DON'T LEGALIZE DRUGS

The charge that "nothing works" in the fight against illegal drugs has led
some people to grasp at an apparent solution: legalize drugs . They will
have taken false heart from news from Britain last week, where the
government acted to downgrade the possession of cannabis to the status of a
non-arrestable offense.

According to the logic of the legalizers, it's laws against drug use, not
the drugs themselves, that do the greatest harm. The real problem,
according them, is not that the young use drugs , but that drug laws
distort supply and demand. Violent cartels arise, consumers overpay for a
product of unknown quality, and society suffers when the law restrains
those who "harm no one but themselves."

Better, the argument goes, for the government to control the trade in
narcotics. That should drive down the prices (heroin would be "no more
expensive than lettuce," argues one proponent), eliminate violence, provide
tax revenue, reduce prison crowding, and foster supervised injection
facilities.

Sounds good. But is it realistic? The softest spot in this line of
reasoning is the analogy with alcohol abuse. The argument goes roughly like
this: "Alcohol is legal. Alcohol can be abused. Therefore, cocaine should
be legal." Their strongest argument, by contrast, is that prohibition
produces more costs than benefits, while legalized drugs provide more
benefits than costs.

But legalizers overstate the social costs of prohibition, just as they
understate the social costs of legalization. Take the statistic that more
than 1.5 million Americans are arrested every year for drug crimes.
Legalizers would have us believe that otherwise innocent people are being
sent to prison (displacing "true" criminals) for merely toking up. But only
a fraction of these arrestees are ever sentenced to prison. And there
should be little question that most of those sentenced have earned their
place behind bars.

Some 24% of state prison drug offenders are violent recidivists, while 83%
have prior criminal histories. Only 17% are in prison for "first time
offenses," while nominal "low-level" offenders are often criminals who
plea-bargain to escape more serious charges. The reality is that a high
percentage of all criminals, regardless of the offense, use drugs . In New
York, 79% of those arrested for any crime tested positive for drugs .

Drug abuse alone cost an estimated $55 billion in 1998 (excluding criminal
justice costs), and deaths directly related to drug use have more than
doubled since 1980. Would increasing this toll make for a healthier
America? Legalization, by removing penalties and reducing price, would
increase drug demand. Make something easier and cheaper to obtain, and you
increase the number of people who will try it. Legalizers love to point out
that the Dutch decriminalized marijuana in 1976, with little initial
impact. But as drugs gained social acceptance, use increased consistently
and sharply, with a 300% rise in use by 1996 among 18-20 year-olds.

Britain, too, provides an instructive example. When British physicians were
allowed to prescribe heroin to certain addicts, the number skyrocketed.
From 68 British addicts in the program in 1960, the problem exploded to an
estimated 20,000 heroin users in London alone by 1982.

The idea that we can "solve" our complex drug problem by simply legalizing
drugs raises more questions than it answers. For instance, what happens to
the citizenship of those legally addicted? Will they have their full civil
rights, such as voting? Can they be employed as school bus drivers? Nurses?
What of a woman, legally addicted to cocaine, who becomes pregnant? Should
she be constrained by the very government that provides for her habit?

Won't some addicts seek larger doses than those medically prescribed? Or
seek to profit by selling their allotment to others, including minors? And
what about those promised tax revenues -- how do they materialize? As it
is, European drug clinics aren't filled with productive citizens, but
rather with demoralized zombies seeking a daily fix. Won't drugs become a
disability entitlement?

Will legalization eliminate violence? The New England Journal of Medicine
reported in 1999 on the risks for women injured in domestic violence. The
most striking factor was a partner who used cocaine, which increased risk
more than four times. That violence is associated not with drug laws, but
with the drug . A 1999 report from the Department of Health and Human
Services showed that two million children live with a parent who has a drug
problem. Studies indicate that up to 80% of our child welfare caseload
involves caregivers who abuse substances. Drug users do not harm only
themselves.

Legalizers like to argue that government-supervised production and
distribution of addictive drugs will eliminate the dangers attributed to
drug prohibition. But when analyzing this "harm reduction" argument,
consider the abuse of the opiate OxyContin, which has resulted in numerous
deaths, physicians facing criminal charges, and addicts attacking
pharmacies. OxyContin is a legally prescribed substance, with appropriate
medical uses -- that is, it satisfies those conditions legalizers envision
for cocaine and heroin. The point is clear: The laws are not the problem.

Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed that drugs place us in a
dilemma: "We are required to choose between a crime problem and a public
heath problem." Legalization is a dangerous mirage. To address a crime
problem, we are asked to accept a public health crisis. Yet if we were to
surrender, we would surely face both problems -- intensified.