THE CASE FOR LEGALISATION

Time For A Puff Of Sanity

IT IS every parent's nightmare.

A youngster slithers inexorably from a few puffs on a joint, to a snort of
cocaine, to the needle and addiction.

It was the flesh-creeping heart of "Traffic", a film about the descent into
heroin hell of a pretty young middle-class girl, and it is the terror that
keeps drug laws in place. It explains why even those politicians who puffed
at a joint or two in their youth hesitate to put the case for legalising drugs.

The terror is not irrational. For the first thing that must be said about
legalising drugs, a cause The Economist has long advocated and returns to
this week (see survey), is that it would lead to a rise in their use, and
therefore to a rise in the number of people dependent on them. Some argue
that drug laws have no impact, because drugs are widely available. Untrue:
drugs are expensive -- a kilo of heroin sells in America for as much as a new
Rolls-Royce -- partly because their price reflects the dangers involved in
distributing and buying them. It is much harder and riskier to pick up a
dose of cocaine than it is to buy a bottle of whisky.

Remove such constraints, make drugs accessible and very much cheaper, and
more people will experiment with them.

A rise in drug-taking will inevitably mean that more people will become
dependent -- inevitably, because drugs offer a pleasurable experience that
people seek to repeat.

In the case of most drugs, that dependency may be no more than a

psychological craving and affect fewer than one in five users; in the case
of heroin, it is physical and affects maybe one in three.

Even a psychological craving can be debilitating. Addicted gamblers and
drinkers bring misery to themselves and their families.

In addition, drugs have lasting physical effects and some, taken
incompetently, can kill. This is true both for some "hard" drugs and for
some that people think of as "soft": too much heroin can trigger a strong
adverse reaction, but so can ecstasy.

The same goes for gin or aspirin, of course: but many voters reasonably
wonder whether it would be right to add to the list of harmful substances
that are legally available.

Of Mill And Morality

The case for doing so rests on two arguments: one of principle, one
practical. The principles were set out, a century and a half ago, by John
Stuart Mill, a British liberal philosopher, who urged that the state had no
right to intervene to prevent individuals from doing something that harmed
them, if no harm was thereby done to the rest of society. "Over himself,
over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign," Mill famously
proclaimed. This is a view that The Economist has always espoused, and one
to which most democratic governments adhere, up to a point.

They allow the individual to undertake all manner of dangerous activities
unchallenged, from mountaineering to smoking to riding bicycles through
city streets. Such pursuits alarm insurance companies and mothers, but are
rightly tolerated by the state.

True, Mill argued that some social groups, especially children, required
extra protection. And some argue that drug-takers are also a special class:
once addicted, they can no longer make rational choices about whether to
continue to harm themselves. Yet not only are dependent users a minority of
all users; in addition, society has rejected this argument in the case of
alcohol -- and of nicotine (whose addictive power is greater than that of
heroin). The important thing here is for governments to spend adequately on
health education.

The practical case for a liberal approach rests on the harms that spring
from drug bans, and the benefits that would accompany legalisation. At
present, the harms fall disproportionately on poor countries and on poor
people in rich countries.

In producer and entrepot countries, the drugs trade finances powerful gangs
who threaten the state and corrupt political institutions. Colombia is the
most egregious example, but Mexico too wrestles with the threat to the
police and political honesty.

The attempt to kill illicit crops poisons land and people.

Drug money helps to prop up vile regimes in Myanmar and Afghanistan. And
drug production encourages local drug-taking, which (in the case of heroin)
gives a helping hand to the spread of HIV/AIDS.

In the rich world, it is the poor who are most likely to become involved in
the drugs trade (the risks may be high, but drug-dealers tend to be
equal-opportunity employers), and therefore end up in jail. Nowhere is this
more shamefully true than in the United States, where roughly one in four
prisoners is locked up for a (mainly non-violent) drugs offence.

America's imprisonment rate for drugs offences now exceeds that for all
crimes in most West European countries.

Moreover, although whites take drugs almost as freely as blacks and
Hispanics, a vastly disproportionate number of those arrested, sentenced
and imprisoned are non-white. Drugs policy in the United States is thus
breeding a generation of men and women from disadvantaged backgrounds whose
main training for life has been in the violence of prison.

Legalise To Regulate

Removing these harms would bring with it another benefit.

Precisely because the drugs market is illegal, it cannot be regulated.

Laws cannot discriminate between availability to children and adults.

Governments cannot insist on minimum quality standards for cocaine; or warn
asthma sufferers to avoid ecstasy; or demand that distributors take
responsibility for the way their products are sold. With alcohol and
tobacco, such restrictions are possible; with drugs, not. This increases
the dangers to users, and especially to young or incompetent users.
Illegality also puts a premium on selling strength: if each purchase is
risky, then it makes sense to buy drugs in concentrated form. In the same
way, Prohibition in the United States in the 1920s led to a fall in beer
consumption but a rise in the drinking of hard liquor.

How, if governments accepted the case for legalisation, to get from here to
there? When, in the 18th century, a powerful new intoxicant became
available, the impact was disastrous: it took years of education for gin to
cease to be a social threat. That is a strong reason to proceed gradually:
it will take time for conventions governing sensible drug-taking to develop.

Meanwhile, a century of illegality has deprived governments of much
information that good policy requires.

Impartial academic research is difficult.

As a result, nobody knows how demand may respond to lower prices, and
understanding of the physical effects of most drugs is hazy.

And how, if drugs were legal, might they be distributed? The thought of
heroin on supermarket shelves understandably adds to the terror of the
prospect.

Just as legal drugs are available through different channels -- caffeine from
any cafe, alcohol only with proof of age, Prozac only on prescription -- so the
drugs that are now illegal might one day be distributed in different ways,
based on knowledge about their potential for harm. Moreover, different
countries should experiment with different solutions: at present, many are
bound by a United Nations convention that hampers even the most modest
moves towards liberalisation, and that clearly needs amendment.

To legalise will not be easy. Drug-taking entails risks, and societies are
increasingly risk-averse. But the role of government should be to prevent
the most chaotic drug-users from harming others -- by robbing or by driving
while drugged, for instance -- and to regulate drug markets to ensure minimum
quality and safe distribution. The first task is hard if law enforcers are
preoccupied with stopping all drug use; the second, impossible as long as
drugs are illegal.

A legal market is the best guarantee that drug-taking will be no more
dangerous than drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco.

And, just as countries rightly tolerate those two vices, so they should tolerate
those who sell and take drugs.

Next article: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01.n1358.a08.html