Mary Anastasia O’ Grady has a great article in today’s WSJ. The tantalizing title of “A Path to Victory in the Drug War” had me rolling my eyes until I started reading:
The classical argument in favor of marijuana legalization rests on personal liberty. Why, proponents ask, should the federal government tell free citizens what they may consume? It is also one reason why many conservatives fear it. They worry that legalization will mean more pot heads, an increase in the consumption of hard drugs, and a decrease in the quality of life for the sober and for society at large.
Is that it? If so, then all it would take to convince them would be evidence that legalization does not increase consumption, nor decrease quality of life for society. It isn’t as if experiments in legalization haven’t been tried before.
Take America’s experience with marijuana before Harry J. Anslinger came along and convinced the powers that be to criminalize the stuff. There were far fewer pot heads, and in the minds of most Americans, there wasn’t an identifiable problem to speak of. Just a few musicians and bohemians doing their thing. So in order to get people in the mood for new laws, Anslinger had to frighten them:
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
It is sad to think that Americans in those days would find such an argument persuasive, but Anslinger was the voice of authority in these matters. As head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, he was the go-to guy: the then-equivalent of the Drug Czar.
What few people asked was a question more and more are asking now. Assume that marijuana is an awful drug that lures people into doing awful things. Why would it flow from there that creating an entire new category of crime and a huge profit incentive system based on artificially high black market prices would cause the number of its users to decrease in number? As we now know, precisely the opposite occurred. Marijuana culture as we know it today arose, spread and developed after its possession, sale, and use became a serious federal crime.
Back to O’Grady. She has had discussions with a once dedicated drug warrior, Brasil’s former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Mr. Cardoso explains that as president he used traditional methods of “repression and prevention” to fight the drug problem. He is quick to add that neither worked. “Eradication was a failure,” he says. Even though marijuana plants were destroyed—the government proudly took pictures of its handiwork—”later on, again, the crops were there.” Meanwhile, the state made an “insufficient” effort toward prevention, in part because Brazil’s drug problem “was not that bad at the time.”
Mr. Cardoso says that after he left office and began to spend time in countries around the region, notably Colombia and Mexico, he recognized the depth and breadth of the problem. “I realized, my God, what is at stake now is much more than just the criminality. [It is] the institutions, the democracy, being jeopardized by cartels and even by repression [in] the way human rights are being violated.”
Of course, the state’s violation of civil liberties in the “drug war” was predictable since the narcotics business involves private transactions between voluntary parties. Policing such transactions requires informants, and it necessarily implies the broadening of state powers beyond what most liberal democracies view as legitimate.
I’m thinking the whole phraseology might be wrong. Is it really a war on the “drugs” themselves? Or is it a war against private transactions between voluntary parties? No, that can’t be it, because if the state really wanted to stop these transactions, the state wouldn’t create a huge profit incentive for the supply side. Essentially, the criminal market is state subsidized by the guaranteed artificial price differential between the substances’ actual value and their ridiculously high illegal value. Criminal laws against drugs thus act as price subsidies, and incentivize drug sales. The idea of drug “pushers” was inconceivable before Anslinger and company gave them turf.
But these arguments are lost on people who think that eliminating laws that imprison users and subsidize prices will increase the demand for drugs.
I like the way Ron Paul put it when (sarcastically) he said this:
I don’t want to use heroin, so I need these laws!
Of course, before they had these laws, they had heroin. It used to be sold in stores.
Amazingly, the problem wasn’t solved by new laws, so we launched a “war.”
Try as I might, I simply cannot figure out what is “conservative” about it.
Unless conservatism is to be forever defined by and chained to a great mistake that tarnishes the legacy of a great man, I just don’t get it.
Comments
9 responses to “What is “conservative” about continuing mistaken policies?”
It’s “conservative” in the “social conservative” sense as drugs “are a sign of societal collapse”.
For Dem and establishment GOP pols it’s about giving power to the gov’t and taking it from Teh Peepul, pure and simple.
Younger conservatives are always surprised when I talk about that effect in conservatism.
[…] What Makes Us Think Posted by mythusmage on 22 November 2011, 1:10 am Classical Values » What is “conservative” about continuing mistaken policies?. […]
At risk of stating what has been said so many times before, the terms “liberal” and “conservative” are as obsolete as identifying communists as “Reds.” (Ironic that red now means “Republican.”)
It often seems to me, in discussions, that people have fallen in love with the words themselves. “I’m a conservative Republican,” one acquaintance told me.
“How did that work?” I asked. “Did you take an inventory of your political beliefs and found that they matched those of other conservative Republicans? Or, did you find out what conservative Republicans believed and then adopted the list wholesale?”
Being “conservative” requires that one oppose gun laws – because banning guns won’t prevent people from having and using them – and abortion on demand – because banning abortion will prevent people from having them. Being “liberal” means adopting the opposite view.
Thanks but no thanks. Having a position on the Iraq War has nothing to do with what I think about the progressive income tax and legalization of marijuana.
The labels themselves are one of the problems as people – and politicians, not sure they’re in the same category – embrace and then hide behind them.
I’m just sayin’ is all.
1/3
The legalization of drugs would bring forth so many issues that we can not predict the damage that would be unleashed. Right now what probably keeps many teens off of many drugs in lack of availability.
In all honesty, nothing should be illegal if you can grow it or synthesize it ….. but that assumes intelligent use. We know many people won’t use in a private location, we know many people will abuse, we know people will commit crimes when under the influence. We know there will be a cost to society. We know there will be ODs. We know there will be people passed out in parking lots …… And there will be costs to deal with these matters.
A Libritarian is just a Liberal Democrat who thinks he won’t have to open his pocketbook.
In the above I was speaking of all drugs because marijuana would just be the first in the legalization of all substances not patented.
[…] my earlier post about the war on drugs, I mentioned Ronald Reagan’s unfortunate (although quite possibly […]
rjp said —
The legalization of drugs would bring forth so many issues that we can not predict the damage that would be unleashed. Right now what probably keeps many teens off of many drugs in lack of availability.
Um. No. In survey after survey, teens say that “controlled” substances are easier to get than alcoholic beverages. You see, the controlled substance laws actually end up providing us with no controls.
In all honesty, nothing should be illegal if you can grow it or synthesize it ….. but that assumes intelligent use. We know many people won’t use in a private location, we know many people will abuse, we know people will commit crimes when under the influence. We know there will be a cost to society. We know there will be ODs. We know there will be people passed out in parking lots …… And there will be costs to deal with these matters.
So that’s it? Keep pointing guns at people because someone might pass out in their car after a night of partying? Keep pointing guns at people because some of them might use a drug in public? Keep pointing guns at people because someone might OD? (Note: OD’s would likely decrease with legalization as quality control would improve in a legal market). Keep pointing guns at people because some of them might become an addict?
As for you thought on crimes committed under the influence, it’s the black market that leads to criminal acts by users. A legal market would lower the price reducing drug related crime because a person could support their addiction more cheaply without resorting to robbery.
Funny how you only post about what you think might happen with legalization and you ignore the costs of prohibition and the benefits of ending prohibition. And some of the things that worry you already happen under our current laws which means prohibition isn’t working. Because if it was working, those things couldn’t happen, right? Right?
As a matter of fact, like most drug warriors, you act as if there is no cost to prohibiting drugs. Of course, the WOD costs billions in taxes annually, let alone the damage done to the lives hundreds of thousands of people who get caught up in the meat grinder called the “justice system”.
Have you ever questioned the notion that guns should be pointed at people for engaging in actions that are peaceable? Morality, how does that work again?
Why do you hate people so much that you insist on pointing guns at them and wanting to harm them for engaging in peaceable actions? Oh, I know, pointing guns at people who engage in peaceable actions makes you a good guy. Funny moral compass you have there, sport.
Randy,
One of my favorite pro prohibition arguments is:
“What about all criminals who will be out of work? What if they start attacking ‘normal’ citizens? What if they go on welfare?”
Thanks Simon.
That is a reality that we must face with legalization. Criminals are criminals and will be.
To think like Randy is inane.
It would not end with marijuana. Bayer surely would love for Heroin to be sold at every local pharmacy. Coca-Cola anyone?
Consistant quality would lower ODs? A user wants to get high and will continue pushing to get a little higher regardless of recommendations or quality. There will actually be more ODs as more people experiment.
Drugs are not as readily available to teens as Randy wants us to believe, else we wouldn’t have a few “brave” teens traveling to the open air drug ghettos in city slums to score. How many teens do you think would be using drugs if they were available in Walgreens?
Prices will not go down either. Prices will go up. The USA at all levels of government loves sin taxes. If the Fed doesn’t tax it, the city, county, and state will.
The war on drugs won’t disappear with legalization as it is a war on values that are inconsistant with a society that repects its fellow members.
Nobody would say a word about legalization if we knew for certain that users would use at home and act responsibly, but we know that will not be the case.
I urge Randy to experiment this weekend. Go get himself a couple of cases of Steel Reserve Malt Liquor and make friends with a few “guys”. Then go hang out with them in their “crib”. There in that safe place, Randy should drink until he passes out. Then I want Randy to tell us what belongings are missing when he wakes up and how his anus feels, because when we talk about legalization “we” are making the assumption that all users hold the same values, will use properly, and repsect their fellow citizens.
[…] naturally (as Simon and I have pointed out ad nauseam), the more they try to clamp down on one place, the more it spreads to others. The […]