Legalize It

I just wrote a post before work about how The Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington's new celebrity-and-insider group blog, was getting an unfair rep. And now, I have just returned from work and found a cool post on there I want to link to. So I'm concerned that you'll all think I'm shilling for Arianna Huffington for some bizarre reason.

But I'm not. It's just a coincidence. I have no reason to say nice things about Arianna Huffington, actually, because I went to a job interview at her house some months ago and did very well, I must say, and then failed to get the job. And, I mean, it wasn't even a really hard job! I mean, come on!

So, you see, I have no interest in getting you to check out Huffington Post. I'm just trying to find stuff to write about so Crushed by Inertia doesn't go on the semi-permanent hiatus that so often infects newbie blogs.

Anyway, Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a group committed to alternatives to the drug war, made a fantastic post to the Huffington blog today that basically sums up my position on the drug war. Basically, that it isn't effective, that it's corrupt, that it is applied discriminatorily, and that it violates the basic freedoms at the heart of the American way of life.

I realize that, despite having had this blog for months and months, I've never written in-depth about my passionate distaste for America's ongoing War on Drugs. This was the sort of thing that, during The Clinton Years, occupied my mind quite frequently. It was my favorite political cause in, say, college (for obvious reasons). But ever since a certain misguided Texan and his merry band of sycophantic psychopaths invaded Washington and a few Middle-Eastern nations, I guess I've been distracted.

But Nadelmann makes an excellent point early on about how devastating our War on Drugs has become:

The United States ranks #1 among all nations in per capita incarceration. The number of people behind bars has increased from roughly 500,000 in 1980 to over 2 million today. We have roughly 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prison population.

I almost feel that I should re-paste that paragraph, as it's so mindblowing. Are you people reading this? We have 25% of the world's prison population in this country. Now, do you think that's reasonable? Do you think we have 1/4 of all the evil in the world right here in America. (Well, actually, now that I really consider it...Americans are pretty vile...) But, no. That's stupid.

So what conclusion are we left with? That we have the most backwards, randomly-applied laws? I guess so. Which is kind of hard to swallow, when you think about it. I mean, our laws are more randomly applied than...Saudi Arabia? North Korea? Iraq?

I don't know...maybe those guys didn't participate in the survey. But still, we like to think of ourselves at the top of the heap, civilization-wise, but that doesn't read like a stat sheet for even a First-World Country. I mean, come on, Honduras is kicking our ass in per capita incarceration? Chad? This can't stand. Where's our national pride?

And, of course, you know the reason for this nonsense. It's our drug laws.

Roughly 500,000 people are behind bars today for violating a drug law – an almost tenfold increase since 1980. Most are poor as well as black or Latino. Drug law violations account for 25-35% of all felony convictions, and for 25-35% of the roughly 5 million Americans who cannot vote today because of a felony conviction. An additional 10-15% are incarcerated for non-drug violations associated with drug market violence or acquisitive crimes motivated by illicit drug addiction.

25% of all felony convictions. Unbelievable. Half a million people in jail because of drug laws.

To my mind, there's no good, solid reason for drugs to be illegal. I say, we legalize them all. Every one. All of it. No more "prescription-only" painkillers, no more anti-steroid PR campaigns, no more Partnership for a Drug-Free America, and no more looking around nervously for a cop before you light up a doob in the passenger seat of your idling car in the parking lot behind the store where you work. Or have I said too much?

The most common response I get to this statement?

"But, making drugs legal is like telling people that they are okay...We have a responsibility to protect people."

And to this, I say, "bullshit." There's nothing in the Constitution about the government helping people make smart health-related decisions. All kinds of things that are really really bad for you are thankfully extremely legal, from Big Macs to cigarettes to booze to rifles to Creed albums. Why do I want the government deciding what's right for me, when I can fuck up my life perfectly well on my own?

Here's the second most-common anti-legalization argument:

"But if you make drugs legal, so many more people will try them, we'll have a much larger drug problem in this country."

Okay, see, no. Because people who want to do drugs already do them. They are illegal and yet entirely available. In high school, I never did drugs once. Seriously. I'm not kidding. I thought they were bad. I had always been taught that drugs dulled your mind and made you stupid, and as a child, I didn't have much self-worth associated with anything but my intelligence. So I felt drugs weren't for me, and avoided them all throughout my youth.

But that's not to say I wasn't aware of their existance, and extremely able to obtain them should the notion appeal to me. In college, drug availability increased exponentially, and now I would find it far far easier to find any number of illcit drugs than many perfectly legal commodities, such as brass brads that will actually fit into the three holes punched in the sides of my latest screenplay. Seriously, I have been to four different office supply stores, and no one has large, long brads such as would fit into a script. Is this not Los Angeles? Does everyone not have a screenplay which requires brads? What the fucking hell?

But I digress. I'm saying that drug people find drugs, period. If drugs were suddenly legal, I would think we would see a three-to-five year bump in drug use, followed by a falling-off to levels below today's. And here's why...

For a few months, people who never did drugs because they were illegal (I'll grant there are some people that fit this description) would try it. Most of them would probably find it distasteful and would give it up forever. Some would get addicted. Those addicts would clean up or die. But the thrill of the new would rapidly go away, and drugs would lose one of their main appeals in today's marketplace: illegality.

Drugs have gained a certain cachet because they are outside the law, particularly in terms of the rebel outlaw 60's counterculture. Strip them of their glamour and mystery, and I suspect most people would see hardcore drugs for what they are - hardcore. As in, way way too much for most people to handle, dangerous and best avoided except for extreme circumstances, like, say Burning Man or Coachella.

The side benefit? Oh yeah, none of that black market street crime gang activity that seems to worry people. No more American taxpayer being left out of one of our largest American industries. No more addicts having to hide out, not getting the medical help they need for fear of arrest or disenfranchisement.

Not to mention that you could finally go to a rock concert and sit on the open-air lawn and enjoy a joint with some friends without having to hide it behind your hand. How can we continue to deny our fellow citizens the legal right to such a simple pleasure?

I'm so just scratching the surface of this debate here. Seriously, I could prattle on about this issue all day, I feel so strongly about it. And not just because I think I should have the right to recreationally use drugs without fear of social and legal repercussions (although I do!), but because of the obstacles to civil liberty that these laws represent, and because these laws are simply not pragmatic. Perhaps, once, anti-drug laws were designed out of some pure and noble motivation, to protect fellow citizens from ruining their lives and bodies with chemicals. But today, these laws represent a more odious and negative influence on our society than the initial abuse which spawned them.