Data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) show the gap between the use of legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco and increasingly marijuana) and illicit drugs. Among Americans 12 and older, about 51 percent have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days, while about 21 percent have used tobacco. The percentage of those who used marijuana is almost 12%, which is considerably higher than those who used opioids (1%) or cocaine (0.7%). Proponents of drug legalization believe that the cheap and widespread supply of high-quality drugs will eliminate the illicit drug market, regulate quality and price, and reduce enforcement costs, including arrest and incarceration. They predict that governments will spend less money on enforcement, benefit from a new source of tax revenue, and that drug-related crime will decline as drugs ranging from marijuana to heroin become widely available, more or less like alcohol and tobacco. So suppose cocaine or heroin are legalized and marketed like cigarettes and alcohol. And let`s say that the level of addiction replicated the 7% of adults who suffer from alcohol abuse or dependence. That would be a disaster for public health. As the late James Q. Wilson said, nicotine shortens life, cocaine humiliates it. I think that is exactly where you and I differ, if I may.
I mean, on the last one — we had a legal supply of prescription opioids and we still had a lot of overdoses. There is no doubt that an irregular supply exacerbates the problem. But I don`t think legal opioid supply would eliminate overdoses. But to be more fundamental, you and I disagree on whether legal care can necessarily stabilize a person who depends on substance. For me, it`s substance-specific. Caffeine and nicotine are two drugs for which the person, if you have a legal supply that is not falsified and so on, can function well in everyday life, even if he is dependent. But for stimulants — crack, methamphetamine and alcohol — simply providing large amounts of genuine, free care does not allow these people to stabilize their lives. And it has terrible effects on them and their families. I fully agree that the legalization of drugs, the legalization of supply, would be a generational event. It would be a massive, massive change in the way things are done – although, as I like to remind people, drugs were legal and trafficked until about 100 years ago. And it was U.S.
pressure on international actors that really got us into the area of prohibition that we have now – in part because even the great colonial powers, the Dutch and the English and others, were very happy with many of these drugs long before prohibition existed in its current form. I also think we`re in a new paradigm in that people are much more aware and willing to talk about the stigma surrounding addiction and addiction and so on. And that gives me hope that if we look at these issues of advertising and marketing and so on, perhaps these public health perspectives may be better taken into account. I hope that our experience with tobacco and opioids could lead to a more rational drug policy on legal access to other substances. It may be naively optimistic, but I feel that as a proponent of political reform, if I am not a little optimistic, there is really no point in moving forward. And I think it`s really nice to have some level of opportunity for what might exist beyond where we are right now. This article is part of the Agora series, a collaboration between the New Statesman and Aaron James Wendland, Senior Researcher in Philosophy at Massey College, Toronto. He tweets @aj_wendland. Drugs can bring pleasure; Drugs can be dangerous. They should be in the hands of doctors, pharmacists and regulated retailers, not criminals. Drug legalization would make drug use safer, but the greatest impact of the transition to a regulated drug market is that it would end the chaos, violence and corruption caused by criminal networks that engage in illicit drug trafficking. The war on drugs has been fought.
He was lost. It is high time for reform. I think legal and regulated access is probably the best environment for a range of drugs, but I think it will depend a lot on the substance itself and factors related to supply and demand issues, where and how it is produced. Without a regulated system, we are in a situation where the very, very large and lucrative drug trade that exists, whether there is a regulated industry or not, is completely co-opted by clandestine actors with different levels of ethics and morality. And I think this whole discussion about lawful access also needs to look at the inclusion of all substances in illicit markets, and then the effects of those behaviors – and has looked at them historically. My mother`s family is Colombian and left Colombia in the 1980s due to the massive increase in cocaine-related violence and cartel use. And it continued underground. The commitment hasn`t really stopped – not just with cocaine, but with a number of other drugs as well. And even Colombia now has a very serious conversation at the government level about what legal regulation of cocaine would look like, because – despite pressure from the US – and other actors, they realized that some sort of legal system could actually be the way to reduce violence in the country.
So even though I think legalizing drugs, which sounds so scary to a lot of people, really means subjecting them to increased regulatory scrutiny. It is difficult, I think, to really think about what an effective strategy to respond to drug addiction at the social level would be when we are in an environment of prohibition because prohibition exacerbates some of these side effects of drugs, such as independence in addiction. President Biden may not be ready for the legalization of recreational marijuana, but many states are way ahead of him. Connecticut just turned 18. State that has legalized recreational marijuana. And it`s not just grass. Several cities have recently decriminalized magic mushrooms, and Oregon has just decriminalized possession of all drugs, including heroin, methamphetamines and cocaine. It seems that the war on drugs is over and drugs have won big. I`m Jane Coaston, and there seems to be a growing consensus that locking our path out of America`s addiction crisis isn`t working.
But even hardline drug reformers have very different views on how to get drugs to a better place than our guests today. Ismail Ali is Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and Jonathan P. Caulkins is Professor of Operations, Research, and Public Policy at H. Guyford Stever University at Heinz College Carnegie Mellon University and a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering. I started by asking Ismail to define the difference between decriminalization and legalization of drugs. However, what is generally presented as a fairly simple process of lifting prohibitionist controls to reap these supposed benefits would actually mean addressing an extremely complex set of regulatory issues. As with most, if not all, goods supplied by individuals and public funds, the main regulatory issues concern the type of medicines legally available, the conditions under which they are supplied and the conditions under which they are consumed (see page 21). But perhaps the best reason to legalize hard drugs is that people who want to use them have the same freedom to determine their own well-being as those who use alcohol or marijuana or whatever. In a free society, the assumption must always be that individuals, not the government, can decide what is in their own interest. The best evidence of the failure of prohibition is the government`s current war on drugs. Instead of implementing a strategy of prevention, research, education and social programs aimed at solving problems such as persistent poverty, long-term unemployment and the deteriorating living conditions in our inner cities, this war has used a law enforcement strategy.
As this military approach continues to devour billions of taxpayers` money and land tens of thousands of people in prison, illicit drug trafficking thrives, violence escalates, and drug abuse continues to weaken lives. Added to this is the largely uncontrolled spread of the AIDS virus among drug addicts, their sexual partners and offspring. While the alternative of legalization usually emerges when fear of drugs and public despair of existing policies are at their peak, it never seems to disappear from the media radar screen for long. Periodic incidents — such as the heroine-induced death of a wealthy young couple in New York City in 1995, or then-surgeon general Jocelyn Elders` remark in 1993 that legalization could be beneficial and should be investigated — guarantee this. The importance of many of those who have advocated for legalization at various times, such as William F. Buckley, Jr., Milton Friedman, and George Shultz, also helps. But every time the issue of legalization is raised, the same arguments for and against are dusted off and trampled on, so we don`t have a clearer understanding of what it might entail and what the implications might be. Criminal drug prohibition has not eliminated or significantly reduced drug use.
Although rates of drug use are similar among white and non-white Americans, African Americans and other racial minorities are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. For example, according to government estimates, only 12% of drug users are black, but nearly 40% of those arrested for drug-related offenses are black. Nationally, a quarter of all young African-American men are under some form of criminal surveillance, mostly for drug-related offenses.
