By Andrew Bernstein
The War on Drugs must forcefully continue.
Toxic drugs destroy lives. No rational person wants to kill himself on drugs—or witness innocent others kill themselves in similar manner.
The first step of a rational, morally proper, and effective war on drugs is to fully legalize all drugs for consenting adults.
The government’s attempt to prevent drug use by legal prohibition is, morally and practically, a disaster. Full legalization will end this disaster and make possible a war on drugs both morally upright and practically effective.
Coercively preventing a consenting adult from ingesting his drug(s) of choice is a manifest violation of an individual’s right to his own life and body. The personal use—or sale—of drugs by or between consenting adults involves no initiation of force or fraud against innocent others; consequently, is not a crime. Currently, thousands of U.S. citizens are in prison for mere possession, use, or sale of banned drugs—and the sole crime is the government’s initiation of force against innocent individuals.
Such flagrantly immoral governmental policy leads to flagrantly impractical results.
For example, in 2010 the government spent $48 billion on its anti-drug crusade; between 1993 and 2003, roughly $180 billion. The result? According to the government’s 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, more than 22 million Americans, aged 12 or older, use illegal drugs. Overall rate of drug use was up almost a full percentage point over the 2008 survey. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget said in understatement: “DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] is unable to demonstrate its progress in reducing the availability of illegal drugs in the U.S.”
Over decades, the government’s war on drugs has incarcerated thousands of U.S. individuals innocent of initiating force or fraud—and robbed hundreds of billions of dollars from productive taxpayers; it has perpetrated all these crimes—and accomplished nothing.
There are reasons necessitating such failure. If substance X is in demand, i.e., desired by many who can afford it, then money can be made supplying it. If X is legal, it is supplied by honest businessmen; if illegal, by criminals. Either way, X is supplied. No government can repeal the laws of economics.
But the full truth is vastly worse—for the state’s war on drugs is responsible for an enormous increase in violent crime. For one thing, it makes criminal drug cartels immensely wealthy. Bloody gang warfare inevitably erupts as rival thugs vie for control of locales assuring profitable sales. The result is an endless string of murders, including of innocent victims caught in the crossfire.
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