Pubdate: Thu, 05 Apr 2012
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2012 Miami Herald Media Co.
Contact:  http://www.miamiherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262
Author: George F. Will, The Washington Post

THE LEGALIZATION DILEMMA

The human nervous system interacts in pleasing and addictive ways with
certain molecules derived from some plants, which is why humans may
have developed beer before they developed bread. Psychoactive -
consciousness-altering - and addictive drugs are natural, a fact that
should immunize policymakers against extravagant hopes as they cope
with the United States' drug problem, which is convulsing some nations
to our south.

The costs - human, financial and social - of combating (most) drugs
are prompting calls for decriminalization or legalization. The United
States should, however, learn from the psychoactive drug used by a
majority of U.S. adults - alcohol.

Mark Kleiman of UCLA, a policy analyst, was recently discussing drug
policy with someone who said he had no experience with illegal drugs,
not even marijuana, because he is of "the gin generation." Ah, said
Kleiman, gin: "A much more dangerous drug." Twenty percent of all U.S.
prisoners - 500,000 people - are incarcerated for dealing illegal
drugs, but alcohol causes as much as half of the United States'
criminal violence and vehicular fatalities.

Drinking alcohol had been a widely exercised private right for
millennia when the United States tried to prohibit it. As a public
health measure, Prohibition "worked": Alcohol-related illnesses
declined dramatically. As the monetary cost of drinking tripled,
deaths from cirrhosis of the liver declined by a third. This
improvement was, however, paid for in the coin of rampant criminality
and disrespect for law.

Prohibition resembled what is today called decriminalization: It did
not make drinking illegal; it criminalized the making, importing,
transporting or selling of alcohol. Drinking remained legal, so oceans
of it were made, imported, transported and sold.

Another legal drug, nicotine, kills more people than do alcohol and
all illegal drugs - combined. For decades, government has aggressively
publicized the health risks of smoking and made it unfashionable,
stigmatized, expensive and inconvenient. Yet 20 percent of every
rising U.S. generation becomes addicted to nicotine.

So, suppose cocaine or heroin were legalized and marketed as
cigarettes and alcohol are. And suppose the level of addiction were to
replicate the 7 percent of adults suffering from alcohol abuse or
dependency. That would be a public health disaster. As the late James
Q. Wilson said, nicotine shortens life, cocaine debases it.

Still, because the costs of prohibition - interdiction, mass
incarceration, etc. - are staggeringly high, some people say, "Let's
just try legalization for a while." Society is not, however, like a
controlled laboratory; in society, experiments that produce
disappointing or unexpected results cannot be tidily reversed.

Legalized marijuana could be produced for much less than a tenth of
its current price as an illegal commodity. Legalization of cocaine and
heroin would cut their prices, too; they would sell for a tiny
percentage of their current prices. And using high excise taxes to
maintain cocaine and heroin prices at current levels would produce
widespread tax evasion - and an illegal market.

Furthermore, legalization would mean drugs of reliable quality would
be conveniently available from clean stores for customers not risking
the stigma of breaking the law in furtive transactions with unsavory
people. So there is no reason to think today's levels of addiction are
anywhere near the levels that would be reached under
legalization.

Regarding the interdicting of drug shipments, capturing "kingpin"
distributors and incarcerating dealers, consider data from the book
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know by Kleiman,
Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken. Almost all heroin comes from
poppies grown on 4 percent of the arable land of one country -
Afghanistan. Four South American countries - Colombia, Ecuador, Peru
and Bolivia - produce more than 90 percent of the world's cocaine.
But attempts to decrease production in source countries produce the
"balloon effect." Squeeze a balloon in one spot, it bulges in
another. Suppress production of poppies or coca leaves here,
production moves there. The $8 billion Plan Colombia was a melancholy
success, reducing coca production there 65 percent, while production
increased 40 percent in Peru and doubled in Bolivia.

In the 1980s, when "cocaine cowboys" made Miami lawless, the U.S.
government created the South Florida Task Force to interdict cocaine
shipped from Central and South America by small planes and cigarette
boats. This interdiction was so successful the cartels opened new
delivery routes. Tranquility in Miami was purchased at the price of
mayhem in Mexico.

The United States spends 20 times more on drug control than all the
world's poppy and coca growers earn. A subsequent column will suggest
a more economic approach to the"natural" problem of drugs.
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MAP posted-by: Matt