Burning at Both Ends
There was a recent article on CNN.com about the Federal Government's probe of a massive drug smuggling ring that used FedEx trucks and airplanes to transport marijuana from Mexico to major US cities. As of April 13, more than 100 people, including 25 FedEx employees, had been charged in the 18-month, multi-million dollar investigation. While arrests were expected to continue, federal officials estimated that 121 tons of marijuana, worth more than $140 million, had already been sold by members of the ring.
It seemed a lukewarm victory for the Feds at best: hardly enough to re-ignite the increasingly lackluster War on Drugs. Indeed, after reading the article, I questioned the logic behind such a long and costly investigation aimed at stomping out a substance that had produced no known fatalities, according to the latest statistics published by The Drug Project. This nationwide coalition, which calls for release of all prisoners incarcerated under existing US drug laws, noted that other illegal narcotics, including cocaine and heroin, were responsible for about 4500 deaths each year: less than one percent of the fatalities reportedly caused by cigarettes and alcohol.
Should booze and smokes be outlawed, too, as some hardcore anti-drug advocates would have us believe? Not according to Richard Miller, an award-winning public television producer from Kansas City, Mo., and the author of The Case for Legalizing Drugs. Miller maintains that there is no correlation between legalization and higher rates of drug abuse. "Most people," he argues, " have no curiosity about illegal drugs and would not use them even if they became legal."
In fact, legalization could allow for more effective solutions to the problem of drug addiction, said David Boaz, Executive Director of the Cato Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank, and the author of the 1997 best-seller, Libertarianism: A Primer. Boaz spoke with me about the benefits of a legalized narcotics trade.
"Legal drugs are easier to regulate," Boaz said. He noted that, while illegal narcotics use has declined since the '80s, it has done so at slower rates than many legal drugs, including cigarettes and alcohol. "By regulating and taxing drugs like marijuana, heroin and cocaine," he said, "the Federal government could use the increased revenue to fund more effective methods of drug treatment and prevention."
Legalization, moreover, would lead to a more socially and economically productive society by enabling users to integrate drugs into their lives in a less disruptive manner than is possible under the current legal restrictions," Boaz said. He explained that most drug users who lose their jobs do so because they must devote so much time and energy to fueling their habits. "If heroin was as convenient and cheap to buy as legal drugs," he said, "users would be able to manage their habits much more effectively and productively," he said.
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