75 YEARS SINCE PROHIBITION

During Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933, there was a dramatic addition
to gangsters' income: proceeds from the sale of alcohol. They weren't
particularly good at making alcoholic drinks, but they were the ones
who were willing to break the law, so consumers didn't have a choice.
The prohibition of cannabis and other popular recreational drugs has
had a similar effect, especially since increases in enforcement, such
as those taken by President Nixon in the early '70s. In his Nov. 25
guest column, Benjamin Kubic expressed concern about the money that
was funneled to criminal organizations, including those with terrorist
agendas, by prohibition of certain drugs. We at Students for Sensible
Drug Policy share Kubic's concern for our country's security.

The two sides of the drug trade are supply and demand. Evidence
suggests that prohibition's effect on demand is minimal. Consider the
prohibition of alcohol to those under 21, an age cutoff whose wisdom
was recently called into question by the Amethyst Initiative. I can
cite studies about this all day, but you probably have Internet
access, too. For a more vivid example, consult your own experience.
Not many people on the campus have thought to themselves, "I'd like to
have a drink, but I'm not allowed to drink alcohol for another year. I
guess I'll find something else to do this weekend." By and large,
those who choose to drink do so, and those who choose not to don't.

Prohibition is often explicitly intended to protect children, but it
is actually less effective than regulation at keeping drugs away from
them. High school students report it is easier to buy pot than
alcohol. Drug dealers, it seems, do not ask for ID.

Someone wanting to reduce the harm associated with drug use might also
try to reduce the supply. An awful lot of drugs are confiscated and
destroyed by the state, but not nearly as much as is successfully
transmitted from producer to consumer. Many drug producers and
traffickers are imprisoned every year, but sadly, we live in a world
that has no shortage of people who feel there is no legal way for them
to support themselves. We can expect the number of such people to
continue to increase throughout our present economic difficulty: A
large pool of unemployed people will depress wage expectations.

What's more, the state is utterly unable to enforce interdiction. For
one example, according to ABC News, marijuana was the top cash crop in
12 states in 2006. For another, according to a Time/CNN poll, 47
percent of American adults admit having used cannabis. Every one of
those adults is a criminal under our present law. However, even if it
were somehow possible to arrest almost half the adults in our country,
I doubt prohibition's biggest fans would want to. This necessary lack
of universal, or even uniform, enforcement leads inevitably to
capriciousness, thus reducing the respect people have for the law and
for police. This impairs the cops' ability to enforce other laws.

There's more. Prohibition doesn't have the intended effects, but it
does have other effects. On the supply side, it's hard to work up
sympathy for a jailed gangster, but how about the flunky who gets much
more time than his boss because by the time prosecutors got to him,
there was nobody left to snitch on? How about for a dealer's
girlfriend, who gets sent in for a mandatory minimum on a conspiracy
charge, even though her connection to her boyfriend's business was
limited to writing down an occasional cryptic phone message and
worrying about his safety? On the demand side, how about the person
who dies of preventable causes because he and his friends would prefer
to risk sleeping it off versus going to a hospital and possibly
getting in trouble?

Prohibition is a cure that is worse than the disease. Seventy-five
years ago, we repealed the 18th amendment with the 21st. We can do the
same again. If you want to prevent violence associated with drugs, if
you want to financially eviscerate organized crime by allowing more
efficient lawful businesses to compete, if you want to increase
cooperation with the police and if you want to make the United States
a better place, let's end prohibition.

Edward Spriggs is a senior math and philosophy major and a member of
Students for Sensible Drug Policy.