Illegal Drugs

SET IT FREE

The Case For Legalisation Is Difficult, But The Case Against Is Worse

SHOULD the ultimate goal be to put drugs on a par with tobacco and alcohol?
That would mean legalising both possession and trade (one makes no sense
without the other), setting restrictions on access that reflect a drug's
relative danger, and insisting on quality controls. Many people
understandably recoil at such a prospect. There is little doubt that
legalising drugs would increase the number of people who took them,
whatever restrictions were applied; and it would raise difficult issues
about who should distribute them, and how.

The number of drug users would rise for three reasons. First, the price of
legalised drugs would almost certainly be lower--probably much lower--than
the present price of illegal ones. This is because prohibition raises the
price by far more than any conceivable government impost might do. If
cocaine, say, were legal, estimates Mark Kleiman, a drug-policy expert at
the University of California in Los Angeles, the price would be about a
20th of its current street level. As for legal cannabis, he thinks, it
would cost about as much as tea. Surely no government would impose a tax
large enough to replace that imposed by enforcement. Indeed, if it did,
legalisation might backfire: smuggling and so crime would continue.

Second, access to legalised drugs would be easier and quality assured. Even
if the stuff were sold in the sort of disapproving way that the Norwegians
sell alcohol, more people would know how to buy it and would be less scared
to experiment. And third, the social stigma against the use of drugs--which
the law today helps to reinforce--would diminish. Many more people might
try drugs if they did not fear imprisonment or scandal.

A fourth force might be that of commercialisation. "Imagine Philip Morris
and the Miller Brewery with marijuana to play with," says Mr Kleiman. In no
time at all, the market would be backed by political contributions, just as
those for tobacco and alcohol have been for so long. And, judging by the
way state lotteries offer games designed to create compulsive gambling,
state distribution might well act as a positive encouragement to consumption.

So more people would dabble in drugs, including many more young people.
"Anything available to adults will be available to children," says Mr
Kleiman. In America, where--to the astonishment of Europeans--nobody under
21 is allowed to buy drink, plenty of youngsters have fake identity cards.
Some 87% of American high-school seniors have sampled alcohol, but only 45%
have tried cannabis. So the potential market is large. Drugs might become
as widely used as alcohol--and alcohol abuse might also rise. Work by
Rosalie Pacula of RAND, a think-tank in California, shows that young people
tend to see the two as complements, not substitutes.

Legalisation, argue Mr Reuter and his co-author, Robert MacCoun, would
result in "a clear redistribution of harms". Poor people would on balance
be better off, even if many more of them used drugs, if they were no longer
repeatedly imprisoned for doing so. But there would be a greater risk "that
nice middle-class people will have a drug problem in their family".

True, it is difficult to prove from past episodes of drug liberalisation
that such consequences would indeed occur. Crucially, it is hard to measure
the responsiveness of drug demand to changes in price. But the evidence for
cocaine and heroin suggests that demand may be at least as responsive as
that for cigarettes. The same may be true for other drugs.

In fact, nobody knows quite what drives the demand for drugs. Fashions come
and go. Some societies seem to resist drugs even though they are widely
available (the Dutch have moderate rates of marijuana use by European
standards); in others, such as Britain's, use is high despite tough laws.
As with other social trends--crime, unmarried motherhood, religious
observance--countries seem to be heading in roughly the same direction, but
with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

The best answer is to move slowly but firmly to dismantle the edifice of
enforcement. Start with the possession and sale of cannabis and
amphetamines, and experiment with different strategies. Some countries
might want the state to handle distribution, as it does with alcohol in
Scandinavia. Others might want the task left to the private sector, with
tough bans on advertising, and with full legal liability for any consequent
health risks. If countries act together, it should be possible to minimise
drug tourism and smuggling.

Move on to hard drugs, sold through licensed outlets. These might be
pharmacies or, suggests Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Centre,
mail-order distributors. That, after all, is how a growing number of people
in America acquire prescription drugs, including some that are not licensed
for use in their country. Individual states could decide whether to
continue to prohibit public sale. Removing the ban on possession would make
it easier to regulate drug quality, to treat the health effects of overuse,
and to punish drug-users only if they commit crimes against people or property.

The result would indeed be more users and more addicts, though how many is
unknowable. But governments allow their citizens the freedom to do many
potentially self-destructive things: to go bungee-jumping, to ride
motorcycles, to own guns, to drink alcohol and to smoke cigarettes. Some of
these are far more dangerous than drug-taking. John Stuart Mill was right.
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
Trade in drugs may be immoral or irresponsible, but it should no longer be
illegal.

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