Mark Kleiman's 'Radical' Yet 'Practical' Drug Policy Agenda
Jacob Sullum | February 7, 2007, 3:34pm
UCLA's Mark Kleiman, who has long distinguished himself as one of the few thoughtful, intellectually honest drug policy experts who nevertheless manage to be consulted by people in power, has an essay in the January/February issue of The American Interest calling for "radical rather than incremental" (yet "practical") changes in the way the government deals with intoxicants. His proposals include less incarceration of drug dealers, more-sophisticated drug education, reducing the government scrutiny that discourages adequate pain treatment, making drug law enforcement a lower priority in foreign policy, allowing the regulated use of performance-enhancing drugs, permitting religious and psychotherapeutic uses of psychedelics, eliminating the drinking age, and legalizing possession and cultivation of marijuana for personal use. Kleiman's ideas are not as radical as I'd like, and some of them (e.g., higher alcohol taxes and, depending on what it means in practice, "coerced abstinence") move in the wrong direction. But on the whole we'd be substantially better off if his advice were followed. In the meantime the drug policy debate could benefit by absorbing some data-driven, Kleimanesque wisdom:
We have a highly intrusive and semi-militarized drug enforcement effort that is often only marginally constitutional and sometimes more than marginally indecent...
Most drug use is harmless, and much of it is beneficial...No harm, no foul. Mere use of an abusable drug does not constitute a problem demanding public intervention. "Drug users" are not the enemy, and a achieving a "drug-free society" is not only impossible but unnecessary to achieve the purposes for which the drug laws were enacted....
"Compulsive" isn't the same as "involuntary": Addicts can and do respond to the conditions and consequences of their behavior....Most substance abuse disorders resolve "spontaneously"; that is, without formal treatment....
The average incarcerated dealer commits fewer predatory crimes than the average non-drug prisoner, so filling cells with dealers while prison space is scarce tends on balance to increase the rate of property and violent crime....
There is no one "solution" to the drug problem...Any set of policies will therefore leave us with some level of substance abuse—with attendant costs to the abusers themselves, their families, their neighbors, their co-workers and the public—and some level of damage from illicit markets and law enforcement efforts. Thus the "drug problem" cannot be abolished either by "winning the war on drugs" or by "ending prohibition." In practice the choice among policies is a choice of which set of problems we want to have....The overarching goal of policy should be to minimize the damage done to drug users and to others from the risks of the drugs themselves (toxicity, intoxicated behavior and addiction) and from control measures and efforts to evade them.
Kleiman tends to put too much faith in the government's ability to weigh all the relevant costs and set policy accordingly. He recommends much higher taxes on beer, wine, and liquor, for example, to discourage alcohol abuse, even while acknowledging that a uniform surcharge will overdeter responsible drinkers and underdeter "the dangerous minority." If, as he suggests in his discussion of illegal drug use, "harmless pleasure and relaxation count as benefits," the benefits forgone because of higher alcohol taxes could outweigh the harm prevented. Although I have less confidence than Kleiman does that we can calculate our way to the ideal drug policy, his insistence that the government consider the costs of its interventions is, as always, welcome.
Kwix | February 7, 2007, 4:29pm | #
Okay, to be fair, the quote from John regarding addiction was a hypothetical (hence, click on link to read his entire previous statement). It is just one that stuck in my head from a ways back.
John,
I think that you are assuming that by entering rehab you should get a free pass for crimes committed on drugs. I personally have the exact opposite vision. If you rob someone while under the influence, you should get an additional penalty for not sitting your ass on the couch while stoned.
I don't think that society owes addicts anything. However I feel that if a person is faced with "free" rehab or commiting a crime for a fix then rehab should be available but looked at as a crime preventative.
It isn't the best solution, personal responsibility is, but it would at least de-escalate this war and restore civil liberties and cost less. It is also the only policy move I can see that might actually work in the forseable future. You can't legislate personal responsibility, that comes from personal teaching. Sadly, that teaching has become rare. You could try to pound that idea into American's heads but it would take a long, long time when "nothing is anybody's fault" anymore.
Kid's too fat, it's the advertising.
Hooked on drugs, it's the meth maker's fault.
You get in an auto accident, it's the other guys problem.
You're house in New Orleans got flooded, it's the Government's fault.
You starved during the Blizzard of '05, Red Cross should have gotten there sooner.
I don't want to maintain the status quo while my civil liberties go down the drain because some people feel that druggies should be left to thier own devices or no change should occur.
Mr. F. Le Mur | February 7, 2007, 5:39pm | #
How about this idea; hold people responsible for their actions.
A most sensible idea that I agree with 100%, but it would never fly in a socialist country like the U.S. because it'd impede the flow of O.P.M. (so to speak).
Know any crackheads, John?
Since you didn't ask me, I'll answer:
Changing to the past tense...yup, quite a few, at least a a dozen, and a few dozen more who've used crack, including myself.
The crackheads stop without treatment when the costs (money and/or social) become prohibitive;
most are also drunks, and their 'cure' typically comes in the form of a drunken car accident.
The others, including myself, mostly didn't like it much in the first place.
I realy don't buy it that they [crackheads] couldn't help themselves.
I don't believe in addiction either. 'Tis nought but a feeble excuse.
FWIW:
"Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy" (Theodore Dalrymple)
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/romancingopiates/
"Using evidence from literature and pharmacology and drawing on examples from his own clinical experience, Dalrymple shows that addiction is not a disease, but a response to personal and existential problems. He argues that withdrawal from opiates is not the serious medical condition, but a relatively trivial experience and says that criminality causes addiction far more often than addiction causes criminality." (from Amazon).
Reminds me of my friend who lived in Africa, talking about how they bought their weed from the police.
Same as in Mexico.
Paul | February 7, 2007, 7:44pm | #
Wow, it's been a Drug War Blogapalooza lately.
How about this idea; hold people responsible for their actions. If you work and pay your bills and do not harm anyone, who cares if you are using drugs?
Because, John, drug use affects others around you, and society at large, indirectly. Take smoking. No one wants to allow anyone to smoke anymore. Even if you whistle past the second hand smoke arguments, you've got the general healthcare costs to the individual smoker which burden society. Let's talk about trans-fats. Same deal. Advertising of candy to minors. Sweet cereal to children during morning cartoons. The fat tax. The banning of "cheap alcohol" sales in so-called "impact areas". We turned the corner to a consumption-regulation based nation some time ago. Yes, it started with the drug war against what are easily categorized as "narcotics", then its cancerous tentacles of prohibition grew into almost every corner of life-- "public health" being the clarion call for every politician of EVERY stripe.
We've got large numbers of people who claim to be against the Drug War(tm)-- that being defined as SWAT teams raiding a pot-smoker based on a few seeds found in his trashcan etc., but sit in their voting booth, and pull the "yes" lever for every petty ban upon which they have the opportunity to vote.
Why? I'm not sure. I have some ideas, though. There's a heirarchy to most people's political beliefs. Smoking = Big Tobacco/Corporate evil. Plus, smoking can be directly linked to increased healthcare costs on a mainstream segment of the population. Smoking ban: good. Trans-fats; Big Food/Corporate evil. As our society continues to grow its government Healthcare Industrial Complex, anything which causes sickness or health problems which the public perceives (and rightly so) to be paid for by public monies is now fair game for regulation or outright ban by the public sector. The list goes on. So what's with heroin, pot, cocaine...?
Because they're not legal to begin with and legalizing them would place public officials in a flawed, logical space-time-continuum feedback loop which would force them to face drugs, and drug-use health effects in the same public-burden light. This, in turn would force a new regulatory framework upon the now legal drugs, and you'd immediately start seeing bans or effective bans due to the public health threat of these formerly illegal substances. Bottom line: We'd be right back where we started. So why bother?
I have some indirect proof of this by the fact that some local marijuana advocates quietly admitted that legalization of pot could "ruin" the culture because it would inevitably become corporatized. Pot = Big Marijuana/Corporate evil... Then you'll see unlikely coalitions forming to, at minimum, put dramatic restrictions on pot use because of the "public health" risk. You think you've seen politicized studies from the government on tobacco smoke? You ain't seen NOTHIN' yet until you start getting studies on pot if it were actually legal.
Keep 'em illegal, it'll all really be so much easier.
