A Statement On Drug Policy

The Drug Cartels, the organizations that produce and smuggle hard drugs for distribution and sale in the United States are using a series of increasingly sophisticated techniques to bring their wares into our country.  As a consequence the cost of enforcing the prohibition on the sale and use of the same hard drugs has risen to virtually astronomical levels.

What's to be done?

Let's start by examining how the mess began.

One theory is that at the repeal of Prohibition, the insane attempt to ban the consumption of alcohol, there were a mass of federal agents looking for work.  And by looking for work, I mean the acquisition of another federal job, not an actually honest job doing real work.  The appalling employment situation in the civilian sector during The Depression may not have been a factor here.  They're federal government employees after all.  Another factor was that the unholy alliance of Holy Rollers and Progressives still believed in the social control attempted in Prohibition.  They refused to understand that real virtues, such as sobriety, can't be enforced at the point of a gun.  Instead the unholy coalition sought to deny their error and instead inflict another mistake on our nation with another insane act of legislation. 

Hard drugs such as Cocaine and Heroin were developed by pharmaceutical companies as proper pain suppression medicines.  At the time there was only a minor subculture in existence that abused these medicines.  But the fact that there were only that a small number of people abused these medicines, and that the negative social impact was nonexistent, didn't stop the those lobbying for unemployed Prohibition agents and moral morons from pushing the clearly necessary legislation.

The mass of politicians faced with being held to account for Prohibition and the Great Depression needed a sacred cause to restore their exalted position with the electorate.  The prohibition of hard drugs along with Marijuana fit the bill.  At first there was no clearly discernible adverse effects.  Some users switched back to alcohol to destroy themselves while others remained undetected.  The task of a federal agent was a government job after all.

Cocaine was still administered under medical supervision.  By one report President Roosevelt received a dose from his doctor later in the afternoon on the Infamous Day, and quite frankly I don't blame him at all.

But there were still users of hard drugs and therefore a market.  The manufacture only required a  simple knowledge of chemistry that an upper level of criminal could understand and the early suppression efforts were only a jobs program and therefore a joke.  But the street level pushers were only receiving a minimum income at best.  They had to expand their user base in order to increase their income.

The increase in the number of discernible users in turn provoked a call for tighter enforcement which in turn increased the cost drug pushing.  The self-reinforcing cycle continued to gain more power until the present absurd situation has come to effect.

So what's to be done?

The absolute first thing that must be understood is that no actual virtue, in this case cleanness from drugs, can never be imposed at gunpoint.  The only person who ever stop a drug user is the user himself.  He has to recognize the fact that he is destroying himself, and only he can make the decision and act to save himself.

With the pretense of morality buried we must then legalize the hard drugs and Marijuana.  The specialized enforcers of the drug laws can be retired, retrained and reassigned to real police positions, or simply fired.  Legalization will have the beneficial effect of reducing federal spending at the same time.  A further effect will be to cut off the federally mandated stream of funding to the Drug Cartels.  Criminals simply can't compete on pricing with a business that has no overhead costs associated with operating in a black market.  Criminal organizations will be faced with the alternatives of legitimization or bankruptcy, but that's their problem.

With the subsequent drop in drug prices the pressure to commit crimes to pay for the addiction will be relieved.  But again the only valid solution to drug addiction is for the user to end it himself.  The legalization of hard drugs won't solve all of the associated problems of usage but it will restore government to the proper mission of defending our lives.  And it will make he situation better for everyone in general.

I fully acknowledge the fact that this was the position of the Libertarian Party.  I was an active member of the Libertarian Party.  But the Libertarian Party in fact is a joke.