The real mistake, it seems to me, is in thinking that anything government does has to make sense. Some things of course do. That doesn't mean everything has to, and the WOD is a textbook case of something that hardly anyone thinks is a good idea, that exacts hideous costs in lives, money, effort, and time, and that will never stop so long as those whose jobs depend upon it have anything to say about it.

Morally, I don't see a dime's worth of difference between the sides of the WOD. What good may in fact be done by the WOD seems to me vastly outweighed by the social, political, and economic costs. I think the WOD is America's worst addiction.

Maybe the war on drugs would be effective if we changed policy just slightly. I do not think the war would take very long to win at all if a "possession with intent to sell" charge held a mandatory death sentence. If this were implemented the cartels might have a harder time recruiting. If there are no soldiers there is no war. This would also save millions of dollars since we would not have to support all of these drug dealers in our nation's prison system.

An oft noted statistic is that the per cent of budget spent on education and prisons has been a near constant during the period the WOD has been in effect. What has changed is the split between the two, where we now spend more on prisons than for education. Do you think there might be a connection?

People who break the law generally believe, or at least hope, that they won't get caught. And there are *plenty* of people with virtually nothing to lose, and who may fear the cartel more than the government. The death penalty wouldn't be much of a deterrent for people in that kind of situation.

Most everyone I know has at least experimented with drugs, and even those whose drug use seems excessive (to me) are generally productive people with valuable lives. But people without jobs (or other reasons to minimize the risks they take) are harmed by the dangerous underworld culture, the lack of regulation of the stuff they buy, and the fear of seeking help for addiction.

And I guess I have to add: death penalty for possession? Really?

Notice I said "possession with intent to SELL". This is not the couple of joints in a baggy possession but, enough that it is more than just for personal use kind of possession.
People who break the law think that they can do it without getting caught and figure that if they do they will be able to deal with the consequences. When people spend less than a year sometimes in jail on drug charges they are probably right. Right now they have nothing to lose but a few months of freedom, they might be less likely to get into the drug business if they would lose their life instead.

Indeed, we should execute everyone who gets caught in possession with intent to sell. We should likewise chop off the hands of those who are caught stealing, and the feet of those who are caught fleeing from the police, and the genitals of those who are caught in the act of adultery. For all of the above we should use large, rusty swords.

After all, disproportionately severe punishments have never been known to make petty criminals desperate and more willing to resort to violence against officers and bystanders when apprehended. Someone rippeed those pages out of my early-modern British history book.

Professor Bauerlein: In the 4th line of your blog you use "it's" twice with the apostrophe. They are different parts of speech, so one is incorrect. Do you know which that is?

Thanks, Dalejohn. That's fixed now. -Alex, an editor at Brainstorm

Thanks, Alex.

suomynona,
Actually I would rather have people caught stealing be forced to pay back twice what they steal (i.e. You steal a cookie you pay the owner the price of two cookies, You steal a car you pay the owner back the price of two cars.) Since adultery is not considered a crime in all states your example is extreme however rape is illegal in all states and for that I would say the removal of the genitals would be the least punishment that could be afforded and perhaps pedophilia could warrant the removal of more. The punishment should fit the crime. If it does not then it is not a deterrent.

suomynona,
Actually I would rather have people caught stealing be forced to pay back twice what they steal (i.e. You steal a cookie you pay the owner the price of two cookies, You steal a car you pay the owner back the price of two cars.) Since adultery is not considered a crime in all states your example is extreme however rape is illegal in all states and for that I would say the removal of the genitals would be the least punishment that could be afforded and perhaps pedophilia could warrant the removal of more. The punishment should fit the crime. If it does not then it is not a deterrent.

What I still don't understand about Dr. Bauerlein's take on this topic is why the widespread flouting of the law is construed as failure of the law (as the prohibition corollary implies), rather than as failure of those governed by the law? If the murder rate rises, is that reason to say the laws against murder are failing us? If anything, people would say the opposite - the laws need to be strengthened. Simply because there is a vigorous trade in drugs, does that mean the laws against it are unwarranted? Do we say the same thing about the trade in humans?

Laws, while not perfect, are intended to prevent us from harming one another. Drugs, including alcohol and marijuana, commonly promote harmful behavior in many instances and directly cause it in many others. Why add to the list of harms we can legally cause one another by legalizing drugs in addition to alcohol? I for one am happy not to condone my neighbor's indulgence in marijuana or other drugs if his actions while under their influence are going to affect me or my family, or his family, or my other neighbors, or my community, or... We are all interconnected, and what one does to himself or herself affects others. That's why (at least in the U.S.) we all get a say in whether an individual's behaviors are legal or not.

What's more, a number of states already have decriminalized possession of marijuana in small quantities. Many people grow it clandestinely. Has any of this succeeded in diminishing the cartels and their violent drug trade?

The government's campaign to curtail drug use, through both education and interdiction/enforcement, is a necessary follow-on to the societal decision, embodied in the law, that many drugs are too harmful to allow. There may be other strategies by which we can be more effective in our opposition to the use of drugs, but to me decriminalization - surrender - isn't one of them.

Next, we can take Ankh-Morpork's view on crime control. We can legalize assassination and theft, so long as its only committed by guild members. Organized crime can once again operate, as long as they stay within their quotas.

It will be a brave new world.

The question to ask, tekton, is whether criminalization is more effective at reducing the harm from marijuana than are other modes of discouraging use. That was the point of bringing up Prohibition. And, of course, one could raise a lot of other precedents, for instance, the people who "flouted" the law by violating Jim Crow ordinances. Just because laws are on the books doesn't mean they should be.

tekton,

I suppose part of the issue of whether drug prohibition is bad policy or whether it's just badly implemented has to do with the fact that mere deterrence and brute force simply aren't always the best means of upholding a law. I think perhaps this is where you're going when you discuss education as a co-operative with enforcement as necessary means of upholding a law that reflects a society's concerns about the dangers of certain drugs.

But there's another element here. Taking your murder example, for example, it seems our society buys wholly into the idea that murder is not a good thing; so we don't require anti-murder public service announcements and so on. But when it comes to drugs, I think many are still not convinced of the anti-drug 'education' they've received. Especially because highly addictive drugs are available legally over the counter, and many more are (over)prescribed by our physicians. People are troubled and unconvinced by the hyperbolic gov. ads they see on TV, and are left to wonder why the mildest of illegal drugs, marijuana, is the most frequently demonized by the government. All of this just doesn't add up. It's just not trustworthy or accurate information, and it's not convincing. It suggests that what's going on is not education, but propaganda aimed at legitimizing the enforcement of prohibition laws that an increasing number of us really don't find beneficial.

My point is, then, that the letter or spirit of the law and the implementation of the law aren't separate things that can be considered independent of one another. The implementation of drug prohibition, which Prof. Bauerlein has shown on numerous occasions to be objectively unsuccessful, reflects much about the faultiness of the law itself.

I've observed some alcohol abusers who become combative under the influence; perhaps the same is true of some other drugs, although I haven't seen it. (Steroids, meth, and cocaine, perhaps?) But it is primarily the illegality of the drugs, I maintain, that causes desperate, fearful, or angry users to commit crimes that harm others.

Tekton gave a reason for opposing drug use and supporting anti-drug laws: "Drugs, including alcohol and marijuana, commonly promote harmful behavior in many instances and directly cause it in many others." But the mere presence of a substance in one's bloodstream harms no one but the user*, and presumably the "harmful behavior" that may follow is already against the law. In my experience, most casual drug users are productive citizens and utterly nonviolent people. Why not punish those behaviors that harm others, and allow those who do no harm to do their thing in peace?

*Leaving aside restrictions, legal or nonlegal, on pregnant women, surgeons, pilots, etc.

(P.S. I tried several times to submit a response to primaryovertone earlier, but the submission failed. Doesn't seem worth reconstructing it now.)

If you support prohibition then you've helped trigger the worst crime wave in this nation's history.

If you support prohibition you've a helped create a black market with massive incentives to hook both adults and children alike.

If you support prohibition you've helped to make these dangerous substances available in schools and prisons.

If you support prohibition you've helped raise gang warfare to a level not seen in this country since the days of alcohol bootlegging.

If you support prohibition you've helped remove many important civil liberties from those citizens you falsely claim to represent.

If you support prohibition you've helped put previously unknown and contaminated drugs on the streets.

If you support prohibition you've helped to escalate Theft, Muggings and Burglaries.

If you support prohibition you've helped to divert scarce law-enforcement resources away from protecting your fellow citizens from the ever escalating violence against their person or property.

If you support prohibition you've helped overcrowd the courts and prisons, thus making it increasingly impossible to curtail the people who are hurting and terrorizing others.

I acknowledge that laws can be misguided, inasmuch as the people who make the laws and the people who elect the people who make the laws can be misguided. And there is a societal double-mindedness regarding the use of behavior-altering substances like alcohol and other drugs. Both of those facts color the discussion regarding decriminalization of drugs.

But the question of "harm" doesn't go away that easily. Many harmful actions are illegal, and rightly so. But that doesn't necessarily keep people from engaging in them. And many harmful actions are NOT illegal. Many involve neglect of responsibility, self-absorption at the expense of others, failure to develop and utilize the abilities one has, just plain rudeness, and so on. Divorce - and the actions that lead up to divorce - is harmful, but many of those actions, and divorce itself, are perfectly legal. Adultery is legal, but harmful. The list can go on and on.

The pro-legalization argument that drugs don't harm anyone but the user and that any outwardly-harmful behavior is already illegal is, in my opinion, a crock. Laws don't do much to curtail a lot of harmful behavior as it is. I'm thankful for the laws and the enforcement of those laws, but the fact is, there is a lot of harm being done one to another every day that is not stopped by the laws of the land. Alcohol has been shown to contribute to harmful behavior, illegal and otherwise. Other behavior-altering drugs do likewise. Why open the door to more harm? Why rely on a system that already doesn't prevent a lot of harm to prevent the additional harm that would come with legalization of substances that promote harmful behavior?

Legalization of additional drugs will only swap one arena of harm - the violence of drug cartels and those involved with the drug trade - with another, larger, and I think, ultimately more damaging form of harm that we won't be able to legislate against. And legalization of just marijuana will do little to dent the power of the cartels. Casual "harmless" marijuana users aren't the folks who end up in our prisons. The cartels will continue to trade in cocaine, meth, heroin, you name it...do we also want to legalize those? Legalizing drugs to undercut the cartels will require the legalization of all of their money-makers in order to be effective. But that would be a taste of hell that I, and fortunately most Americans, strenuously oppose.

Question for tekton and other prohibitionists:

Why stop with the maintainence of the prohibition of already illegal drugs? Why not ADD alcohol, which is a worse drug in terms of bad behavior than marijuana? (As George Carlin used to point out, you hardly ever hear of rioting and looting by marijuana-crazed mobs.)

NOT advocating adding alcohol to the prohibition couldn't be because of its probable futility, could it? After all, as tekton says, "What I still don't understand about Dr. Bauerlein's take on this topic is why the widespread flouting of the law is construed as failure of the law (as the prohibition corollary implies), rather than as failure of those governed by the law?" Right: If we add alcohol to the prohibition and the law is flouted and the bootlegger equivalent of drug cartels return, it will be because of "the failure of those governed by the law," which should everybody feel quite warm and fuzzy as they bunker themselves against the equivalent of Al Capone's gang and every city is 1920s Chicago.

I note that alcohol is _per user_ associated with more child abuse than any illegal drug. However, I don't hear people accusing rational enough to realize that Prohibition didn't work of being in favor of child abuse - I have been when I state my opposition to current drug laws.

Sorry, I agree with the idea that the war on drugs is a very bad thing, but I think the worst-ever US government program is Social Security, the biggest ponzi scheme ever. SS has hurt the most people for the most money. And, by the way, I'm in favor of a continuing article on the worst-ever government programs.

The War on Drugs has of course evolved the same strange political bedfellows as Prohibition did: organized and not particularly organized crime cheek by jowl with the representatives of political, social, and religious virtue.

When is this country going to grasp the difference between self-control, taking responsibility for one's actions, and living with the consequences of one's own choices, on the one hand, and telling other people what they may and may not do, on the other.

Trying to control the private behavior of other people is one of the pathologies shared by left and right, just in different areas. The belief that "I know what's best for you," no matter how sincerely held, is no more a justification for telling everyone else what they may or may not ingest than it is a justification for telling everyone else what to do on Sunday morning. Or what they can read or say or think.

We seem to have an irradicable belief that everything everyone else says and does is our business. It isn't. If we'd mind our own business and not others', we and they would be better off.

Substance abuse should be treated as the public health problem that it is. It should not be treated as a criminal justice problem, for all the reasons that many, many commentators have made and which I have no interest in repeating.

But if we buy the arguments of the prohibitionists, then why stop at psychoactive substances? Let's outlaw junk food. You can make nearly identical arguments for outlawing junk food as you can for outlawing psychoactive substances. The main difference is that junk food users, like marijuana users, do not tend to get violent when using their substance, unlike many alcohol and stimulant users. With 1/3 of the American population obese, the social consequences of obesity are huge in terms of increased health costs and decreased productivity. I volunteer to lead the raid on the headquarters of Dunkin' Donuts.

Well, along with outlawing cigarettes and other forms of tobacco, let's give alcohol prohibition another run. While we're at it, ban all drug advertising from print and electronic media, so that patients being treated for depression are no longer urged to suggest changes to their medication. Any restaurant of whatever status could be closed for serving fat, since I don't like it.

Where do we stop? Personally, I think chewing gum is repulsive, and so is nail polish, so to prevent choking and fume-intoxication, they have to go. I find body piercing unattractive, so for safety's sake that had better be banned as well. And there's danger of infection with tattoos, so . . . oh-oh: I've got one of those, so they're all right. But God forbid we pass up a chance to try to tell other people what to do, what to think, what to say, what to eat, drink, smoke, or otherwise ingest. It seems to me that most "health concerns" are less really that, in the context of legal prohibition, than rationalizations, pretexts for control over other people.

Benjamin Rogge, in my opinion, got it exactly right: "I, Ben Rogge, do not use marijuana nor do I approve of its use, but I am afraid that if I support laws against its use, some fool will insist as well on denying me my noble and useful gin and tonic."

If we could get over our will to power over others and try to exercise some over ourselves, each and every one of us, along with society as a whole, would be much better off.