Drug Problem

America has a drug problem. It's not the turn on, tune in, drop out one that the American government teaches us, but instead the real problem is our government's so called "war on drugs". This is a war that is very costly. The issue here is moral and ethical. If you live in a free country you should have the right to put anything in your body that you so wish. Anything else goes against the idea of personal freedom.

The new prohibition on drugs was started in 1971 by the Nixon administration. Many feel that the timing of this prohibition had to due with the government's need to construct a moral battle on our own turf in order to distract the people from a morally questionable war that was taking place over seas. This civil war which began as a 350 million dollar a year waste of money has today become a 20 billion dollar a year waste of our money. This prohibition has been a favored political tool of nearly every president who has followed Nixon. From Bill Clinton's balanced budget which he stated contained "the largest anti-drug effort ever" to George Bush Sr. pointing at the camera and defiantly stating that "this scourge will be stopped" to Nancy Regan's "Just Say No" campaigns, many have made this "war" a central vote getting strategy despite its cost to the American public. How much of a political game is to call drugs a scourge yet still serve perfectly legal cocktails at the White House. By any definition that you wish to use alcohol is a mind altering drug. It is the most popular and some would argue one of the most lethal drugs. But the freedom to drink is every Americans right, providing they are of age and do not hurt anyone else, and that is the way it must be in any country that calls it self free.

It is beneficial at this point to look at the history of alcohol prohibition being its relevance to the current drug prohibition. Back in 1919 protestant groups lobbied the government to prohibit the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes. Despite the constitutional amendment forbidding it the masses still demanded alcoholic beverages and an entire black market was created. The demand was supplied by an underground coalition of thugs and lowlifes. Many people where injured or killed due to improperly made moonshine and a lot of innocent kids were mowed down in the streets by Tommy-guns in prohibition induced disputes. The gun has changed from the Tommy-gun to the Tek-9 but the consequences of prohibition remain the same.

The issue here is that when you criminalize things the are not real crimes you still make real criminals, but what does the government want to do with the criminals it creates. Well throw them in jail of course. In 2002, drug law violators comprised 21.4% of all adults serving time in State prisons - 265,000 out of 1,237,500 State prison inmates.1 Over 80% of the increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995 was due to drug convictions.2 A lot of these drug offenses are non-violent offenses such as possession and trafficking. The U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska.3 By putting these non-violent offenders in prison we are costing tax payers money along with creating more hardened criminals. In an experiment conducted through Stanford Dr. Craig Haney found this disturbing trend; "Department of corrections data show that about a fourth of those initially imprisoned for nonviolent crimes are sentenced for a second time for committing a violent offense. Whatever else it reflects, this pattern highlights the possibility that prison serves to transmit violent habits and values rather than to reduce them."4 Many studies have shown that dealing with drugs this way is costing our country too much. A 1998 report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) estimated the economic costs of illegal drug abuse in the United States to be $97.66 billion in 1992. Sixty percent (60%) of drug costs were due to drug-related law enforcement, incarceration and crime. Only 3% of drug costs were from victims of drug-related crime.5

Proponents of the drug war argue that drug use is down across the board due to the prohibition but this is just not the case. Since 1994 marijuana use among 12th graders has increased by about 62% and among the same group use of cocaine has increase from 5.9% in 1994 to 9.8% in 1999. Also from 1999 to 2000 12th graders using ecstasy rose from 5.6% to 8.2%.6 While the most recent National Household Survey showed an increase in drug use the government has been quick to attribute this increase to due to a change in methodology. It is very difficult for any reasonable person to look at this evidence and say that our government's war is working.

As detailed earlier the drug prohibition does not show any compassion or help to drug offenders so maybe the point is to stop drugs from being as available so that fewer people have access to them. Let us look at the issue of supply and demand for a while.

First off let's deal with the theoretical side of the issue and look at the possible ways prohibition could affect supply and demand. In concern to demand prohibition could have one of three outcomes. The first would be that by incarcerating the purchasers of the drugs then we would remove them from the market and in turn remove the demand. The problem with this thinking is two-fold. The first problem would be that it costs society more to incarcerate these people then it does to just let them get high. The second problem lies in the fact that because of search and seizure and privacy laws the vast majority of drug users would not be susceptible to incarceration. A vast majority of possession charges come in connection with another broken law such as speeding or some other crime. Prohibition could also decrease demand indirectly due to the fact that people would be scared of the penalty of drug use and it would in turn decrease the value of the drugs to them. In this model the risk would not be worth the reward. The problem that lies in this mode of thinking is that unless penalties become stricter it is clear that the reward in the drug game still out weighs the risks involved. The third possible effect that prohibition would have on demand is that it could increase it. By outlawing drugs the government turns them into a "forbidden fruit" which could in turn make them more valuable to some people. While this motif can be seen in day to day life there is little hard evidence to support this type of thought.

By creating a black market prohibition has a very traceable effect on supply. Prohibition increases the costs of manufacturing, transporting, and distributing