HOW LONG DOES AN EXPERIMENT NEED TO CONTINUE BEFORE IT'S DECLARED A FAILURE?

For alcohol prohibition, our US version, it was about 13 years.
Between mafia crime, poisonings from adulterated beverages, and the
dropping age at which people were becoming alcoholics, Americans
decided that the "Noble Experiment" -- whether it should actually be
regarded as noble or not -- was a bad idea. And they ended it. New
York State did its part 75 years ago today, ratifying the 21st
amendment to repeal the 18th amendment, bringing the Constitution one
state closer to being restored. It took another half a year, until
December 5th, to get the 36 states on the board that were needed at
the time to get the job done. But Americans of the '30s recognized
the failure of the prohibition experiment, and they took action by
enacting legalization of alcohol.

Industrialist John D. Rockefeller described the evolution of his
thinking that led to the recognition of prohibition's failure, in a
famous 1932 letter:

"When Prohibition was introduced, I hoped that it would be widely
supported by public opinion and the day would soon come when the evil
effects of alcohol would be recognized. I have slowly and reluctantly
come to believe that this has not been the result. Instead, drinking
has generally increased; the speakeasy has replaced the saloon; a
vast army of lawbreakers has appeared; many of our best citizens have
openly ignored Prohibition; respect for the law has been greatly
lessened; and crime has increased to a level never seen before."

In the context of today's leading prohibition -- the drug war -- it's
important to realize that those other drugs were made illegal even
before alcohol was. It was December 17th, 1914, when the Harrison
Narcotics Act passed the US Congress -- ostensibly a regulatory law
to synchronize America's system with a new one being adopted by
countries around the world. But law enforcement interpreted it as
prohibiting drugs -- coca and opium, and derivatives of them such as
heroin and cocaine, were the ones in question then -- and law
enforcement got its way.

Which means that drugs have been illegal for almost a century. And
yet despite a century of prohibition -- a century of fighting opium
- -- the Taliban could somehow make a hundred million off of it last
year, that's how much of it is still being used. Our addiction rate
in the US is higher today than it is believed to have been at the
turn of the 20th century, and while other things that have certainly
changed that could affect drug use, if you're fighting a "drug war"
to end drug use, if addiction goes in completely the opposite
direction, then you have a problem. A recent example of things going
in the completely opposite direction as intended is cocaine prices on
the streets of our cities, which according to DEA data is about a
fifth of what it was in 1980 when adjusting for inflation and purity.
The goal of the eradication-interdiction-arrest-incarceration
strategy is to raise prices, in order to discourage use. Oh, and the
drugs have gotten worse too -- who had ever heard of crack cocaine
before 1986 -- 72 years after passage of the Harrison Act?

Marijuana prohibition, enacted in 1937, is an even less successful
experiment than opiate and cocaine prohibition. For the harder drugs
one might say at least that some young people have trouble getting
them, although that's really just the kids who aren't into drugs. But
marijuana can be purchased by virtually any high school student in
the country, at virtually any high school in the country, and
generally from other students. When kids are dealing drugs to other
kids, and that is happening everywhere, what is the result of the
experiment? What is its conclusion? Is further research really
necessary at that point?

No, it's not. The findings are on the drug prohibition experiment are
conclusive -- it's a failure. And while many of the people waging the
drug war believe it's noble, that belief is misguided -- with half a
million people incarcerated in US jails and prisons for drug
offenses, the prohibition experiment is anything but noble.

The day we legalize drugs is the day we can begin to clean up the
mess that the drug prohibition experiment has created.