End The War On Drugs - Chapter 16
Final Thoughts
EDITOR’S NOTE: A few years ago, I penned a first draft of a short book, “End The War On Drugs” I offer an updated version, in serial form, here on Substack, for my paid subscribers. I will publish a chapter each week.
CHAPTER 1: A Catastrophic Failure
CHAPTER 2: A Brief History
CHAPTER 3: A Society Rooted in Individual Liberty
CHAPTER 4: Use vs Abuse
CHAPTER 5: Societal Cost
CHAPTER 6: Use and Addiction
CHAPTER 7: Free To Choose
CHAPTER 8: Prohibitions Create Business Opportunities
CHAPTER 9: Inner City Youths and the Permanent Stigma of Drug Convictions
CHAPTER 10: Prisons and the Corrections Industry
CHAPTER 11: Law Enforcement and the Militarization of Police
CHAPTER 12: Asset Forfeiture
CHAPTER 13: Expatriation of Dollars and Destabilization of Foreign Governments
CHAPTER 14: Practical Aspects of Legalization
CHAPTER 15: The Morality of the War On Drugs
While in principle I feel I shouldn't have to state this (as in my arguments should stand on their own), I do not condone recreational use or misuse of narcotics. I do not presume to speak with authority on their harmfulness or benefit, but I don't believe that partaking of them is an advisable thing to do, I generally don't care to be in their presence of people who possess them or are under their influence, though I’m not an absolutist. My position on what other people do is: if you’re an adult of sound mind, I have no business telling you what you should do or not do as long as you don’t do harm to or infringe on the rights of others or others’ property. The extent of my “business” is where and how I associate with others.
The magician, juggler, and libertarian Penn Jillette, on one of his podcasts, discussed how the fact that he neither drinks nor uses any recreational drugs (not even caffeine) has enabled him to have a totally clear and clean stance on the occasions when he's been pulled over by police, for example. Knowing that there isn't anything one is "guilty of" can be very empowering and liberating, and this is the position I find myself in with regard to the War on Drugs. I have never smoked anything (including cigarettes), nor do I have any desire to smoke anything, ever. I have no interest in pot, or coke, or meth, or heroin, or any other narcotic. And, apart from some morphine they gave me in the hospital the night after my back surgery, and the occasional post-surgical prescription painkillers (most of which expired in the medicine chest), I haven't partaken of any such drug in my life. The two recreational drugs I do enjoy (both in moderation), alcohol and caffeine, are legal and in no danger of becoming illegal. So, I get to laugh off those who presume to attack my opposition to the drug war with aspersions regarding my true motives. It is very empowering and it erases a huge source of potential personal doubt from my introspection on this subject.
There are some aspects of drug use and the War on Drugs that I haven't addressed. One of those is the harmfulness of the banned drug themselves. There is a great deal of debate and disagreement about whether and to what degree marijuana is harmful, in the short term or the long term, whether its medicinal use is legitimate, whether the benefit is more important than the harm, and so forth. Similar discussions and disagreements exist for most other banned substances, and drug (or alcohol or nicotine or gambling) addiction is often-to-usually a terrible and destructive thing. There are volumes to be written on the ills and evils of drug misuse and abuse. I don't take up that task, because those ills are, to put it bluntly, irrelevant to the question at hand.
There are countless legal substances and products that do us harm if we consume them. There are countless legal substances that are beneficial when consumed in moderation, or to a certain degree, but harmful if over consumed. The premise that a product's harmfulness, potential or otherwise, empowers government to ban our right to consume them is antithetical to the premise of individual liberty.
Of course, not everyone is so absolutist when it comes to liberty, especially on this topic. Many welcome the restrictions government places on a range of drugs, and many more welcome the controls the government places on legal drugs (e.g. the FDA, a topic for another day). For them, I refer the argument back to the practical: the utter failure of the War on Drugs in achieving its goals. I reiterate an early point - anyone can get just about anything he wants, with little risk and not much effort. Instead of results, we are left with the enormous cost and harm this War has done. And, from that perspective, the harmfulness of drugs is irrelevant. Prohibition has not mitigated or ended the problems - all it has done is create countless more.
Please come to terms with this:
It’s happening anyway.
People are consuming banned stuff every day. Despite all the restrictions and prohibitions, and for a third time, anyone who wishes to can procure just about any drug he or she wishes, with very little effort and without much risk. Fulfilling Richard Cowan’s Iron Law of Prohibition, those drugs are stronger and purer than ever, and the more effort that’s put into prohibition, the stronger the drugs will become. Every large seizure of drugs (sometimes literal tons) serves to remind us just how massive the demand is. To the producers, such seizures are merely the cost of doing business.
There is no panacea solution to the addiction problem. The War on Drugs will never achieve any sort of victory. The choice between legalizing recreational drugs and continuing prohibition is not a “surrender,” it is a reality check. Despite all the laws and all the money and effort expended, people continue to partake of their recreational substances of choice. We can continue down the disastrous path of punishment or we can come to terms with reality, shift our focus to treatment, and start to unravel all the massive enforcement spending and massive infringements of our liberties.
I hope that, if you started reading this e-book either opposed to or uncomfortable with legalization or decriminalization, at least some of the points in this piece might cause you to take some time and think about that opposition or discomfort. Our opinions should be open to modification or evolution over time, and it is a simple truth that many of those opinions aren't as informed as they could be. That's not an aspersion in any way - we have only so many hours in the day and there are countless things competing for those hours. The best thing we can do is acknowledge that, on many topics, there is a lot of information that we haven't yet been exposed to, and to be open to hearing other informed opinions.
The End.
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Peter.