Comparative Lessons in Drug Policy

By Roger Salus, Political Science and Economics, University of Alberta

This century has witnessed the erosion of many personal freedoms in Western democracies. No more blatant example can be presented than repressive drug policies—especially in the US. The evidence suggests that the more governments attempt to limit personal choice and responsibility, the more disastrous are the results on society.

Interference by the US government in the area of drugs is increasing, and has taken many forms. The 1914 Harrison Act criminalized many drugs and burdened medical professionals with federal regulations. The prohibition of recreational alcohol in the 1920’s, the Boggs Act of 1951, and the Narcotics Control Act of 1956 are indicative of continued government interference.

The results of such crackdowns have been, without exception, disasters. Prohibition brought with it widespread civil disobedience and the rise of organized crime empires that still thrive today. In the US over one million people are in prison, half of whom are drug offenders. One estimate puts the annual number of drug war related homicides in that country at 10,000!¹ Recent statistics indicate that, despite President Clinton’s insistence on carrying on the war on drugs, marijuana and cocaine use are in fact increasing, not decreasing.

However, the worst of the unintended consequences of the drug war may be the attack on individual rights. In particular, the police have been granted extended powers of search, and often unlimited powers of seizure when dealing with drug offenders.

The cause of the drug war’s failure is economic, not political. Specifically, tightening supply does not necessitate a drop in demand. Thus, the drop in supply coupled with continued demand for drugs has created massive distortions in price. A small quantity of hard drugs which costs only pennies to produce can fetch tens of thousands of dollars on the streets. The seductive power of such profit margins cannot be signed or legislated away.

Friedrich Hayek wrote that for a society to be free “… anybody should be free to produce, sell or buy anything that may be produced or sold at all.”² The connection between economic freedom and political freedom is clear with regard to drugs. Personal freedoms are being legislated away in the United States because increasing force is required to mould behaviour in the image of the state.

Proponents of the war on drugs point to social issues that drugs can lead to: loss of productivity, crime, and health costs. Such ills can definitely be linked to drugs. However, they cannot logically be used to justify the war further.

In a free society some people will use drugs and become less productive. Yet in the US, where drugs are strictly forbidden, some people still use drugs, and are less productive. Some people in a free society might resort to crime to finance their habits, but people do that now. Some people in a free society may cause a strain on health dollars, but those same people are doing so now too.

In Charles Murray’s words: “The way to reduce irresponsible behaviour is to refuse to mask the costs that irresponsible behaviour would ordinarily incur.”³ Current attempts to mask these costs have obvious results: distorted prices force addicts to greater extremes to acquire cash for drugs, and billions of dollars are being funnelled into organized crime to pay for machine guns and bribes. With criminalization, non-users are paying the price for users, in the form of unsafe neighbourhoods, higher taxes, and the escalation of what are mostly preventable medical costs.

But wouldn’t decriminalization lead to an explosion in use? The short answer is no. In Holland, where marijuana is decriminalized, use among high school children (the group we want to protect most) is dramatically lower than in the US.⁴ In Britain, where addiction is treated as a medical issue, the growth in the use of hard drugs is also lower than in the US.

These facts have convinced even many prominent American conservatives, such as William F. Buckley Jr., to favour varying degrees of decriminalization. It is odd that many on the right, who supposedly claim to respect basic laws of supply and demand, fail to see that meddling with those very laws is creating anarchy and disintegrating personal freedom.

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Last Modified: Wednesday, October 20, 1999.