Who would have thought just one decade ago, that by 2015, nearly half of the states in America would have medical marijuana,
and four states would have it completely legalized it for recreational use. It wasn’t even a possibility. But like gay marriage, marijuana legalization and decriminalization has swept across the country, along with popular support.
According to Pew Research Center, the millennial generation is a huge factor in this widespread change in social opinion. About 77 percent of millennial Democrats and 63 percent of millennial Republicans support marijuana legalization, while for the silent generation, only 17 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Democrats agree. Its the same story with gay marriage -- the younger you are, the more likely you will support progressive social causes.
I have noticed this change in view in my personal experience. Over the years, people have become more and more receptive to marijuana legalization, something I have been advocating since I became politically aware. Just five years ago, I would have to make a pitch to the majority of people, explaining the many pros of legalizing marijuana, and discussing the disastrous prohibition of alcohol to illustrate that banning a substance cannot not stop human beings from acquiring it -- but can help create criminal masterminds like Al Capone. Today, I seldom have to go in depth when advocating marijuana legalization, as it has become a social norm at this point.
And then I say that all drugs should be legalized. This tends to earn me a strange look, as if I just advocated a communist overthrow of the government. ‘Even hard drugs like heroin?’ they ask, baffled by the thought. For some strange reason, many people assume that if a drug like heroin were to be legalized and regulated, everyone would suddenly become a heroin addict! Because, y’know, if the government isn’t going to arrest you for it, why not became an addict?
Once again, I have to rehash the same old argument about marijuana legalization, and remind them of America’s past failures at criminalizing substances. The fact is, human beings have been altering their consciousness with different substances for thousands of years, and anyone who believes that this will stop because the government makes it illegal is simply living in a fantasy world.
In reality, criminalizing drugs, and fighting a so-called “war” on chemical substances has been one of the greatest mistakes of this past century. Predictably, since the beginning, prohibition of drugs in America has been largely based on racism. The first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (predecessor to the Drug Enforcement Administration), Harry Anslinger, exemplified this, saying:
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
Other drugs, such as opium and cocaine, were also criminalized because of racial fears. The first anti-drug law was against opium in 1875 San Francisco, based on the fear that the Chinese were seducing white woman into having sex in opium dens. Cocaine was also prohibited because of racial prejudices, particularly against blacks. A New York Times headline from 1914, the year cocaine was outlawed, read:
"Negro Cocaine 'Fiends' Are a New Southern Menace: Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower Class Blacks Because They Have Taken to 'Sniffing."
So, drug prohibition in the United States has a very racist past; but that alone doesn’t prove that drugs should legalized. The fact that the war on drugs has been a complete failure that has ruined many lives and overflowed our prisons, however, does.
Across the Atlantic, we could learn a great deal from our European friends. The Netherlands, which is famous for its liberal drug policies, including marijuana legalization, has a much lower “lifetime” and “past year” prevalence of marijuana use than America, as well as lower heroin use and prison population. But the real model for future drug laws comes from Portugal, which in 2000 decided to decriminalize all drugs.
In 2000, Portugal had an awful drug problem, with about one percent of the population addicted to heroin. To combat this, political leaders decided to make drug use a health issue, rather than criminal. While they did not legalize all drugs, they stopped punishing addicts criminally, and enacted policies of prevention and treatment rather than incarceration. Fast-forward fifteen years, and it has been a tremendous success. In 2011, it was reported that drug abuse was down by half since the decriminalization.
Decriminalization seems like an obvious solution; to think that putting addicts behind bars, rather than providing treatment, would have stopped drug abuse is almost comical. But thats what our hypocritical politicians have been doing since tricky dick, who ran a criminal administration, yet got elected on the promise of “law and order.” Of course, Nixon only meant street crime, not the the crimes committed by his administration.
Over the twentieth century, we have gotten deeper and deeper into this quagmire against drugs. Should it be criminal for a human being to ingest a chemical substance? Or even more importantly, does making it criminal help our society in any way? The answer is clearly no. Outlawing drugs simply creates more outlaws in the form of drug dealers, like the outlawing of alcohol created the notorious Al Capone. Since the war on drugs began under Nixon, and escalated with Reagan, our prison population has skyrocketed 500 percent. Today, we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, and nearly half a million people are in our prisons and jails for drug offenses, compared to under 50,000 in 1980. This is outrageous. Drug addicts need a physician, not a corrections officer. Prison should be a place for serious criminals -- rapists, murderers, and why not criminal bankers or criminal Heads of State? Sending impoverished addicts into a prison population only transforms them into real criminals. Former LAPD Deputy Chief, Stephen Downing, writes in the Huffington Post:
“Once incarcerated, users' prospects and those of their families, already often limited, instantly decrease. For the most part, when these folks enter jail, they're marginalized --disproportionately people of color and the poor -- but not violent or dangerous. But after months or years in custody, they become socialized to prison norms, where aggression is an asset and violence commonplace. Someone whose only crime is using a drug does not necessarily have any criminal tendencies, but when they come out of prison and can't find a job because of their record, many turn to crime, the only occupation they've been taught in prison. Almost two-thirds will re-offend within three years, clearly indicating that our current form of punishment is not a deterrent.”
At the very least, all drugs should be decriminalized and addiction treated as a health issue, and the war on drugs terminated. But what about complete legalization? Some of the main selling points for legalization are putting the drug dealers out of business and collecting taxes from the sales, while also regulating the industry. Drug legalization would hurt dealers; but more importantly, it would make it easier for addicts to seek help, and if one bought drugs legally, health professionals could spot abuse and provide aid. Today, criminal drug dealers prey and profit off of hopeless fiends, and our system helps them do it.
Though marijuana legalization is still a new phenomenon in the United States, we can looks at some of the effects in Colorado, which voted to legalize in late 2012. “The first ten months of legal marijuana sales have resulted in nearly $40 million in tax revenue,” according to the states department of revenue, while violent crime has declined in Denver. The states economy is also doing well, while unemployment is low. The biggest issue currently facing states like Colorado and Washington may very well be the competition of medical marijuana, which is taxed at much lower rates and therefore cheaper than recreational. The black market also survives with lower prices, but it is too soon to tell how long the underground market will last. One of the most important results is that crime has not suddenly risen, as many conservatives predicted.
Regardless of these results, the fact is that the drug war has failed, our prisons are overcrowded with non-violent offenders, and we have wasted more than one trillion dollars. It is estimated that the legalization of currently illegal drugs would yield about $46.7 billion annually with taxes comparable to alcohol and tobacco. Not only is it the right thing to do, it is the fiscally prudent thing to do. Standing in the way is an irrational fear that sticks with us today. Outlawing chemical substances has always been based on this kind of irrational fear; in 1875 it was the fear of the Chinese seducing white women, at the start of the twentieth century it was the fear of black ‘fiends’, and during the seventies it was the fear of decadent hippies and addicted veterans. But criminalizing drugs has simply escalated our problem, turning harmless drug users into hard-boiled criminals. Its time to stop living in fear, and do whats right.