WE MUST WEIGH THE COSTS OF FIGHTING THE WAR ON DRUGS

Who's winning the war on drugs? Not us. There are renewed calls to
legalize various drugs, especially marijuana. If you read The Ottawa
Citizen you'll have seen Dan Gardner's articles, which make a strong,
reasoned case for decriminalizing illicit drugs.

One of the main points raised is that by making drugs illegal, we
have created a lucrative criminal enterprise, one that draws in
otherwise law-abiding citizens. Joe the Mechanic or Jane the
Housewife, hard up for money to pay their mortgage, decide to grow a
little weed on Grandpa Elmer's old farm. Joe and Jane smoke a joint
themselves once in awhile, so they see no real harm in it. Yeah, it's
illegal. But that's why the money is good for those who take the risk
of growing it and selling it.

If we decriminalize marijuana, we remove the temptation of big, easy
money. Thus it's less likely that Joe and Jane will be inclined to
grow more than a few plants for their own use. They certainly won't
make friends with shadier drug dealers like biker gangs or the Mafia.

The argument holds for other drugs as well, as far as removing the
criminal element from the mix, but marijuana is the least problematic
of the lot and an obvious first step.

My only concern with this argument is that it rests on a major
assumption: that the human cost of the criminal drug enterprise is
greater than that of drug addiction. This definitely depends on the drug.

For example, legalizing marijuana would remove its criminal
underground. However, as a legal drug, it's likely more people would
use it that wouldn't have otherwise. Being a rather innocuous soft
drug, marijuana's threat to society is minimal in comparison to the
criminal enterprise it spawns.

But what about other drugs, the hard ones such as crystal meth,
heroine and cocaine that turn their users into the walking dead? Even
if you try to tightly control their distribution, once something is
legal you can't put the genie back in the bottle. What about steroids
and human growth hormones? These have also generated criminal
enterprise. What about prostitution? What is its cost ratio? Should
we put all our temptations on the table for consideration?

It's not easy to know where to draw the line in the sand. We have
legal drugs in alcohol and tobacco. If you made them illegal today
you would create a massive criminal enterprise by tomorrow morning.
Yet look at the human costs both have wrought - we're talking
millions of people negatively affected.

Some people say it's all about personal freedom. Let the individual
decide what they choose to smoke, drink, eat, or with whom they
sleep. Laws are made to protect us from each other, not ourselves.
But what of the greater good? Have we suddenly become supermen with
iron wills that find temptation irrelevant?

As it's Lent, I'm reminded of a spiritual truism: if you want to
avoid sin, you must avoid the occasion of sin. Sin does lead to
death, figuratively and sometimes literally. As a society we should
keep this in mind as we try to balance what we allow and what we disallow.

It'd be a shame to win the war on drugs only to lose our collective
soul in the process.