THE CASE FOR MAKING DRUGS LEGAL

This is not to say legalization would eliminate all drug-related problems.
No policy is capable of doing that. But legalization would have clear and
substantial benefits, with little increase in the problems related to drug
use itself.

Without endorsing full legalization, about 500 distinguished signers
affirmed in an open letter to the United Nations this month that the
international drug war now causes more harm than drug abuse does.

The foundation of the case for legalization is the indisputable yet
oft-ignored fact that drug prohibition does not eliminate drug markets or
drug use. Instead, it simply moves them underground. Drug prohibition does
raise some costs of doing business for suppliers, and it probably reduces
demand by some consumers.

But substantial drug consumption persists even in the countries that work
hardest at prohibition, and this fact means prohibition has enormous
adverse consequences for society.

Perhaps the most imporant negative consequence is increased crime. While it
is incontrovertible that many criminals consume drugs, this fact in no way
demonstrates that drug use causes crime. Instead, the available evidence
suggests that drug prohibition causes most drug-related crime, via several
mechanisms.

Prohibition prevents buyers and sellers of drugs from using the criminal
justice system to resolve disputes, so these persons use violence instead.
Prohibition also diverts criminal justice resources from the deterrence of
nondrug crime, as when nondrug offenders are released early to ease
drug-war-induced prison overcrowding. And prohibition facilitates the
corruption of police, judges, and politicians, partly because huge profits
are at stake, partly because the legal channels of influence are not
available to black market suppliers.

The increase of crime through prohibition implies another unwanted side
effect, an increased demand for guns. Not only do black market suppliers
tend to arm themselves heavily, since, unlike suppliers of legal
commodities, they cannot resolve commercial disputes by using lawyers, but
the increased violence amid prohibition implies a greater demand for guns
from the rest of society, as law-abiding citizens purchase arms for
self-defense. The increased violence also brutalizes society.

Prohibition also means diminished health for drug users and even some
nonusers. In a black market, drug users face heightened uncertainty about
the quality and purity of the drugs they purchase, plus an incentive to
consume drugs using techniques, such as injection, that are unhealthy but
give the biggest bang for the buck. These characteristics of illegal
markets lead to accidental poisonings and overdoses, plus the sharing of
contaminated needles and increased transmission of AIDS.

In a legal drug market, inadvertent overdoses and accidental poisonings
would be rare. Moreover, aided by lower drug prices and the legal sale of
syringes, more users would practice safer means of taking drugs, obviating
the question of whether governments should fund programs such as needle
exchange.

A still further harm of prohibition is heightened racial tension. In any
society, the underground sector attracts especially those persons who
believe that their chances for advancement in the legal sector are limited
by racism, poor schooling, and the like. In the United States, this means
that blacks and some immigrant groups have participated disproportionately
in the drug trade, not because they are more likely to use drugs nor
because they are inherently less law-abiding, but because it has been
rational for them to do so.

But this over-representation of blacks and immigrants in the drug trade
tends to validate negative stereotypes, and it means that police, even if
nonracist, enforce prohibition especially against these groups. This fuels
perceptions of selective enforcement and exacerbates racial animosity.

Another intangible but critical consequence of drug prohibition is
diminished respect for the law. Under prohibition, millions of citizens
sell and use drugs with relative impunity, while the rest of society bears
witness. Everyone, therefore, learns that laws are for suckers: Those who
evade usually get what they want. People are thus encouraged to violate
other laws or social norms, whenever it is convenient to do so. This
''disrespect for the law'' can destroy a free society, since governments
cannot maintain order and civility without widespread, voluntary compliance
with the law.

On top of all these deleterious effects, using prohibition to deter drug
consumption means society cannot levy sin taxes on sales of drugs or
collect income taxes from those working in the trade. This means drug
suppliers and drug users - persons deliberately breaking society's rules -
gain at the expense of taxpayers generally, rather than contributing their
fair share.

Of course, sin taxes on drugs would have to be moderate, or they would
themselves generate a black market and all the attendant undesirable
consequences. But widespread experience with alcohol and cigarettes
suggests substantial taxes can be imposed without generating significant
evasion.

Substitution of a moderate sin tax for prohibition thus turns drug profits
into tax revenues while simultaneously reaping diverse additional benefits
for society. And the costs of enforcing a moderate sin tax would likely be
small in comparison with the costs of enforcing prohibition; most of the
necessary apparatus already exists for the collection of alcohol and
cigarette taxes, and voluntary compliance with a sin tax is far less costly
to drug users than the abstinence required under prohibition.

The beneficial tax and expenditure effects of outright legalization help
explain why this policy is preferable to decriminalization - under which
small-scale possession and purchase are permitted but production and sale
are still outlawed - since decriminalization by itself does little to
convert the untaxed, black market for drugs into a legal, taxable one.

Of course, the problems of prohibition might be tolerable if it were highly
effective in reducing the harms caused directly by drug consumption, or in
deterring drug use by minors. But prohibition appears to reduce drug use
mainly among casual users, whose consumption imposes little cost on
society, while failing to deter drug use by more determined users, whose
consumption accounts for the lion's share and is more likely to harm users
and others. The forbidden-fruit allure that prohibition creates might well
encourage initial experimentation with drugs by teenagers, who are
particularly vulnerable to drugs' negative consequences.

Even when prohibition does deter harmful drug use or keeps teenagers away
from drugs, this often results in greater alcohol consumption (rather than
a diminished ''gateway'' effect), with similar or more deleterious
consequences. The critical question therefore asks the extent to which
prohibition reduces abusive kinds of drug consumption or prevents
adolescent drug use. The answer, according to abundant evidence, is not much.

The case for legalization of drugs is overwhelming. This conclusion does
not presume that legalization will be accompanied by increased government
funding for drug treatment, or even that existing funding must continue;
the desirability of subsidized drug treatment is a logically separate
issue, which requires its own analysis.

Nor do the preceding arguments imply that full legalization is the only
policy change that would be beneficial; certain partial steps toward
legalization - imposing fewer restrictions on the medical provision of
drugs, or legalizing marijuana only, for example - would shrink the black
market and thus produce substantial gains. But dispassionate analysis of
the evidence leaves little doubt regarding the folly of current policy, and
it suggests just as clearly the appropriate direction for change.

© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

Checked-by: Richard Lake