Failed states and failed policies

How to stop the drug wars
Mar 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution

A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.

That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.

Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

The evidence of failure
Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe.

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States.

Nowadays the drug warriors claim to seize close to half of all the cocaine that is produced. The street price in the United States does seem to have risen, and the purity seems to have fallen, over the past year. But it is not clear that drug demand drops when prices rise. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that the drug business quickly adapts to market disruption. At best, effective repression merely forces it to shift production sites. Thus opium has moved from Turkey and Thailand to Myanmar and southern Afghanistan, where it undermines the West’s efforts to defeat the Taliban.

Al Capone, but on a global scale
Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.

The failure of the drug war has led a few of its braver generals, especially from Europe and Latin America, to suggest shifting the focus from locking up people to public health and “harm reduction” (such as encouraging addicts to use clean needles). This approach would put more emphasis on public education and the treatment of addicts, and less on the harassment of peasants who grow coca and the punishment of consumers of “soft” drugs for personal use. That would be a step in the right direction. But it is unlikely to be adequately funded, and it does nothing to take organised crime out of the picture.

Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.

Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children.

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.

There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them from doing so.

What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.

By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.

A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago (see article). Reviewing the evidence again (see article), prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13237193

Time 2 legalize it all

some things, maybe.. Pot, sure.. but that's about it.. I can't think of a single reason to legitimize or legalize stuff like LSD, mdma (ecstasy), methamphetamine. Even cocaine and heroine I can't think of a reason to legalize and make widely available..

but even pot isn't like it was back in the 60's and 70's or even the 80's.. far more potent strains of marijuana cand cultivations techniques make smoking pot a far different experience than backk when the hippies were sparking up and jimi hendrix was torching his stratocaster at the monterey pops..

I agree the "war on drugs" is illconceived and badly executed, landing many a pacifistic pot-head in "pound-me-in-the-a$$" prison. I'd like to see that come to an end but I cannot see the benefit of legal and widely accessible hard drugs

About the only benefit that could be garnered from "hard core" drugs is the ability to slap a tax stamp on them and it would take the market away from the criminals (heroin/Cocaine someone want to talk to the CIA?).
However, as long as those users aren't causing any harm to another person, then they should have the right to do what they want with their own body, if women are afforded that right when it comes to abortion, why can't the guy who wants to lock his doors and watch "three stooges" reruns while on LSD retain the same rights to choose?

Alcohol prohibition didn't work and it stands to amuse me that one of the top lobbyists to keep weed illegal is none other than Anheiser Busch, not to mention Chemical companies like Monsanto and DuPont.

We have far too many issues in this country right now to be blowing tax money into the shredder over regulating morality and personal choice.

I don't know.. I think it's a stretch to compare a woman's right to choose abortion to choosing to lock yourself in a room and trip out on acid..

I see what you're saying in general. the gubment needs to butt out of it. I don't think the legalise and tax model would work the way you think it would. I don't think there's any real reason to think that the black market would go away nor would the crime sydicates just give up the drug trade post-legalisation. it just doesn't wash.

if I was a drug dealer, why, once it's legal to possess and use, would I give up my livelihood? why would they stop shipping truckloads of high grade cheeba out of northern california?

further, if I'm the gubment and I'm trying to squeeze tax dollars out of the drug trade, would I not continue to seek out and prosecute illegal drug producers?

I think it's naive to believe that the illegal drug trade goes away once the feds decide to do Americans a favor and start taxing their drug habits..

I don't think that it's a stretch at all. Both can cause harm to the person seeking the activity. Both are about making choices as to what you're going to do with your body. Both have been hashed and rehashed (pun intended) to make them complicated issues, although the drug issues shouldn't be, considering that the "war on drugs" has caused nothing but harm. Difference between the two is (and this comes down to when you think life starts) the guy who tokes a bongful isn't harming another life.

Why wouldn't the underground sales go away? If a user has the option to stroll down to the 7-11 and pick up a half ounce of weed or to go to the shady guy, who's probably armed and a member of some gang, which one are you going to do business with?

The Government is spending probably 1,000 dollars to every one gained from their prosecutions of drug dealers and users. Furthermore, the escalation it causes only harms both Police and Communities.

I can give you a half a dozen reasons why the legalize and tax model would free up and generate cash. Just with weed:

1) you would end all these ridiculous prosecutions.
2) which would end 80% of the drug war arrests, freeing up prison space, freeing up hundreds of thousands of tax payer money from the judicial.
3) That freed up prison space would also save cash, due to housing costs of these prisoners.
4) if regulated by the department of Agriculture and not the FDA or the BATF, you create a instant cash crop for family farms.
5) The products that can be made from hemp involves natural based plastics, medications, clothing, and the kicker:high quality easy to produce ethanol.
6) Alot of Americans would be a hell of alot more mellow, but there are many medicinal benefits, it seems to even alot people out, it's been shown to let the desperately ill eat, it solves alot of the uncomfortable side effects of PMS, it has direct curatives when it comes to painful conditions, especially neurogenic pain, movement disorders, asthma, glaucoma.
it has been shown to be beneficial in treating symptoms associated with treatments for cancer, AIDS, inflammatory bowel disease, and hepatitis. Cannabis also acts as an antispasmodic and anticonvulsant and is indicated for neurological conditions such as epilepsy especially complex partial seizures, multiple sclerosis, and spasms. As an analgesic and an immunomodulator it is indicated for conditions such as migraine, arthritis, spinal and skeletal disorders. As a bronchodilator it is beneficial for asthma. Recent studies have shown the drug to be efficacious in treating mood disorders and mental health issues such as depression, post traumatic stress disorder, clinical depression, attention-deficit disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder It is also indicated for hypertension, and insomnia. It is also reported to be an effective treatment for constipation.

But lets keep all that in the hands of the criminals.

i understand.. you needn't convince me of the benefits of marijuana. there are plenty of good uses for the many parts of the plant other than the flowering buds..

what I'm sying is that I don't think it's reasonable to think that those who are engaged in the illicit drug trade will be detered by legalization. drug smugglers have a lucrative trade going and won't give up those billions of dollars easily.. I"m not saying 'let them have it' but I don't think its likely at all to expect that to disappear in a post-prohibition America.

what's more, I don't think that under any circumstances will there ever be pot sold at the corner store. at best, a highly regimented, beauracratized version of the California dispensary system would be waht we could expect following legalization.

I don't think that under any circumstances could you expect an Amsterdam type situation where you can walk into a coffee bar and order up an espresso with 1/8th ounce of purple kush on the side..

but there's always optimism..

I don't smoke the stuff because it give me a headache and I don't like to feel high at all, though I do like to sleep so I don't mind taking an otc sleep aid now and then or an asprin for a headache, but I agree with you on this. I think it is absolutely ridiculous that we dont' legalize it, period for all the reasons stated. I think it's a crime that for all it's uses we are so ignorant about it.

I would love to see the cartels stopped in their tracks, who would deal with them if they could get it locally and legally.