Gateway drugs
Set it free
Jul 26th 2001
From The Economist print edition
The case for legalisation is difficult, but the case against is
worse
SHOULD the ultimate goal be to put drugs on a par with tobacco
and alcohol? That would mean legalising both possession and trade
(one makes no sense without the other), setting restrictions on
access that reflect a drug's relative danger, and insisting on
quality controls. Many people understandably recoil at such a
prospect. There is little doubt that legalising drugs would increase
the number of people who took them, whatever restrictions were
applied; and it would raise difficult issues about who should
distribute them, and how.
Gateway drugs
The number of drug users would rise for three reasons. First, the
price of legalised drugs would almost certainly be lower—probably
much lower—than the present price of illegal ones. This is because
prohibition raises the price by far more than any conceivable
government impost might do. If cocaine, say, were legal,
estimates Mark Kleiman, a drug-policy expert at the University of
California in Los Angeles, the price would be about a 20th of its
current street level. As for legal cannabis, he thinks, it would cost
about as much as tea. Surely no government would impose a tax
large enough to replace that imposed by enforcement. Indeed, if it
did, legalisation might backfire: smuggling and so crime would
continue.
Second, access to legalised drugs would be easier and quality
assured. Even if the stuff were sold in the sort of disapproving
way that the Norwegians sell alcohol, more people would know
how to buy it and would be less scared to experiment. And third,
the social stigma against the use of drugs—which the law today
helps to reinforce—would diminish. Many more people might try
drugs if they did not fear imprisonment or scandal.
A fourth force might be that of
commercialisation. “Imagine Philip Morris
and the Miller Brewery with marijuana to
play with,” says Mr Kleiman. In no time at
all, the market would be backed by
political contributions, just as those for
tobacco and alcohol have been for so
long. And, judging by the way state lotteries offer games designed
to create compulsive gambling, state distribution might well act as
a positive encouragement to consumption.
So more people would dabble in drugs, including many more young
people. “Anything available to adults will be available to children,”
says Mr Kleiman. In America, where—to the astonishment of
Europeans—nobody under 21 is allowed to buy drink, plenty of
youngsters have fake identity cards. Some 87% of American
high-school seniors have sampled alcohol, but only 45% have tried
cannabis. So the potential market is large. Drugs might become as
widely used as alcohol—and alcohol abuse might also rise. Work by
Rosalie Pacula of RAND, a think-tank in California, shows that
young people tend to see the two as complements, not
substitutes.
Legalisation, argue Mr Reuter and his co-author, Robert MacCoun,
would result in “a clear redistribution of harms”. Poor people would
on balance be better off, even if many more of them used drugs, if
they were no longer repeatedly imprisoned for doing so. But there
would be a greater risk “that nice middle-class people will have a
drug problem in their family”.
True, it is difficult to prove from past episodes of drug liberalisation
that such consequences would indeed occur. Crucially, it is hard
to measure the responsiveness of drug demand to changes in
price. But the evidence for cocaine and heroin suggests that
demand may be at least as responsive as that for cigarettes. The
same may be true for other drugs.
In fact, nobody knows quite what drives the demand for drugs.
Fashions come and go. Some societies seem to resist drugs even
though they are widely available (the Dutch have moderate rates
of marijuana use by European standards); in others, such as
Britain's, use is high despite tough laws. As with other social
trends—crime, unmarried motherhood, religious
observance—countries seem to be heading in roughly the same
direction, but with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
The best answer is to move slowly but
firmly to dismantle the edifice of
enforcement. Start with the possession
and sale of cannabis and amphetamines,
and experiment with different strategies.
Some countries might want the state to
handle distribution, as it does with
alcohol in Scandinavia. Others might
want the task left to the private sector, with tough bans on
advertising, and with full legal liability for any consequent health
risks. If countries act together, it should be possible to minimise
drug tourism and smuggling.
Move on to hard drugs, sold through licensed outlets. These might
be pharmacies or, suggests Ethan Nadelmann, director of the
Lindesmith Centre, mail-order distributors. That, after all, is how a
growing number of people in America acquire prescription drugs,
including some that are not licensed for use in their country.
Individual states could decide whether to continue to prohibit
public sale. Removing the ban on possession would make it easier
to regulate drug quality, to treat the health effects of overuse,
and to punish drug-users only if they commit crimes against people
or property.
The result would indeed be more users and more addicts, though
how many is unknowable. But governments allow their citizens the
freedom to do many potentially self-destructive things: to go
bungee-jumping, to ride motorcycles, to own guns, to drink alcohol
and to smoke cigarettes. Some of these are far more dangerous
than drug-taking. John Stuart Mill was right. Over himself, over his
own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. Trade in drugs may
be immoral or irresponsible, but it should no longer be illegal.