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Writing in his Reuters column Bernd Debusmann questions America's 72 year old laws against marijuana using the prohibition against alcohol as the comparator without ever thinking of logically extending his reasoning to all illegal drugs.
If the prohibition against marijuana has failed , as Debussmann states it has, simply because people continue to smoke it and it diverts law enforcement and resources away from tackling violent and serious crime why not apply reason and widen the debate to the legalisation of all drug use on the same basis? Why restrict reason to the debate about marijuana alone? People continue to take crack despite legal supply control efforts to shut down the trade , if we object to the $10.7 billion wasted on busting dope smokers last year - the arrest rate was apparently one person every 38 seconds - then we have even more reason to rethink the US Governments wider war on drugs which we are losing at a cost of about $118 billion a year.
Debusmann notes that Ted Kennedy tried to change the law on marijuana and lists the many prominent Americans who have admitted smoking pot including President George W. Bush, Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senator John Kerry, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, former Vice President Al Gore and Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for next November's presidential election. So, Barack smokes a spliff now and again, thats ok then...lets legalise it cos he's a good guy... It seems easier for prominent Americans to admit getting stoned on marijuana at some point in their lives than admit using other drugs or, heaven forbid, realistically talking about the balloon effect of supply side drug control efforts, the fact that if the authorities squeeze the supply chain in one point it just expands in another because the incentives of supplying drugs far outweigh the disincentives. A recent report by UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC) went further than admitting the balloon effect , it stated that supply control strategies could be fuelling drug turf wars and violent drugs related crime., in other words, the cure is worse than the social ill we think we need to fix.
We waste billions of dollars a year on the war on drugs simply because we think its the right thing to do even though we know that the people who run the country or even behind drugs policy have at some point thought nothing wrong in getting stoned themselves. How dumb does this argument need to get? Are we ever going to see US politicians and other movers and shakers fessing up to taking speed and coke? We know that coke was a high society drug long before its 'cheapening' cut variant, crack, hit the streets. We know coke is still the drug of choice in affluent circles and that it is, for all the talk of tackling the drugs problem , readilly available at most happening Washington and Wall Street soirees. And you know what, drugs related violence and crime in Columbia, Mexico, Chicago and the Bronx occurs irrespective of the respectability of the end user. White House insiders and law enforcement officials who enjoy a recreational line of coke every now and again dont have their own personal clean supply chain, their counterparts in Mexico and Columbia are murdered or corrupted to enable us to recreationally use drugs. . The guys with the Uzi's and chainsaws may not hold the mirror while the politicians , interns and brokers snort coke through their c notes off it but they are there lurking in the background, our recreational use is ripping other societies apart, Mexico is a classic example, the drugs gangs are at war with the elected Government and it basically boils down to a moral question, do we want to tolerate perpetuating the international evils of the drug trade or do we want to regulate and tax it? There is nothing particularly romantic or flowery about the marijuana supply chain either, as long as the unregulated trade generates billions of dollars people will go to any lengths to supply it .People get killed for our right to spliff up. The fact that so many prominent Americans feel that its part of their rite of passage to get stoned in an illicit context is part of the problem, how pathetic can it get? So Barack Obama has smoked dope, wow!, that just makes him even more a hypocrit for all the shit he'll come out with anout drugs devastating the black community, say, blacks dont need to be lectured on drugs they need to be lectured on working to pay for them and paying taxes on their earnings if they sell them the same as everyone else. White , black, yellow , red, drugs need to be treated like any other commodity , its insane to try to keep up the pretense that we are winning the war against drugs, of course we aren't. I really dont have a view on people who take drugs and if I did it would have to encompass all the people listed above , including Obama and Bush, as well . I dont use illegal drugs but I know there is a steady and constant demand for them that will continue to be met no matter what we do to try to stem supply . I can think of better ways to spend $118 billion a year than wasting it pretending we can stop people doing something they are going to do anyway. That figure doesnt even start to factor in the social costs of failed drug control policy which ranges from encouraging the development of rogue states and financing terrorism to the 'do as we say not as we do ' hypocrisy exhibited by our own law makers. Bill Clinton claimed he didnt inhale. Again, how dumb does this argument have to get? Bernd Debusmann could have written a more courageous and honest article about drug policy , he didn't yet Reuters wont hesitate to report drugs related assassinations in Mexico or to document how drug warlords have wrested control from and terrorise politicians and local people in places like Columbia and Afghanistan in a hand wringing way. Lets have the debate Mr Debussmann based on your experience of people using drugs and other substances around you, write with integrity to change minds not to appease them or is that too much to ask of journalists nowadays?
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