For Release Sunday, December 14, 2008
© 2008 Washington Post Writers Group
WASHINGTON– Are we ready to repeat repeal?
December 5th marked the 75th anniversary of America’s decision, in 1933, to re-amend the Constitution and set ourselves free from alcohol prohibition, a 13-year failed experiment.
So is it time to free ourselves once more from an impractical and misguided prohibition effort–this one the ill-starred “war on drugs” of punitive federal and state laws passed since the 1970s? Yes, argued two groups–Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation–at a press event last week. They’re urging, instead, legalization and careful public regulation of mind-altering drugs (www.WeCanDoItAgain.com).
The parallels–our situation today and 1933–are intriguing.
Americans disobeyed alcohol prohibition by the millions. Booze even got tied to a rebellious, adventurous lifestyle appealing to young people. Before prohibition, New York City had 15,000 saloons; five years into prohibition it had some 32,000 speakeasies.
Today, surveys show 35 million Americans use marijuana yearly, and 114 million have in their lifetimes. Addicts to prohibited drugs, notes Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, “are famous radio personalities, spouses of major candidates, corporate America, Hollywood and your neighbors.”
Under prohibition, hard liquor–more potent and compact, more profitable to ship illegally–largely displaced beer and wine. With government quality controls gone, thousands of Americans were blinded or killed by “bathtub gin” and its equivalents. Today it’s similar: drug buyers purchase without knowledge of substances’ purity or safety, leading to many accidental deaths.
Then crime. Gangster syndicates were born in the ’20s as Al Capone and his ilk struggled (and killed) for control of the alcohol trade. As with drugs now, disputes about quality, delivery or price weren’t resolved in courts, but at the point of a gun.
Today’s prohibition-triggered terrorism is even worse. Violence and official corruption have deeply wounded Mexico, Colombia and other nations with drug rings that feed the U.S. market. This year alone, 4,000 Mexican police, prosecutors, journalists, drug cartel members and innocent bystanders have been slaughtered, imperiling that nation’s very stability.
Prohibition always imperils civil society. In the ’20s our courts were clogged with alcohol cases and alarming corruption of public officials. Today it’s the same for drugs, exacerbated by escalating criminal penalties our lawmakers approve.
U.S. drug-related arrests are rising yearly–1.8 million last year. The nation has been building more than 900 prison beds every two weeks for some 20 years, the huge costs trumping higher education and other critical investments. Our 2.3 million prisoner count is the highest of any nation on earth. Families are ravaged. Millions of ex-convicts are treated as social addicts, unable to get work (or in many states, even vote).
Yet many drug cases are for mere possession. Marijuana, for example, is less dangerous than alcohol (which can trigger violent, even murderous behavior). But we criminalize it. Aren’t sky diving, swimming, motorcycles, skiing or firearms possession equally if not more dangerous to users? We do inform people of dangers in those pastimes, notes Sterling, but we leave the choice to them. So why shouldn’t use of marijuana–which rarely, when legal, harms others–be different? And for truly addictive drugs like heroin, work out safe supply linked to treatment?
Today advocates of drug prohibition repeal have a new argument–economic. We are clearly in the worst economic and fiscal crisis since the Great Depression. The downturn will inevitably shrink budgets, trigger layoffs for schools, police, transit, child protection and more.
In the early 1930s, it was the same–economic crisis, with unemployment spreading. Repeal of alcohol prohibition created tens of thousands of new legal, taxpaying jobs. Repeal of drug prohibition could do the same now.
In fact, legalizing drugs would save roughly $44.1 billion yearly in government prohibition enforcement for arrests, prosecutions, court and incarceration costs, according to a fresh study by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron. About $30 billion of the savings would be made by state and local governments.
Plus, Miron estimates, legalizing drugs would yield taxes of $32.7 billion, assuming taxation of drugs at rates comparable to those now levied on alcohol and tobacco.
“We can repeal prohibition to restore the economy and pay for vital public services. We can do it again,” argues Sterling.
Finally, no one expects the new Obama administration to risk its early momentum on the drug issue–it’s clearly too “hot.” Yet Obama has expressed concern about our world-leading incarceration rates, about burdening youthful drug offenders with lifelong felony records, about “the devastating impact of the drug trade in the inner cities.”
And there’s the disturbing statistic: 13 percent of African-Americans are drug users, but blacks are nearly 60 percent of drug offenders in federal prisons.
Could the new administration tap the big Obama Internet networks for thoughts on drug reform? Who better to start forming a grassroots constituency for “the change we need”?
Neal Peirce’s e-mail is npeirce@citistates.com.
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