The so-called “War on Drugs” has been a failure ever since it was implemented. Criminalizing the possession and distribution of drugs is contrary to fundamental individual rights, like the right to exercise control over one’s own body and the right to voluntarily trade with others. Additionally, imprisoning people for the use, possession or sale of an illicit drug negatively impacts their life and hampers their freedom. A punishment as severe as imprisonment should be reserved for crimes that have a victim and are clearly immoral—theft, rape, murder and so on. Prohibition of drugs (and alcohol in the 1920s) attempts to purify society and proactively stop drug-related crime before it happens; however, it actually entrenches a black market in which violence is inherently associated with, and does nothing to address, a societal health issue.
The most straightforward argument for legalizing all drugs is based upon acknowledging a simple set of rights that all individuals possess. A general rule for encapsulating this set of allowable behavior is that, under normal circumstances, people can do anything as long as they do not harm someone else or their property. Individuals are allowed to take risks with their own lives by making choices about their own health and the dangerous activities they partake in. Whether society thinks a drug is “bad” or not is irrelevant to its legal status. The benefits and consequences of using a drug are subjective. Some people care a lot about health risks, and others not at all. Simply put, all drugs should be legalized because everyone has a right to exercise control over their own body. It is not appropriate to use the force of government (through fines and jail time) because of an inherently personal decision that is somehow “wrong.”
Many people agree that individuals have a right to exercise control over their own body; however, they only extend that logic to situations where the health risks are lower than those associated with drugs. These situations could include the right to eat at “unhealthy” fast food restaurants instead of cooking healthy food at home or the right to skydive with the potential for injury or death. Strong drugs like heroin or cocaine supposedly have a risk that is so high that it renders the right to self-ownership and control to not be absolute. If you hold the fundamental belief that it is morally acceptable to fine or jail someone for a personal health choice if it crosses some arbitrary line of risk, there is nothing I can do to convince you.
A stronger argument against the legalization of drugs is the idea that certain drugs are going to cause crime. Proponents of this idea see drug prohibition as eliminating a problem at its roots. They contend that drug use causes crime; therefore, preventing drug use prevents harmful crimes like theft, assault and murder. For this argument to be valid, using an illicit drug would have to directly cause another crime 100 percent of the time. I say 100 percent of the time because it isn’t acceptable to imprison a nonviolent personal simply because an activity they do is correlated with another violent one. Fortunately, we’ll never come close to a moral dilemma of a drug causing violence 99 percent of the time because it’s impossible to prove that drugs cause violent and illegal behavior.
Human behavior is complex, and there are a multitude of psychological explanations for behavior. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, and even if it did, the correlation between drug use and crime is not strong. Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that only 5-7 percent of homicides are drug-related, and only 14 percent of people on probation reported being under the influence of any drug when they committed their crime. Unsurprisingly, 10 percent of the overall probation population reported marijuana as the drug they were high on, so only 4 percent of those surveyed were feeling the effects of a stronger drug. Other drug use and crime statistics consistently show marijuana as the drug most highly correlated with crime, yet marijuana is also one of the most harmless drugs. This relationship would seem to indicate that, even in the presence of horrific anecdotes of violent crimes committed under the influence, drug use does not cause crime. A separate, unknown set of factors likely causes both drug use and crime.
While the motives of crime are quite vast and unclear, the ramifications of prohibition are obvious. Individuals who have only allegedly “harmed” themselves see their freedoms eliminated or severely restricted. Just like markets did under the prohibition of alcohol, markets for illicit drugs become black markets that are highly cartelized and marred with violence. Illegal drug users and distributors have no legitimate way of resolving disputes (they can’t go to court or call the police without fear of imprisonment), so they turn to violence. When government authorities threaten their highly profitable operations, they fight back. Evidently, that violence isn’t justified, but there are always people who are willing to corrupt their morals in order to make a profit. Without prohibition, that violence becomes unnecessary and disappears.
All of the arguments for prohibition fail. It is not the government’s job to make an individual’s health a societal issue. We all have the right to control our own bodies. Drug use does not cause crime no matter how strong of a correlation between crime and illicit drug use we perceive as a result of anecdotal evidence. People don’t deserve to go to prison for using a drug regardless of the health risks and consequences associated with that drug. Trying to stop the crime problem at its “source” is impossible because there is no cause to hone in on given the inherent complexity of explaining human behavior. All we are doing through our current prohibition policy is negatively impacting people for their own personal choices and setting up a prime environment for gangs and cartels. Like we did in the 1930s with alcohol, it’s time to end prohibition. This time, all drugs must be legalized.
Tim is a freshman writer for The Daily Cardinal. What do you think about his perspective? Please send all thoughts and comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
