soft drugs should be legalized essay

You are using an outdated browser. Upgrade your browser today or install Google Chrome Frame to better experience this site.

Should drugs be legalized? Legalization pros and cons

Source: Composite by G_marius based on Chuck Grimmett's image

Should drugs be legalized? Why? Is it time to lift the prohibition on recreational drugs such as marijuana and cocaine? Can we stop drug trafficking? if so what would be the best way to reduce consumption?

Public health problem

Drugs continue to be one of the greatest problems for public health . Although the consumption of some substances has declined over time, new drugs have entered the market and become popular. In the USA, after the crack epidemic, in the 80s and early 90s, and the surge of methamphetamine, in the 90s and early 21st century, there is currently a prescription opioid crisis . The number of casualties  from these opioids, largely bought in pharmacies, has overtaken the combined deaths from cocaine and heroine overdose. There are million of addicts to these substances which are usually prescribed by a doctor. This is a relevant twist to the problem of drugs because it shows that legalization or criminalization may not always bring the desire solution to the problem of drug consumption. On the other hand there is also evidence of success in reducing drug abuse through legal reform. This is the case of Portuguese decriminalization of drug use, which has show a dramatic decrease in drug related crime, overdoses and HIV infections. 

History of prohibition of drugs

There are legal recreational drugs , such as alcohol and  tobacco , and other recreational drugs which are prohibited. The history of  prohibition of drugs is long. Islamic Sharia law, which dates back to the 7th century, banned some intoxicating substances, including alcohol. Opium consumption was later prohibited in China and Thailand. The  Pharmacy Act 1868 in the United Kingdom was the first modern law in Europe regulating drug use. This law prohibited the distribution of poison and drugs, and in particular opium and derivates. Gradually other Western countries introduced laws to limit the use of opiates.  For instance in San Francisco smoking opium was banned in 1875 and in Australia opium sale was prohibited in 1905 . In the early 20th century, several countries such as Canada, Finland, Norway, the US and Russia, introduced alcohol prohibitions . These alcohol prohibitions were unsucessful and lifted later on. Drug prohibitions were strengthened around the world from the 1960s onward. The US was one of the main proponents of a strong stance against drugs, in particular since Richad Nixon declared the "War on Drugs ." The "War on Drugs" did not produced the results expected. The demand for drugs grew as well as the number of addicts. Since production and distribution was illegal, criminals took over its supply.  Handing control of the drug trade to organized criminals has had disastrous consequences across the globe. T oday, drug laws diverge widely across countries. Some countries have softer regulation and devote less resources to control drug trafficking, while in other countries the criminalization of drugs can entail very dire sentences. Thus while in some countries recreational drug use has been decriminalized, in others drug traficking is punished with life or death sentences.

Should drugs be legalized?

In many Western countries drug policies are considered ineffective and decriminalization of drugs has become a trend. Many experts have provided evidence on why drugs should be legal . One reason for legalization of recreational drug use is that the majority of adicts are not criminals and should not be treated as such but helped in other ways. The criminalization of drug users contributes to generating divides in our societies. The "War on Drugs" held by the governments of countries such as USA , Mexico, Colombia, and Indonesia, created much harm to society. Drug related crimes have not always decline after a more intolerant government stance on drugs. Prohibition and crime are often seen as correlated.

T here is also evidence of successful partial decriminalization in Canada, Switzerland, Portugal and Uruguay. Other countries such as Ireland seem to be following a similar path and are planning to decriminalize some recreational drugs soon.  Moreover, The United Nations had a special session on drugs on 2016r,  UNGASS 2016 , following the request of the presidents of Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala. The goal of this session was  to analyse the effects of the war on drugs. explore new options and establish a   new paradigm in international drug policy in order to prevent the flow of resources to organized crime organizations. This meeting was seen as an opportunity, and even a call, for far-reaching drug law reforms. However, the final outcome failed to change the status quo and to trigger any ambitious reform.

However, not everyone is convinced about the need of decriminalization of recreational drugs. Some analysts point to several reasons why  drugs should not be legalized  and t he media have played an important role in shaping the public discourse and, indirectly, policy-making against legalization. For instance, t he portrayal of of the issue in British media, tabloids in particular, has reinforced harmful, dehumanising stereotypes of drug addicts as criminals. At the moment the UK government’s response is to keep on making illegal new recreational drugs. For instance,  Psychoactive Substances Bill aims at criminalizing legal highs . Those supporting the bill argue that  criminalization makes more difficult for young people to have access to these drugs and could reduce the number of people who get addicted. 

List of recreational drugs

This is the  list of recreational drugs  (in alphabetic order) which could be subject to decriminalization in the future:

• Amfetamines (speed, whizz, dexies, sulph)
• Amyl nitrates (poppers, amys, kix, TNT)
• Cannabis (marijuana, hash, hashish, weed)
• Cocaine (crack, freebase, toot)
• Ecstasy (crystal, MDMA, E)
• Heroin (H, smack, skag, brown)
• Ketamine  (K, special K, green)
• LSD (acid, paper mushrooms, tripper)
• Magic mushrooms (mushies, magics)
• Mephedrone (meow meow, drone, m cat)
• Methamfetamines (yaba, meth, crank, glass)
• Painkillers, sedatives and tranquilizers (chill pills, blues, bricks)

Pros and cons of legalization of drugs

These are some of the most commonly argued pros of legalization :

• Government would see the revenues boosted due to the money collected from taxing drugs.
• Health and safety controls on these substances could be implemented, making recreational drugs less dangerous.
• Facilitate access for medicinal use. For instance cannabis is effective treating a range of conditions. Other recreational drugs could be used in similar ways.
• Personal freedom. People would have the capacity to decide whether they experiment with drugs without having to be considered criminals or having to deal with illegal dealers.
• Criminal gangs could run out of business and gun violence would be reduced.
• Police resources could be used in other areas and help increase security.
• The experience of decriminalization of drugs in some countries such as Portugal and Uruguay, has led to a decrease in drug related problems. 

Cons of decriminalizing drug production, distribution and use:

• New users for drugs. As in the case of legal recreational drugs, decriminalization does not imply reduction in consumption. If these substances are legal, trying them could become "more normal" than nowadays.
• Children and teenagers could more easily have access to drugs.
• Drug trafficking would remain a problem. If governments heavily tax drugs, it is likely that some criminal networks continue to produce and smuggle them providing a cheaper price for consumers.
• The first few countries which decide to legalize drugs could have problems of drug tourism.
• The rate of people driving and having accidents due drug intoxication could increase.
• Even with safety controls, drugs would continue to be a great public health problem and cause a range of diseases (damamge to the brain and lungs, heart diseases, mental health conditions).
• People may still become addicts and die from legalized drugs, as in America's opioid crisis.

What do think, should recreational drugs be legalized or decriminalized? Which of them?  Is legalising drugs being soft on crime?  Is the prohibition on drugs making the work of the police more difficult and diverting resources away from other more important issues? Join the discussion and share arguments and resources on the forum below .

Watch these videos on decriminalization of drugs

Vote to see result and collect 1 XP. Your vote is anonymous. If you change your mind, you can change your vote simply by clicking on another option.

Voting results

New to netivist?

Join with confidence, netivist is completely advertisement free. You will not receive any promotional materials from third parties.

Or sign in with your favourite Social Network:

Join the debate

In order to join the debate you must be logged in.

Already have an account on netivist? Just login . New to netivist? Create your account for free .

 Report Abuse and Offensive language

Was there any kind of offensive or inappropriate language used in this comment.

If you feel this user's conduct is unappropriate, please report this comment and our moderaters will review its content and deal with this matter as soon as possible.

NOTE: Your account might be penalized should we not find any wrongdoing by this user. Only use this feature if you are certain this user has infringed netivist's Terms of Service .

Our moderators will now review this comment and act accordingly. If it contains abusive or inappropriate language its author will be penalized.

Posting Comment

Your comment is being posted. This might take a few seconds, please wait.

Error Posting Comment

  error.

We are having trouble saving your comment. Please try again .

Most Voted Debates

Start a Debate

Would you like to create a debate and share it with the netivist community? We will help you do it!

Found a technical issue?

Are you experiencing any technical problem with netivist? Please let us know!

Help netivist

Help netivist continue running free!

Please consider making a small donation today. This will allow us to keep netivist alive and available to a wide audience and to keep on introducing new debates and features to improve your experience.

• What is netivist?
• Entertainment
• Top Debates
• Top Campaigns
• Provide Feedback

Follow us on social media:

 Share by Email

There was an error...

Email successfully sent to:

Join with confidence, netivist is completely advertisement free You will not recive any promotional materials from third parties

 Join netivist

Already have a netivist account?

If you already created your netivist account, please log in using the button below.

If you are new to netivist, please create your account for free and start collecting your netivist points!

You just leveled up!

Congrats you just reached a new level on Netivist. Keep up the good work.

Together we can make a difference

Follow us and don't miss out on the latest debates!

Drug Legalization?: Time for a real debate

Subscribe to governance weekly, paul stares ps paul stares.

March 1, 1996

• 11 min read

Whether Bill Clinton “inhaled” when trying marijuana as a college student was about the closest the last presidential campaign came to addressing the drug issue. The present one, however, could be very different. For the fourth straight year, a federally supported nationwide survey of American secondary school students by the University of Michigan has indicated increased drug use. After a decade or more in which drug use had been falling, the Republicans will assuredly blame the bad news on President Clinton and assail him for failing to carry on the Bush and Reagan administrations’ high-profile stand against drugs. How big this issue becomes is less certain, but if the worrisome trend in drug use among teens continues, public debate about how best to respond to the drug problem will clearly not end with the election. Indeed, concern is already mounting that the large wave of teenagers—the group most at risk of taking drugs—that will crest around the turn of the century will be accompanied by a new surge in drug use.

As in the past, some observers will doubtless see the solution in much tougher penalties to deter both suppliers and consumers of illicit psychoactive substances. Others will argue that the answer lies not in more law enforcement and stiffer sanctions, but in less. Specifically, they will maintain that the edifice of domestic laws and international conventions that collectively prohibit the production, sale, and consumption of a large array of drugs for anything other than medical or scientific purposes has proven physically harmful, socially divisive, prohibitively expensive, and ultimately counterproductive in generating the very incentives that perpetuate a violent black market for illicit drugs. They will conclude, moreover, that the only logical step for the United States to take is to “legalize” drugs—in essence repeal and disband the current drug laws and enforcement mechanisms in much the same way America abandoned its brief experiment with alcohol prohibition in the 1920s.

Although the legalization alternative typically surfaces when the public’s anxiety about drugs and despair over existing policies are at their highest, it never seems to slip off the media radar screen for long. Periodic incidents—such as the heroin-induced death of a young, affluent New York City couple in 1995 or the 1993 remark by then Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders that legalization might be beneficial and should be studied—ensure this. The prominence of many of those who have at various times made the case for legalization—such as William F. Buckley, Jr., Milton Friedman, and George Shultz—also helps. But each time the issue of legalization arises, the same arguments for and against are dusted off and trotted out, leaving us with no clearer understanding of what it might entail and what the effect might be.

As will become clear, drug legalization is not a public policy option that lends itself to simplistic or superficial debate. It requires dissection and scrutiny of an order that has been remarkably absent despite the attention it perennially receives. Beyond discussion of some very generally defined proposals, there has been no detailed assessment of the operational meaning of legalization. There is not even a commonly accepted lexicon of terms to allow an intellectually rigorous exchange to take place. Legalization, as a consequence, has come to mean different things to different people. Some, for example, use legalization interchangeably with “decriminalization,” which usually refers to removing criminal sanctions for possessing small quantities of drugs for personal use. Others equate legalization, at least implicitly, with complete deregulation, failing in the process to acknowledge the extent to which currently legally available drugs are subject to stringent controls.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government—including the Clinton administration—has done little to improve the debate. Although it has consistently rejected any retreat from prohibition, its stance has evidently not been based on in- depth investigation of the potential costs and benefits. The belief that legalization would lead to an instant and dramatic increase in drug use is considered to be so self-evident as to warrant no further study. But if this is indeed the likely conclusion of any study, what is there to fear aside from criticism that relatively small amounts of taxpayer money had been wasted in demonstrating what everyone had believed at the outset? Wouldn’t such an outcome in any case help justify the continuation of existing policies and convincingly silence those—admittedly never more than a small minority—calling for legalization?

A real debate that acknowledges the unavoidable complexities and uncertainties surrounding the notion of drug legalization is long overdue. Not only would it dissuade people from making the kinds of casual if not flippant assertions—both for and against—that have permeated previous debates about legalization, but it could also stimulate a larger and equally critical assessment of current U.S. drug control programs and priorities.

First Ask the Right Questions

Many arguments appear to make legalization a compelling alternative to today’s prohibitionist policies. Besides undermining the black-market incentives to produce and sell drugs, legalization could remove or at least significantly reduce the very problems that cause the greatest public concern: the crime, corruption, and violence that attend the operation of illicit drug markets. It would presumably also diminish the damage caused by the absence of quality controls on illicit drugs and slow the spread of infectious diseases due to needle sharing and other unhygienic practices. Furthermore, governments could abandon the costly and largely futile effort to suppress the supply of illicit drugs and jail drug offenders, spending the money thus saved to educate people not to take drugs and treat those who become addicted.

However, what is typically portrayed as a fairly straightforward process of lifting prohibitionist controls to reap these putative benefits would in reality entail addressing an extremely complex set of regulatory issues. As with most if not all privately and publicly provided goods, the key regulatory questions concern the nature of the legally available drugs, the terms of their supply, and the terms of their consumption (see page 21).

What becomes immediately apparent from even a casual review of these questions—and the list presented here is by no means exhaustive—is that there is an enormous range of regulatory permutations for each drug. Until all the principal alternatives are clearly laid out in reasonable detail, however, the potential costs and benefits of each cannot begin to be responsibly assessed. This fundamental point can be illustrated with respect to the two central questions most likely to sway public opinion. What would happen to drug consumption under more permissive regulatory regimes? And what would happen to crime?

Relaxing the availability of psychoactive substances not already commercially available, opponents typically argue, would lead to an immediate and substantial rise in consumption. To support their claim, they point to the prevalence of opium, heroin, and cocaine addiction in various countries before international controls took effect, the rise in alcohol consumption after the Volstead Act was repealed in the United States, and studies showing higher rates of abuse among medical professionals with greater access to prescription drugs. Without explaining the basis of their calculations, some have predicted dramatic increases in the number of people taking drugs and becoming addicted. These increases would translate into considerable direct and indirect costs to society, including higher public health spending as a result of drug overdoses, fetal deformities, and other drug-related misadventures such as auto accidents; loss of productivity due to worker absenteeism and on-the-job accidents; and more drug-induced violence, child abuse, and other crimes, to say nothing about educational impairment.

Advocates of legalization concede that consumption would probably rise, but counter that it is not axiomatic that the increase would be very large or last very long, especially if legalization were paired with appropriate public education programs. They too cite historical evidence to bolster their claims, noting that consumption of opium, heroin, and cocaine had already begun falling before prohibition took effect, that alcohol consumption did not rise suddenly after prohibition was lifted, and that decriminalization of cannabis use in 11 U.S. states in the 1970s did not precipitate a dramatic rise in its consumption. Some also point to the legal sale of cannabis products through regulated outlets in the Netherlands, which also does not seem to have significantly boosted use by Dutch nationals. Public opinion polls showing that most Americans would not rush off to try hitherto forbidden drugs that suddenly became available are likewise used to buttress the pro-legalization case.

Neither side’s arguments are particularly reassuring. The historical evidence is ambiguous at best, even assuming that the experience of one era is relevant to another. Extrapolating the results of policy steps in one country to another with different sociocultural values runs into the same problem. Similarly, within the United States the effect of decriminalization at the state level must be viewed within the general context of continued federal prohibition. And opinion polls are known to be unreliable.

More to the point, until the nature of the putative regulatory regime is specified, such discussions are futile. It would be surprising, for example, if consumption of the legalized drugs did not increase if they were to become commercially available the way that alcohol and tobacco products are today, complete with sophisticated packaging, marketing, and advertising. But more restrictive regimes might see quite different outcomes. In any case, the risk of higher drug consumption might be acceptable if legalization could reduce dramatically if not remove entirely the crime associated with the black market for illicit drugs while also making some forms of drug use safer. Here again, there are disputed claims.

Opponents of more permissive regimes doubt that black market activity and its associated problems would disappear or even fall very much. But, as before, addressing this question requires knowing the specifics of the regulatory regime, especially the terms of supply. If drugs are sold openly on a commercial basis and prices are close to production and distribution costs, opportunities for illicit undercutting would appear to be rather small. Under a more restrictive regime, such as government-controlled outlets or medical prescription schemes, illicit sources of supply would be more likely to remain or evolve to satisfy the legally unfulfilled demand. In short, the desire to control access to stem consumption has to be balanced against the black market opportunities that would arise. Schemes that risk a continuing black market require more questions—about the new black markets operation over time, whether it is likely to be more benign than existing ones, and more broadly whether the trade-off with other benefits still makes the effort worthwhile.

The most obvious case is regulating access to drugs by adolescents and young adults. Under any regime, it is hard to imagine that drugs that are now prohibited would become more readily available than alcohol and tobacco are today. Would a black market in drugs for teenagers emerge, or would the regulatory regime be as leaky as the present one for alcohol and tobacco? A “yes” answer to either question would lessen the attractiveness of legalization.

What about the International Repercussions?

Not surprisingly, the wider international ramifications of drug legalization have also gone largely unremarked. Here too a long set of questions remains to be addressed. Given the longstanding U.S. role as the principal sponsor of international drug control measures, how would a decision to move toward legalizing drugs affect other countries? What would become of the extensive regime of multilateral conventions and bilateral agreements? Would every nation have to conform to a new set of rules? If not, what would happen? Would more permissive countries be suddenly swamped by drugs and drug consumers, or would traffickers focus on the countries where tighter restrictions kept profits higher? This is not an abstract question. The Netherlands’ liberal drug policy has attracted an influx of “drug tourists” from neighboring countries, as did the city of Zurich’s following the now abandoned experiment allowing an open drug market to operate in what became known as “Needle Park.” And while it is conceivable that affluent countries could soften the worst consequences of drug legalization through extensive public prevention and drug treatment programs, what about poorer countries?

Finally, what would happen to the principal suppliers of illicit drugs if restrictions on the commercial sale of these drugs were lifted in some or all of the main markets? Would the trafficking organizations adapt and become legal businesses or turn to other illicit enterprises? What would happen to the source countries? Would they benefit or would new producers and manufacturers suddenly spring up elsewhere? Such questions have not even been posed in a systematic way, let alone seriously studied.

Irreducible Uncertainties

Although greater precision in defining more permissive regulatory regimes is critical to evaluating their potential costs and benefits, it will not resolve the uncertainties that exist. Only implementation will do that. Because small-scale experimentation (assuming a particular locality’s consent to be a guinea pig) would inevitably invite complaints that the results were biased or inconclusive, implementation would presumably have to be widespread, even global, in nature.

Yet jettisoning nearly a century of prohibition when the putative benefits remain so uncertain and the potential costs are so high would require a herculean leap of faith. Only an extremely severe and widespread deterioration of the current drug situation, nationally and internationally—is likely to produce the consensus—again, nationally and internationally that could impel such a leap. Even then the legislative challenge would be stupendous. The debate over how to set the conditions for controlling access to each of a dozen popular drugs could consume the legislatures of the major industrial countries for years.

None of this should deter further analysis of drug legalization. In particular, a rigorous assessment of a range of hypothetical regulatory regimes according to a common set of variables would clarify their potential costs, benefits, and trade- offs. Besides instilling much-needed rigor into any further discussion of the legalization alternative, such analysis could encourage the same level of scrutiny of current drug control programs and policies. With the situation apparently deteriorating in the United States as well as abroad, there is no better time for a fundamental reassessment of whether our existing responses to this problem are sufficient to meet the likely challenges ahead.

Governance Studies

Brookings Institution, Washington DC

2:00 pm - 5:30 pm EDT

David R. Holtgrave, Regina LaBelle, Vanda Felbab-Brown

September 3, 2024

Nicole Gastala, Harold Pollack, Vanda Felbab-Brown

August 27, 2024

• Share full article

Advertisement

The World’s View on Drugs Is Changing. Which Side Are You On?

Should we decriminalize drugs, or legalize.

Today on “The Argument,” is it time to legalize all drugs?

Last November, an overwhelming majority of Oregonians voted to decriminalize most drugs via referendum. Medical marijuana is now legal in Alabama. And in a matter of months, cannabis products could be available to those who qualify.

Truth of the matter is, there’s not nearly been enough evidence that has been acquired as to whether or not it is a gateway drug. And I want a lot more before I legalize it nationally.

President Biden may not be ready for legalized, recreational marijuana, but many states are way ahead of him. Connecticut just became the 18th state to legalize recreational marijuana. And it’s not just weed. Several cities have recently decriminalized magic mushrooms, and Oregon just decriminalized possession of small amounts of all drugs, including heroin, methamphetamines, and cocaine. It seems like the War on Drugs is over and drugs won big. I’m Jane Coaston, and there seems to be more and more consensus that jailing our way out of the addiction crisis in the United States is not working. But even hardcore drug policy reformers have vastly different takes on how we get to a better place with drugs, like our guests today. Ismail Ali is the Policy and Advocacy Director at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and Jonathan P. Caulkins is the H. Guyford Stever University Professor of Operations, Research, and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. I started out by asking Ismail to define the difference between drug decriminalization and legalization.

So when people think of decriminalization, they’re usually thinking of the reduction or elimination of criminal penalties, sometimes including civil penalties. And legalization tends to be when the law actually is fully recognizing, regulating activity from point A to point Z. So you can decriminalize, for example, personal use and possession. But if every behavior up to that point is still illegal, you have an island of maybe legal or decriminalized behavior in a sea of illegal behavior. So they get through all this illegal behavior to get to the legal behavior. And I think legalization implies a full spectrum, regulated approach to the whole piece.

Ismail, you do think that ultimately the goal would be to legalize all drugs. Why?

I do think that legal, regulated access is likely the best environment for a number of drugs, but I think it’s going to depend very much on the substance itself, and factors that have to do with the supply and demand questions with respect to where and how it’s produced. Not having a legally regulated system puts us in a position where the very, very large and lucrative drug trade, which exists, whether or not there’s a regulated industry, entirely is captured by underground actors with various levels of ethics and morals. And I think that that whole conversation around legal access must also look at — and has looked at, historically — the uptake of all substances in illegal markets, and then the effects of those behaviors. My mother’s family is Colombian, and they left Colombia in the 1980s as a result in part of the massive increase in cocaine violence and cartel use. And that continued underground. Engagement has not really ceased — not just with cocaine, but with a number of other drugs. And even Colombia now is having a very serious conversation at the governmental level about what it would look like to legally regulate cocaine, because — despite pressure from the U.S. and other actors, they have realized that, actually, having some sort of legally regulated system could be the way to reduce the violence in the country. So while I do think that legalizing drugs, which sounds like such a scary thing to a lot of people, really means bringing them under more regulatory control. It’s hard, I think, to really think through what an effective addiction response strategy at the social level would be while we’re under an environment of prohibition, because prohibition does exacerbate some of those secondary effects of drugs, like, for example, addiction independence.

I’m curious as to your thoughts, Jonathan, on decriminalization versus legalization.

These have to be decided drug by drug. Drugs are different. For a long time, we’ve had caffeine be legal. That was probably fine. I don’t think that it’s — one should be cavalier about other substances. Opioids make the point. The prescription opioid crisis was a crisis that killed tens of thousands of people every year for a drug that was highly regulated, much more so than the typical recreational drug. Opioids are intrinsically dangerous, much more so than caffeine or cannabis. It has to be decided on a case by case basis.

I think that that’s something that’s also important to note here, is that, for instance, in Oregon — Oregon just passed Measure 110, which makes possession of small amounts of LSD, methamphetamines, cocaine, and heroin punishable by a civil citation. That is not legalization. That is decriminalization. So I’m interested, Jonathan, can you talk about — when we’re talking about decriminalization, it sounds to me that it is still a civil penalty in Oregon to possess these — crimes. It’s like a traffic ticket, but that’s still a crime-ish.

Yeah, with the ish. The other thing it’s important to say is that, usually, when people talk decriminalization, they’re talking about decriminalizing or changing the consequences for people possessing amounts suitable for personal use. Whereas if you just say legalize, without any qualification, the presumption is you’re legalizing supply. So there is a big difference there. And sometimes it helps to keep them straight by remembering a third term, which is legalizing use. So decriminalization is usually reducing penalties for use so that you don’t have people getting a criminal record for use. Then you can go a step farther, as Ismail was saying, and legalize use, meaning you don’t even get the equivalent of a fine or a traffic ticket. Both of those are very different than legalizing supply.

Jonathan, you made a really fascinating argument in a piece called “The Drug Policy Roulette,” and I’d like you to explain more about this, because it actually was counterintuitive for me, which is — my view was that legalizing drugs would do what the end of Prohibition did for alcohol, which is when you aren’t legally allowed to drink, you can drink all the time. But with the end of Prohibition and with a regulated alcohol market, you have places — you have counties that are dry. You have a liquor store that can only be open from this time to this time. There are prohibitions on drunk driving, and societal prohibitions against when you can — like, drinking in the morning, drinking by yourself, this is looked down on. And I think societal prohibitions play into how we think about using drugs and alcohol anyway. But in the case of drugs, you made the point in this piece that one of the issues that would be unexpected from this is that prohibition makes drugs expensive, and that drugs like heroin and cocaine would actually be pretty cheap to obtain if they were legalized, because a part of what makes them expensive is what’s called compensating wage differentials. Namely, it’s really hard to bring cocaine into the United States. You are paying for the cost of how hard it is to bring cocaine into the United States. But with that price collapse, the taxes required to make it so that you weren’t just having cheap cocaine everywhere would be incredibly high, which would then contribute to the kind of gray market smuggling that we see with cigarette smuggling in the United States and in other countries. This is a financial issue I had never thought about.

Sure. The first point is that prohibition prevents one from producing these things in straightforward ways. None of the drugs are hard to produce. If it was legal and you could allow a regular company to do it, then they become very cheap. You can see that, for instance, just in the price of cocaine in Colombia is about 1 percent or 2 percent what it is in the streets in the United States. And the illegal distribution system effectively charges $15,000 to move a kilogram from Bogota to New York City that would cost $70 on FedEx. So prohibition makes things far more expensive than it would be if they were legal. As a practical matter, there’s no way that we will have taxes high enough to prevent prices from declining substantially. And that is in part because there probably wouldn’t be the political will, but also in part because of practicalities. Drugs are very potent in the sense that it doesn’t take very much material. A daily cannabis user using one and a half grams a day consumes only a little more than a pound over a year, about the same weight as one 20 ounce can of beer. So we just can’t effectively collect very high taxes on these easy to smuggle commodities.

Yeah, and many people have talked now for some years about this concept, the Iron Law of Prohibition, which maybe it would be good to bring in here, which is essentially the idea that because smuggling is such a lucrative activity, and because smuggling smaller things, more concentrated substances is easier, it actually incentivizes higher concentrations of substances to be taken across borders. So for example, if you want to take enough heroin for 500 people, you need a trunk of a car. If you want to take enough fentanyl for 500 people, you need something about the size of your phone or maybe much, much, much smaller. So there might be the case where as smuggling gets more difficult, it’s actually incentivizing higher concentrations of drugs, because it’s easier to smuggle those drugs as opposed to ones that take up more physical space.

Well, we should unpack this, though. I mean, the movement from heroin to fentanyl is not a response to a change in the legal status of either substance. But the Iron Law of Prohibition has been completely refuted by the experience with cannabis legalization. It’s the iron law that holds no water. Cannabis did not exceed average potency of 5 percent until 2000, and now it’s — typical flower potency in a legal stores is over 20 percent. And we now have common use of vapes and dabs, which are much more potent than that. So the Iron Law of Prohibition has just been disproved by experience with cannabis legalization.

I’d probably push back on that a bit, because cannabis is also produced in state. We’re not talking as much about taking things across borders, but the big difference is that with a lot of cannabis products, they’re being produced at the place or near the place they’re being used, which is different from things that are crossing international borders.

The weight of drugs doesn’t matter much at all after they are legal, because the weight is so small. Again, I make reference this —

Yeah, no. I agree after they are legal, for sure.

So it doesn’t matter that at the moment we’re in this weird situation where we have a bunch of state specific markets. That’s a temporary artifact of the fact that there’s not yet national legalization. Once there’s national legalization, we can no longer have these state specific markets because of the Interstate Commerce Clause in the Constitution.

Jonathan, you brought up the opioid crisis. And I think that there have been a host of people who’ve written on how they used to support drug legalization. And the opioid epidemic and how it took place changed their minds. And I want to point to a great piece — my former colleague at Vox, German Lopez, wrote about this, where he said that essentially with opioids, you had companies that got a hold of a product. They marketed it irresponsibly and lobbied for lax rules in influencing government, and people died. As he points out, the United States historically is very bad at regulating drugs. Ismail, does the experience of the opioid epidemic — has that changed your viewpoint on what legalization would look like?

No, because I don’t see legalization as only a question of the regulations that have to do with the drug. I think that there are factors beyond just the way opioids are regulated and are regulated that has to do with why there’s a crisis today. And I actually personally tend to frame it as an overdose crisis. I do think opioids are a big part of that. But if you’ve been following the numbers for the last couple of years, it’s absolutely the case that overdoses with methamphetamine and other drugs are also extremely intensely increasing. And the way that, as you said, a certain framework of pharmaceutical regulation has operated with certain opioids is such a good example of what I imagine legalization to be. Like, I think if I were putting together a thinking through with people — what would be an ideal legalization scheme? And I really agree with what Jonathan said, where it’s a case by case basis. And there may be drugs that don’t need or shouldn’t have fully legally regulated systems, and maybe decriminalization is the appropriate environment for that. And maybe decriminalization of certain kinds of behaviors — and I think one really good example that feels like it’s at the center of this is this question about advertising and marketing. I think that what companies are allowed to say, what claims they’re allowed to make, how they’re allowed to advertise, what expectations are setting with consumers — those factors are pretty significant. That’s not to say that if there wasn’t the aggressive marketing campaign with some of these opioids that we’d be in the same or a different position today. It’s really difficult to tell. It’s a system that has been highly affected by interests that are not in that of the consumer, not in the interest of the public. When society was flooded with cigarette ads, a lot of people started smoking more cigarettes. That’s not — and of course, there’s a risk to smoking cigarettes. But to me, that’s an artificial pressure that comes from the market and its incentives. And I think that once you take out some of those things to the extent that that’s possible in a legal market, you might actually be able to adjust some of those outcomes.

But I think that’s the point. It’s easy to imagine an ideal legalization, but that’s not what we’re going to get. We’re going to get the legalization that comes out of our political process and institutions. And marketing is the concrete example. Once a product is legalized, the companies that produce it will enjoy First Amendment commercial free speech protections that will allow them to market.

Should they?

It doesn’t matter whether they should or should not. In the United States, under our Constitution, which protects commercial free speech, they will. In another country, with a different constitution, the government would have greater power to restrict advertising. Many of the current restrictions on cannabis advertising only are constitutional because it is still illegal under federal law.

Yeah, I spent a brief time looking at some of the ads that were made for OxyContin. And there’s one that says that, when you know acetaminophen won’t be enough, OxyContin 12 Hour — which is, like, acetaminophen is Tylenol. And going from Tylenol to OxyContin is a real — it’s a real leap. But I think that gets to something I’m curious about — because the United States has been a leader in determining the control of drug trade and practice, Jonathan, how do you think hypothetically that a legalization or decriminalization would impact international markets? Do you think that there would be a collapse in the price, internationally, of cocaine or heroin? What would that even look like?

Yeah, it’s a great question. And sort of the short answer is that in any place that legalizes and allows for profit industry, you’re going to see a price collapse. And because these things are so easy to smuggle, that would put downward pressure on other countries that are connected commercially to the country that legalized. And in an interconnected world, that’s a lot of places. You’re seeing some of this already, even without legalization, from the switch to synthetics which can be produced anywhere and are easier to produce surreptitiously than with crop based products. And legalization would be a little bit like the innovation of fentanyl coming into the market. It would greatly reduce the cost of production. And over time, that puts downward pressure on prices.

Ismail, I know that your organization has been thinking a lot about this with regard to psychedelics, so whether that’s LSD, whether that’s the use with MDMA in Oregon and other places, psychedelics and the use of psychedelics is getting increasing state support. The California State Senate in June of this year passed a bill that would legalize the social sharing and possession and use of psychedelics. It’s something that’s coming around. What does that look like, and how has your organization participated in that conversation?

Yeah, a couple of things. So I work for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which was founded in 1986 after MDMA was criminalized in an emergency scheduling decision by the D.E.A. MDMA — best known as the active ingredient in ecstasy. It’s now— through MAPS and the Public Benefit Corporation, which we work with — in that entity is taking MDMA through the F.D.A. process, with the intention of having it recognized as a prescription medicine. But while we’re focusing primarily on MDMA, it’s absolutely the case that one of the large goals and kind of value systems that MAPS has utilized over the last 35 years is toward legal, regulated access for psychedelic substances, and specifically, in a legal, medical, or cultural context. And while my personal perspective on this does have to do with really shifting drug laws for all of the substances involved, it is absolutely true that psychedelics are experiencing a kind of like zeitgeist, or some sort of like resurgence in society, now that we have a couple of decades of solid clinical and observational data, you know, depending on the substance, depending on the environment, that show that they may have benefits for certain people in certain mental health contexts. That’s happening simultaneously to this renewed awareness of the spiritual use of some of these substances in certain contexts, which regulatory and structurally speaking, looks very different from like a medicalized, or like, a medical adjacent system. So you mentioned Measure 110 in Oregon. At the same time, Oregon also passed Measure 109, which is a legal psilocybin services system, and psilocybin being the active ingredient in what people call magic mushrooms. And that’s relevant, because it’s actually the first legalized, or attempt at a legalized regulated system for access to one of these substances aside from cannabis. And I’ll just say — to kind of close this thought — that psychedelics are an interesting bridge, because while I think some people want them to be the silver bullet for mental health. And they have all these benefits, and it’s certainly true that for certain people and in certain contexts, they do have tremendous benefit. But they do come with risks. And the thing about psychedelics is that they’re actually more known for their psychological risks as opposed to their physical risks.

And that’s a really interesting thing, because it brings up how we actually navigate and handle mental health in the United States.

I want to push back very lightly on that, because I think that when — in D.C., the language around the decriminalization of mushrooms, which I supported, it very much implied that not only should mushrooms be decriminalized, but that you should do them.

I think that this gets into the question of — we don’t necessarily exist in the ideal regulatory and cultural marketplace for legalized psychedelics or legalized drugs in general. And I’m curious as to how you’re thinking about how, yes, it would be fantastic if these drugs would be used in these safe contexts, in these — whether secular or religious ceremonies, or with the right groups of people. But they won’t be. And I’m curious how you’re thinking about this.

Well, this brings me to the question of education, which we haven’t touched on too much in this conversation yet. I think that the current legal status of psychedelics has — and all drugs - has significantly warped the education that people receive about them. I was part of the DARE generation, and when I learned that —

Oh, I was too.

I was too. Some would say it did not prove effective.

Totally. Do you remember the doobies with the big googly eyes, like, they’re going to come get you. Like, when I learned that methamphetamine and marijuana were not the same, that were they were not equally dangerous, which is what I was taught in sixth grade, I experienced a big rupture where I actually — it was probably the beginning for me of beginning to really doubt what education I was receiving, not just about drugs, but about other things in general. And I would say now, especially looking back at what feels like propaganda for the drug war, it makes it really difficult to trust what kind of education and information people are getting. So to answer your question, you’re right. There’s absolutely no way to control the way people use drugs. Like, there’s no guarantee that even with the best regulatory system and the best policy in every way, people will use them the way that we want every time. However, I do think that stigma and misinformation and drug hysteria contributes to people using drugs in less educated ways. And that’s not to say that more information would fix the overdose crisis. It would not fix a lot of these issues with addiction. But I do think that with psychedelics specifically and especially, better education about the environment would make quite a big difference. One of the most persuasive things I can say when I’m doing advocacy work around psychedelics is that psychedelic therapy is not that fun. I mean, it is true that people can have super ecstatic and joyous experiences with psychedelics, but psychedelic therapy as a treatment modality is actually quite challenging. And dealing with one’s own internalized trauma is not a particularly fun process. It’s not something you want to do at a festival surrounded by your friends. You want to do it in a safe place, maybe with a blanket and some chill music going on, in a room where you can do that with people who you can trust. So it’s — a lot of that has to do with the environment that people are in. And because all psychedelics are equally illegal and you can’t do them anywhere, then that means you can do them anywhere, you know.

Yeah, when you’re surrounded by 90,000 people, it’s maybe not the best time to maybe encounter God.

On the psychedelics, the people who are optimistic about legalization are often very optimistic about the potential of education. My caution is when you allow a for profit industry, a lot of the education, quote unquote, is going to be provided by the industry. You referred earlier to — I may get the details wrong, but I think it might have been a Purdue advertisement that said when Tylenol is not enough, take Oxy. I mean, I don’t have the details right, but that is them trying to educate you about the right — in their mind — set and setting for drug use, not for your benefit, but for their profits’ benefit. Legalizing supply is night and day different than just decriminalizing. The power of the market that is unleashed when you create corporations that make money by inducing greater use of their product, coupled with — intrinsically, some of these products are appealing or addictive — that’s a potent combination we need to be very careful about.

Hi, Jane. My name is Blake and I live in Boston. One thought that’s been occupying my mind, and something I talked to my dad and family about, is on cryptocurrency — in particular, Bitcoin. And I guess one thing that I’ve been struggling with is trying to determine whether I believe it’s something that’s going to stick around or if it’s just a fad. It’s been really hard for me to find sources that are objective and look at both sides of the coin, no pun intended there. Thanks so much. Take care.

Hi Blake. Well, I have a lot of thoughts on cryptocurrency, but I think the question isn’t it a fad, or is it something that’s going to stick around forever, because the answer to both of those can be yes. I don’t think cryptocurrency is going to save the world. I also think that it’s going to be around for a long time. And it’s something that I’d like to learn more about. But I have a feeling that both sides tend to overstate either the importance or the lack of importance of cryptocurrency. That seems to be how this kind of thing goes.

What are you arguing about with your family, your friends, your frenemies? Tell me about the big debate you’re having in a voicemail by calling 347-915-4324, and we might play an excerpt of it on a future episode. Jonathan, can you talk a little bit about overdoses and the potential health impacts?

Opioids are particularly dangerous in terms of overdose risk, but what makes them less problematic because we do have pharmacological therapies for them, methadone being the original and most famous — perhaps buprenorphine. We do not have anything like that in terms of pharmacotherapies for the common stimulants. And it makes a difference, because if you’re going to legalize — particularly legalize supply, allow for profit companies to promote the use, you’re going to get more use. You’ll get more dependence. And it’s a very different thing. If you are choosing policies that promote dependence to something for which there is no real effective treatment, as opposed to opioids — it’s not that opioids are gentle, but we do at least have a treatment.

Ismail, how do we think about recovery, and how do we think about the aftershocks of legalization? I’m just curious how you think about addiction in this conversation.

Yeah, I have what might be a slightly unpopular opinion, especially in today’s time. Like, addiction itself — let’s say, like, drug dependency, to be a little more specific — itself, I don’t necessarily see as a social harm or a social bad. I think that a lot of people manage a lot of addictions totally fine, regularly, because it’s not disruptive to them, because they have access to a safe supply of what it is that they’re addicted to. Of course, the effects of a caffeine addiction or caffeine dependency are significantly less dramatic and less likely to cause some sort of antisocial behavior than a withdrawal from a different substance. But I think that what both Jonathan and you have mentioned, Jane, that I think is more relevant, has to do with the consequences and the secondary effects — of course, on the individual, but especially on society. Alcohol is a great example, because we do have what people would consider a safe supply of alcohol. It’s a regulated product with tons and tons of social externalities that are still there. The difference is that the purchase, the manufacture, the use of alcohol — if criminalized, I believe, would make our current alcohol related issues worse. But I do think that the big difference with other substances is that because they’re criminalized, you have all of those effects, those secondary antisocial effects of dependence or antisocial use, et cetera. And you have the additional layer of criminalization for the use itself. I’m curious about — especially Jonathan’s perspective on this, because there are examples where certain countries like Switzerland are using heroin to manage heroin addiction. Right, they’re actually allowing people to have a safe, consistent supply of heroin. In places like Portugal and Spain, you have a huge percentage of people who were on heroin in the ‘80s and ‘90s who’ve transitioned onto methadone, and are still on methadone decades later. But they’re able to have jobs. They’re able to have families. They’re able to do x, y, z — so.

I think this gets right to the heart of where you and I differ, if I may. I mean, on the last — we had legal supply of prescription opioids and still had a lot of overdoses. There’s no question that an inconsistent supply exacerbates the problem. But I don’t think legal supply of opioids would eliminate overdoses. But to be more fundamental about it, you and I differ on whether or not legal supply necessarily can stabilize a person who is dependent on the substance. To me, that’s substance specific. Caffeine and nicotine are two drugs for which if you have legal supply that is not adulterated and so on, the person can function in everyday life just fine, even if they are dependent. But for the stimulants — crack, methamphetamine, and for alcohol, just providing abundant amounts of unadulterated, free supply does not let those people stabilize their lives. And that has terrible repercussions for them and their families.

Yeah and I would just — to clarify, I don’t necessarily think that an uninterrupted, as much as you want, supply of any drug is going to be good for everyone. Like, I —

Well, that’s what for profit companies are going to want to supply if we legalize.

But there is nuance there. But my question — actually, back to you is — I wonder about your thoughts about why there hasn’t been the same — because while there is a tremendous amount of methamphetamine use, it’s not the case as far as I understand that the increase in methamphetamine use is a result of increased, for example, prescribing of dexamphetamine or other amphetamine analogs that are legal for various treatments, whereas you do see a little bit more of that shift from prescription opioids to underground use of opiates with that market. So I hear what you’re saying. And it seems to be the case that a regulated, safe supply of something like Adderall actually doesn’t have the same effect as in bringing people into a super unregulated, dangerous, unadulterated market in the same way you see with opioids. And it’s true that we also don’t have the pharmaceutical interventions for stimulants as we do with opioids, but I wonder what makes that different. Why are people going to meth in that way versus the other?

Yes, stimulants is a broad category. And some of them are tougher than others. I mean, at some level caffeine is a stimulant, but it’s not a very powerful one, to speak informally, whereas methamphetamine definitely is. Adderall is more on the caffeine end of the spectrum, blessedly, although there is actually some diversion of Adderall. But it’s a different feel. This is like somebody with access to Adderall selling it or giving it to their friend in college to help them study, because they think it’s going to be a performance enhancing smart drug. But on the whole —

I’ve never I’ve never heard of that happening, ever — definitely don’t know anything about that.

Adderall’s worth talking about for a minute here, because it does illustrate the phenomenon that — the trick with providing generous supply to some people is, in part, can they make money by diverting it to other people — money, or do favors for friends. The prescription opioids got out of control for a whole bunch of reasons, many reasons. But one of them was the fact that there was already this value in the illegal market. And you also could seek a prescription based on symptoms that could not be objectively assessed by the clinician. And that combination was a problem. You could show up and say, oh, my back hurts a lot. Give me these things for the cost of a co-pay, and I can turn around and sell them for a lot of money. We’re going to always be vulnerable if you, through the medical system, provide subsidized access to anything for which there is demand in the illegal market. And Adderall does have that character. It just fortunately is nowhere near as bad for you, or risk of overdose, as the opioids were.

Yeah, or meth. I hear that. That makes a lot of sense, and I appreciate that answer. And also I think that the other factor, especially with regulated stimulants — and this is, I think also one of the questions with respect to regulations in general, which is method of administration. Because I do think that the fact that you don’t have smokable amphetamines or injectable amphetamines through regulated system also means that people who are accessing it through a regulated market tend to be doing it in a way that’s not going to have the same super rapid onset, and then related withdrawal, et cetera that you might have with methamphetamine use or other related things.

Yeah, I’ll agree with that. And then it’s also location of administration. So cocaine is available as a medicine. It turns out to be a vasoconstrictor and topical anesthetic that’s useful in minor surgeries. We have no problem with diversion of medical cocaine to illegal markets, because it’s only used inside the medical facility, administered by the clinician. So if we were to talk about, like, psychedelics used by a psychiatrist, on site, under supervision, that sort of medical use would have next to no risk of diversion to a market. But if we were ever to say to somebody, here are two pills a day for the next month. Take them home, do what you want with them. Then, there’s much greater risk of some of those being diverted into the market.

Yeah, and just to clarify — the way that psychedelics are being incorporated into health care now, it’s more like a procedure or a surgery than it is like other psychiatric interventions, where it actually is in the presence of a therapist or a psychiatrist or someone who has specific training to work with both these altered states of consciousness as well with the substances themselves.

Jonathan, I’m curious. Are we asking some of the wrong questions about consumption and distribution if we’re thinking about something as big as what decriminalization or legalization of substances beyond marijuana would look like?

Well, first of all, the bigness of decriminalize and legalize are very, very different. Decriminalization would be a big change, but it’s not a change the world. Legalization of supply, that’s totally different. You said that’s a big shake up. It’s a once in a century event. I would just stress — it’s a once and for all time event. Once you create a legal industry, it’s going to be really hard to get rid of it. When you create a legal industry, you create a powerful lobbying force. One of the challenges we have is regulatory capture. It’s already starting with cannabis. We haven’t even gotten to national legalization yet. But you just presume- - if you’re going to legalize supply of something, presume that there will be regulatory capture, presume you will never go back. And presume that a lot of the regulations are actually going to be shaped by what’s in the industry interests much more so than public health. Public health doesn’t tend to win in the lobbying battles against industry.

I totally agree that legalizing drugs, legalizing supply would be a generational event. It would be a massive, massive shift in the way things are done — even though, as I like to remind people, drugs were legal and traded until about 100 years ago. And it was US pressure on international actors that really brought us into the realm of prohibition that we have now — among others, because even large colonial powers, the Dutch and the English and others, were very happily trading a lot of these drugs for a long time before prohibition in its current form existed. So I also think that we are in a new paradigm in the sense that people have much more awareness and a willingness to talk through the stigma around the dependency and addiction and so on. And that does give me hope, that as we look at these questions around advertising and marketing and so on, that maybe it is possible that these public health perspectives could be better considered. I hope that our experience with tobacco and with opioids could lead to a more rational drug policy with respect to legal access of other substances. That could be naively optimistic, but I feel like as a policy reform advocate, if I’m not somewhat optimistic, then there’s really no point to going forward. And I think it’s really good to have some level of possibility for what there could be beyond where — we currently are.

I admire that optimism. I’m usually the one who’s accused of being optimistic. Compared to you, I guess I’m the jaded, cynical one. We’ll see.

Jonathan, Ismail, thank you so much for joining me. And I really appreciated this conversation.

Good. It was a joy to be here.

Thanks so much, Jonathan. Thank you so much, Jane.

Ismail Ali is a Policy and Advocacy Director at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Jonathan P. Caulkins is the H. Guyford Stever University Professor of Operations, Research, and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. If you want to learn more about drug policy of the United States, I recommend “Is There A Case For Legalizing Heroin” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker, published in April of 2021. For the other side, you can read “The Drug Policy Roulette” by Jonathan P. Caulkins and Michael A.C. Lee in the National Affairs Summer 2012 edition. And listen to “Michael Pollan’s ‘Trip Report,’” an episode on The New York Times opinion podcast “Sway.” You can find links to all of these in our episode notes.

“The Argument” is a production of New York Times opinion. It’s produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez, and Vishakha Darbha, edited by Alison Bruzek and Sarah Geis, with original music and sound design by Isaac Jones. Additional engineering by Carole Sabouraud, and additional mixing by Sonia Herrero. Fact checking by Kate Sinclair, and audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks this week to Kristin Lin.

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

Produced by ‘The Argument’

Medical marijuana is now legal in more than half of the country . The cities of Denver, Seattle , Washington and Oakland, Calif., have also decriminalized psilocybin (the psychedelic element in “magic mushrooms”). Oregon went one step further, decriminalizing all drugs in small quantities, including heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine.

Attitudes toward drugs have changed considerably over the years. But the question of whether all drugs should be legalized continues to be contentious. How much have attitudes toward illegal drugs changed? And why?

[You can listen to this episode of “The Argument” on Apple , Spotify or Google or wherever you get your podcasts .]

This week, Jane Coaston talks to Ismail Ali, the policy and advocacy director for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and Jonathan P. Caulkins, a professor of operations research and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, about the pros and cons of legalizing all drugs.

Mentioned in this episode:

“ Is there a Case for Legalizing Heroin? ” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells in The New Yorker

“ The Drug-Policy Roulette ” by Jonathan P. Caulkins and Michael A.C. Lee in the National Affairs Summer 2012 edition

“ Michael Pollan’s ‘Trip Report,’ ” on The New York Times Opinion podcast “Sway”

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] or leave us a voice mail message at (347) 915-4324. We want to hear what you’re arguing about with your family, your friends and your frenemies. (We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.)

By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.

“The Argument” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Elisa Gutierrez and Vishakha Darbha and edited by Alison Bruzek and Sarah Geis; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Sonia Herrero, and audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.

The “Should Drugs Be Legalized?” Essay by Bennett Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Bennet argues that legalizing drugs, reducing their cost, and minimizing risks associated with underground drug manufacture will eventually lead to addiction. He backs his argument with a refutation of Friedman’s comparison of drugs to alcohol during the Prohibition Era. Bennet presents statistical data: after the alcohol ban was lifted, its consumption rose to 350 percent; a similar pattern would happen to drug use. Eventually, this jump would lead to more hospitalizations linked to overdoses and addiction.

Bennet rebuts the supposed positive effect of drug legalization on the crime rate in the US. He presents the argument that most crimes are committed before the criminal has started consuming drugs (Boström et al., 2019, p.12). He furthers his thought by claiming that although drugs do increase the probability of breaking the law, this pattern mainly applies to those involved in crime all along.

Bennett responds to Friedman’s argument on treating drug users rather than punishing them: he claims that people with addiction will not be able to get treated unless they want it. This could be considered a rebuttal rather than a refutation on Bennet’s part. The argumentation presented is subjective and is backed by Bennet’s political opinion. He provides the audience with an alternative view on the matter.

Bennett rebuts Friedman’s point that drug addicts only harm themselves, so drug legalization would be advantageous by showing casualties among children who fell victims to drug addicts under the influence. The point on possible dangers for pregnant women is also presented to show how urgent the issue is. Bennet claims that the legalization of drugs might lead to a modern form of slavery that would disable people from living good lives without an addiction clouding their judgment.

Boström, M., Micheletti, M., & Oosterveer, P. (2019). The Oxford Handbook of Political Consumerism. Oxford University Press.

• Synthetic Marijuana: Physiological and Social Factors
• Drug Addiction in Teenagers: Smoking and Other Lifestyles
• Pill Testing Reducing Deaths and Hospitalizations
• Bennett News Model, Its Limitations and Challenges
• Postcolonialism in the Works of Basquiat and Gordon Bennett
• Drug Abuse Among Homeless Young Adults in New Jersey
• "Should Drugs Be Legalized?" Essay by Bennett
• Impaired Control and Alcohol Consumption
• America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life Review
• Drug Addiction Treatment for a Pregnant Woman
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, March 15). The "Should Drugs Be Legalized?" Essay by Bennett. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-should-drugs-be-legalized-essay-by-bennett/

"The "Should Drugs Be Legalized?" Essay by Bennett." IvyPanda , 15 Mar. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/the-should-drugs-be-legalized-essay-by-bennett/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'The "Should Drugs Be Legalized?" Essay by Bennett'. 15 March.

IvyPanda . 2023. "The "Should Drugs Be Legalized?" Essay by Bennett." March 15, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-should-drugs-be-legalized-essay-by-bennett/.

1. IvyPanda . "The "Should Drugs Be Legalized?" Essay by Bennett." March 15, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-should-drugs-be-legalized-essay-by-bennett/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The "Should Drugs Be Legalized?" Essay by Bennett." March 15, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-should-drugs-be-legalized-essay-by-bennett/.

Pardon Our Interruption

As you were browsing something about your browser made us think you were a bot. There are a few reasons this might happen:

• You've disabled JavaScript in your web browser.
• You're a power user moving through this website with super-human speed.
• You've disabled cookies in your web browser.
• A third-party browser plugin, such as Ghostery or NoScript, is preventing JavaScript from running. Additional information is available in this support article .

To regain access, please make sure that cookies and JavaScript are enabled before reloading the page.

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

• Home ›
• Reviews ›
• The Legalization of Drugs: For & Against

The Legalization of Drugs: For & Against

Douglas Husak and Peter de Marneffe, The Legalization of Drugs: For & Against , Cambridge University Press, 2005, 204pp., $18.99 (pbk), ISBN 0521546869.

Reviewed by William Hawk, James Madison University

In the United States the production, distribution and use of marijuana, heroin, and cocaine are crimes subjecting the offender to imprisonment. The Legalization of Drugs , appearing in the series "For and Against" edited by R. G. Frey for Cambridge University Press, raises the seldom-asked philosophical question of the justification, if any, of imprisoning persons for drug offenses.

Douglas Husak questions the justification for punishing persons who use drugs such as marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. He develops a convincing argument that imprisonment is never morally justified for drug use. Put simply, incarceration is such a harsh penalty that drug use, generally harmless to others and less harmful to the user than commonly supposed, fails to justify it. Any legal scheme that punishes drug users to achieve another worthy goal, such as creating a disincentive to future drug users, violates principles of justice.

Peter de Marneffe contends that under some circumstances society is morally justified in punishing persons who produce and distribute heroin. He argues a theoretical point that anticipated rises in drug abuse and consequent effects on young people may justify keeping heroin production and distribution illegal. According to de Marneffe's analysis, however, harsh prison penalties currently imposed on drug offenders are unjustified.

The points of discord between Husak's and de Marneffe's positions are serious but not as telling as is their implicit agreement. Current legal practices and policies which lead to lengthy incarceration of those who produce, distribute and use drugs such as marijuana, heroin, and cocaine are not, and cannot be, morally justified. Both arguments, against imprisoning drug users and for keeping heroin production illegal, merit a broad and careful reading.

The United States has erected an enormous legal structure involving prosecution and incarceration designed to prohibit a highly pleasurable, sometimes medically indicated and personally satisfying activity, namely using marijuana, heroin, and cocaine. At the same time, other pleasure-producing drugs, such as tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine, though legally regulated for the purposes of consumer safety and under-age consumption, can be purchased over the counter. As a result, while the health and safety risks of cigarettes may be greater than those proven to accompany marijuana, one can buy cigarettes from a vending machine and but go to prison for smoking marijuana. A rational legal system, according to Husak, demands a convincing, but as yet not forthcoming, explanation of why one pleasurable drug subjects users to the risk of imprisonment while the other is accommodated in restaurants.

Drug prohibitionists must face the problem that any "health risk" argument used to distinguish illicit drugs and subject offenders to prison sentences runs up against the known, yet tolerated, health risks of tobacco, as well as the additional health risks associated with incarceration. "Social costs" arguments targeting heroin or cocaine runs up against the known, yet tolerated, social costs of alcohol, as well as the additional social costs of incarceration. Even if one were to accept that illicit drugs were more harmful or exacted greater social costs than tobacco and alcohol (and the empirical studies referred to in the text do not generally support this thesis), that difference proves insufficient to justify imprisoning producers, distributors or especially users of illicit drugs.

Decriminalizing Drug Use. Douglas Husak presents a very carefully argued case for decriminalizing drug use. He begins his philosophical argument by clarifying the concepts and issues involved. To advocate the legalization of drugs calls for a legal system in which the production and sale of drugs are not criminal offenses. (p. 3) Criminalization of drugs makes the use of certain drugs a criminal offense, i.e. one deserving punishment. To argue for drug decriminalization, as Husak does, is not necessarily to argue for legalization of drugs . Husak entertains, but cautiously rejects the notion of a system where production and sale of drugs is illegal while use is not a crime. De Marneffe advocates such a system.

Punishing persons by incarceration demands justification. Since the state's use of punishment is a severe tool and incarceration is by its nature "degrading, demoralizing and dangerous" (p. 29) we must be able to provide "a compelling reason … to justify the infliction of punishment… ." (p. 34) Husak finds no compelling reason for imprisoning drug users. After considering four standard justifications for punishing drug users Husak concludes that "the arguments for criminalization are not sufficiently persuasive to justify the infliction of punishment."

Reasons to Criminalize Drug Use . 1) Drug users, it is claimed, should be punished in order to protect the health and well being of citizens . No doubt states are justified in protecting the health and well being of citizens. But does putting drug users in prison contribute to this worthy goal? Certainly not for those imprisoned. For those who might be deterred from using drugs the question is whether the drugs from which they are deterred by the threat of imprisonment actually pose a health risk. For one, Husak quotes research showing that currently illicit drugs do not obviously pose a greater health threat than alcohol or tobacco. For another, he quotes a statistic showing that approximately four times as many persons die annually from using prescribed medicines than die from using illegal drugs. In addition, one-fourth of all pack-a-day smokers lose ten to fifteen years of their lives but no one would entertain the idea of incarcerating smokers to further their health interests or in order to prevent non-smokers from beginning. In sum, Husak accepts that drug use poses health risks but contends that the risks are not greater than others that are socially accepted. Even if they were greater, imprisonment does not reduce, but compounds the health risks for prisoners.

2) Punishing drug users protects children . Husak here responds to de Marneffe's essay which focuses on potential drug abuse and promotes the welfare of children as a justification for keeping drug production and sale illegal. Husak finds punishing adolescent users a peculiar way to protect them. To punish one drug-using adolescent in order to prevent a non-using adolescent from using drugs is ineffective and also violates justice. Punishing adult users so that youth do not begin using drugs and do not suffer from neglect -- which is de Marneffe's position -- is not likely to prevent adolescents from becoming drug users, and even if it did, one would have to show that the harm prevented to the youth justifies imprisoning adults. Husak contends that punishing adults or youth, far from protecting youth, puts them at greater risk.

3) Some, e.g. former New York City mayor Guiliani, argue that punishing drug use prevents crime . Husak, conceding a connection between drug use and crime, turns the argument upside-down, showing how punishment increases rather than decreases crime. For one, criminalization of drugs forces the drug industry to settle disputes extra-legally. Secondly, drug decriminalization would likely lower drug costs thereby reducing economic crimes. Thirdly, to those who contend that illicit drugs may increase violence and aggression Husak responds that: a) empirical evidence does not support marijuana or heroin as causes of violence and b) empirical evidence does support alcohol, which is decriminalized, as leading to violence. Husak concludes "if we propose to ban those drugs that are implicated in criminal behavior, no drug would be a better candidate for criminalization than alcohol." (p. 70) Finally, punishing drug users likely increases crime rates since those imprisoned for drug use are released with greater tendencies and skills for future criminal activity.

4) Drug use ought to be punished because using drugs is immoral . In addition to standard philosophical objections to legal moralism, Husak contends that there is no good reason to think that recreational drug use is immoral. Drug use violates no rights. Other recreationally used drugs such as alcohol, tobacco or caffeine are not immoral. The only accounts according to which drug use is immoral are religiously based and generally not shared in the citizenry. Husak argues that legal moralism fails, and with it the attempts to justify imprisoning drug users because of health and well-being, protecting children, or reducing crime. Husak concludes, "If I am correct, prohibitionists are more clearly guilty of immorality than their opponents. The wrongfulness of recreational drug use, if it exists at all, pales against the immorality of punishing drug users." (p. 82)

Reasons to Decriminalize Drug Use. Husak's positive case for decriminalizing drug use begins with acknowledgement that drug use is or may be highly pleasurable. In addition, some drugs aid relaxation, others increase energy and some promote spiritual enlightenment or literary and artistic creativity. The simple fun and euphoria attendant to drug use should count for permitting it.

The fact that criminalization of drug use proves to be counter-productive provides Husak a set of final substantial reasons for decriminalizing use. Criminalizing drugs proves counter-productive along several different lines: 1) criminalization is aimed and selectively enforced against minorities, 2) public health risks increase because drugs are dealt on the street, 3) foreign policy is negatively affected by corrupt governments being supported solely because they support anti-drug policies, 4) a frank and open discussion about drug policy is impossible in the United States, 5) civil liberties are eroded by drug enforcement, 6) some government corruption stems from drug payoffs and 7) criminalization costs tens of billions of dollars per year.

Douglas Husak provides the conceptual clarity needed to work one's way through the various debates surrounding drug use and the law. He establishes a high threshold that must be met in order to justify the state's incarcerating someone. Having laid this groundwork Husak demonstrates that purported justifications for drug criminalization fail and that good reasons for decriminalizing drug use prevail. For persons who worry about what drug decriminalization means for children, Husak counsels that there is more to fear from prosecution and conviction of youth for using drugs than there is to fear from the drugs themselves.

Against Legalizing Drug Production and Distribution. Peter de Marneffe offers an argument against drug legalization . The argument itself is simple. If drugs are legalized, there will be more drug abuse. If there is more drug abuse that is bad. Drug abuse is sufficiently bad to justify making drug production and distribution illegal. Therefore, drugs should not be legalized. The weight of this argument is carried by the claim that the badness of drug abuse is sufficient to justify making drug production and sale illegal.

De Marneffe centers his argument on heroin. Heroin, he contends, is highly pleasurable but sharply depresses motivation to achieve worthwhile goals and meet responsibilities. Accordingly, children in an environment where heroin is legal will be subjected to neglect by heroin using parents and, if they themselves use heroin, they will be harmed by diminished motivation for achievement for the remainder of their lives. It is this later harm to the ambition and motivation of young people that, according to de Marneffe, justifies criminalizing heroin production and sale. As he puts it:

… the risk of lost opportunities that some individuals would bear as the result of heroin legalization justifies the risks of criminal liability and other burdens that heroin prohibition imposes on other individuals. The legalization of heroin would create a social environment -- call it the legalization environment -- in which some children would be at a substantially higher risk of irresponsible heroin abuse by their parents and in which some adolescents would be at a substantially higher risk of self-destructive heroin abuse. (p. 124)

Are the liberties of individual adult drug producers, distributors and users sacrificed? Yes, but this may be justified by de Marneffe's "burdens principle." According to the burdens principle, "the government violates a person's moral rights in adopting a policy that limits her liberty if and only if in adopting this policy the government imposes a burden on her that is substantially worse than the worst burden anyone would bear in the absence of this policy." (p. 159) According to this, de Marneffe claims that burdens on drug vendors or users may be justified by the prevention of harms to a particular individual or individuals. As he puts it:

What I claim in favor of heroin prohibition is that the reasons of at least one person to prefer her situation in a prohibition environment outweigh everyone else's reasons to prefer his or her situation in a legalization environment, assuming that the penalties are gradual and proportionate and other relevant conditions are met. (p. 161)

According to this view, the objective interest of a single adolescent in not losing ambition, motivation and drive justifies the imposition of burdens on other youth and adults who would prefer using drugs. Although Johnny might choose heroin use, his objective interest is for future motivation and ambition that is not harmed by heroin use.

De Marneffe's "burdens principle" seems to hold the whole society hostage to the objective liberty interests of one individual. Were this principle applied to drug producers or distributors who faced imprisonment it seems that imprisonment could not be justified. I suspect a concern for consistency here gives de Marneffe reason to make drug production and distribution illegal but without attaching harsh prison sentences for offenders. He advocates an environment where drugs are not legal, in order to protect youth against both abuse and their own choices that may cause them to become unmotivated, but recognizes that prison sentences are unjustified as a way to support such a system.

In The Legalization of Drugs the reader gets two interesting arguments. Douglas Husak makes a compelling case against punishing drug users. His position amounts to drug decriminalization with skepticism toward making drug production and sale illegal. On the other side, Peter de Marneffe justifies making drug production and sale illegal based upon the diminishment of future interests of young people. De Marneffe introduces a "burdens principle" which is likely much too strong a commitment to individual interests than could ever be realized in a civil society. In both instances, the reader is treated to arguments that effectively undermine current drug policy. The book provides philosophical argumentation that should stimulate a societal conversation about the justifiability of current drug laws.

We need your support today

Independent journalism is more important than ever. Vox is here to explain this unprecedented election cycle and help you understand the larger stakes. We will break down where the candidates stand on major issues, from economic policy to immigration, foreign policy, criminal justice, and abortion. We’ll answer your biggest questions, and we’ll explain what matters — and why. This timely and essential task, however, is expensive to produce.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

The most convincing argument for legalizing LSD, shrooms, and other psychedelics

by German Lopez

I have a profound fear of death. It’s not bad enough to cause serious depression or anxiety. But it is bad enough to make me avoid thinking about the possibility of dying — to avoid a mini existential crisis in my mind.

But it turns out there may be a better cure for this fear than simply not thinking about it. It’s not yoga, a new therapy program, or a medicine currently on the (legal) market. It’s psychedelic drugs — LSD, ibogaine, and psilocybin, which is found in magic mushrooms.

This is the case for legalizing hallucinogens. Although the drugs have gotten some media attention in recent years for helping cancer patients deal with their fear of death and helping people quit smoking, there’s also a similar potential boon for the nonmedical, even recreational psychedelic user. As hallucinogens get a renewed look by researchers, they’re finding that the substances may improve almost anyone’s mood and quality of life — as long as they’re taken in the right setting, typically a controlled environment.

This isn’t something that even drug policy reformers are comfortable calling for yet. “There’s not any political momentum for that right now,” Jag Davies, who focuses on hallucinogen research at the Drug Policy Alliance, said, citing the general public’s views of psychedelics as extremely dangerous — close to drugs like crack cocaine, heroin, and meth.

But it’s an idea that experts and researchers are taking more seriously. And while the studies are new and ongoing, and a national regulatory model for legal hallucinogens is practically nonexistent, the available research is very promising — enough to reconsider the demonization and prohibition of these potentially amazing drugs.

Hallucinogens’ potentially huge benefit: ego death

Mushroom, mushroom.

The most remarkable potential benefit of hallucinogens is what’s called “ego death,” an experience in which people lose their sense of self-identity and, as a result, are able to detach themselves from worldly concerns like a fear of death, addiction, and anxiety over temporary — perhaps exaggerated — life events.

When people take a potent dose of a psychedelic, they can experience spiritual, hallucinogenic trips that can make them feel like they’re transcending their own bodies and even time and space. This, in turn, gives people a lot of perspective — if they can see themselves as a small part of a much broader universe, it’s a lot easier for them to discard personal, relatively insignificant and inconsequential concerns about their own lives and death.

That may sound like pseudoscience. And the research on hallucinogens is so early that scientists don’t fully grasp how it works. But it’s a concept that’s been found in some medical trials, and something that many people who’ve tried hallucinogens can vouch for experiencing. It’s one of the reasons why preliminary , small studies and research from the 1950s and ‘60s found hallucinogens can treat — and maybe cure — addiction, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Charles Grob, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and pediatrics who studies psychedelics, conducted a study that gave psilocybin to late-stage cancer patients. “The reports I got back from the subjects, from their partners, from their families were very positive — that the experience was of great value, and it helped them regain a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning to their life,” he told me in 2014. “The quality of their lives notably improved.”

In a fantastic look at the research, Michael Pollan at the New Yorker captured the phenomenon through the stories of cancer patients who participated in hallucinogen trials:

Death looms large in the journeys taken by the cancer patients. A woman I’ll call Deborah Ames, a breast-cancer survivor in her sixties (she asked not to be identified), described zipping through space as if in a video game until she arrived at the wall of a crematorium and realized, with a fright, “I’ve died and now I’m going to be cremated. The next thing I know, I’m below the ground in this gorgeous forest, deep woods, loamy and brown. There are roots all around me and I’m seeing the trees growing, and I’m part of them. It didn’t feel sad or happy, just natural, contented, peaceful. I wasn’t gone. I was part of the earth.” Several patients described edging up to the precipice of death and looking over to the other side. Tammy Burgess, given a diagnosis of ovarian cancer at fifty-five, found herself gazing across “the great plain of consciousness. It was very serene and beautiful. I felt alone but I could reach out and touch anyone I’d ever known. When my time came, that’s where my life would go once it left me and that was O.K.”

But Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at New York University’s Marron Institute, noted that these benefits don’t apply only to terminally ill patients. The studies conducted so far have found benefits that apply to anyone : a reduced fear of death, greater psychological openness, and increased life satisfaction.

“It’s not required to have a disease to be afraid of dying,” Kleiman said. “But it’s probably an undesirable condition if you have the alternative available. And there’s now some evidence that these experiences can make the person less afraid to die.”

Kleiman added, “The obvious application is people who are currently dying with a terminal diagnosis. But being born is a terminal diagnosis. And people’s lives might be better if they live out of the valley of the shadow of death.”

Again, the current research on all of this is early, with much of the science still relying on studies from the ‘50s and ‘60s. But the most recent preliminary findings are promising enough that experts like Kleiman are cautiously considering how to build a model that would let people take these potentially beneficial drugs legally — while also acknowledging that psychedelics do pose some big risks.

The two big risks of hallucinogens: accidents and bad trips

Charles Grob, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, is leading the way in psychedelic research.

Hallucinogens aren’t perfectly safe, but they’re not dangerous in the way some people might think. As Grob previously told me , there’s little to no chance that someone will become addicted to psychedelics — they’re not physically addictive like heroin or tobacco, and the experiences are so demanding and draining that a great majority of people simply won’t be interested in constantly taking the drugs. He also said that hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, which can cause the disturbances widely known as “flashbacks,” is “uncommon, but you will see it, particularly among someone who has taken hallucinogens a lot.”

Kleiman drew a comparison to marijuana to explain the risks. “The risk with cannabis is, primarily, that you lose control of your cannabis taking,” he said. “The risk with LSD is primarily that you’ll do something stupid to ruin the experience, or you’ll have such a scary experience that it’ll leave you damaged. But those are safety risks rather than addiction risks.”

This gets to the two major dangers of hallucinogens: accidents and bad trips. The first risk is similar to what you’d expect from other drugs: When people are intoxicated in any way, they’re more prone to doing bad, dumb things. As Kleiman explained, “People take LSD and think they can fly and jump off buildings. It’s true that it’s a drug warrior fairy tale, but it’s also true in that it actually happens. People drop acid and run out in traffic. People do stupid shit under high doses of psychedelics.”

Bad trips are also a concern. A bad psychedelic experience can result in psychotic episodes, a lost sense of reality, and even long-term psychological trauma in very rare situations, especially among people using other drugs or with a history of mental health issues. Just like psychedelics can lead to long-term psychological benefits, they can lead to long-term psychological pain.

These risks are why not many people are seriously discussing legalizing hallucinogens in the same way the US allows alcohol or is now beginning to allow marijuana. But the potential benefits of hallucinogens are leading some experts to consider how these drugs could be legalized in some capacity.

“I think it’s a bad idea to treat hallucinogens like we treat cocaine or cannabis,” Kleiman said. “They pose different risks and offer different benefits.” He added, “But I don’t think we’re ever going to free these substances from careful legal control.”

How hallucinogens can be legalized

Drop some LSD — but maybe only in a controlled environment.

So how can you maximize the benefits and minimize the risks? The most convincing idea so far is letting people take psychedelics in a controlled setting, in which multiple participants can be watched over by trained supervisors who ensure the experience doesn’t go poorly.

So far, this is what the medical side has focused on: The typical medical trial involves doctors watching over a deathly ill patient or someone dealing with addiction who takes psilocybin. But if the concept is expanded to allow nonmedical users, then perhaps professionals who aren’t doctors but are trained in guiding someone through a trip could take up the role. “I imagine someone who has training in managing that experience, and a license, and liability insurance, and a facility,” Kleiman said.

Here’s how it would work: A psychedelic user would go through some sort of preparation period to make sure she knows what she’s getting into. Then she could make an appointment at a place offering these services. She would show up at this appointment, take the drug of her choice (or whatever the facility provides), and wait to allow it to kick in. As the trip occurs, a supervisor would watch over the user — not being too pushy, but making sure he’s available to guide her through any rough spots. In some studies, doctors have also prepared certain activities — a soundtrack or food, for example — that may help set the right mood and setting for someone on psychedelics. Different places will likely experiment with different approaches, including how many people can participate at once and how a room should look.

The most convincing idea so far is letting people take psychedelics in a controlled setting

Kleiman also envisions a potential system in which people can eventually graduate to using the drug solo. “It’s like Red Cross water safety instruction,” he said. “You start out, you’re a newbie. You don’t go into the pool without a trained, certified person to watch you, guide you, and keep you safe. After a while, your teacher gives you a test to certify that you’re safe to be in the water alone. And you might even get certified to become a trainer, so you can guide newbies yourself.”

If pulled off correctly, this would maximize the best possible outcomes and minimize the worst. Supervisors could help prevent accidents, and they could walk people through good and bad trips, letting users relax and get something meaningful out of the experience.

There are risks to the controlled setting. If a supervisor is poorly trained or malicious, it could lead to a horrific trip that could actually worsen someone’s mental state. This is why regulation and licensing will be crucial to getting the idea right.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, argued for a looser model that could, for example, allow psychedelics to be sold over the counter. “You dramatically decrease the black market. So long as you have people who have to go through some sort of gatekeeper, or who can be denied, you’re going to continue to have a black market,” Nadelmann said. “Secondly, this means the percent of consumers who got a product of known potency and purity from a reliable source would increase.”

But the black market demand for psychedelics is very small, with only 0.5 percent of Americans 12 and older in 2013 saying they used hallucinogens in the past month. So allowing over-the-counter sales would likely have a tiny benefit at best on public health and criminal groups’ profits from the black market.

The debate about which model works best will likely go on for some time, especially if different places test different approaches. There’s no doubt it will be tricky to hash out exactly how to legalize and regulate these drugs, as some states are learning with marijuana .

But if we know the benefits to public health and well-being are real, it’s irresponsible to let the potential go untapped. It may soon be time for America to seriously consider legalizing LSD, magic mushrooms, and other psychedelic drugs.

• Health Care

Most Popular

• There’s a fix for AI-generated essays. Why aren’t we using it?
• Conservatives are shocked — shocked! — that Tucker Carlson is soft on Nazis
• Has The Bachelorette finally gone too far?
• Trump’s biggest fans aren’t who you think
• America’s love affair with the increasingly weird Kennedys

Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Explainers

The case for and against fracking, politics aside.

From granola bars to chips, more studies are revealing that UPFs are tied to diseases like cancer and depression.

The factors that lead to tragedies like the Apalachee High School shooting are deeply ingrained in US politics, culture, and law.

Polls show a tight race. But there are other figures that can help explain where this campaign is headed.

The raids come amid escalating violence in the Palestinian territory.

The privately funded venture will test out new aerospace technology.

The Wider Impact of Drug Legalization on the Criminal Justice System

by aseneviratne | Mar 16, 2021 | All , Criminal Justice Reform , Public Health

This paper will discuss the effect of legalizing possession of all drugs on the criminal justice system. This paper will begin with a brief history of the modern War on Drugs to establish why drug possession should not be a criminal matter. Discussion of the impact of legalization will primarily focus on reduction in caseload and the resulting benefits.

The modern War on Drugs began during the Nixon presidency with the passage of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (“CSA”), which established federal regulatory power over the manufacture, importation, possession, use, and distribution of certain substances. [1] The CSA was ostensibly a public health response to the growing heroin epidemic in the mid-1960s. [2] In 1973, Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Agency (“DEA”) to carry out enforcement of the CSA. [3]

The War on Drugs expanded into a system of mass incarceration under the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, which increased criminal penalties associated with cannabis possession and established mandatory minimum sentences. [4] From 1980 to 1997, “the number of [individuals incarcerated] for nonviolent drug law offenses [jumped] from 50,000 . . . to over 400,000.” [5] “By 1991, the United States had surpassed the former Soviet Union and South Africa as having the largest prison population in the world.” [6] The racial impact from the ‘Tough on Crime’ approach reared its ugly head as “the sentences of black inmates were 41% longer than that of whites.” [7]

Most critically, the War on Drugs has been ineffective in deterring drug use. [8] In 2000, law enforcement seized over 4.4 million tablets of ecstasy, an increase from 350,000 tablets just two years prior. [9] From 2010 to 2015, the lifetime prevalence of 8th graders who have used illicit drugs consistently hovered around 20%. [10] Over that same period, the number of drug-induced deaths increased from 40,393 to 55,403. [11]

In light of the racial bias stemming from the War on Drugs as well as its failure to achieve its supposed intended purpose, drug possession is a worthy candidate for exploration into forms of treatment outside of the criminal realm. [12]

Legalization v. Decriminalization

For the purposes of this paper, assume that legalization means that the possession, sale, and manufacturing of all drugs would be regulated similarly to alcohol or cigarettes. At the outset, it is important to note why legalization is preferable to decriminalization. Decriminalization of drug possession simply means that possession is not a criminal offense. [13] In 2001, Portugal decriminalized all drugs, and the public health benefits have been palpable. [14] Under a system of decriminalization, however, the manufacturing and sale of drugs is still criminal. [15] As a result, the drug market is still propped up and supplied by drug cartels, just as it is in a system of prohibition. [16] Legalization goes further than decriminalization by legalizing drug production. [17] Allowing companies to manufacture drugs removes the viability of the black market drug trade, such as in Mexico where one cartel alone “had annual earnings calculated to be as high as $3 billion.” [18] In 2018, the DEA spent over $445 million on international enforcement to decrease the impact of these cartels in the United States. [19] Legalization treats the cause of the disease, and the consequent reduction in symptoms would decrease the need for these yearly international enforcement expenditures.

Court Decluttering

In 2017, there were 1,632,921 drug related violations in the U.S., of which 85.4% were for possession; an average of 3,820 possession arrests per day. [20] Under a system of legalization, American courts would no longer be inundated with this entire class of offense. The benefits of legalization on the courts are multifaceted: for the drug possessor, who is no longer a victim of the fruitless War on Drugs; for the judge, who enjoys greater flexibility with a decluttered docket; and most importantly, for the public defender, who can take advantage of the much-needed decrease in workload to provide better counsel to clients. [21]

In 2016, Louisiana had an estimated annual workload of 147,220 total cases to be divided among its 363 public defenders. [22] This meant that “the Louisiana public defense system [could only] handle 21 percent of [its] workload in compliance with [state] guidelines.” [23]

“Unsurprisingly, excessive workloads diminish the quality of legal representation.” [24] With such an enormous caseload, public defenders do not have the time available to conduct basic defense tasks necessary for a trial, creating an incentive for guilty pleas. [25] Guilty pleas based on time constraint rather than merit render “an ethical and constitutional plea bargain . . . impossible.” [26]

Given the sheer number of drug arrests, legalization would likely drastically reduce the public defense system’s case load. [27] With this caseload reduction, public defenders would be able to work towards closing the gap between the actual and necessary amount of time devoted to each client. [28] With more time to evaluate each case, public defenders can more effectively assess the appropriateness of a plea deal on the merits, rather than time constraints. [29] The increased legitimacy and efficiency of the public defense system resulting from legalization will likely lead to broader indirect benefits for all public defense clients, no matter what crime they are accused of. [30 ]

An argument against legalization posits that these reductions in public defense caseload would be offset by an increase in crime, such as petty crime and driving under the influence, due to legalization. [31] This line of reasoning rests on the assumption that if there are no criminal penalties for drug possession or use, then the number of drug users will increase. [32] With more people using drugs, more people will become addicts, who are more prone to committing crimes. [33]

The assumption that the absence of criminal sanctions entails more people using drugs is unsound, as under Portugal’s system of decriminalization, “in almost every category of drug, and for drug usage overall, the lifetime prevalence rates . . . were higher” prior to decriminalization. [34] Cocaine usage in Portugal was significantly lower than usage in the United States, which was head and shoulders above the rest of the world. [35] The heroin usage rate in Portugal from 1999 to 2005 actually decreased from 2.5% to 1.8% among those in the 16-18 age group. [36] Decreased drug use does not necessarily follow from from punitive state response, just as increased drug use does not necessarily follow from rehabilitative state response. [37] If the pool of drug users remains consistent after legalization, then pool of criminal drug users would likely remain consistent as well.

Still, even assuming that the number of drug addicts would increase post-legalization, leading to an increase in the number of petty crime and driving under the influence (“DUI”) cases, these cases differ quantitatively and qualitatively from possession and crimes currently associated with the black market for drugs.

Quantitatively, the increased caseload for petty crime and driving under the influence would still be significantly less the number of possession charges the system currently deals with. [38] Further, under the current system of prohibition, courts and society at large must deal with violent crimes associated with the black market for narcotics: in 2016, 11.2% of all federal prisoners held in state correctional facilities were incarcerated for drug trafficking and drug offenses other than possession. [39] Under a system of legalization, the profitability of the black market is greatly reduced, which would likely result in these arguably more serious crimes becoming less prevalent and further decreasing the caseload related to drugs despite a potential increase in petty crime and driving under the influence cases. [40]

Qualitatively, DUIs directly present significant and real risks of harm to other members of society in a way that drug possession does not. “In 2016, 10,497 people died in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for 28% of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.” [41] Given the increased culpability and blameworthiness of these crimes, it is not a waste of the public defense system resources to criminalize DUI and bear the associated costs of doing so; rather, these are precisely the crimes which fall under the purview of the criminal justice system. [42]

In conclusion, the War on Drugs has disproportionately impacted minorities [43] and has not effectively reduced drug consumption and usage. [44] In light of this, the United States should take steps to legalize drug possession and emulate the success of other nations who have treated drug use as public health matter, instead a criminal one. [45] Further, the benefits of legalization extend beyond drug users. [46] Globally, legalization helps to curtail the influence of cartels. [47] Domestically, legalization frees up the criminal justice system, permitting more efficient and legitimate legal representation for all individuals. [48]

[1] See Controlled Substances Act of 1970, 21 U.S.C. § 811.

[2] See Pub. Broadcasting Serv., Interview Dr. Robert DuPont , FRONTLINE: DRUG WARS, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/interviews/dupont.html (last visited Mar. 20, 2020).

[3] See History , DRUG ENF’T AGENCY, dea.gov/history (last visited Jun. 29, 2020).

[4] See Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-473, 98 Stat. 1976.

[5] A Brief History of the Drug War , DRUG POL’Y ALL., https://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/brief-history-drug-war, (last visited Mar. 23, 2020).

[6] Charles Ogletree, Getting Tough on Crime: Does It Work? 38 Boston B. J. 9, 27 (1994).

[8] See Ross C. Anderson, We Are All Casualties of Friendly Fire in the War on Drugs , 13 Utah B.J. 10, 11 (2000).

[9] Id. at 11.

[10] See OFFICE OF NAT’L DRUG CONTROL POL’Y, NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL STRATEGY: PERFORMANCE REPORTING SYSTEM REPORT 27 (2016); What is Prevalence? NAT’L INST. MENTAL HEALTH (Nov. 2017), https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/what-is-prevalence.shtml (explaining that “[l]ifetime prevalence is the proportion of a population who, at some point in life has ever had the characteristic.”).

[11] Id. at 12.

[12] See Anderson, supra note 8, at 11.

[13] See GLENN GREENWALD, DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION IN PORTUGAL: LESSONS FOR CREATING FAIR AND SUCCESSFUL DRUG POLICIES 2 (2009), https://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/drug-decriminalization-portugal-lessons-creating-fair-successful-drug-policies.

[14] See id. at 14-15 (explaining that since decriminalization, Portugal has experienced a slight decline in drug use, a significant decline in drug related pathologies such as HIV, and a substantial increase in use of treatment programs).

[15] See i d. at 2.

[16] See German Lopez, What People Get Wrong About Prohibition , VOX (Oct. 19, 2015), https://www.vox.com/2015/10/19/9566935/prohibition-myths-misconceptions-facts.

[17] See GREENWALD, supra note 13, at 2.

[18] JUNE S. BEITTEL, CONG. RSCH. SERV., R41576, MEXICO: ORGANIZED CRIME AND DRUG TRAFFICKING ORGANIZATIONS 19 (2019).

[19] DRUG ENF’T ADMIN., FY 2019 BUDGET REQUEST, 4 (2018).

[20] See 2017 Crime in the United States: Persons Arrested , FED. BUREAU INVESTIGATION: UNIFORM CRIME REPORTING, https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/persons-arrested (last visited Aug. 15, 2020).

[21] See Lisa C. Wood et al., Meet-and-Plead: The Inevitable Consequence of Crushing Defender Workloads , 42 LITIG. 20, 23 (2016).

[22] See A.B.A. & POSTLETHWAITE & NETTERVILLE, THE LOUISIANA PROJECT: A STUDY OF THE LOUISIANA DEFENDER SYSTEM AND ATTORNEY WORKLOAD STANDARDS 2 (2017).

[24] Wood et al., supra note 21, at 23.

[25] See id.

[27] See id. at 26.

[28] See id .

[29] See id .

[30] See id.

[31] See Paul Stares, Drug Legalization?: Time for a Real Debate , BROOKINGS INST. (Mar. 1, 1996), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/drug-legalization-time-for-a-real-debate/.

[32] See id.

[33] See id.

[34] GREENWALD, supra note 13, at 14-15 (emphasis added).

[35] See id. at 22-24.

[36] Id. at 14.

[37] See Stares, supra note 31 .

[38] See 2016 Crime in the United States: Table 18 , FED. BUREAU INVESTIGATION: UNIFORM CRIME REPORTING, https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-18 (last visited Aug. 15 2020) (illustrating that arrests for drug abuse violations are nearly eight times as high as arrests for burglary – a petty crime that is often related to drugs).

[39 ] JENNIFER BRONSON & E. ANN CARSON, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, NCJ 252156 , PRISONERS IN 2017 21 (2019).

[40] See Lopez, supra note 16 .

[41] Impaired Driving: Get the Facts, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION ( Aug. 24, 2020, 12:00 AM), https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html.

[42] See Janine Geske, Achieving the Goals of Criminal Justice: A Role for Restorative Justice , 30 Quinnipiac L. Rev. 527, 530-31 (2012).

[43] See Anderson, supra note 8, at 11 .

[44] See id.

[45] See GREENWALD, supra note 13, at 14-15.

[46] See Stares, supra note 31.

[47] See i d.

[48] See Wood et al., supra note 21, at 23, 26; s ee also Lopez, supra note 16.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

• February 2022
• January 2022
• November 2021
• October 2021
• August 2021
• January 2021
• December 2020
• October 2020
• August 2020
• February 2020
• October 2019
• September 2019
• August 2019
• Circuit Split
• Counterterrorism Law
• Criminal Justice Reform
• Criminal Procedure
• Domestic Violence
• Environmental Crimes
• First Amendment
• Juvenile Justice
• Legislation
• Police Reform
• Public Health
• Supreme Court Cases
• White Collar Crime

• Mon 14 Feb 2022

Five benefits of legalising drugs that may change your perspective 

• By Ariana Yekrangi

Legalising drugs would make drug use safer, but the bigger impact of moving to a regulated drug market is that it would defy racism, reduce chaos and violence and make us wealthier. 

What does decriminalisation of drugs mean VS what does it mean to legalise drugs

When we talk about decriminalising all drugs, within a legal framework, we don’t necessarily refer to them being legalised. In other words, drug ownership and personal use would itself still be legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Ideally, we want the legalisation of all drugs, however, decriminalising them could also be an attractive short-term solution. Here are five arguments for legalising drugs.

1. Reducing drug violence and regulating its consumption

Will legalising drugs reduce drug trafficking.

The global market for goods, including drugs, is based on the simple principle of supply and demand. When a government reduces the supply of any particular drug without reducing its demand for it, its price goes up. However, unlike many other goods, the consumption of drugs is not particularly price-sensitive. 

As the notorious United States’ ban of alcohol during the 1920s demonstrated, public demand for the drug remained high, which in turn fueled an increase in bootleg booze and speakeasies. But that wasn’t all. It aided the emergence of various mafia gangs and other crime syndicates.

This is often known as the balloon effect, referring to the fact that when squeezing an inflated balloon, it just moves the air around, instead of completely getting rid of it. 

Legalising drugs gives us a unique opportunity to address this issue and remove much of the crime and violence associated with it. In 2018, the number of drug-related homicides in Mexico was a whopping 33,341. Imagine saving this amount of lives, just in Mexico! 

Moreover, legalising drugs further allows us to regulate its consumption. Currently, most children are easily able to buy various drugs from their friendly neighbourhood dealers, since selling drugs to children isn’t a moral code most drug cartels swear by. 

The solution is simple: let us run the drug market, not gangsters!

2. A unique chance to defy racism 

Across many nations, drug laws are not only unnecessarily strict, but also fuel systemic racism. This is not breaking news and can easily be observed if one takes the time to look at the relevant data.

In September, Simon Woolley, an ex-No 10 adviser warned Borris Johnson’s government about this very issue: “For decades, politicians from all sides have either turned a blind eye to drug policy failures or weaponised the debate to score cheap political points,” he said. “This has led to half a century of stagnation, which has landed with force on our black communities, driving up needless criminalisation and undermining relationships with the police.”

However, this is not a unique case in the UK. Across the Atlantic, in the United States, black people are several times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession; even though both groups smoke weed at similar rates. Just in 2020, people of colour made up 94% of marijuana arrests by the NYPD .

But it is not only the legal system that suffers from systematic racism; the name of a drug like Marijuana, for example, has a clear racist background.

The use of the word Marijuana increased dramatically in the US during William Randolph Hearst’s desperate campaign to create hysteria around the impact of cannabis. In fact, he decided to use a foreign-sounding name (Marijuana) to scare off Americans about an invasion of marijuana-smoking Mexican men assaulting their white women. Scary heh? 

True, legalising drugs will not, by itself, solve racism. However, numerous studies have already proven that as the general number of arrests decline, so do the racial disparities that come with them. 

3. Stopping systematic drug-related human rights abuses around the world

Capital punishment for drug trafficking is a serious offence across human right’s violating countries such as China, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Vietnam. According to Harm Reduction International, as of 2020, thirty-five countries still retain the death penalty for drug offences.

These thirty-five nations continue to undermine the human rights and well-being of persons who use drugs and that of their families and communities. The practice is not only a blatant breach of drug user’s/traffickers human rights, but also one which is in clear violation of international law. 

In 2020, Amnesty International recorded at least 30 executions for drug-related offences carried out in only three countries (China, Iran and Saudi Arabia), a decrease of 75% from 2019. Do keep in mind though that the 75% reduction in executions is during a period when most countries are hit by the Covid pandemic and were likely to have strict quarantine and lockdown measures in place. The figure was drastically higher in the anteceding years. In 2019, 122 drug-related executions were confirmed, whereas in 2015 the number of executions was a whopping 755.

Legalising drugs will have an immense impact on the lives of hundreds who are killed as well as thousands of others across the globe who are on death row for various drug offences.

The United Nations’ 2019 report “ What we have learned over the last ten years ” is a comprehensive resource on the organisation’s commitments on drug-related matters. One only needs to hope that the UN approaches its solutions with adamant hands.

4. Actually helping addicts

Would legalising drugs increase addiction.

Pretty much everything we have been taught about addiction is a fab. Most don’t get addicted because it is fun, most don’t enjoy being junkies.

During the 1970s, Bruce Alexander, a Canadian psychologist, published a number of studies known as the “rat park experiments”. The experiment essentially studied two groups of rats, both of which were pre-addicted to morphine. The first group was placed in separate cages, while the other group was added to a rat colony, with regular social access to other rats where they could play and have plenty of sex. 

Already becoming jealous? No? Just me? Moving on… 

During this period, both groups were offered a choice between water and a morphine solution. The shocking result was that the rats living together in the colony drank significantly less morphine than those living alone in isolation.

A similar conclusion resulted from a study conducted on US servicemen returning from the Vietnam war. During various military urine tests in 1971, it became clear that drug use amongst soldiers in Vietnam had reached epidemic proportions. In September 1971, a random sample of 470 soldiers, as well as another sample of 495 soldiers who had previously been tested positive for opioids, were selected and interviewed by sociologist Lee N. Robins.

All the men had been serving in Vietnam for exactly one year, so their exposure to the country’s heroin and opium resources was the same. After a closer inspection, it became known that almost half of all army men enlisted in Vietnam had tried heroin or opium and that 20% of them had developed an addiction to them. 

It may seem common knowledge that the availability of a certain drug directly correlates with its consumption. However, what surprised the research team in this particular study was that eight to 12 months after the soldiers had returned home, heroin use was uncommon, even amongst those who had previously become addicted to the drug in Vietnam. In fact, during the first year back home, only 5% of men had relapsed to addiction.

Although both experiments have their limitations when it comes to the repeatability and applications to society, they both teach us a valuable lesson: environmental factors matter and must be an undeniable aspect in prevention programmes and policies impacting drugs and crime. 

Our penal system must be rehabilitative, not vindictive. Let’s not forget that a criminal conviction relating to drugs can have devastating effects upon someone’s life. It can cause personal relationships to fall apart and limit future work opportunities and further alienate those who are in desperate need of our help. This doesn’t need to be the case. Instead of stopping drug users, let’s support them instead.

5. More tax money

Legal drugs present the possibility of tremendous benefits to economies especially as a means to recover from the pandemic induced economic downturn. 

Looking at this again, over the past few years, the sale of a drug like marijuana in states like Colorado and Washington have resulted in buoyant tax revenues. According to a report from Arcview Market Research and BDS Analytics, cannabis sales in the country were $12.2 billion in 2019 and projected to increase to $31.1 billion by 2024.

But that’s not all, we will also be able to save vast sums of money as fewer law enforcement officers would be required and fewer court cases involving drug substances would go to trial. Legalising drugs can also create more jobs and investment opportunities. 

Reform! The drug legalisation debate can be a complex one, however what is clear is that the war on drugs was an ill-advised policy that we have been pursuing for the last 80 years.

It is time we listen to experts. It is time that we understand that nations don’t live in a vacuum and global challenges require global solutions. 

Drugs can bring us joy; drugs can harm us. Legalise them and give them to doctors, pharmacists and regulated retailers, not criminals. 

Please contact us if you have any comments or would like us to write about potential arguments against legalising drugs.

Empower us to do more!

‘Reaping what you sow’: Why Trump’s assassination attempt is unworthy to steal headlines

‘If it ain’t broke… break it’: How the US betrayed free speech and the First Amendment

“We’ve seen this before”: Inside Israel’s war on truth, journalists and the free media

‘Embracing genocide’: How Iranian monarchists are championing Israel’s deadly onslaught on Palestine

Looking away from Gaza will not assuage our conscience; only action will

The end of a charade: Israel’s collapse under global condemnation

To be or not to be European alone: Horizons of EU expansion

Julia Hartley-Brewer’s racism is a common reality for brown man – I know, having experienced it firsthand

To be or not to be European alone — The Gordian Magazine

Welcome to the February issue of The Gordian Magazine. In this edition, we venture into the depths of a question that has, for centuries, puzzled and provoked: “To be or not to be European alone”. As we stand at the crossroads of history, the fabric of our collective identity is being stretched and tested by the forces of nationalism and globalisation, each tugging in its direction.

Read The Gordian for free

The Gordian Magazine is a community-supported magazine that shares YOUR revolutionary ideas in regards to human rights, animal welfare and environmental protection. Every issue contains global news, opinions and long reads accompanied by striking photography and insightful companion pieces.

We promise not to spam your inbox. Find how we use your information.

Or become a free member .

• The Gordian →
• Get involved →
• Contact us →
• The UN-aligned manifesto
• As an Alternative UN
• The international political party
• On Facebook
• On Instagram

UN-aligned uses cookies to make this website better.

7th June 2023

This blog makes the case for the legalisation and regulation of drugs and outlines why this is better than making drugs illegal. This piece is an edited extract of Transform’s Debating Drugs guide, which addresses common concerns about the legal regulation of drugs including:

• Levels of drug use
• The young and vulnerable
• Crime and security
• Health and human rights

Responsible governments already legally regulate many risky activities and other drugs effectively, including alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals. So, far from being ‘radical’, legal regulation is in fact the norm. In reality, it is prohibition that is the radical policy.

Legal regulation of drugs means establishing formal controls over the production, supply and availability of drugs . This will generally include licensing regimes, systems of taxation, marketing regulations, health and safety requirements, age access controls and quality control standards. Setting out practical models for the effective legal regulation of drugs is core to Transform’s work.

Legal regulation means that access to drugs would be more restricted.

Although the legal regulation of drugs is sometimes characterised as a ‘liberalisation’ or ‘relaxation’ of the law, it is in fact the opposite: it is about bringing the drug trade within the law so that strict controls can be applied. Such controls are impossible to impose under prohibition

Legal regulation enables responsible governments to control which drugs can be sold, who has access to them, and where they can be sold. Under prohibition, it is organised crime grups and undergulated vendors who make these decisions

When governments have control of the market they can put age limits on products, whereas people selling drugs in the illegal market do not ask for ID

Under a system of legal regulation, many activities, such as sales to minors, would remain illegal and subject to sanctions

It is a caricature of the reform position to say that advocates of legal regulation want drugs to be freely available – sold, for example, in supermarkets. It is irresponsible in the extreme that alcohol and tobacco are already sold in this way. We should aim for better, stricter regulation of both legal and currently illegal drugs

We already legally regulate other risky substances such as alcohol and tobacco. The legal regulation of drugs is already similar to how to regulate other risky activities.

Prohibition was a leap into the unknown at the time. There was never any evidence that it would be effective. Now, after more than half a century of this policy, we know that it is not effective, instead it is costly and counterproductive

We already legally regulate many risky activities and substances effectively. Even some drugs prohibited for non-medical use – including opiates, amphetamines, cocaine and cannabis – are produced safely and securely for medical use without any of the chaos, violence and criminality of the illicit trade

Real reforms are taking place all over the world, including in Canada, the US, Europe, Uruguay and Bolivia

There would be no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach: the riskier the drug, the stricter the controls that should be placed on it. Some less risky drugs, for example, would be sold by licensed retailers, while more risky drugs would only be available via medical prescriptions for people with drug dependencies. The supply of the most risky preparations, such as crack cocaine, would remain prohibited (although posession of any drug would no longer be crminalised)

We can apply the lessons learned from the control of other risky substances and activities – such as alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, gambling and sex work – to ensure that regulation promotes public health and safety

Change will not happen overnight – it will be phased and cautious, based on experimentation, with policy carefully adapting and evolving in response to emerging evidence. If policies do not work they can be revisited and, where necessary, reversed

Legal regulation can alleviate the problems caused by drug prohibition.

No one is claiming that legal regulation is a silver bullet for all the problems associated with drugs. The argument is that it can reduce, often dramatically, many of the disastrous problems caused by drug prohibition

To meaningfully address the wider challenges posed by drugs, legal regulation must be complemented by improvements in public health, education, prevention, treatment and recovery, as well as action on poverty, inequality and social exclusion

For more insight into legal regulation, please see our Debating Drugs guide.

Debating guide 2018

Latest articles.

Our vision for regulated cannabis in the UK

15th August 2024

What about the kids? Regulating adult-only cannabis access

6th August 2024

Oregon's decriminalisation needs to return

2nd August 2024

Should Illegal Drugs Be Legalized?

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated in its Jan. 6, 1995 paper titled “Against Drug Prohibition”:

“The best evidence of prohibition’s failure is the government’s current war on drugs. This war, instead of employing a strategy of prevention, research, education and social programs designed to address problems such as permanent poverty, long term unemployment and deteriorating living conditions in our inner cities, has employed a strategy of law enforcement. While this military approach continues to devour billions of tax dollars and sends tens of thousands of people to prison, illegal drug trafficking thrives, violence escalates and drug abuse continues to debilitate lives… Those who benefit the most from prohibition are organized crime barons, who derive an estimated $10 to $50 billion a year from the illegal drug trade. Indeed, the criminal drug laws protect drug traffickers from taxation, regulation and quality control… In the same way that alcohol prohibition fueled violent gangsterism in the 1920s, today’s drug prohibition has spawned a culture of drive-by shootings and other gun-related crimes… The recent steep climb in our incarceration rate has made the U.S. the world’s leading jailer… Nonviolent drug offenders make up 58 percent of the federal prison population, a population that is extremely costly to maintain… Some people, hearing the words ‘drug legalization,’ imagine pushers on street corners passing out cocaine to anyone — even children. But that is what exists today under prohibition… In the long run, ending prohibition could foster the redirection of public resources toward social development, legitimate economic opportunities and effective treatment, thus enhancing the safety, health and well-being of the entire society.” May 25, 2005

Benson Roe, MD, Professor and Chief Emeritus at the School of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, wrote in his article (accessed on Nov. 18, 2005) titled “Why We Should Legalize Drugs,” posted on the Schaffer Library of Drug Policy’s website :

“[N]owhere can be found reliable, objective scientific evidence that [illicit drugs] are any more harmful than other substances and activities that are legal. In view of the enormous expense, the carnage and the obvious futility of the ‘drug war,’ resulting in massive criminalization of society, it is high time to examine the supposed justification for keeping certain substances illegal. Those who initiated those prohibitions and those who now so vigorously seek to enforce them have not made their objectives clear. Are they to protect us from evil, from addiction, or from poison?… The concept of evil is derived from subjective values and is difficult to define. Just why certain (illegal) substances are singularly more evil than legal substances like alcohol has not been explained… Addiction is also a relative and ubiquitous phenomenon… Some people are more susceptible to addiction than others and some ‘needs’ are more addictive than others. Probably the most addictive substance in our civilization is tobacco – yet no one has suggested making it illegal… And ‘poison’ is also a misleading shibboleth. The widespread propaganda that illegal drugs are ‘deadly poisons’ is a hoax. There is little or no medical evidence of long term ill effects from sustained, moderate consumption of uncontaminated marijuana, cocaine or heroin. If these substances – most of them have been consumed in large quantities for centuries – were responsible for any chronic, progressive or disabling diseases, they certainly would have shown up in clinical practice and/or on the autopsy table. But they simply have not!” Nov. 18, 2005

Joseph D. McNamara, PhD, former chief police in Kansas City, MO and San Jose, CA, stated during a symposium organized by the National Review for its July 1, 1996 cover story titled “Abolish the Drug Laws”:

“About $500 worth of heroin or cocaine in a source country will bring in as much as $100,000 on the streets of an American city. All the cops, armies, prisons, and executions in the world cannot impede a market with that kind of tax-free profit margin. It is the illegality that permits the obscene markup, enriching drug traffickers, distributors, dealers, crooked cops, lawyers, judges, politicians, bankers, businessmen… Sadly, the police have been pushed into a war they did not start and cannot win. It was not the police who lobbied in 1914 for passage of the Harrison Act, which first criminalized drugs… If drugs had been outlawed because the police had complained that drug use caused crime and disorder, the policy would have been more acceptable to the public and won more compliance. And the conviction that the use of certain drugs is immoral chills the ability to scrutinize rationally and to debate the effects of the drug war… To enforce drug laws the police have to resort to undercover work, which is dangerous to them and also to innocent bystanders. Drug enforcement often involves questionable ethical behavior by the police, such as… letting a guilty person go free because he enticed someone else into violating the law… Police scandals are an untallied cost of the drug war. The FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and even the Coast Guard have had to admit to corruption. The gravity of the police crimes is as disturbing as the volume… The drug war is as lethal as it is corrupting. And the police and drug criminals are not the only casualties.” July 1, 1996

The Cato Institute, a Libertarian think-tank, makes the following policy recommendations to the 108th Congress in its Dec. 2004 “Cato Handbook for Congress”:

“There are a number of reasons why Congress should end the federal government’s war on drugs. First and foremost, the federal drug laws are constitutionally dubious… Congress never asked the American people for additional constitutional powers to declare a war on drug consumers. That usurpation of power is something that few politicians or their court intellectuals wish to discuss… [D]rug prohibition is a classic example of throwing money at a problem. The federal government spends some $19 billion to enforce the drug laws every year—all to no avail. For years drug war bureaucrats have been tailoring their budget requests to the latest news reports. When drug use goes up, taxpayers are told the government needs more money so that it can redouble its efforts against a rising drug scourge. When drug use goes down, taxpayers are told that it would be a big mistake to curtail spending just when progress is being made… One of the broader lessons that [recent presidents and congresses] should have learned is this: prohibition laws should be judged according to their real-world effects, not their promised benefits… Congress should repeal the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, shut down the Drug Enforcement Administration, and let the states set their own policies with regard to currently illegal drugs… Repeal of prohibition would take the astronomical profits out of the drug business and destroy the drug kingpins who terrorize parts of our cities… Not only would there be less crime; reform would also free federal agents to concentrate on terrorism and espionage and free local police agents to concentrate on robbery, burglary, and violent crime.” Dec. 2004

Kathleen Parker, a syndicated columnist, wrote in an Aug. 3, 2002 article for Townhall.com titled “In Drug War, Honesty is Best Policy,” that:

“There isn’t space here to outline all the arguments for and against legalization of some drugs, but it’s clear that: drugs are easy to get; the drug subculture thrives in part because it is forbidden and therefore attractive; dollar for dollar, the billions we funnel into this ‘war’ would be better spent on education, prevention and treatment. Would it not be better to control those substances, tax them, limit their availability to minors as we try to do with alcohol, rather than criminalize a huge segment of the population that probably includes many of our neighbors and even our own children? The genie in the bottle is truth, and the truth is that all drugs are not awful, evil or equally harmful… Truth is also this: Drug abuse is different from drug use, just as alcoholism is different from the weekend cocktail party. Rather than fight the abuse war from a moral, shame-on-you posture, which doesn’t work with any age, we might try a medical model that educates with facts and urges human wisdom… Think of it as an investment in credibility so that potential users tune in to the discussion on consequences that needs to follow.” Aug. 3, 2002

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in the summary of its May 2003 booklet titled “Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization,” stated:

“We have made significant progress in fighting drug use and drug trafficking in America. Now is not the time to abandon our efforts.The Legalization Lobby claims that the fight against drugs cannot be won. However, overall drug use is down by more than a third in the last twenty years, while cocaine use has dropped by an astounding 70 percent… The Legalization Lobby claims that the United States has wasted billions of dollars in its anti-drug efforts. But for those kids saved from drug addiction, this is hardly wasted dollars. Moreover, our fight against drug abuse and addiction is an ongoing struggle that should be treated like any other social problem. Would we give up on education or poverty simply because we haven’t eliminated all problems? Compared to the social costs of drug abuse and addiction—whether in taxpayer dollars or in pain and suffering—government spending on drug control is minimal. Legalization of drugs will lead to increased use and increased levels of addiction. Legalization has been tried before, and failed miserably… Alaska’s experiment with Legalization in the 1970s led to the state’s teens using marijuana at more than twice the rate of other youths nationally. This led Alaska’s residents to vote to re-criminalize marijuana in 1990… Most non-violent drug users get treatment, not jail time. The Legalization Lobby claims that America’s prisons are filling up with users. Truth is, only about 5 percent of inmates in federal prison are there because of simple possession. Most drug criminals are in jail—even on possession charges—because they have plea-bargained down from major trafficking offences or more violent drug crimes.” May 2003

John Walters, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), wrote in a July 19, 2002 op-ed article titled “Don’t Legalize Drugs” in the Wall Street Journal that:

“The charge that ‘nothing works’ in the fight against illegal drugs has led some people to grasp at an apparent solution: legalize drugs… Better, the argument goes, for the government to control the trade in narcotics. That should drive down the prices (heroin would be ‘no more expensive than lettuce,’ argues one proponent), eliminate violence, provide tax revenue, reduce prison crowding, and foster supervised injection facilities. Sounds good. But is it realistic?… Legalizers overstate the social costs of prohibition, just as they understate the social costs of legalization… Legalization, by removing penalties and reducing price, would increase drug demand. Make something easier and cheaper to obtain, and you increase the number of people who will try it… Legalizers like to argue that government-supervised production and distribution of addictive drugs will eliminate the dangers attributed to drug prohibition. But when analyzing this ‘harm reduction’ argument, consider the abuse of the opiate OxyContin, which has resulted in numerous deaths, physicians facing criminal charges, and addicts attacking pharmacies. OxyContin is a legally prescribed substance, with appropriate medical uses—that is, it satisfies those conditions legalizers envision for cocaine and heroin. The point is clear: The laws are not the problem… Legalization is a dangerous mirage. To address a crime problem, we are asked to accept a public health crisis. Yet if we were to surrender, we would surely face both problems—intensified.” July 19, 2002

The Drug Free America Foundation stated in its “Myths About the Drug War” posted on its website (accessed Nov. 18, 2005):

“Under a legalization scenario, a black market for drugs would still exist. If drugs were legal for those over 18 or 21, there would be a market for everyone under that age. People under the age of 21 consume the majority of illegal drugs, and so an illegal market and organized crime to supply it would remain—along with the organized crime that profits from it. After Prohibition ended, did the organized crime in our country go down? No. It continues today in a variety of other criminal enterprises. Legalization would not put the cartels out of business; cartels would simply look to other illegal endeavors… While ‘government drugs’ could conceivably be priced low enough to eliminate competition, perhaps by having taxpayers subsidize them to discourage a black market, the combination of low price and wide availability would result in greater consumption, and consequently increased addiction. Increased consumption and addiction lead to drug-related crime. This government regulation argument ignores the dangerously addictive nature of drugs. And finally, under a legalization scenario, a black market for drugs would still exist. If drugs were legal for those over 18 or 21, there would be a market for everyone under that age –a faction of the population that can be targeted by those looking to profit from the sale of drugs.” Nov. 18, 2005

Charles D. Mabry, MD, Assistant Professor at the College of Medicine at the University of Arkansas, wrote in an Oct. 2001 article titled “Physicians and the War on Drugs: The Case Against Legalization,” published in the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons that:

“Does making addictive drugs illegal work? Cocaine and potent narcotics were freely sold in America until the first two decades of the 20th century, and the number of patients addicted dropped sharply once availability was curtailed… More recently, several European countries have experimented with various attempts to legalize or decriminalize some illegal drugs. These experiments have resulted in a rise in the number of drug-addicted patients and a corresponding increase in the crime rate… The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse has stated the situation concerning illicit drugs in this country most eloquently: ‘Drugs are not a threat to American society because they are illegal; they are illegal because they are a threat to American society.’… There is another stark reality: In some cases, the only thing that forces someone who is addicted to drugs and spiraling out of control into therapy is the threat (or reality) of incarceration. Do away with laws prohibiting sale of these drugs, and you do away with the only hope of help for so many people who are addicted but just can’t stop themselves.” Oct. 2001

Ann Coulter, JD, author, wrote in her Oct. 3, 2000 article “Don’t Do Drug Legalization” for Townhall.com that:

“The most superficially appealing argument for drug legalization is that people should be allowed to do what they want with their own bodies, even if it ruins their lives. Except that’s not true. Back on Earth, see, we live in a country that will not allow people to live with their own stupid decisions. Ann has to pay for their stupid decisions. ‘We’ have to ‘invest’ in ‘our’ future by supporting people who freely choose to inject drugs in their own bodies and then become incapable of holding jobs, obtaining housing and taking care of their children. So it’s not really quite accurate to say drugs hurt no one but the user, at least until we’ve repealed the welfare state… Drugs enslave people. So do cigarettes and alcohol, the drug legalizers say… Assume alcohol and cigarettes induce dependency, ruin lives, cause disease, depression, countless traffic injuries and fatalities, and increase the incidence of homicide and suicide. This is supposed to be an argument for legalizing another drug like them?” Oct. 3, 2000

More Civil Liberties Debates

• Should Abortion Be Legal?
• Should Parents or Other Adults be Able to Ban Books from Schools and Libraries?
• Is the USA PATRIOT Act a Good Law?

ProCon/Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. 325 N. LaSalle Street, Suite 200 Chicago, Illinois 60654 USA

Natalie Leppard Managing Editor [email protected]

© 2023 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved

• ACLU – Pros & Cons
• Top Pro & Con Quotes
• Top 10 Pro & Con Arguments
• Historical Timeline
• Did You Know?
• ACLU Positions on Issues from Abortion to the War on Terror
• ACLU Structure
• ACLU: What They Do and How They Do It
• Opinion Polls/Surveys
• US Constitution and Bill of Rights

Cite This Page

• Additional Resources
• Artificial Intelligence
• Private Prisons
• Space Colonization
• Social Media
• Death Penalty
• School Uniforms
• Video Games
• Animal Testing
• Gun Control
• Banned Books
• Teachers’ Corner

ProCon.org is the institutional or organization author for all ProCon.org pages. Proper citation depends on your preferred or required style manual. Below are the proper citations for this page according to four style manuals (in alphabetical order): the Modern Language Association Style Manual (MLA), the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago), the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), and Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Turabian). Here are the proper bibliographic citations for this page according to four style manuals (in alphabetical order):

[Editor's Note: The APA citation style requires double spacing within entries.]

[Editor’s Note: The MLA citation style requires double spacing within entries.]

Legalize and regulate non-medical use of all drugs, prioritizing opioids

Personal possession and use of all drugs in Canada should be decriminalized immediately, but we need to go further. To combat the illegal market and save more lives, we need to legalize and regulate drugs. We should prioritize the provision of safe access to opioids given the toll the opioid crisis is exacting. Legalization and regulation are the options that cause the least harm.

The lessons of legalization and regulation of cannabis

It’s been two years since recreational cannabis was legalized and regulated, something that once seemed impossible. Cannabis reforms have not been without problems, but they have been widely regarded as successful. The criminalization of individuals for merely using and possessing that substance has essentially ended. A drug long thought to be limited to the criminal element in dark alleys has been hauled into the daylight and bought and sold within a tight and transparent regulatory framework.

With legalization has come a fundamental shift in thinking that non-medical use of drugs should be addressed as a public-health issue, not with use of penal sanctions. People who use drugs should not be punished – and they should get support if they need it.

Increasing support for decriminalization

There has been recent, significant momentum toward decriminalization of drugs for personal use. Those endorsing such reform include the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police , The Canadian Association of Social Workers, many medical officers of health, including Bonnie Henry, the New Democratic Party and B.C. Premier John Horgan along with the Vancouver city council and Jane Philpott, the former minister of health. An August editorial in the Globe and Mail also voiced support for it.

The Prosecution Service of Canada has begun to pull back from prosecution for personal possession of drugs, limiting it to cases involving public safety, according to a directive it issued in August. Decriminalization combined with other harm-reduction strategies such as safe-injection sites can lower rates of fatal overdoses and HIV infection caused by tainted needles. It can also create a path to help for those who are dependent.

The positive impact of decriminalization is not theoretical. Portugal has had mostly positive results from its decision two decades ago to decriminalize personal possession and use of all drugs. There has been no significant increase in harmful use, including for kids; the country did not become a haven for people coming to it just to use drugs; HIV infections and drug overdoses have gone down.

A ballot measure in Oregon to decriminalize drugs passed in November’s U.S. election with strong support. Norway is also proceeding to roll back penal sanctions for consumption of substances. It’s time for Canada to follow suit and decriminalize drugs now.

Legalize to confront the illicit market

Decriminalization, however, does not address the illicit supply of drugs coming from ruthless criminals making billions of untaxed dollars and peddling tainted substances that cause sickness and death. Legalization and regulation confront that system of “ narconomics .” Yet even just decriminalization has met with consistent opposition from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He has said repeatedly that legalizing and regulating cannabis is as far as he is prepared to go to reform laws dealing with illicit drugs.

Legalizing the sale of illegal drugs seems a bridge too far despite cannabis legalization. There is widespread acceptance that the war on drugs has been a failure. Consumption for some drugs has increased, the illicit market is thriving, and individual lives are ruined.

But many people who are open to arguments favouring legalization wonder how it would be done. How is it possible to create an acceptable legal market for all non-medical use of drugs? That question must be answered.

A recent effort to address this critical challenge was undertaken by the British think tank Transform Drug Policy Foundation with the publication in October of How to Regulate Stimulants: A Practical Guide . Transform focuses on the reform of laws that criminalize non-medical use of drugs. It is highly regarded and consulted with the government of Canada regarding the legalization of cannabis. It has published work on legalization. The prestigious Global Commission on Drug Policy has also published such reports . Because stimulants, especially cocaine, are widely used, the October report focused on these drugs. But its discussion about how to regulate effectively and responsibly can be applied to any substances.

The opioid crisis and legalization

The numbers are horrific . Within the COVID-19 pandemic the opioid epidemic has taken a deadly toll. In B.C. there were more than 100 “illicit drug toxicity” deaths a month from March to August of this year – far more than in a comparable period last year (181 in June 2020 vs. 76 in June 2019). Data from Ontario indicate that the number of fatalities from opioids in that province increased by about 50 per cent this year over last year. In Alberta, related deaths from April to June this year were 302, significantly exceeding the previous three-month high of 211 in 2018. Urgent action is required to protect individuals from street drugs.

There is already something of a pathway to legalization of opioids in this country. Some police forces have stopped charging for simple possession and use of opioids, but the practice is uneven . Such lack of uniformity explains the increasing support for formal decriminalization. In addition, the federal government is permitting “ safe supply” projects . In these instances, dependent individuals are given access to opioids so that they are not consuming street drugs, which can be toxic. But the future of such projects is uncertain, and we need more of them.

So – in constrained and shifting circumstances – there is a sort of legalization and regulation unfolding regarding opioids: some de facto decriminalization combined with some safe supply. But much more needs to be done – and quickly.

There is room for debate about the details of legalization and regulation of non-medical use of drugs. Transform, the British think tank, focuses the debate by breaking down the regulatory scheme into components including production, distribution outlets, availability, higher- and lower- risk products. There is much in its October report to guide policy-makers – if there is the political will to move forward with legalization and regulation. Transform is also clear about the goals of drug policy: “improve public health, protect human rights and promote social justice,” as mentioned in the executive summary of its report .

These components analyzed by Transform can be applied to the production and sale of opioids for non-medical use to sketch a route forward. As a starting point, provision of safe supply could be expanded and improved . A further step could be to allow doctors to prescribe heroin (an opioid) for those adults determined to use the drug despite counselling about its dangers. At some level this is a horrible suggestion, but it is better than having people get these drugs on the street from a criminal network that pays no taxes, has committed crimes for a thriving system of narconomics , and doesn’t care whether the drug is tainted. In all of this we should remember that drugs were largely available with little legal restriction until the 1900s. Punishing people for using drugs was, in many ways, a project of the 20th century.

Expanding safe supply and prescribing heroin both fall short of full legalization of opioids. But together with decriminalization, they would end criminalization of people who use drugs, further confront the illicit market, and save more lives. After careful assessment of the impacts, further measures such as those suggested by Transform could be contemplated.

The least bad policy

Legalization of drugs is no cause for celebration. It’s no panacea for all the harms caused by drugs, including the ones that are now legal. It’s also not a basis for encouraging drug use. Legalization needs to be accompanied by widely available support for those who are dependent.

Many details must be hammered out, including the appropriate conditions for prescribing opioids for medical purposes . But when measured against the costs and pain of the current situation, legalization together with regulation is, as The Economist somberly put it back in 2009: “The least bad policy.”

Photo: Shutterstock.com, by Darwin Brandis

You are welcome to republish this Policy Options article online or in print periodicals, under a Creative Commons/No Derivatives licence.

Republish this article

by W.A. Bogart. Originally published on Policy Options December 22, 2020

This <a target="_blank" href="https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/december-2020/legalize-and-regulate-non-medical-use-of-all-drugs-prioritizing-opioids/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://policyoptions.irpp.org">Policy Options</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img id="republication-tracker-tool-source" src="https://policyoptions.irpp.org/?republication-pixel=true&post=94980&amp;ga4=G-GR919H3LRJ" style="width:1px;height:1px;">

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

Related stories

Finding innovative solutions to reduce the cost of substance use on health care

• Social Policy

Ontario Cannabis Store earned $234 million but taxpayers got nothing

B.C. ban on public consumption of some drugs would harm the vulnerable

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• v.335(7627); 2007 Nov 10

Head to Head

Should drugs be decriminalised no, joseph a califano, jr.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, 633 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017-6706, USA

Recent government figures suggest that the UK drug treatment programmes have had limited success in rehabilitating drug users, leading to calls for decriminalisation from some parties. Kailash Chand believes that this is the best way to reduce the harm drugs cause, but Joseph Califano thinks not

Drug misuse (usually called abuse in the United States) infects the world's criminal justice, health care, and social service systems. Although bans on the import, manufacture, sale, and possession of drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin should remain, drug policies do need a fix. Neither legalisation nor decriminalisation is the answer. Rather, more resources and energy should be devoted to research, prevention, and treatment, and each citizen and institution should take responsibility to combat all substance misuse and addiction.

Vigorous and intelligent enforcement of criminal law makes drugs harder to get and more expensive. Sensible use of courts, punishment, and prisons can encourage misusers to enter treatment and thus reduce crime. Why not treat a teenager arrested for marijuana use in the same way that the United States treats someone arrested for drink-driving when no injury occurs? See the arrest as an opportunity and require the teenager to be screened, have any needed treatment, and attend sessions to learn about the dangers of marijuana use.

The medical profession and the public health community should educate society that addiction is a complex physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual disease, not a moral failing or easily abandoned act of self indulgence. Children should receive education and prevention programmes that take into account cultural and sex differences and are relevant to their age. We should make effective treatment available to all who need it and establish high standards of training for treatment providers. Social service programmes, such as those to help abused children and homeless people, should confront the drug and alcohol misuse and addiction commonly involved, rather than ignore or hide it because of the associated stigma.

Availability is the mother of use

What we don't need is legalisation or decriminalisation, which will make illegal drugs cheaper, easier to obtain, and more acceptable to use. The United States has some 60 million smokers, up to 20 million alcoholics and alcohol misusers, but only around six million illegal drug addicts. 1 If illegal drugs were easier to obtain, this figure would rise.

Switzerland's “needle park,” touted as a way to restrict a few hundred heroin users to a small area, turned into a grotesque tourist attraction of 20 000 addicts and had to be closed before it infected the entire city of Zurich. 2 Italy, where personal possession of a few doses of drugs like heroin has generally been exempt from criminal sanction, 2 has one of the highest rates of heroin addiction in Europe, 3 with more than 60% of AIDS cases there attributable to intravenous drug use. 4

Most legalisation advocates say they would legalise drugs only for adults. Our experience with tobacco and alcohol shows that keeping drugs legal “for adults only” is an impossible dream. Teenage smoking and drinking are widespread in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe.

The Netherlands established “coffee shops,” where customers could select types of marijuana just as they might choose ice cream flavours. 2 Between 1984 and 1992, adolescent use nearly tripled. 2 Responding to international pressure and the outcry from its own citizens, the Dutch government reduced the number of marijuana shops and the amount that could be sold and raised the age for admission from 16 to 18. 2 5 In 2007, the Dutch government announced plans to ban the sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms. 6

Restriction

Recent events in Britain highlight the importance of curbing availability. In 2005, the government extended the hours of operation for pubs, with some allowed to serve 24 hours a day. 7 Rather than curbing binge drinking, the result has been a sharp increase in crime between 3 am and 6 am, 8 in violent crimes in certain pubs, 9 and in emergency treatment for alcohol misusers. 7

Sweden offers an example of a successful restrictive drug policy. Faced with rising drug use in the 1990s, the government tightened drug control, stepped up police action, mounted a national action plan, and created a national drug coordinator. 10 The result: “Drug use is just a third of the European average.” 11

Almost daily we learn more about marijuana's addictive and dangerous characteristics. Today's teenagers' pot is far more potent than their parents' pot. The average amount of tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in seized samples in the United States has more than doubled since 1983. 12 Antonio Maria Costa, director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has warned, “Today, the harmful characteristics of cannabis are no longer that different from those of other plant-based drugs such as cocaine and heroin.” 13

Evidence that cannabis use can cause serious mental illness is mounting. 13 A study published in the Lancet “found a consistent increase in incidence of psychosis outcomes in people who had used cannabis.” 14 The study prompted the journal's editors to retract their 1995 statement that, “smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health.” 15

Drugs are not dangerous because they are illegal; they are illegal because they are dangerous. A child who reaches age 21 without smoking, misusing alcohol, or using illegal drugs is virtually certain to never do so. 16 Today, most children don't use illicit drugs, but all of them, particularly the poorest, are vulnerable to misuse and addiction. Legalisation and decriminalisation—policies certain to increase illegal drug availability and use among our children—hardly qualify as public health approaches.

Competing interests: None declared.