Drug Prohibition is Immoral
Jacob Sullum reports on the Atlasphere that:
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that drug offenders account for about 25 percent of local jail inmates, 21 percent of state prisoners and 55 percent of federal prisoners. Since 1980 the number of drug offenders in state prisons has increased by 1,200 percent, more than four times the increase in violent offenders. … According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, however, only one in ten federal crack offenses involves violence or the threat of violence. … Research conducted by criminologist John DiIulio, economist Anne Morrison Piehl, and sociologist Bert Useem in the late 1990s found that many, if not most, people sentenced for drug crimes in New York, Arizona, and New Mexico were “drug-only offenders,” meaning the only crimes they’d ever committed involved the voluntary exchange of politically incorrect intoxicants for money.
Those opposing legalization argue that the social cost of drug addiction is too high to let it go unpunished; drug offenders not only harm themselves but present a burden on their families and friends, and, if necessary, they commit crimes to get their fix.
However, the social cost involved in jailing people for drug offenses that do not involve violence is enormous. And, making drugs illegal creates drug crime because when free trade is prohibited, the only other option is force.
More importantly, prisons do not cure drug addiction. Often they are violent environments in which individuals can sustain physical and psychological harm. How does that aid in recovery? Chances are that addicts, even though they may have not had access to drugs during their prison time and hence are “clean” when they get out, become even more screwed up due to their experience in the slammer; they may even become violent. That is because only treatment works, and only if it is accepted by the addict; it will not work if it is forced on him or her as part of a sentence (you may say or act because you are forced but you cannot be forced to believe).
Making drugs illegal doesn’t stop those who are addicted; it just makes it harder for them to get drugs. A free and legal market of drugs will not cure drug addiction either. However, while a cost-benefit analysis tips the balance in favor of legalization, more importantly, drug legalization leaves individuals free to choose, even if those choices harm them. People should have the right to take drugs even if it hurts them. People are prohibited from and punished for killing me or stealing my property; that is in my own interest. However, I am not gaining anything from laws prohibiting others from consuming substances that harm only them. On the contrary, I sacrifice by having to pay for the enforcement of those laws.
Sure, those who care about the drug addict may suffer, but they can choose whether to keep witnessing his or her self-destruction or whether to move on. And, those who depend on them because they cannot take of themselves, such as children, can be taken care of otherwise by family and friends, or caring individuals outside that circle. But that must also be a free choice because nothing is worse than a caregiver who does not care but simply feels obligated (just like belief, love cannot be forced).
Prohibition does not just fail a cost-benefit analysis; forcing people to sacrifice for other people’s choice to destroy themselves by using drugs is immoral.
