IT'S TIME TO END DRUG PROHIBITION

On Dec. 5 America celebrated the 75th anniversary of that blessed day
in 1933 when Utah became the 36th and deciding state to ratify the
21st Amendment, thereby repealing the 18th Amendment and ending the
nation's disastrous experiment with alcohol prohibition.

Let's hope that along with the honorary cocktail parties, however,
"Repeal Day" also served as a day for Americans to reflect on why our
forebears rejoiced at the relegalization of a powerful drug long
associated with bountiful pleasure and pain -- and consider the
lessons for our time.

The Americans who voted in 1933 to repeal Prohibition differed
greatly in their reasons for overturning the system. But almost all
agreed that the evils of failed suppression far outweighed the evils
of alcohol consumption.

The change from just 15 years earlier, when most Americans saw
alcohol as the root of the problem and voted to ban it, was dramatic.
Prohibition's failure to create an "Alcohol Free Society" sank in
quickly. Booze flowed as readily as before, but now it was illicit,
filling criminal coffers at taxpayer expense.

Some opponents of Prohibition pointed to Al Capone and increasing
crime, violence and corruption. Others were troubled by the labeling
of tens of millions of Americans as criminals, overflowing prisons
and the consequent broadening of disrespect for the law.

Many Americans were disquieted by dangerous expansions of federal
police powers, encroachments on individual liberties, increasing
government expenditure devoted to enforcing the prohibition laws and
the billions in forgone tax revenues. And still others were disturbed
by the specter of so many citizens blinded, paralyzed and killed by
poisonous moonshine and industrial alcohol.

Supporters of Prohibition blamed the consumers and some went so far
as to argue that those who violated the laws deserved whatever ills
befell them. But by 1933, most Americans blamed Prohibition itself.

When repeal came, it was not just with the support of those with a
taste for alcohol, but also those who disliked and even hated alcohol
but could no longer ignore the dreadful consequences of a failed
prohibition. They saw what most Americans still fail to see today:
that a failed drug prohibition can cause greater harm than the drug
it was intended to banish.

Consider the consequences of drug prohibition today: 500,000 people
incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails for nonviolent drug-law
violations; 1.8 million drug arrests last year; tens of billions of
taxpayer dollars expended annually to fund a drug war that 76 percent
of Americans say has failed; millions now marked for life as drug
felons; many thousands dying each year from drug overdoses that have
more to do with prohibitionist policies than the drugs themselves;
and tens of thousands more needlessly infected with AIDS and
hepatitis C because those same policies undermine and block
responsible public-health policies.

And look abroad. At Afghanistan, where a third or more of the
national economy is both beneficiary and victim of a failed global
drug prohibition regime. At Mexico, which makes Chicago under Al
Capone look like a day in the park. And elsewhere in Latin America,
where prohibition-related crime, violence and corruption undermine
civil authority and public safety and mindless drug eradication
campaigns wreak environmental havoc.

All this, and much more, are the consequences not of drugs per se but
of prohibitionist policies that have failed for too long and that can
never succeed in an open society, given the lessons of history.
Perhaps a totalitarian America could do better, but at what cost to
our most fundamental values?

Why did our forebears wise up so quickly while Americans today still
struggle with sorting out the consequences of drug misuse from those
of drug prohibition?

It's not because alcohol is any less dangerous than the drugs that
are banned today. Marijuana, by comparison, is relatively harmless:
There's little association with violent behavior and no chance of
dying from an overdose, and it's not nearly as dangerous as alcohol
if one misuses it or becomes addicted.

Most of heroin's dangers are more a consequence of its prohibition
than the drug's distinctive properties. That's why 70 percent of
Swiss voters approved a referendum two weekends ago endorsing the
government's provision of pharmaceutical heroin to addicts who could
not quit their addictions by other means. It is also why a growing
number of other countries, including Canada, are doing likewise.

Yes, the speedy drugs -- cocaine, methamphetamine and other illicit
stimulants -- present more of a problem. But not to the extent that
their prohibition is justifiable while alcohol's is not. The real
difference is that alcohol is the devil we know, while these others
are the devils we don't.

Most Americans in 1933 could recall a time before Prohibition, which
tempered their fears. But few Americans now can recall the decades
when the illicit drugs of today were sold and consumed legally. If
they could, a post-prohibition future might prove less alarming.

But there's nothing like a depression, or maybe even a full-blown
recession, to make taxpayers question the price of their prejudices.
That's what ultimately hastened Prohibition's repeal, and it's why
we're sure to see a more vigorous debate than ever before about
ending marijuana prohibition, rolling back other drug war excesses
and even contemplating far-reaching alternatives to drug
prohibition.

Perhaps the greatest reassurance for those who quake at the prospect
of repealing contemporary drug prohibitions can be found in the era
of alcohol prohibition outside of America.

Other nations, including Britain, Australia and the Netherlands, were
equally concerned with the problems of drink and eager for solutions.
However, most opted against prohibition and for strict controls that
kept alcohol legal but restricted its availability, taxed it heavily
and otherwise discouraged its use.

The results included ample revenues for government coffers, criminals
frustrated by the lack of easy profits and declines in the
consumption and misuse of alcohol that compared favorably with trends
in the United States.

President-elect Barack Obama didn't commemorate Repeal Day. And I do
not expect him to do much to reform the nation's drug laws apart from
making good on a few of the commitments he made during the campaign:
repealing the harshest drug sentences, removing federal bans on
funding needle-exchange programs to reduce AIDS, giving medical
marijuana a fair chance to prove itself and supporting treatment
alternatives for low-level drug offenders.

But there's one more thing Mr. Obama can do: promote vigorous and
informed debate in this domain as in all others. The worst
prohibition, after all, is a prohibition on thinking.