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This is a paper I wrote back in 1985, which I am currently working to update.
As long as the leaders of this country continue to insist on wasting resources, particularly human resources by building more and more prisons in order to lock up more and more people, the United States will not come close to realizing its economic, political, and most importantly, social potential. In the early 1980s, it cost $13,000 to keep a person incarcerated in a federal prison and between $5,000 and $23,000 to keep a person in a state prison for a year. 1.This was back in the 1980s, when I first wrote this paper. The numbers are much higher now. Multiply this by the 438,830 people serving prison terms and estimated 210,000 people in local jails in April, 1984, this adds up to about $10 billion spent by federal, state and local governments to incarcerate people. In addition to this, state and local governments in the United States have $6 billion worth of construction of new prisons underway or on the drawing boards. 2.
What a waste! What a drain on the limited resources of this society! At a time of declining but still large budget deficits, the governments of the United States are spending all of this money to lock up people who are considered a threat to society. At a time of numerous farm foreclosures and far, far too many people forced to live on the streets because they cannot afford to have a roof over their heads, thousands of lives are being ruined and their energies wasted by these policies.
"In all, 1 of every 350 Americans was behind bars, one of the highest such ratios in the world." 3. U.S. law enforcement authorities have utilized wiretaps, breaking and entering, undercover policemen, informants, illegal searches and seizures, entrapment and harrassment of innocent people in an attempt to deal with the crime problem. Let's hear it for the land of liberty and freedom from government oppression that is supposed to be guaranteed by the Constitution.
Despite the steps that have been taken that appear to be leading to the establishment of a police state in the United States, the crime rate is still " ... among, the steepest in the world ... " although it appears to have declined slightly in the past several years. Much of this decrease, however, has been attributed to demographics "the population of 18 to 25 year olds are the most crime prone - is shrinking." 4.
What can be done to correct this situation? A new public attitude toward the drug problem, where drug use is addressed as a health issue rather than a legal or moral problem would go a long way toward lowering the crime rate, easing overcrowding in prisons and would clear out much of the backlog that has almost paralyzed the legal system in the United States. Estimates of property crimes committed by drug users range from. 20% to 70%. These estimates do not include such crimes as drug smuggling and dealing and gang wars over who will control the highly profitable illegal drug trade. 5.
For a bag of heroin with a street price of $100.00, the estimated cost of the raw opium, before processing, was estimated to be $.05. 6. Why is dealing in illegal drugs so profitable? Precisely because the drugs are prohibited and the dealers charge high prices in order to compensate for the risks that they take dealing in the black market. Using the basic economic principle of supply and demand, it is only logical that the more the government cracks down on drugs, the higher the price rises because of lower supply and greater risk. The government's efforts to rid us of drug dealers are counterproductive to the efforts to reduce the crime rate because of the increase in property crimes committed by drug users in order to pay the higher prices charged for illegal drugs. When will the powers that be realize that their efforts to eradicate drugs only contribute to the crime problem and are a large part of the reason that Americans are increasingly cynical about their leaders and have less and less respect for the law?
By removing drugs from the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system, and placing it where it belongs, with the medical profession, the crime rate and number of people suffering drug overdoses or from impurities such as rat poison and battery acid being added to the drugs will fall drastically. By making hard drugs (drugs other than marijuana and. hashish) available with a doctor's prescription given after regular medical exams, a major problem will be brought into the open, its true scope will be more accurately known, and it will therefore, be easier to deal with. Drugs manufactured to strict F.D.A. standards to avoid contaminants such as those mentioned above and in established doses, will eliminate most deaths due to drug overdoses . Lower prices due to the legal sale of currently illegal drugs at pharmacies will greatly reduce the number of property crimes committed to finance drug use.
As part of their pursuit of happiness, which is supposed to be part of the American dream, more than 20,000,000 Americans regularly break the law, thereby risking their liberty, by smoking marijuana, some of which had been sprayed with the herbicide Paraquat by the U.S. government, which causes them to risk their health and possibly even their lives as well. Americans spend an estimated $30 billion, none of which is subject to federal, state or local taxes, on U.S. grown marijuana, which accounts for about half of the marijuana smoked in this country. 7. In an era of federal budget deficits over $100 billion and a national debt of over $5 trillion, it is at best negligence, or at worst the ultimate in irresponsibility to ignore this source of tax revenue while spending hundreds of million dollars attempting to eradicate "the evil weed."
In studies sponsored by the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse and by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, it was shown that marijuana was less harmful than two legal substances, alcohol and tobacco. 8. By legalizing marijuana and hashish, and placing them under the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, quality and access can be controlled, labelling requirements would include information about the effects on a person's health, and the government could tax the hell out of it. These new tax revenues would. then be used for drug education programs and for research into medical uses, such as a treatment for glaucoma and as an inhibitor of some of the more unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy for cancer and AIDS patients, as well as reducing the national debt.
Ending the prohibition on drugs will also improve our relationships with various Latin American countries, who, under intense U.S. pressure to act against drug growers, processors and dealers, are diverting millions of dollars away from much needed projects, such as feeding and housing the poor and making capital investments. For countries such as Colombia, Mexico, Peru Jamaica, Brazil and Bolivia, already under I.M.F. austerity measures, the U.S. pressure to undertake measures to combat the drug trade only serves to destabilize already fragile governments and alienates the citizenry. The drug trade is very important to the economies of these nations; drugs brought in more foreign revenue "... than the largest licit exports of Peru, Colombia, and Jamaica (copper, coffee, and aluminum, respectively) and more than the combined value of all Bolivian exports." 9.
When these governments have attempted to crack down on drug traffickers, the result has been the major drug dealers pulling their money out of the country, further weakening economies on the edge of bankruptcy. The Colombian government's crackdown on drug traffickers has been linked to a 77% reduction in that government's foreign exchange holdings between 1981 and 1985. Bolivian army action against the drug trade last year " ... was followed by drops in the official and unofficial values of the peso of 250% and more than 300%, respectively."10.
By legalizing these drugs in the United States, the drug producing nations will then be able to incorporate the proceeds into their economies, instead of driving it underground and out of the countries. This would enable these countries to use their resources to help the poor rather than wasting those limited resources on drug, eradication programs that are doomed to failure, and to eventually pay their debts.
Such a change in the law will also return individual freedom to the people. It will give responsibility for what a person does to his or her own body back where it belongs, with the individual, and not with the government. Any change in the law must ensure the protection of society; therefore, if a person decides to use drugs, then they must be held responsible for whatever actions taken while under the influence of those drugs. Drug use should therefore, not be used as a mitigating factor in regards to the law.
FOOTNOTES
1. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, October, 1983, p. 92. Return to where you left off.
2. Ted Gist, "Bulging Prisons Curbing Crime or Wasting Lives?", U.S. News and World Report, April 23, 1984, p. 42. Return to where you left off.
3. Ibid. Return to where you left off.
4. Ibid., p. 43. Return to where you left off.
5. Roy A Childs, Jr. "Crime in the Cities, the Drug Connection", The Libertarian Review, The Cato Institute, Washington, DC, August, 1981, p. 30. Return to where you left off.
6. lbid., p. 31. Return to where you left off.
7. Robert Pisani, spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in speech given at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa. , November 3, 1983. Return to where you left off.
8. Patrick Anderson, High in America, The True Story Behind NORML and the Politics of Marijuana, The Viking Press, New York, NY, 1981, pp. 314 - 316. Return to where you left off.
9. Rensselaer W. Lee III, "The Latin American Drug Connection", Foreign Policy, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, Winter, l985/86, p. 146. Return to where you left off.
10. Ibid. Return to where you left off.
Links to more information on drugs and lowering the crime rate .
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