THE CASE FOR LEGALIZING DRUGS IN AMERICA
By Joseph J Kusnell for Boomeryearbook.com
California is releasing 22,000 criminals back into their neighborhoods to save $400,000,000.00 to use elsewhere. This is the second year in a row they have done this. Maybe if they stopped support illegal immigrants with taxpayer money, they wouldn't have to release criminals on our society.
The following is an unusual article. What makes it unusual is that the author is not at all sure of what he wants to say. He – me – I – find myself facing a conundrum - contemplating the legalization of drugs while abhorring the use of drugs. I guess it’s a sign of the times.
From my earliest days, I have been against drug use and the legalization of drugs. When the subject came up, I took a strong stand against it. The last thing this society wants or needs, I argued, is more drug users. Therefore, fearful that legalization might entice some to experiment with drugs that might not otherwise do so, I opposed it. Today I am not so sure; therefore, I have decided to rethink my position aloud.
To begin with, let’s examine the drug problem. As we do, keep in mind what I have said about my position on this matter. I hate drugs, have always hated rugs, have been against them or their use or their legalization all of my life and have always believed those who use them are to be pitied and helped, rather than enabled. I had no interest in helping them get sicker. And I still feel that way.
I also worry that what I am doing today is giving in to evil because that evil won’t go away. I hope that’s not the case but it certainly could be.
Despite that, the sad truth in America is that rather than abating, drug use seems to be on the increase everywhere. No matter what we do, no matter how much money we throw at the problem, drug use seems to be an all-pervasive and all-encompassing problem that seems to get worse decade by decade.
On that point, more people are now incarcerated for drug abuse in America (dealers and users) than for any other crime. More money is spent to catch and house drug dealers and drug users in America than is spent policing all other crimes.
Mexico and Columbia may be the source of most of the drugs that come into America but that does not mean these countries are free of the problems that come with drugs. Down there, drug money corrupts and undermines every aspect of daily life including local politics, local law enforcement, local employment and even the local press. Drug cartels intimidate everyone. And those they can’t intimidate they buy.And those they can’t buy, they kill.
Sad to say, in this ongoing battle, law and order is the underdog. The drug lords are better financed, better armed, andbetter ‘connected’ than those who oppose them. Money from drug sales buys whatever and whoever the need, from the top to the bottom and across borders. Drugs have become everyone’s biggest headache. And why? Because Americans have to have their drugs. Shame on us!
Americans finance this brutal industry. More drugs are used per capita in the United States than any country in the world. If buyers are the problem, and they are, the problem is right under our noses.
It is us.
Without this American lust for drugs, none of this would be happening. Growers and suppliers are merely reacting to market demand in America and in America the demand is for more and more drugs. Our government reacts by cracking down on growers, and distributors, and dealers and pushers and all for one reason – we can’t crack down on users who are the real problem. There are just too many of them.
The people of Mexico and of Columbia can rightly point to us as their biggest problem. They are suffering because we are a nation of drug users. And not just in our poorer depressed neighborhoods either but everywhere, from the lowest to the highest. No wonder they are asking us to provide money to help them fight the problem. That’s because it is really OUR problem.
Okay, that’s the reality of the situation so - what do we do about it? Americans using drugs is a malignancy that is deeply ingrained in the psyche of our nation. We have tried everything we could think of to stem the tide but all without success. Those who use drugs simply won’t give them up. Disgusting but true.
Governments govern at the will of the electorate. That means they govern just as long as the mass of the people want them to govern. If most people obey a law, that law works. If most people disobey that law, that law doesn’t work. It’s really very simple. Sadly in America, drug laws are not being obeyed so they are not worth the paper they are written on. So many Americans violate our drug laws, we might as well not even have them.
Drug use has become a systemic problem in our culture. Something is wrong in America. Maybe even in the world. But it seems clear that drug use is now as much a permanent part of our society as is drinking.
So far, our response to this problem has been largely to build more and more prisons, spend more and more money on enforcement, and arrest more and more people. Unfortunately, none of this has worked. No sooner is one dealer taken off the streets then two others appear to replace him. No matter how many users we put in jail, there are always others to take their place. We just can’t win.
Profit fuels the drug trade and there is just too much profit for anyone to give it up. Not only that but those same profits are used to find more and better means to smuggle drugs into America where Americans are waiting at the docks to buy them. it’s truly a disgraceful situation The Drug Enforcement Agency – DEA – the drug-fighting arm of the U.S. Government - is in over its head. The agency’s job is to fight the battle on the hard streets both here and in Columbia and Mexico where their lives are constantly in danger from those that they would uncover. They do their best in this terribly dangerous environment but there really isn’t much they can do. As long as the demand for drugs remains high, and profits remain high, the drug trade will flourish. We need to find a way to change one of the existing dynamics.
Americans who use drugs seem to understand the danger of drugs alright but they don’t seem to care. They use them anyway. So the question is, if they don’t care, why should we care? Why should I care? Why is stopping them so big a priority for the rest of us?
Some people make the argument that some of these users will end up needing health care for their addiction. Okay so what? For one thing, the money we are now spending every year on drug enforcement would be freed up to meet that obligation and it will be more than enough. Also, the taxes that we would collect from legal drug sales would be a huge bonanza, more than enough to make up for any unexpected health care expenditures.
The truth may be that profits from legalized drug sales could finance health care for all of us in America. And at the same time, lower the cost to the users.
Finally, there will be the claim that legalizing drugs will somehow result in the destruction of American families. I seriously doubt that, I would agree that drug use can wreck a family just as excessive drinking does, but legalization won’t be the reason. Drug use will be the reason as it is now.
But the truth is that the vast majority of today’s drug users have families and regular jobs, neither of which is seriously threatened by their use of recreational drugs. By that I mean, most people who use drugs use them for recreation in their lives not as a substitute for their lives. I can't see how legalization won’t make a difference to them. To those to whom it does make a difference, they have the problem already so there’s little we can do about that.
So that takes me to the final argument, the only one that to me still has any credibility. That is the argument of morality.
Drug use is immoral. Most of us would agree with that. Enabling drug users is therefore also immoral. And most of us would tend to agree with that. If drugs are immoral – and I think they are – then enabling drug users is also immoral. It;s a hard argument to refute.
But if that’s true then it is also true of other things like drinking and smoking. If drinking is immoral – and I think we can make that argument – then enabling people to drink is also immoral and we are all guilty of that to one degree or other. And how many lives have been destroyed by drinking?
Then we have gambling. Gambling addicts gamble away everything they have and in so doing, destroy their own life and the lives of others. Yet, we run state lotteries and we build lots of Casinos.
It is hard to regulate the morality of a people. Gambling, drinking, cheating, lying, avarice– all the deadly sins are practiced by human beings every day. What are we supposed to do about them? We live in a hedonistic society where all vices have their part, many of which are actually fostered by society to wit: movies, magazines, television et al.
I fear morality in a society is largely in the mind of the beholder.
I admit I feel guilty about making this argument and I wouldn’t be making it if I honestly thought we had any chance whatsoever of overcoming drug use. But we don’t. It’s all we can do to keep drinking and gambling under control and there are those who think we haven’t done even done that very well.
It would appear that people are going to do what they want to do and won’t do what they don’t want to do and that’s all there is to it. When they want to drink, they drink. When they want to gamble, they gamble. Now that they want to use drugs, they use drugs.
So what else is new.
In forty years of fighting the drug wars, we have made absolutely no inroads. We have spent billions of dollars and gotten precious little for our money. That’s because there is a market and where there is a market there will be a supply. Short of a total dictatorship (and I don’t even know if that would work), there is nothing we can do about it. Drugs are found today in every neighborhood in this country, from the very best and most affluent to the very worst and least affluent and all the neighborhoods in between. And from what I see, they aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
I would guess that 33% or more of adults have used some form of drug from pot to coke to heroine to whatever while as many as one in five teenagers have also done so. In fact, in our best colleges booze, drugs, and sex are seen almost as a right of passage, so who’s kidding whom about morality? Anybody coming after college presidents for allowing all this illegal and immoral conduct on their campuses? Not that I've noticed.
I also believe that given the choice, the majority of Americans would come down against legalizing drugs while a strong minority would favor it. And some who actually use drugs may nevertheless come down against drug use.
So, we are a divided house and everyone knows a house divided against itself cannot stand. It means that two thirds of us are willing to spend tens of billions of dollars to prevent the other one third from doing what they want. I don’t see how that can work. I know we tried it with alcohol and that sure didn’t work.
How about this: a national referendum, a referendum on drug legalization? If the majority say ‘yes’, it’s yes. If they say ‘no’, then it’s no. I don’t know any other way. What we are doing isn’t working so let’s try something else. It has been said that discretion is the better part of valor. Sadly, that seems to be the case here.
If the people vote ‘yes’ to legalization, all the drugs that are now illegal would become legal. All the drugs now grown or manufactured in remote areas controlled by drug cartels would become legal crops grown or manufactured by legitimate licensed businesses operating under control of their governments. That would be the first plus.
Pricing would be regulated, sales would be taxed, and quality would be assured as with any other product. We have alcohol that is regulated, we have cigarettes that are regulated, so now we will have drugs that are regulated. Twenty years from now people may wonder what the fuss was all about.
The strange thing is the drug that produces the most harmful long-term effects, the drug that ruins more homes, the drug that fosters more spousal and child abuse and causes the most tragic deaths is alcohol. Yet we allow people to drink as much as they want in the privacy of their own homes. So what’s the difference?
The benefits to legalization are obvious. We can close up half our prisons. We can free up space for more serious offenders, keeping them incarcerated for their full terms instead of releasing them for lack of space. (Just today, California announced the early release of 21,000 prisoners for lack of space.)
We can also reduce the number of cops on the street and let those that remain concentrate of the more violent criminals. All this from letting free people make their own choice.
And then there is this: if legalizing drugs does entice some who would not have tried them otherwise, others who tried them only because they were illegal (the thrill factor) won’t bother now that ‘the thrill is gone’. So it’s a trade off there.
Benefits will surely extend beyond our borders. The governments of Mexico and Columbia will benefit, their press will benefit, and their people will have that yoke of drug-sponsored oppression and intimidation removed from their necks. The bad guys will be history. And, we can use legal profits to pay for our health care.
Why isn’t this a better plan?
And let’s not forget the thousands of kids killed each year in our inner cities because of drug traffic. With the drug profits gone, the drug pushers will go. With the pushers gone the competition for ‘turf’ will also go. With all that gone the murders will go too. They are all tied together.
Of course, those who want to buy drugs legally will have to pass the same kind of background checks that are used for gun buyers. But since it’s legal, I don’t think that would be a problem. Also it might be possible to establish controls on how much and how often a buyer can get specific drugs but that can be determined at a later date. We wouldn’t want a buyer to buy different drugs that don’t mix well. Just as we watch the mix in our pharmacies. If that is a problem, let the doctors control the drug mix. I am sure we can work out the details.
And remember: the parole system is largely governed by space available. When it get crowded we let bad guys go. A murderer given a 10-15 year sentence, serves 10 but get a chance at parole at 7. What kind of sentence is that? But this is a business. All the people associated with criminal justice live off the bad guys. So they put them back into circulation to grease the wheels of the justice industry. Legalize drugs and you make more free space; hence, you can keep bad guys in jail for their entire sentence. That will make us safer (along with the fact that the druggies won’t have to rob or kill to get money for their habit). Sadly – and it bothers me as much as it does you – sadly, almost everyone would benefit from the legalization of drugs in America. (By the way, it should be noted that drugs have been used by indigenous populations around the world since the world began.)
So that’s that situation. We have two choices. (1) We can do what we have been doing and live with the consequences in both money and human lives forever or (2) we can try something different.
This plan is different.
So why aren’t I jumping up and down about ‘solving’ the drug problem. I will tell you why and it’s the same reason if there were a referendum, I am not sure how I would vote: because I can’t see selling heroin to some young person knowing it’s going to destroy his or her life. Whether they are already hooked or about to become hooked.
I want no part in being part of the cause.
Then there is the problem of kids generally. Kids use drugs. If the drugs were legal they certainly would be for adults only so what happens to the kids trade? Does it stay on the streets?
I guess it would just as alcohol does. Which reminds me: how come we don't discipline college officials who allow drinking (and sex and drugs) on their campuses??? Just curious.
All this is why I called this mess a conundrum. Because it is. Webster defines a conundrum as "a complicated problem". Amen to that.
Perhaps a way to start would be to legalize the growing and distribution of maraijuana. This is the drug of choice and the financial lychpin of the drug industry so lets legalize it and control it and tax it. Maybe that's all we have to do and I think we can handle that. It's certainly a first step.
JOEY
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