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Withdrawal from Drugs

by Thomas Sowell


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"If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again--and then give up. Don't be a damn fool about it."

W. C. Fields's wisecrack contained a lot of wisdom. Nowhere does it apply more than in the crusade against drugs.

Drug raids are good politics but they don't make a dent in the problem. The federal government's seizures of cocaine are six times what they were just a few years ago. But the flood of cocaine into the contry has continued to be so massive as to drive down the price. A variety of drugs are for sale within a mile of the Drug Enforcement Administration's headquarters in Washington.

The ban on drugs has become Prohibition writ large. Like Prohibition, the ban on drugs has been a financial bonanza for organized crime, and its profits have financed the corruption of law enforcement agencies, politicians, and judges.

Drugs can be hideous things. And those who push drugs are slimy and poisonous. But let us not forget that a similar case was made against alcohol and bootleggers many years ago. Tens of thousands of lives are still lost each year to drunk driving alone. That doesn't count the other lives destroyed or dehumanized under the influence of the bottle.

If drugs and alcohol had never been discovered, this would be a lot better world. But it is a dangerous illusion that we have the omnipotence to undo every evil. The crusading mentality can easil make things worse.

Drugs are inherently a problem for the individual who takes them, but they are a much bigger problem for society--/precisely because they are illegal/. It is their illegality that makes them costly and drives people to desperation to get the money by any means, at anybody else's expense.

The mere cost of production of drugs can be very inexpensive. If an addict could support his addiction for a few dollars a week, he would still be an addict, but he would not have to steal, mug, or kill other people to support his habit. Neither would drug pushers have the financial incentive to try to get children hooked on drugs, if there was no big money in it.

Crusaders cannot accept the fact tht they are not God--that they have neither the right nor the competence to run other people's lives. The years that preceded Prohibition saw private citizens take the law into their own hands, entering saloons with axes to destroy bottles of liquor. It was ego-boosting, moral exhibitionism.

When the crusaders finally succeeded in getting the Prohibition amendment added to the U. S. Constitution, it was their crowning triumph--and the nation's tragedy. Organized crime blossomed. So did the corruption of the whole political process.

When national Prohibition ended, many localities passed their own bans on liquor. Bootleggers sometimes financed the campaigns to ban liquor. Their profits depended on liquors being illegal.

Legalization of narcotics would similarly destroy the profits of today's drug pushers. There is no way that they can compete with drugs that can be mass-produced cheaply by big pharmaceutical companies.

This is not a complete "solution." Nowhere is it written in stone that there are always answers in the back of the book. What we can do as a society is to cut our losses. It is bad enough that some people destroy their own lives with drugs. We don't need to add vast numbers of innocent victims who are robbed, mugged or murdered by addicts trying to get money for a fix.

Like alcohol, drugs can be regulated for content, age required for purchasing, driving under the influence, etc. But this is just one more area where we have to recognize that government has its limits. Ignoring those limits is not only reckless arrogance but dangerous. We finally learned that painful lesson from Prohibition. We need to remember it when it comes to drugs.

Thomas Sowell, 29 November 1984 from Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays, pp. 32-34 New York: William and Morrow, 1987

 
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