(A Public Service Announcement from Suburra Publishing.)
Fact #8
The Horrible Side Effects of the Drug War are in Vain Because It Will Never Be Won
The insanity of the war on drugs is most evident when it is recognized how abysmally it has failed. The government likes to point to temporary dips in the usage of particular drugs as signs of success, but these dips are often accompanied by blips for other drugs – blips that go unmentioned. The popularity of individual drugs, and drugs as a whole, wax and wane just as with other consumer goods, regardless of government intervention.
One of the few objective measures of prohibition’s success is the price of
drugs. If the government was successful in stifling the flow of drugs, prices
should go up. However, prices for cocaine and heroin have fallen steadily since
the current drug war was launched by Ronald Reagan in 1980. This price drop does
not appear to be attributable to less consumption or less availability, e.g. in
1989 cocaine was more available to high school seniors than it was in 1980 (55
vs. 30%).
The price of marijuana has been more erratic, but its availability and its popularity are the same as they were in the mid-1970s. It is also worth noting that marijuana is now the number one cash crop in the United States, bigger than corn and wheat combined.
YEAH THANKS:
Drug Addicted Americans
1914 1.3%
1979 1.3%
2004 1.3%
Economics
The war on drugs will never succeed because of iron-clad economic laws. The
stated goal of drug enforcement is to drive up illegal drugs’ retail price. This
fails because recreational drugs have proven to be a necessity to the human
species. Some scientists have even argued that it is instinctual to desire
altered states of consciousness, e.g. little children spinning to create
dizziness. Since getting high is impossible to stop, the war on drugs is
self-defeating for two reasons.
One, since drugs have proven to be a
necessity, when the government manages to raise a drug’s price it also raises
the profit (incentive) for people to supply them.
Two, criminal enforcement of drug laws
actually strengthens the drug market. It is well known to those that witness the
drug-war first-hand that, “we only catch the stupid ones.” Law enforcement
largely locks up low-level or middle-level offenders. The drug kingpins that
politicians blame for Little Suzie’s choices are seldom caught. Law enforcement,
“weeds out the less effective, less ingenious participants and encourages the
more ruthless and the more cunning.”
The rising efficiency of drug
traffickers and dealers can be seen in more than just the price drop in the
finished product but also in its quality. Street heroin rose in purity from 5%
in 1982 to 27% in 1999. Street cocaine rose from 36% in 1982 to 64% in 1999.
Common Sense
The futility of keeping drugs off of the streets is demonstrated by other facts.
For example, America cannot even keep drugs out of its prisons. In 1997, 9% of
those in American prisons tested positive for drugs. This is the case even in
high security “supermax” prisons, where people such as Charles Manson have
tested positive. The government could lock up the entire population to keep it
from doing drugs and it would still fail.
Another clue is America’s entry points.
Media attention is given to the drug war’s battles at the border. This is
usually focused on smuggling through international airline flights and motor
vehicle traffic running from Mexico into the United States. The fact that
smugglers are even bothering to use these routes at all shows how ineffectively
they are policed because there are easier alternatives. The most obvious one is
walking them across deserted border areas like illegal immigrants – without
drugs – do every day.
A second route is through the mammoth
forty foot long steel containers of international commerce that are flipped from
ships to railroad carts and trucks. Checking just one of these containers is a
huge task and Los Angeles’s port alone can bring in 130,000 of them in a month.
In Los Angeles, customs inspectors struggle to check even 2% of these. The
entire annual cocaine supply for the United States could fit in thirteen of the
boxes. The entire annual heroin supply could fit in just one.
Even if drug importation miraculously
ceased Americans could simply grow their own. Coca and poppies can both be grown
on American soil. Papaver somniferu – the poppies that provide heroin – grow
through sidewalk cracks in Seattle, along interstate highways, and are planted
by gardeners like Martha Stewart. To get opium from these plants one merely has
to slit the pod with a knife. It is probably not a coincidence that poppies are
frequently the top-selling dried flower.
Lastly, people can always switch to other drugs. The thorough prosecution of particular drugs in the past has simply turned people to alternatives. The prohibition on opium and cocaine drove people to use heroin. Alcohol’s prohibition was the “mainspring of the marijuana boom.” The raising of the minimum legal age for alcohol consumption to 21 in the late 1970s and 1980s also stoked marijuana demand.
Little Suzies that want to get high will always be able. One readily available backup is huffing inhalants (gasoline, glue, and paint thinners). Unlike other recreational drugs (e.g. heroin and marijuana) chronic use of inhalants causes permanent brain damage. The practice of huffing does not get as much government attention or media coverage despite the fact that 8% of middle school students and 15% of high school seniors participate. It could be argued that the lack of attention is because battling huffing provides no financial boon to the criminal justice system.
It’s All About Suzie
What If We Stop Being Pussies?
The response of the zealots to the decrepit state of the war on drugs is to step
it up. However, the limits of punishments are being reached. When marijuana
users are serving life sentences the only thing left to do is kill them and this
has been tried before to no avail. Saudi Arabia publicly decapitated drug
smugglers to stem the flow of drugs in its country. The flow did not stop.
Instead such a backlog on beheadings was created that in 1995 weekly chopping
days had to be expanded from two days to four.
All information taken from You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos, Book I by Robert R. Arthur. Detailed documentation of sources can be found therein.
Page last modified August 29, 2007.