7 reasons to end the war on drugs

Of all the government policy ideas that have been implemented over the last 40 years or so "the war on drugs" may well rank as one of, if not the, worst. Bonnie Kristian, a columnist at Rare, gives us 7 reasons for ending this policy:

1. Expensive. I’m always amazed that fiscal conservatives aren’t the loudest advocates of ending the drug war, because it has been one pricey failure. Government has spent more than $1.5 trillion since 1970 trying to prevent people from doing drugs—at this point, we’re dropping as much as $51 billion each year (split among all federal, state, and local government). That’s no small chunk of change, but it might be a little less ridiculous if it weren’t so…

2. Ineffective. The war on drugs does many things (more on that below), but the one thing it doesn’t do is stop people from using drugs. After more than four decades of prohibition, the U.S. has the highest rate of illegal drug use worldwide. In fact, even as drug war spending ballooned, addiction rates have stayed steady at about 1.3 percent. By historical and international standards, the drug war simply doesn’t work. Unfortunately, the drug war isn’t only ineffective, it’s also…

3. Counter-productive. Beyond failing to make people stop using drugs, America’s drug laws actually make abuse more likely. In Portugal—a wealthy, Western country with a culture and government close enough to our own to make this comparison fair—decriminalizing drugs resulted in abuse rates dropping by half. The Netherlands, which likewise has far more lenient drug laws than the U.S., has significantly lower rates of drug abuse than America because people are more likely to seek help for their addictions if they don’t risk jail in the process. But jailing addicts is just one way the drug war is…

4. Inhumane. While just over half of Americans now support legalizing marijuana for recreational use, eight out of ten support legalizing medical marijuana. That’s good news, because it can be cruel to deny medical marijuana to people who are sick or dying when it is the only thing which will ease their pain. Yet, forcing people to die painfully rather than letting them eat a special brownie isn’t the only way the drug war is…

5. Anti-family. The Washington Post’s Radley Balko covered a story recently in which the state of Kansas arrested a little boy’s mom after he argued in favor of legalizing medical marijuana in a school presentation. Caught with cannabis oil she’d used to alleviate her Crohn’s disease, now this single mother must fight to retain custody of her son. This is just one of many cases of the drug war breaking up families over nonviolent “crimes”—and the traumatizing consequences these children experience are just one more way the drug war is…

6. Dangerous. For our neighbors in Mexico, the drug war has produced tens of thousands of brutal murders, with some victims beheaded, dismembered or assaulted with ice picks. Here in the U.S., scarce prison space and police efforts are often devoted to non-violent drug violations while real criminals walk free. Meanwhile, just as alcohol prohibition caused violent crime to increase by criminalizing a high-demand industry, so the drug war increases violent crime rates. But even if none of these practical reasons to end the drug war existed, this state control over what we put in our own bodies would still be…

7. Inappropriate. As Thomas Jefferson said in his first inaugural address, “a wise and frugal Government [shall] restrain men from injuring one another [and] shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.”

The drug war embodies the opposite of this philosophy: It is the epitome of a busybody state determined to regulate our most basic choices. There are many good reasons not to do drugs, but it’s a decision that shouldn’t involve Washington.

These ideas are of course based on the U.S. experience but versions, be they less extreme, of these 7 reasons will likely apply to most countries around the world which in some form or anther have their own war on drugs.