Drugs, Economics, and Liberty
Only a few people would dispute that narcotics can harm people, whether that harm is in the form of damage to the body, mental and physical dependency, or threats to social relationships. However, there is not nearly as much consensus as to what the correct public response to narcotics use and sales is. Ideas range from decriminalization to the current outright prohibition.
Let’s start by acknowledging that there is no question whatsoever that the sale and use of narcotics in our country could be virtually eliminated. It could be accomplished at a monetary cost far less than the hundreds of billions spent so far in the nation’s “war on drugs.” We could suspend habeas corpus and constitutional guarantees against unreasonable searches to more easily gather evidence on people who use or sell drugs. We could make those arrested bear the burden of proof of innocence and on conviction summarily execute them. Countries with far less wealth and far fewer police resources than ours have used that strategy to reduce drug use, and so could we. Thankfully, I think most Americans would, and should, recoil in disgust at that kind of drug-war strategy. So we have to examine less draconian measures. A few thoughts on the economics of drug trade might give us guidance.
There’s no mystery why people use mind-altering drugs: It makes them feel good, at least temporarily. That’s not only true of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana; it’s also true of mind-altering products like cigarettes, cigars, coffee, tea, wine, and whiskey. There’s considerable evidence that many people prefer their vices in a diluted form. Hence the popularity of filtered cigarettes, light beer, wine coolers, and mixed drinks. The same seems to be true, at least to some extent, about illicit drugs.
When what are seen as vices are legally prohibited, supply responses change people’s behavior. Imagine there’s a supplier of illegal marijuana. Government steps up its efforts to stop its supply by increasing interdiction efforts, along with stiffer fines and prison sentences. Which is easier to conceal and transport—a million dollars’ worth of marijuana or a million dollars’ worth of cocaine? Obviously, it’s cocaine because there is far less bulk per dollar of value. Thus one effect of prohibition is the tendency toward increased sales and use of more-concentrated forms of drugs that can include products such as crack cocaine, ice, and meth.
Another impact of prohibition is on prices. To supply the addiction needs of those who are not able to pay the prohibition-induced higher prices of cocaine, producers will seek to find cheaper substitutes such as crack. This is borne out by the fact that crack is far more popular among poorer addicts than wealthier ones.
Invitation to Make a Killing
Illegality, high prices, and high profits, coupled with greater government drug-interdiction efforts, also encourage entry by suppliers who are more ruthless and innovative, and who have a lower regard for civility and the law. Panty-waisted, petty, and otherwise law-abiding practitioners are ousted. In addition, since the courts are unavailable to enforce agreements made among traders, as in the case of legal transactions, disputes are more likely to be settled through violence.
Yet another supply response to prohibition, largely ignored in the drug debate, is the inevitable tendency toward corruption of public officials. Today’s drug trade, like the Prohibition liquor trade, could not flourish without official corruption. It’s not difficult to see how police officers, customs inspectors, and other law-enforcement officers earning $50,000, $60,000, or $70,000 a year could succumb to the temptation of $5,000 or $10,000 bribes to look the other way. No doubt there are elected officials who are also tempted by bribes. Even otherwise law-abiding nondrug-using parents are quieted by money and expensive gifts from their children who are involved in the drug trade.
The war on drugs restricts supply and raises prices. When one drug operation is busted up, another one emerges virtually overnight to take its place. When the DEA, FBI, and local police make a big drug bust, law-abiding citizens should not be jubilant. Instead, they should expect higher prices, leading to more ruthlessness among drug users and buyers, more crime and corruption, and greater social costs.
Sanctioning Civil Rights Abuses
Another very dangerous cost of the war on drugs is that it has given respectability to the violation of our constitutional guarantees. Civil-forfeiture laws have been enacted, in clear violation of the Fifth Amendment, under which property can be confiscated without due process. A parent can have his automobile or house confiscated if, even when unbeknown to the parent, his offspring uses it in connection with drug use or sales. Anti-money-laundering laws violate our rights to privacy in our transactions. Murderers and rapists have been freed from crowded prisons to make room for nonviolent drug users.
From the demand, or personal use, side of the drug issue, what should we do? Lysander Spooner (1808–1887), one of the great American thinkers of the nineteenth century, suggested that while vices may be self-destructive or offensive, like all peaceful, voluntary activities they should remain outside the province of law and government. The vices Spooner referred to include “gluttony, drunkenness, prostitution, gambling, prize-fighting, tobacco-chewing, smoking and snuffing, opium-eating, corset-wearing, idleness, waste of property, avarice, hypocrisy, etc., etc.” Spooner added that if practitioners of these and other vices cannot be reformed voluntarily, if they go on to what other men call destruction, then they must be permitted to do so. He reminds us that the maxim of law is there can be no crime without criminal intent to invade the property or person of another.
People practice vices for what they perceive as their own happiness—not to violate the rights of another. In a free society people have the right to destroy their own lives but not those of others. When government coercion is used to promote virtue, there cannot be liberty. However, there is conduct that people might engage in under the influence of narcotics, such as impaired driving, robbery and burglary to fund their habit, and other acts that threaten the rights of others. Such acts are already criminal and should be punished.
We Americans have to ask ourselves if there is a better way to deal with the drug problem. I think there is. We need to focus more on the demand side of the drug problem. After all, most people don’t use marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. The reason they don’t has nothing to do with its price or the fact it’s illegal. Their decision has much more to do with their values and common sense. Rather than near-exclusive reliance on the law and government, I believe greater and longer-lasting gains can be made through civil society, where we can cajole, admonish, and teach people about the destructive effects of narcotics—and ostracize them if necessary.
It is foolhardy to have a public policy that forces people hell-bent on destroying their own lives to become violent criminals and destroy the lives of innocents in the process. It is also foolhardy for society to create circumstances in which official integrity is compromised and our constitutional guarantees are violated.
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Comment by jt on 6 June 2010:
This is rediculous to try and legalize. Those who choose to break the current laws and contiune to try to supply and create are exactly those that our society need to recognize as dangerous devients and who we dont need on the streets.
Putting money over matter(human lives espcially) thats the concern,
Drug laws catch more than Drug dealers!!!
They catch devients PERIOD..
Comment by Jes Beard on 8 June 2010:
jt seems mighty upset by deviants, without even suggesting that deviants or deviancy hurts anyone. Deviancy merely means being different, which is at the very core of freedom and liberty.
While I would not disagree with anything Williams wrote, he did fail to include one of the bigger problems coming from the “war on drugs.” That problem is the way in which such laws tend to corrupt police, law enforcement in general and the courts themselves, far beyond the possibility of anyone being tempted to take a bribe.
Drug offenses tend to be offenses in which police quite routinely need to seriously violate a suspect’s Constitutional rights in order to make out a case. A police officer sees someone who he thinks might be a drug user, stops him without a real basis, and then searches him without having made an arrest for any offense the officer was aware of (which would provide a legal basis for a search) and also without consent.
When the case goes to court the officer lies about the basis for the stop and also about where the drugs were found or whether the defendant gave consent to search. And often the lies are pretty clearly just that, but the prosecuting attorney and the Court turn a blind eye to the officer’s perjury and violation of the defendant’s Constitutional rights, because if the officer does not lie and they don’t let him, the evidence is not allowed in and the case gets dismissed.
This corruption of the system is routine.
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Comment by Leisa M. on 24 August 2010:
Thank you for this truth. I am struggling with this issue due to a personal experience in my family. I know from what I have seen that this is true. However, from a conservative Christion stance, I have had trouble transitioning. I’m not sure how we took ‘tough on crime’ to a third world criminal justice system. We are guilty.
Comment by Denise on 28 February 2011:
To my “deviant” friend JT who commented June 6,2010….. Just in case you didn’t know prior to 1909 cocaine, marijuana and opium were legal. Anyone could walk up to their local pharmacy and purchase any of these. There was very little drug related crimes and violence. It wasn’t until these things were made illegal that our wonderful country started having “issues” with drug related crimes and violence. Drug cartels, drug suppliers and drug dealers still provided these drugs but at a higher cost. This in turn began the drug related crimes and violence that people like you are scared of. If our government was smart enough they would legalize these drugs again. Imagine the tax dollars that could be made. There isn’t much difference between alcohol and marijuana. One difference that has been noted in several publications is the fact that there have been thousands of alcohol related abuses towards other people. For example, many men have come home from a night out drinking with the guys, walk in the house and beat their wives. Have you ever heard of a guy smoking one to many joints then coming home and beating his wife? Probably not. That guy is more than likely coming home and asking for something to eat to curb the “munchies”. Seems much less deviant don’t you think? I guarantee, depending on your age, your grandmother or great grandmother had her own stash of “snuff”. Isn’t that what they called cocaine back then? I can’t find any evidence of an upsurge in crimes and violence when cocaine and opium were being used “back in the day”. If people like JT, who’s comment just totally annoyed me, really took a look at why drugs were made illegal in this country they might be shocked. It wasn’t to keep us safe, or protect us from “mean” drug dealers (by the way there weren’t drug dealers back then)it was plain old politics. Google “the opium exclusion act of 1909″.This is where it started. This “war on drugs” has done nothing but violate our rights as Americans. Back in those days there was very little drug-related crime or violence. Drug use and addiction was not a problem for the American public. Drug related crime, violence and addiction has increased hundreds of times since the “war on drugs” started. Another problem with the “war on drugs” is that it allows the “government” to violate of our constitutional guarantees. Civil-forfeiture laws have been made that violate the Fifth Amendment. These laws say that property can be confiscated without due process. A parent can have his automobile or house taken away if their kid uses or sells drugs in it. It doesn’t matter if the parents had no idea their kid was using or selling drugs from the house or car they can still loose it. Why don’t you google Opium and CIA. Very interesting reading. Our government doesn’t do anything now a days that is in the “peoples” best interest. They are more concerned with big business, money and power not the whats best for Americans. Try reading some literature on medical marijuana. You obviously have no idea how this benefits cancer patients, MS patients, etc. Why don’t we hear about the thousands of crimes related to legal drugs like vicodine, xanex and hundreds of other “legal” drugs.These are all backed by big pharmaceutical companies. These are the drugs of choice for middle american high school kids. Your kids are probably taking a few of your pills daily. Get a clue and educate yourself before you start calling 70% of americans deviants.
Comment by sam on 16 March 2011:
fuck u bellend
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People are pushed into crime not generally because they want to have the constant tension that they may or may not be caught at any given inopportune moment. They do what they do because they are presented with few choices. I had a friend who was going to college for engineering. His family cut him off because he refused to go to church with them because he was atheist. With no money and shitty job schedules and crap economy he paid his way through college selling Marry-J. Who’s fault is it? The consumer who wants to escape his crappy life? The family who was trying to save their son from eternal death? The government for not providing enough grants or at least jobs for undergrads? Or the college student that will do anything to go to college? Before you start labeling asshole think about what your saying! Did you know that George washington grew hemp and the decloration was printed on hemp paper? We dont need laws against hemp. We need a better economy! More government Jobs for the masses. You dont want a dealer in your hood give him a job!
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