WHAT HISTORY TEACHES US ABOUT DRUG PROHIBITION

In 1936 August Vollmer, highly respected Berkeley, CA police chief
addressed the International Association of Chiefs of Police, "Drug
addiction ... is not a police problem; it never has been and never can be
solved by policemen. It is first and last a medical problem."

Vollmer's own experience was different from ours. He'd lived during a
period when drugs which are now illegal were popular tonics and important
medicines, freely available from drug and grocery store shelves. Cocaine
was in Coca-Cola and some 40 other soft drinks as well. Morphine and heroin
were two of the three most popular medicines, more widely used than today.
When addiction occurred, it was dealt with as a medical problem.

The addiction level had stabilized at about 1.5% of the population (the
same as 1979 and 1997) - despite recurrent media alarms over "epidemic"
drug use. The impact of non-alcohol addiction on society before Prohibition
was so small that few historians bother to mention it. As Edward Brecher
noted in 1972, addicts weren't treated as much of a problem because in fact
they weren't much of a problem. However, no historian fails to note the
devastation wrought by Prohibition, starting in 1920.

Prohibition was our first Utopian quest for a "drug free" America, and the
arch villain was alcohol. Then as now, alcoholics outnumbered heroin and
cocaine addicts combined by more than 5 to 1. Voters were told that one
drink led to certain addiction and that alcohol was responsible for nearly
all of the crime and most of the insanity in America. Doctors even
suggested to alcoholics that they become addicted to morphine or heroin to
stop their crazed and violent behavior.

After passage of the 18th Amendment, the reformers promised, "we will soon
live in a world that knows no alcohol." America become swept up in
Prohibition fervor - some people also wanted to prohibit the dreaded and
ever dangerous 'Hesitation waltz'. Two 5 to 4 Supreme Court decisions in
1919 reinterpreted a 1914 tax act so that, in effect, heroin and cocaine
were also prohibited.

Prohibition allowed Vollmer and many others to see that the unintended
consequences of a prohibition law were far worse than those of the
prohibited substance. Repeal of the 18th Amendment followed when concerned
mothers - initially led by Republican women - in 1928 realized that
children had easier access to alcohol and were using it at a shocking rate
even as adult users respect for the law had plummeted. The criminal justice
system became swamped. Violent crime and corruption exploded. Petty thugs
received a bonanza which spawned today's powerful criminal organizations.
Prohibition on alcohol was repealed, but heroin and cocaine prohibition
remained as a criminal enterprise which also provided employment for the
bureaucracy set up to enforce Prohibition. Over time, and with a hiatus for
the second World War, the son of Prohibition grew larger than the father.
History has been allowed to repeat itself with a vengeance.

This brief history suggests there are many lessons to be learned from
careful analysis of the past. A commonly expressed fear is that change in
drug policy will produce a "nation of zombies." History tells us that there
is a real difference between drug use and addiction, and that a natural
human abhorrence of addiction insulates most of us from that danger. There
is also strong evidence that those who, for whatever reasons, are prone to
addiction are not deterred by force any more than a potential suicide might
be.

It's clear that our current division of drugs into legal and illegal is
arbitrary and no more contributes to solving drug problems than making all
Fords illegal would solve traffic problems. (In that analogy, marijuana
might be a tricycle.) Through the insight of observers like Vollmer along
with the experience of Prohibition, and models ranging from heroin
maintenance in Shreveport in the 1920s to modern experience in Switzerland
and Holland, we have strong indications that much less damage might be done
to a society willing to reach an accommodation with marijuana. And also to
allow "hard" drug addicts to get their drugs from doctors instead of
criminals.