When alcohol was outlawed in America in 1920 the Reverend Billy Sunday proclaimed, “The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be a memory […] Men will walk upright now, women will smile and children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent”. Prohibition is now almost universally recognised as a colossal failure. Not only did alcohol consumption rise, but alcohol potency increased, quality declined, and the prisons swelled to include the thousands who continued to make and drink their own illegal “moonshine”. Organized criminals like the infamous Al Capone, who made a reported $100m a year, took over the alcohol trade. Prohibition made them rich, while the government grew poorer, as the increasingly desperate attempts at enforcement saw government revenue being funnelled into the ever- swelling coffers of the Bureau of Prohibition. Most importantly, people simply did not stop drinking. Prohibition was an unmitigated disaster, and created a whole new reign of tears.
It has been 35 years since President Nixon declared drugs to be “America’s public enemy number one”. The latest manifestation of the “ideology of prohibition” has since seen much of the world consumed by the “War on Drugs”. Drug prohibition has seen such illicit substances as heroin, cocaine and ecstasy outlawed, and its consumers universally criminalised, condemned as social pariahs. Through innumerable sound-bites, politicians and officials have claimed that outlawing illicit substances keeps the innocent safe, and the drugs off our streets. George W. Bush recently proclaimed, “Illegal drugs are the enemy of ambition and hope… When we fight the war on drugs, we also fight the war on terror”. The strategy is attractive to voters because it deals in absolutes: No Drugs, No Tolerance, at any time, in any place. It is assumed that utter prevention and complete expulsion will control the drug problem. Prohibition is sold to the public in these terms, and the illusion is lapped up. However, the substance of prohibition does not support the illusion. As in America in the 1920s, prohibition has failed. The War on Drugs has been a massive and tragic failure which has been perpetrated by fraudulent, superficial sound-bites. All counter-arguments and critiques are branded and demonised as soft on drugs, and soft on crime. The truth is stifled behind the rhetoric of base emotional pandering rather than rational debate.
The War on Drugs is intended to crush the drug kingpins. In truth, prohibition supports criminals. By making drugs and drug use illegal, it places all control into the hands of the black market. It does not undermine demand for drugs, it merely eradicates the means for a legal, safe and cheap supply. Prohibition allows criminals to set their own prices, without any regulation other than ad hoc agreements. According to Transform, a leading drug liberalisation pressure group, prohibition has resulted in profit margins as high as 850% to 1850%. It is estimated that there are over five hundred thousand Class A drug users in Britain. Any estimates at the annual income of the average drug trafficker are irrelevant. Whatever they earn, it is too much. The alternative is liberalising the drug laws, and legalising the drug trade. This would regulate the market, taking the finances from the black market, taxing the drug trade, and thereby not only abolishing the wealth of criminals, but also providing a source of revenue for the government which would protect the greatest victims of this sham war: drug users themselves.
According to the Number 10 Strategy Unit, drug users are responsible for “36m drug-motivated crimes each year, 56% of the total number of crimes”. They commit crimes to feed a habit which is often forced upon them by the pushers and traffickers, forced to pay the outrageous mark-ups to satisfy their addiction. It seems that no-one has sympathy for drug users. They are branded as criminals themselves, willing participants in a trade which is responsible for an average of 1,400 deaths from misuse a year since 1999. Despite a recent increase, government expenditure on treatment and rehabilitation is pitiful. £19 million was spent on detox treatments last year. This is miniscule when compared with the increasingly hopeless financial waste on prohibition, which was estimated at between £12 and 18 billion by no less an institution than York University itself. Imagine the levels of welfare that could be provided if that £18 billion was spent on providing safe, clean refuges. Here drug users who sought to continue could feed their addiction through monitored methods in protected clinics, using clean needles (thus slashing the HIV crisis in this country) and legitimate, cheap, quality product (obliterating the common crime rate). The vast majority who seek proper treatment, education and rehabilitation could finally get it.
The shameful misuse of resources could be spent on actually protecting and caring for society rather than fruitless attempts to achieve the 60-80% seizure rate necessary to end drug trafficking in this country. (Current seizure rates remain below 20% and are likely to never reach the necessary rate). Johann Hari, columnist for The Independent and long-time supporter of liberalisation insists that “The idea that the drugs market can be stamped out is a fantasy”. Prohibitionists claim to protect us by quashing drug trafficking domestically and production abroad. Well publicised interventions like the seizure of 3.1 tons of cocaine in Colombia last year barely disturb the illegal market, yet causes devastation to the poverty-stricken, heavily exploited farmers responsible for its manufacture. Countries like Bolivia and Afghanistan have little other natural resources except for the production of drug-related crops like coca and opium poppies, finding their only source of income forcefully destroyed, regardless of any actual relevance to the drug trade itself. Prohibition is massively expensive, and massively damaging. It is also massively ineffective. According to Milton Friedman, “prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse”.
Those who support liberalisation agree with President Bush and other prohibitionists; “Drugs attack everything that is best about our country, robbing Americans, young and old, and their families of dignity and character…”. Milton Friedman claims that “you are not mistaken in believing that drugs are a scourge that is devastating our society… Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore”. Even Milton Friedman, renowned neo- liberal conservative economist, supports liberalisation. It is not just a far-fetched policy of bleeding-heart liberals. The breadth of support is astounding and traverses the political spectrum. Transform counts among its supporters Mo Mowlam, Dame Anita Roddick, The Dowager Duchess of Bedford, Oona King, Sir Keith Morris, Lord Mancroft and… Jonathan Ross. Even a report from the Number 10 Strategy Unit was leaked which condemned the current approach to drug policy. Despite this, there is still relatively limited debate in the public domain, restricted to moronic tabloid tittle-tattle over Kate Moss and Pete Doherty. There must be ways of approaching drug policy without demonising the victims of drugs whilst simultaneously supporting the system of pimps and pushers, criminals and cartels. It requires pressure from the electorate themselves, as a poll on drugsense.org indicates. It begins with public debate. It begins with you.