DOOMED TO REPEAT HISTORY?

The Drowsy Chaperone, that blowsy, buoyant, infectious smash hit at
the Playhouse, is fuelled partly by the running joke of alcohol
prohibition.

It's set in 1928 and booze is why the Chaperone is always drowsy. The
gathered wedding party is obviously indifferent to the law. The
hostess and her butler/gofer discuss code words for drinks. Pretty
much the way everyone today deals with marijuana: with a wink and a
nudge.

Watching the show brought to mind the fact that Prohibition was
repealed 75 years ago this month. That decision was made for many
reasons, but all were circumscribed by the simple fact that the United
States was broke. It was no longer possible to suffer the massive
drain on the public purse caused by a misbegotten adventure in moral
engineering.

From 1920 to 1933, American federal spending on policing went from
$2.2 million to $12 million; and the federal prison population rose
from 3,000 inmates to 12,000. Forget the puny numbers compared to
today's bailout amounts and the population of today's prisons: those
figures represent an increase of 450 per cent and 300 per cent,
respectively. It is doubtful that Prohibition would have been
continued in the face of those costs even if it were successful. But
it turned out it wasn't.

Consumption dropped for the first two years; but by 1933 it was 11 per
cent higher than it had been in 1919. The roaring '20s, apart from its
gang wars, saw a marked increase in diseases associated with alcohol
consumption, especially bathtub gin and other home brews. In other
words, efforts to get around the law brought disease, death,
corruption, violence and a general disrespect for the law in general.
Sound familiar?

In 1973, a couple of years after Richard Nixon declared his war on
drugs, the budget for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was $75
million. In 2001, it was $1.2 billion, a staggering 1,500 per cent
growth in less than 30 years.

Similarly, the total U.S. federal prison population in 1970 was
22,038. By 2001 that had grown to 137,536 inmates, a 524 per cent jump
- -- and 55 per cent were in there for drugs. In fact, by 1994, there
were as many drug offenders in American prisons as there had been
total prisoners in 1970.

We in Canada have locked up our fair share, but certainly less than
our southern neighbours because we have been less obsessed by the
notion that more and longer prison terms will have an impact on
illegal drug use and abuse. That may be only for the time being,
however, since the Harper government appears determined to install
"get tough" measures, like mandatory minimums, that have been tried in
the United States and are now being abandoned there as
counterproductive and futile.

On the other hand, we can hope that the economic crunch will delay
those plans. The cost of drug prohibition here and in the United
States is a "known known", as Donald Rumsfeld once famously said.
Cumulatively, from 1973 to 2006 our American neighbours spent $1
trillion on it. Recently, Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron (a
libertarian, by the way, so he should find an ally in that other
economist, Stephen Harper) calculated that the United States presently
spends $76.8 billion annually on drug prohibition.

In this country the federal government, the provinces and the
territories all keep separate track of police, prosecution, court and
corrections costs within their jurisdiction. A compilation of those
figures attributable only to illegal drugs in 2002 totaled
$2,336,530,000.

That's right. This minor democracy of barely 30 million people managed
to go through almost two-and-a-half billion dollars in just one year
pursuing the unattainable.

Meanwhile, the Lower Mainland and most Canadian metropolitan areas and
small cities (Prince George, for example) are witnessing persistent
gang violence by those who want to gain or maintain status in the
incredibly lucrative drug market. Al Capone has become the mythical
figurehead for the equivalent mayhem of the '20s. But the St.
Valentine's Day massacre of 1929 was no different from the many
execution-style murders across the country today.

In the teeth of a recession it would probably not be worth the cost
even if prohibition had some effect on drug use and abuse; but, as it
turns out, it has had even less impact than the first prohibition. We
have thrown billions at an illusory "problem" and drug consumption has
risen far more dramatically than alcohol consumption did from 1922 to
1933. In Canada, between 1994 and 2004, self-report of regular use of
marijuana and cocaine rose 100 per cent and 300 per cent,
respectively. In the United States the numbers are just as
discouraging for the drug warriors. Indeed, they point to the
possibility that prohibition actually fosters drug use. In the
Netherlands, with its hands-off policy on pot consumption, 22 per cent
report that they have tried marijuana at some point in their lifetime.
The U.S. figure is 46 per cent, in spite of the country's Draconian
penal laws.

The United States was prodded by the Depression to abandon a foolish
and counterproductive policy. When it did, there was no sudden
explosion of alcoholism; but there was a significant reduction in
related disease and death and an almost instantaneous demise of the
destructive criminal organizations the policy had generated. Better
still, states garnered huge amounts of revenue from the taxation of
alcohol. There is no reason to expect any different result if our
present economic crisis were to lead to abandonment of drug
prohibition.

As happened with the repeal of alcohol prohibition, we can save
billions of dollars, advance the health and well-being of thousands of
Canadians, and rid ourselves of a significant amount of criminal
activity. Maybe our leaders can be just functional enough to take that
great leap.