IS IT TIME TO LEGALIZE?

There are questions to answer before we do anything, says Tod
Robberson

Whenever a prominent world leader or tycoon lends his voice to the
call for drug legalization, my immediate instinct is to think, "Wow,
if this smart guy supports legalization, then it's time to give this
some serious thought."

We're all looking for better solutions because, let's face it, the war
on drugs isn't working. The annual cultivation figures from Colombia
and Afghanistan suggest we're no better off today than we were a
decade ago, despite billions of dollars in eradication expenditures.
It's also hard to argue with those who contend that Prohibition did
little to halt alcohol use but certainly fueled a surge in violent
organized crime. Today, the carnage in Mexico's biggest border towns
makes Al Capone look like Mother Teresa.

Take away the criminal punishment for drugs and the violence will
disappear, legalization supporters argue. Tax drug consumption, and
governments will get rich rather than spend all their money fighting
traffickers and imprisoning users.

It all sounds so simple, so logical. And so unworkable. What I've yet
to hear is a coherent legalization strategy that answers the following
questions:

First, what do we do about the major drug cartels? We should be clear
that no one is talking about legalizing the unrestricted production
and sale of drugs. If cartels continue smuggling drugs to evade taxes
or to undercut legal sellers, they will continue to be prosecuted.
Does anyone think the criminal networks entrenched in Colombia,
Mexico, Russia and Afghanistan will magically disappear because drug
use is legalized?

Prosecution of illegal drug smugglers and traffickers must continue,
but I have yet to hear a good explanation of how the fight against
these powerful cartels and militias would change under
legalization.

Second, what about underage drug users? Given that 21 is the minimum
drinking age, it's unlikely that the age for legalized drug use would
be more lenient. Federal statistics show that the 12-25 age group is,
by far, the one most likely to abuse drugs. Law enforcers would remain
at least as busy, if not more so, if drug use were legalized because
access to marijuana and harder drugs would jump dramatically for the
under-21 crowd.

Which leads to my third question: How do we deal with addiction rates?
The nation already spends about $96 billion a year dealing with the
adverse health effects of our legal nicotine-delivery system,
cigarettes. We lose another $97 billion in lost productivity from
smoking. Can we afford the billions more we will spend treating
addicts, coping with lower productivity and paying for the untold
health effects of legalized drug use?

Supporters of legalization will no doubt respond: Kids already have
easy access to drugs, so what's the difference whether they're legal
or not? The amount of money we'd save from interdiction and
enforcement would more than offset the costs of addiction treatment.
Plus, if you put a high enough tax on it, legalization would wind up
being a financial windfall for the government.

I don't doubt that these arguments are at least partially valid, but
they are, at best, theories of how the system would work. In the
non-theoretical real world of today, a network of criminality has
developed around this multibillion-dollar industry. It's one that
cannot be easily dismantled or wished away.

I concede that many big international problems would be significantly
diminished if drug use were legalized. What we can't predict are the
many more, possibly worse, problems could quickly fill the vacuum.