"The greater the number of laws, the greater the number of offenses against them." - Havelock Ellis."Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny." - Edmund Burke.
The War on Drugs began at the end of the 1960s during the Nixon Administration. The proximate cause of the war was serious heroin addiction in a small portion of the inner cities and modest marijuana usage among the young. After three decades; after millions of dollars invested in enforcement and prison construction, after the serious shrinkage of Fourth Amendment protections induced by the relentless pursuit of drug possession violations; and after dramatic increases in the ethos of violence, it is impossible to argue the net effect of the drug war been anything but a disaster. The fact that the cost of drugs has actually reduced is a clear indication that efforts to decrease supply have failed. Abraham Lincoln once remarked that the best way to repeal a law is to have it strictly enforced. Lincoln's assessment of political intelligence was too sanguine.
Laws have a legitimate teaching function. Proscribing negative behavior can encourage more constructive life styles. However, when the material and spiritual costs in this pursuit exceed the harm of the forbidden behavior, it is time to reconsider. Prohibition of alcohol lasted 14 years before, the country realized the cost in crime far exceeded the negative effects of alcohol consumption. It does not reflect positively on the polity that we have not learned the same lessons with other drugs, particularly marijuana.
Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure, by Dan Baum, is a journalist's view of the history of the drug war. Nixon ostensibly began the drug war to fight the increase in crime erroneously believed to be cause by addicts in search of money to finance their habits. To the Nixon Administration's credit, the methadone treatment program it instituted did have the salutary effect of aiding heroin addicts to cope while trying to escape addiction.
In the dawn of the Carter Administration the drug war was not a priority and the excesses in drug law enforcement abated. Unfortunately, the culture of drug use infected the popular culture. Drug use was glamorized in music, movies, and television. Predictably drug use, partly marijuana use among the young increased. NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, an organization formed to encourage the decriminalization of marijuana, undercut its own cause at the time with its refusal to acknowledge that perhaps drug laws should treat minors differently from adults.
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