Prohibiting Prohibition

There is a hard economic reason for decriminalising narcotics. It costs too much. Not only is it exorbitant to monitor the trade and house its perps and victims in prison, but even the human cost is too high. People will always do drugs, but they need to be helped, not persecuted. It’s more humane - and much cheaper.

We’re not losing the war on drugs, it is already lost and no amount of law making or jail time is going to solve the problem. Just look at our overcrowded prisons and gang-run townships. We’re not even close to treating the symptoms, let alone the cause. We need a radical change in thinking if we’re to redress the scourge of illegal drug taking and it’s knock-on criminal consequences to society. 

We don’t need to look too far to find that prohibition is an ineffective and blunt tool to combat drug use. Many of us forget, or just don’t know, that the sale of alcohol was prohibited in the USA from 1919 until 1933. A movement driven by the churches (who else?) in the 1800s deprived people of legally sipping on a cold one or a fine whiskey. Despite the ban, the public wouldn’t be denied their tipple and so began the birth of bootlegging as alcohol was illegally shipped in or produced in moonshine factories to satisfy the people’s demand for a good time. 

Because prohibition had led to a scarcity of supply, the price at which illegal alcohol was peddled was high enough to make large margins worth the while of criminals to get involved in production and distribution. Prohibition was the fertile soil that gave rise to some of America’s most notorious and violent gangsters, including Al Capone. 

 

South Africans too, quite like their drugs. From cigarettes, to alcohol, to dagga and the devil-inducing “tik”, we’re not going to stay away from these vices even if some are on the government’s naughty list. That is the first truth we need to admit. Many people will always use recreational drugs because it feels good and banning drugs is like banning sex - no law will stand in the way of those who really want it.
 
The greatest benefit of legalisation is  the guaranteed decrease in the criminal element that entwines itself with a high-margin illegal product like narcotics. If you think I am exaggerating, ask yourself when last you heard of someone prostituting themselves for a shot of beer? For heroin or tik maybe, but not something you can get on almost every street corner.

Rehab centre workers will argue that alcohol addicts are the biggest problem they encounter and making hard drugs legal will only increase the opportunity for addicts to get hooked. My hard line answer is that those people were probably destined for misery anyway, likely to get addicted to one form or drug or another. Rather they end up in rehab than become a pawn in a gangland economy. And let’s not forget tobacco, which has been proven to be more addictive than virtually all hard drugs, and what it costs society each year.

As for successful case studies, we only need to see what happened to the US afterProhibition was abolished in 1933. The Great Depression proved the breaking point of the people, along with the hypocrisy of lawmakers who drank themselves silly at parties, yet maintained a pro-Prohibition stance to keep office. Once repealed, organised crime was mostly pushed out of the alcohol trade (and found their way to narcotics) and the state benefited from a larger tax revenue base. We need to start thinking the same way here.

Portugal recently celebrated 11 years of decriminalisation of all drugs, with astounding results. These include reduced health burdens on the state and the significant reduction in the price of drugs, making it less appealing to criminal traders. HIV infections from needle sharing dropped dramatically as did consumption by young teenagers. Prior to the policy change Portugal had the highest rate of needle-induced HIV infections in Europe, a true tipping-point moment that led to the paradigm shift. (Decriminalisation is not the same as legalisation. Offences are administrative rather than criminal but nonetheless a step in the right direction).

The conservatives will no doubt have their panties in a spin. They will be heralding the end of our moral society, should we legalise drugs. But we need to realise that prohibition just isn’t working, we are at our own breaking point.

Legalisation isn’t a magic pill (sic) solution to our problems, but right now we’re just wasting our efforts and taxpayers’ money. The rich are doing it anyway, and the poor are being victimised by criminals. It hasn’t worked for a century in any country that’s introduced it and if we want to drive the criminal element out of the drug trade, there is only one solution. Abolish prohibition. (from the Daily Maverick)