Border Security/De-criminalizing “illegal drugs”
I rarely post reader emails (this site has a comments section). However, one line in this week’s Creators Syndicate column caught an informed reader’s attention. Glenn Reynold’s at Instapundit also linked to the column and brought up the issue of drug legalization. I’ll comment on that in a moment.
Here’s the email (re-produced with a couple of small edits):
In your “On Point” column on Strategypage today, the single comment upon which I stuck was your remark to the effect that: “Getting real control of the borders means curbing America’s appetite for illegal drugs.“ Take an old GP’s word on the subject as an honest of the fact that nothing in the power of the United States government (or in the power of those governments of the several States) can achieve this end. First, it is not “America’s appetite for illegal drugs” but rather the desires (and in a slender minority of cases the *need*) for psychoactive substances - everything from alcohol and tobacco through the various chemicals covered by the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), Title II of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, and the many inhalants used for “huffing” to induce cerebral hypoxia - that makes up this “appetite.” Think of the epidemiology in terms of political economics. Just as macroeconomic trends are created by millions of discrete microeconomic decisions, aggregate public health problems are defined by millions of individual cases. Second, it cannot be government’s responsibility to control this “appetite” any more than it is government’s responsibility to control any other aspect of the economy. Er, you don’t actually believe that the federal and state governments *should* control the economy, do you? Or that there could be any benefit to such efforts at control? I should think that the catastrophic collapse of the Second World a few years ago had settled that problem in favor of Ludwig von Mises’ robust theoretical analysis in *Socialism* (1922). Government is an agency armed and engined for the exercise of the police power in civil society and in international affairs. Its functions are punitive, and it can be described as persuasive only in that one is “persuaded” when somebody points a pistol at one’s head. It is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. And you can’t force a person to stifle his appetite for alcohol, tobacco, “controlled substances,” or toxic inhalants if he truly wants them. It’s impossible to prevent efforts at self-destructively perverse behavior even when you’ve got an individual in a prison cell on a 24-hour-a-day suicide watch. The exercise of the police power to such an end is not only intrinsically ineffective but ultimately destructive to civil society. It not only puts that government into a state of war with a huge portion of the same population it’s constituted to serve but also guarantees that the officers of that government will be corrupted either by the manifold opportunities to profit from the desire for the prohibited substances or a corrosively fanatical zeal for the exercise of normative control. What’s worse? Government as prostitute or government as dominatrix? You’re readily able to make a comparison as regards the matter of illegal drugs. What we’re getting right now is *both*. If you truly believe that “[g]etting real control of the borders means curbing America’s appetite for illegal drugs,” then you have just abandoned all possibility for true border control, and that’s a helluva pity. The rest of your analysis appears to be the result of good observation and sound reasoning. Let me offer you a suggestion. Give up the “War on Drugs.” Karate isn’t working. Let’s try judo. The Controlled Substances Act and all other precedent and subsequent legislation at all levels - federal, state, and local - must be repealed and replaced by nothing whatsoever. Let the dopers have what they want, brought to them at market-clearing prices which will drop so low that the drug “Lords” of the worldwide criminal economy will see their profits disappear into thin air. De-incentivize the drug trade, allow the drug addicts who won’t save themselves to crash and burn (which they’ll do anyway), and absolve all government agencies of any responsibility for cleaning up any of the self-inflicted woundings the drug addicts suffer. The rest of the First World will rapidly follow suit. Only American idiocy in this regard has really held them in the “War on Drugs.” The productivity of the First World nations will no longer be channelled into Third World criminal enterprises. FARC and Hugo Chavez will be de-funded. The drug gangs of Central Asia will have markets of such vastly reduced profitability that they will not be able to secure the manpower and material resources to continue militarily significant operations. And there are thousands of other examples of changes for the better that I can leave to you as an exercise for the student. Consider the global impact of organized crime (including criminal regimes masquerading as diplomatically recognized governments) deprived of the financial resources they presently gain as the result of their activities in drug trafficking. Let the drug addicts crash and burn. The prolongation of their survival is not worth the perversion of civil government and the destruction of civil society that the “war on drugs” has been inflicting upon these United States for the past century and more. Punish criminal and negligent behavior resulting from drug-induced impairment (much as we punish acts of negligence or violence when a malefactor injures someone under the influence of alcoholic inebriation), but otherwise leave the drug addict to suffer the fate he has chosen for himself. And as a secondary effect, you’ll get the “real control of the borders” you desire.
I actually agree with the thrust of this email. I’ll have to address drug legalization in depth in a future column. The current column wasn’t about drug legalization — it looked at several of the “big issues” which affect immigration and broder security but are rarely addressed by legislators or analysts. Illegal immmigration and border security are complex issues, and the subtle (or “difficult”) dimensions rarely get discussed.
Over the years my view on “drug legalization” has changed. In my 1996 novel, PRISM, I have an Asian drug lord make a joke about “legalization with stigmatization.” However, that is no longer a joke. “Legalization with stigmatization” may be the best solution to narcotics trafficking — legalizing the drugs but “stigmatizing” their use. What’s stigmatization mean? Mandatory drug testing regimens for police, bus drivers, pilots, etc. is one example.
UPDATE: Another reader email re: drug legalization:
Drug consumption is a matter of the self-regulating restraint of the individual. In previous eras, significant time, energy and resources were consumed in efforts to sustain an individual or family (i.e. food, shelter, security, clothing, energy, etc.) There was no infrastructure that would supply all these needs with remarkable reliability at surprising low cost as today. Recreation and/or leisure were something out of fairy tales for most. In our age you can stay quite stoned or addicted without experiencing the material depravations the sober experienced in former times. In fact, huge industries exist, legal and illegal, to assist one with their drug use or dependency. Currently our culture can’t spell self-restraint let alone employ it. Under these circumstances, drug use will be with us a very long time.
The good doctor’s ideas might work, the key point being, “[A]llow the drug addicts who won’t save themselves to crash and burn (which they’ll do anyway), and absolve all government agencies of any responsibility for cleaning up any of the self-inflicted woundings the drug addicts suffer.” For the plan to work it is essential that the people who make bad choices bear the full consequences of those choices. If their families want to bankrupt themselves paying for detox and rehab programs, or if religious and other philanthropic organizations want to set up such programs, let ‘em, but don’t you dare spend a penny of taxpayer money to subsidize them. It’s time the government (at all levels) got out of the enabling business. Another essential would be to universally abolish “diminished capacity” resulting from the use of such substances as a legal defense in criminal and civil courts. The responsibility to bear alone the full burden of one’s bad choices must go hand in hand with the freedom to make those choices. That said, it won’t happen, because the nanny state philosophy is too firmly rooted in our political soil. Only half the equation would be enacted, and the government would continue to use taxpayers’ money to bail out the users, absorbing the costs of their multiple detoxifications and rehab programs, until they OD’d and killed themselves. The do-gooders rule, and as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Comment by ExRat — 4/5/2006 @ 10:52 am
This would deffinately help. I’d say we already have stigmatization of drugs, so all we would have to do is legalize them. If one needs an example of stigmatization just look at drunkiness. Alchol is legal, yet getting drunk exspecially in public is stigmatized against.
Comment by baronger — 4/5/2006 @ 11:18 am
“Legalization with Stigmatization” was the state for most of US history. Opium, cocaine, alcohol, tobacco were all dealt with this way. The disease model for drug abuse is the greatest impediment to legalization. Bring back a little ol’ time stigmatization for Dope Fiends, Souses, Chain smokers etc.
Comment by Dave Moelling — 4/5/2006 @ 1:06 pm
“Stigmatization” will mean taxing the hell out of recreational drugs, and restricting their distribution to bars and licensed distributors. chsw10605
Comment by chsw10605 — 4/5/2006 @ 3:38 pm
allow the drug addicts who won’t save themselves to crash and burn (which they’ll do anyway), I will not hold my breath on our society allowing drug addicts to just “crash and burn”. I agree stigmatization is a healthy societal mechanism for curbing unhealthy behavior but that too is falling by the wayside. In our past blue laws were not enforced but the consequences of breaking blue laws was stigmatization, now our society practically screams its inidiscretions. One example of this is the stigma associated with being fat.
Comment by Marcus Aurelius — 4/5/2006 @ 4:09 pm
“allow the drug addicts who won’t save themselves to crash and burn” This one phrase marks the whole screed as the deluded pseudo-libertarian fantasy. How long after the first addict ODs on a sidewalk will it be before the demonstrations begin demanding “free” “therapy” (costing the Feds and/or the states hundred of billions, and accomplishing nothing but transferring that money into the pockets of the “rehabilitation industry) be given for life to anyone walking into a clinic and proclaiming, “I have a substance abuse problem”? I say less than 48 hrs.
Comment by John "Akatsukami" Braue — 4/5/2006 @ 4:53 pm
I concur with your “legalize but stigmatize” approach. I abhore drugs and their devastating effects on individuals (and their friends and families). However, attempting to stop their flow into the country is worse than allowing them to be legally imported and distributed. Keep in mind that illegal drugs promote a completely underground economy, very dangerous criminal elements, huge profit motives to entice new users, and uncontrolled distribution. They also create a huge new class of lawbreakers that clog the justice system and divert vast, expensive resources from national security matters. The illegal activities also often FUND terrorist operations, too, so it is a lose-lose-lose situation for us. However, as long as it remains illegal, let’s do our best to stop it. I’m just suggesting we remove its illegality and regulate it.
Comment by E. T. Page — 4/5/2006 @ 8:56 pm
Legalization of in-demand drugs is essential or we continue to cede complete control of all production and commercial distribution of these drugs to unlicensed and unregulated drug dealers. It would be interesting to see you create a Topic on this subject. Please consider contacting me and LEAP for points of view you might not find elsewhere, given that they come from cops, judges, DEA agents and others with long experience on the front lines of the so-called “Drug War” Steve Heath
Comment by SteveHeath — 4/5/2006 @ 11:20 pm
I don’t see mandatory drug-testing for people in control of dangerous instrumentalities (such as police badges, buses and airplanes) as “stigmatization” but only as a reasonable precaution. But drug legalization? — essential if we are serious about a war on drug criminals.
Comment by Raw Data — 4/6/2006 @ 12:28 am
I’ve got to admit that I have long believed in what you call “legalization with stigmatization”… Sure, go ahead and use drugs, but be prepared to accept the consequences, like the loss of your job, the loss of certain privileges (like driving or flying an airplane, for example), and don’t expect much sympathy when those things happen. And it does not mean that anyone who partakes of drugs cannot be considered a pariah by large segments of society (as tobacco users are finding more and more). Yes, it would make some enforcement a little more complicated… like just how much of what drug in your system would constitute a legal presumption that you were impared (or had been impared within the previous x number of hours). But we certainly do that with alcohol now, so it’s not much of a stretch to extend the approach to other drugs (including even those that are currently legal). And, yes, something would need to be done to discourage access to drugs for children, but that, too, has been done for alcohol and tobacco (with some level of non-compliance, but that takes the issue back to being criminal). It is something that truly deserves a sincere national debate. Unfortunately, there are far too many people in high places who benefit from the current state of affairs… and not just those who are corrupt and getting under-the-table payments to look the other way. There are vast bureaucratic institutions that have been built to combat the trafficing and use of illegal drugs, and these folks will not give up their role in life easily. Just my $.02 DRK
Comment by DaveK — 4/6/2006 @ 4:45 am
I have long wondered what is wrong with our society that we have so many people who need drugs, alcohol, or whatever. I cannot imagine wanting to give control of my life over to a substance, whatever that substance might be. I am a 69 year old female and my memories of the beginings of the drug problem is when Robert Mitchum was a scandal and sent to jail for marijuana use. I know there must have been something going on in the 40’s and 50’s but even alcohol was not a problem in any schoolmate in my small town. As we went into the 60’s and so much debauchery , as I see it, began I only looked on and wondered why, what was wrong in their minds. I inadvertently raised my children to think they were too good for drugs. Snobbism apparently works even when you don’t realize what you are doing with it. We were just too good for that and looked down on them. Not until I was in my 50’s did I realize I had raised them to think they were “better than that.” And only then did I realize it because they told me.
Comment by Ruth H — 4/6/2006 @ 6:13 am
The cartels will fight it out to establish a monopoly, which will then set price well above the cost of production.Gov’t will have to distribute the stuff free.
Comment by scattershot — 4/6/2006 @ 6:54 am
Drug consumption is a matter of the self-regulating restraint of the individual. In previous eras, significant time, energy and resources were consumed in efforts to sustain an individual or family (i.e. food, shelter, security, clothing, energy, etc.) There was no infrastructure that would supply all these needs with remarkable reliability at surprising low cost as today. Recreation and/or leisure were something out of fairy tales for most. In our age you can stay quite stoned or addicted without experiencing the material depravations the sober experienced in former times. In fact, huge industries exist, legal and illegal, to assist one with their drug use or dependency. Currently our culture can’t spell self-restraint let alone employ it. Under these circumstances, drug use will be with us a very long time.
Comment by Brad Lena — 4/6/2006 @ 8:17 am
The good Doctor is right. The only point I would take issue with is that the elimination of drug trafficking would not necessarily limit illegal immigration or give us much better control of our borders, although certainly some. Shift the anti-drug industry over to counterterrorism. I have been castigated by good friends because I do not have children, as if this is the only reason for taking money out of narco-trafficking. I am afraid the implementation of the program would be fought tooth and nail by the anti-drug industry and every bleeding heart nanny statist on the planet. Though the right thing to do, is is preeminently politically incorrect.
Comment by Mark McGilvray — 4/6/2006 @ 2:44 pm
Our grandparents faced this problem and came to a common sense, American solution we should emulate. When alcohol was banned, for the best of reasons, in the great effort to enforce morality, and yes…for the children (look at the press of the time)the result was the growth of lawlessnes and organized crime. Our grandparents bit the bullet and re-legalized alcohol. They also regulated and taxed it. Glory be! The republic survived and prospered. Let’s face the unpleasant fact that we’ve made the same blunder and use the proven solution. Legalize, REGULATE (no drugs for minors)and tax. All of these “decriminalization” half measures leave the big evils in place.
Comment by Mark C Reardon — 4/6/2006 @ 4:28 pm
What I’m seeing in some comments is the belief that people, usually not the commenter, have to be saved from themselves. I submit that freedom means the freedom to screw up. An it harm none but you, go ahead and get yourself killed. You can’t force people to be sensible. At best you can try and persuade them, but if they don’t want to use their good sense, they’re not going to. Get right down to it, the better course of action may be to let people kill themselves off using drugs, and other such methods of self-execution. If a person is really determined to end his life by his own plan, and nothing will dissuade him, then let’s provide him with the tools he needs to do it reliably and quickly. As the late Robert Anson Heinlein once said, “If at first you don’t succeed try, try again. Then give up. No sense in making an ass of yourself.” You can’t run other people’s lives for them. You can offer all the advice you want, but choosing to follow it is up to your audience.
Comment by Alan Kellogg — 4/6/2006 @ 5:45 pm
I disagree with legalization. To work, legalization would have to allow full discrimination in hiring and firing, as well as making provision for permenent removal from medicare, medicaid, social security, worker’s comp, child support, etc… If you could get such a package past a group that just voted for legalization, you would have problems enforcing it. A user would have a very strong incentive to covertly purchase drugs, and would just go to the current dealers. It seems like you get nothing but the likelyhood of more trouble getting rid of people who have decreased their ability to function. Imagine am unfireable stoner in charge of some process at your local chemical plant. I believe that prohibition successfully handled the concerns of the anti-saloon movement. The bar is better then the saloon because 0-10 year olds are kept out, and the alcohol industry isn’t hypercompetitive anymore. A big part of the prohibition was that the industry was unresponsive to concerns about its practices and bribed politicions for help. Also they thought alcoholism was wholy nurture, rather then nature. Saloon
Comment by Bob — 4/7/2006 @ 2:25 pm
There are plenty of responsible and workable ways to regulate the now illicit drug trade. That is a minor issue compared to the vital national security reasons to do so. And do so fast. The border security issue is vital. Hundreds of metric tons of drugs cross our borders every year. Much of it originating with terrorist related organizations. According to the 2006 National Drug Threat Assessment of the US Justice Department, going forward, they expect that their interdiction SUCCESSES in central and south America will drive the FARC’s US distribution gangsters and alQaida heroin producing gangsters into partnership in the future. They are now planning for this new “chaos and instability” that they admit they are creating. Please see my essay: U.S. border security? “Creating chaos and instability”
Comment by Pat — 4/9/2006 @ 12:01 pm
“Imagine am unfireable stoner in charge of some process at your local chemical plant.” You’re funny. Do you have any idea what is already going on out there? Just because someone uses marijuana does not make them unemployable, or even irresponsible. Use is not abuse.
Comment by Temp — 4/11/2006 @ 11:08 pm