Legalize Drugs” Electric Lib. Schaffer Library of Drug Policy, http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer
Frey, James A Million Little Pieces NAN A. Talese: An Imprint of Doubleday: A division of Random House, Inc, 2003
Levitt, Steven D.
Dubner, Stephen J. Freakonomics New York: William Morrow: An Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers
Miller, Joel Bad Trip Nashville: WND Books, 2004
“Legalize drugs all of them.” The Seattle Times 4 Dec 2005 Stamper, Norm.