CONSIDER ARGUMENTS FOR LEGALIZING, REGULATING DRUGS

Sometimes the majority has good intentions, but consequences of good
intentions are often bad public policy. The War on Drugs is a cure worse
than the disease. We have experimented with both prohibition of alcohol and
drugs used for recreation purposes (heroin, tranquilizers, marijuana,
etc.). Perhaps we are on the threshold of criminalizing tobacco for adults.

What have we learned? By using criminal penalties, if eradication of use is
the goal, failure is certain. If moderately curbing use is the goal,
success is possible, but at a cost that is unacceptable.

Some say if we can put a person on the moon, we can stop illegal drug use.
Wrong. It is easier to send a person beyond our atmosphere than it is to
change the habits of millions of people.

Today, tobacco is our most deadly drug and alcohol is close behind. And
then come numerous also-rans of cocaine, heroin, etc. Society tolerates but
regulates the first two drugs. For the others, the slammer is the favorite
"cure."

As long as millions of people desire drugs, they will be supplied. When
police are most effective, they bust many dealers and confiscate pounds or
even tons of drugs. Then the price on the street goes up. Laws of supply
and demand deem purchases will decline when price increases, even for
addictive substances.

But as price increases so does property-related crime. Drugs cost more so
holdups and burglaries increase. (And when price goes up, more people go
into sales.) Detroit once had a very unofficial experiment of not busting
heroin dealers for a period of time. Price went down; use likely went up;
and property-related crime dropped.

Also violent crime increases when drug possession is criminalized. Milton
Friedman, a conservative, Nobel Prize-recipient economist, has demonstrated
that during Prohibition homicides rose dramatically due to fighting among
gangs over areas for exclusive distribution of alcohol. This is how
organized crime spread from Sicilian neighborhoods to around the nation.
After alcohol's relegalization during the New Deal, homicides dropped
dramatically. Crack and heroin prohibition has duplicated the turf-war
carnage and would likely follow the pattern of declining number of
homicides with legalization. Until the second decade of this century,
cocaine and heroin were legal in most locales. Even Owensboro had an opium
treatment center at the turn of the century.

Another problem is black market drug dealers often adulterate their
product. In the '20s bathtub gin poisoned its customers, and today's crank
labs in abandoned shacks don't produce anything like pure methamphetamine.
Being good business people, dealers generally seek to sell a stronger
product. Since whether your product is expensively potent or only mildly
stimulating, each sale has the same potential for a bust and sentence. Why
not sell the "good" stuff for a premium price and maximize the profit of
each sale? Marijuana today is both far more expensive and far more potent
than what Bill Clinton failed to inhale as a young man.

Conversely, once alcohol was legalized, a long slide in potency began.
Contrary to critics who claim without evidence that after legalization
drugs will only become stronger, after alcohol was relegalized beer and
wine gradually replaced bourbon as the drink of choice.

Daviess County has paid the price as almost a score of distilleries died
during this decline in potency. Also contrary to critics of legalization,
consumption of alcohol per person has dropped steadily. Availability does
destroy the attractiveness of once "forbidden fruit." Denmark had the same
experience when it legalized pornography.

If all of the above is not enough for the most diehard prohibitionist to
rethink his or her position, one must realize both the financial cost and
the destruction of human potential that follows from the penal approach to
banning drugs. Forty percent of arrests are drug-related (more if we
include alcohol). The cost in wasted lives and prison is immense,
especially since many drug arrests are of people who have never committed a
violent felony. These arrests help keep Jailer Harold Taylor's cells full
and state monies coming into the county, but can anyone really think that
incarcerating nonviolent drug users is more cost effective and humane than
drug treatment?

To Judge Tom Castlen's and Gus Gesser's (among others) credit, a new
approach, drug court, is being taken, which emphasizes treatment over
prison. And unlike prison, drug treatment works -- the rate of recidivism
is quite low with proper screening. California's voters have mandated
treatment over prison for all first-time, nonviolent drug offenders. Though
it is not legalization, it's a clear statement by voters in the most
populous state that addiction needs to be treated as a disease.

Making counties dry (two-thirds of Kentucky) can't stop the use of alcohol,
forbidding possession and sale of tobacco to teens will not stop teen
smoking and prohibition of recreational drugs will not end their use.
Regulate these substances but don't prohibit them. The latter is a fool's
errand.

By the way, I witnessed four friends' burials due to drug-related
activities. And I do not drink alcohol, smoke tobacco or take drugs for
recreational purposes.

William Conroy is a professor of political science and history at Kentucky
Wesleyan College, but his column represents only his personal opinion.

William Conroy