A RECORD OF FAILURE: RE-EVALUATING THE WAR ON DRUGS

Despite police, prison and propaganda, illegal drugs are readily available.
A think-tank analyst argues that drug warriors have been unable to
demonstrate that social and economic benefits of prohibition outweigh the
costs.

Since drug prohibition became a Canadian reality in 1913, governments have
not seriously reconsidered drug policy, preferring instead to follow
whatever flawed "solution" may be currently in vogue. Such desultory
thinking has only served to retard health care, fuel the law enforcement
industry and empower organized crime.

Clearly, the record of drug prohibition is a record of failure. The
available evidence confirms that most of the serious problems we associate
with illegal drug use are caused either directly or indirectly, not by drug
use itself, but by drug prohibition.

The evidence of failure is all around us. The greatest anti-drug
enforcement effort in history (particularly on the part of the U.S.)
hasn't, as the venerable Cato Institute's David Boaz concluded in 1997,
"stopped either the use or the abuse of drugs, or the drug trade, or the
crime associated with black-market transactions."

Despite the cops, courts, prison, and propaganda that collectively comprise
the War on Drugs, illegal drugs are everywhere, available to just about
anyone who wants them. Today, the levels of illegal drug production and
illegal drug profits are at an all-time high.

The worldwide trade in illicit drugs is currently estimated at $600 billion
- -- eight per cent of all international trade, sufficient to line the
pockets of an ever-expanding global criminal class.

But, even more alarming, usage is much higher than before prohibition for
some drugs, such as cocaine. Overall, drug addiction levels have remained
steady for the past 20 years. Today, in our high schools, 23 per cent of
teenage boys are regular marijuana users.

The drug war has been such an overwhelming "success" that one in 10 B.C.
residents now either smokes or grows marijuana or both. Our annual
marijuana crop is worth $4 billion, making it B.C.'s most lucrative
agricultural product.

In our prisons, illegal drugs are plentiful and their use is widespread. No
matter what they try, prison wardens can't keep drugs out. As American drug
policy expert James Ostrowski has suggested, this is an important lesson
for those who'd turn North America into a prison to stop drug use.

A staggering 80 per cent of drug-related deaths aren't the result of drug
use -- they're the result of drug prohibition. An illegal drug is one not
subject to regulation, quality control or product liability. As a result,
drug-taking has become a health lottery where the losers fatally overdose.
In Vancouver, 400 people will die this year of a drug overdose.

Drug-related AIDS is almost entirely the result of prohibition. For
example, 50 per cent of new HIV patients are intravenous drug users.

Why such alarming health statistics? Because the drain prohibition exacts
on the public purse prevents the necessary facilities and programs (e.g.,
detox, rehabilitation and needle exchange) from being funded at anything
more than a fraction of current demand.

On a day-to-day basis, the most tangible cost of the drug war is criminal
behaviour. Again, most drug-related crime stems not from actual drug use,
but from drug prohibition. Simply put, prohibition stimulates crime. In
downtown Vancouver, for example, recent statistics indicate that 90 per
cent of property crime is drug-related.

Why is there so much crime? Because so many addicts must spend their days
stealing the large amounts of money -- on average, $500 to $1,000 a day --
needed to buy their drugs.

But why are the drugs so costly? Again prohibition is the culprit; the only
reason is their illegality. The street price of cocaine and heroin is from
50 to 100 times the pharmaceutical cost of producing these drugs.

The bottom line is that drug prohibition has created a business environment
in which there's nothing as profitable as smuggling and selling illegal
drugs. For the drug entrepreneur, the profit margins are extremely high and
the profits are tax-free.

Domestic demand for illicit drugs is sufficiently large that the bulk of
police, prison and court resources are devoted to drug law enforcement.
What's the cost to society? The annual economic cost of enforcing North
American drug laws is estimated at $87 billion.

It is now a truism that the drug trade is like an old mattress: Whenever
it's pushed down in one area, it springs up in another. This is because
drug use is sensitive neither to price nor to punishment.

History shows us the demand for drugs rises and falls largely according to
social factors impervious to government legislation. But drug use, like
alcohol use, is sensitive to social mores and education.

Revealingly, drug warriors can't defend prohibition on rational
cost-benefit grounds. They have been unable to demonstrate that the social
and economic benefits of drug prohibition outweigh the social and economic
costs. The War on Drugs has failed to reduce the supply and consumption of
illegal drugs. But it has succeeded in stoking the AIDS crisis, swamping
our prisons, and creating very wealthy drug dealers.

Patrick Basham is director of the Social Affairs Centre at The Fraser
Institute, a Vancouver-based economic think-tank.