BELIEVE IT OR NOT, THERE ARE DRAWBACKS TO LEGALIZING DRUGS

Legalize drugs, advocates say, and you'll decrease drug use, virtually
empty our prisons, end the violence among cartels in Mexico and move
toward a more humane society in which drug abuse is treated as an
illness, not a crime.

You see, they further instruct us, the so-called "war on drugs" has
won nary a battle. It's a hugely expensive replay of
Prohibition.

What we're talking about here is liberty, the drug legalizers go on to
say. Drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines are
no worse than cigarettes or whiskey, and the only ones hurt by their
consumption are the adults who decide to use them.

It's on the basis of such fictions that some well-meaning people --
including some of my libertarian friends -- are trying to march our
society off a cliff. They ought to take a close, hard look at some
contrary analyses that come to us not just from stubborn
right-wingers, but from research think tanks, governmental agencies
and highly regarded social scientists.

James Q. Wilson of Boston College makes the common-sense case that
legalization will increase drug use because it will reduce the price
of drugs and make them easier to obtain.

In the Netherlands, the government decided to permit legal cannabis
shops. Soon enough you had twice as many people aged 18 to 20 using
the drug. We once had legal opiate and cocaine drugs in this country,
mostly sold as medications in the late 19th century to cure what ailed
you. This led to high rates of debilitating addiction.

With more drug use, Wilson says, will come more people on welfare,
more traffic deaths and more ruined marriages.

That's just the beginning. Because they so decisively unravel our
self-control, drugs can render us more likely to do all kinds of
things we wouldn't otherwise do.

Half of all those arrested for committing violent crimes were under
the influence of drugs, says John Walters, former director of the
Office of National Drug Policy.

He cites this startling statistic: 80 percent of all child abuse cases
are drug-related. So this is the great libertarian cause -- increase
child abuse in America? The obvious fact is that use of illegal drugs
does more than harm just the user.

Cocaine is something like seven times as addictive as alcohol. It's
true that drinking and smoking are hugely damaging themselves. But
that's hardly an argument to make additional drugs available for more
people to harm themselves and others.

More treatment and less incarceration for drug abusers makes sense.
But you don't get there by legalizing methamphetamines and other drugs
that are harmful to individual health and a menace to public safety.

And anyway, the courts already are increasingly placing drug offenders
in rehabilitation programs. Besides which, users make up a relatively
small percentage of those in federal prisons for drug-related crimes.

Despite contentions to the contrary, Walters notes that anti-drug
efforts have significantly decreased usage and addiction -- just as
Prohibition, for all its failures, in fact did lead to a reduction in
alcohol consumption.

Decriminalizing marijuana, as some states have done, may turn out to
be workable. But commercializing it? Surely not.

And Mexico? Walters observes that decriminalizing marijuana there has
hardly put the violent drug gangs out of business.