So a little set up is needed I suppose. I was born in 1992, and grew up in Portland, Oregon saturated with the Just Say No abstinence/ignorance-oriented anti-drug use propaganda.
So, here in my sophomore-level ethics course, where we have been studying everyone from Ayn Rand to Epicurus, my "mini-lecture," which I am actually presenting tomorrow afternoon in class, will include this slideshow: The War on Drugs: Expensive, Destructive, Immoral.
The presentation by no means covers every single issue tied to drug prohibition, just the ones that I thought my classmates would like hearing about. I think it speaks for itself, but in case you are not able to view it, I will quote some of the juicier textual portions below the Orange Lozenge. Enjoy!
[Note: some of the following material was edited after I published the original PDF, so you will notice some slight differences]
Since these drugs are illegal, they cannot be manufactured by pharmaceutical companies. So who makes money from prohibition? Drug gangs. This is dangerous in many ways: first, the substances are often “cut” with other chemicals so they can make more money. Who’s stopping them? The government can only regulate legal substances, through the FDA. Secondly, because drugs are not protected commerce, it creates a black market not just for the substances themselves, but also for private military forces—i.e. “gangs.”
From Time magazine:
“Drug convictions went from 15 inmates per 100,000 adults in 1980 to 148 in 1996, an almost tenfold increase. More than half of America's federal inmates today are in prison on drug convictions. In 2009 alone, 1.66 million Americans were arrested on drug charges, more than were arrested on assault or larceny charges. And 4 of 5 of those arrests were simply for possession.
…
Many state prisons are now run by private companies that have powerful lobbyists in state capitals. These firms can create jobs in places where steady work is rare; in many states, they have also helped create a conveyor belt of cash for prisons from treasuries to outlying counties.
Partly as a result, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education in the past 20 years. In 2011, California spent $9.6 billion on prisons vs. $5.7 billion on the UC system and state colleges. Since 1980, California has built one college campus and 21 prisons. A college student costs the state $8,667 per year; a prisoner costs it $45,006 a year.”
My conclusion is that we cannot continue this superficial, puritanical effort to “protect society”; we are causing turmoil in Latin America because of our laws, and the demand will always be there whether it is legal or not. We are creating a permanent underclass by keeping people in jail, and we have entire industries built on keeping people locked up. My argument may seem extreme, but I sincerely believe we must legalize, tax, and regulate all substances that are illegal under current laws.
Regardless of the supposed “harm reduction” to society, vis a vis public health and productivity, I also believe that people should be free to make their own mistakes. Culturally, we are creating a deep sense of shame attached to drug users; at best, they have a “disease that needs to be cured,” and at worst we completely dehumanize them. Drug users are looked upon at best as pitiable, and at worst leeches on our society.
This is no different than Nazi Germany’s slow transition of tyranny in their persecution of undesirables.
Not only is there a strong racial bias in our enforcement of the laws, we have created a dehumanized class who will spend many years behind bars, and likely not be able to find employment, even for petty possession charges—we are devastating our economy by forcing people to rot in prison rather than go to school, start businesses and find jobs.
Thanks for reading folks! Hope you gained something from this, or at least enjoyed the ride ;)
2:48 PM PT: Update: Just gave my presentation and held a discussion in class. Holy crap, people were a lot more receptive to my argument than I thought they would be.