What's the Opposite of a Drug-Free Society?
Jacob Sullum | July 3, 2008, 6:59pm
With the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration celebrating its 35th birthday this week, the publication of a new study estimating drug use rates across countries is well-timed. Of the 17 countries surveyed by the World Health Organization, China has the lowest rate of illegal drug use (cannabis and cocaine combined), followed by Japan, while the United States has the highest rate, followed closely by New Zealand. (Here is a comparison table.) "Globally," the researchers report, "drug use is not distributed evenly and is not simply related to drug policy, since countries with stringent user-level illegal drug policies did not have lower levels of use than countries with liberal ones." It may be that the United States has especially stringent drug policies partly because it has especially high levels of drug use. But it seems clear, after you look at drug use not only across countries but over time in the U.S., that the ebbs and flows have little to do with the intensity of drug law enforcement (which is not to say that prohibition itself has no impact).
As I mentioned yesterday, changes in drug use among teenagers since the DEA was established in the 1970s are not very impressive. I focused on drug use by high school seniors because it is a measure of success commonly used by drug warriors and because the government has comparable data for that group going back more than three decades. But whichever age group you look at, trends in drug use do not correspond very well with changes in drug control efforts. Overall, drug use in the U.S. peaked around 1979 and began to fall well before Ronald Reagan ramped up the war on drugs. As Republicans are fond of noting, drug use did rise during the Clinton administration, but it started to fall again before anything George W. Bush did differently could have had an impact. Although marijuana arrests have increased by more than 150 percent since 1990, marijuana use seems to be just as common today as it was then, if not more so. There is some uncertainty on that point, since the government changed the techniques used in its broadest drug use survey during this period. But in the Monitoring the Future Study, the rate for past-year marijuana use among high school seniors was 31.7 percent percent in 2007, compared to 32.5 percent in 1990.
Getting back to the WHO study, it's striking that the lifetime marijuana use rate in the U.S. (42.4 percent) is more than twice as high as the rate in the Netherlands (19.8 percent), despite the latter country's famously (or notoriously, depending on your perspective) tolerant cannabis policies. The difference for lifetime cocaine use is even bigger: The U.S. rate (16.2 percent) is eight times the Dutch rate (1.9 percet). Do these results mean that draconian drug laws promote drug use, while a relatively laid-back approach discourages it? Not necessarily; that would be a hell of a "forbidden fruit" effect. But one thing that's clear is the point made by the WHO researchers: Drug use "is not simply related to drug policy." If tinkering with drug policy (within the context of prohibition) has an impact, it is hard to discern, and it's small compared to the influence of culture and economics.
jsknow | July 7, 2008, 1:55am | #
It's time to remove all the politicians that promote prohibition.
How many more lives have to be needlessly devastated or lost?
Prohibited drugs are way easier for kids to get than regulated drugs!
Prohibition never works it just causes crime and violence.
The year alcohol prohibition was repealed violent crime fell by 65 percent.
Guns have absolutely nothing to do with using drugs, they have to do with drug prohibition. Al Capone didn’t kill people because he was drunk, he killed people because they got between him and his illegal drug money.
On March 22, 1972: The Richard Nixon-appointed, 13-member National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommended the decriminalization of marijuana, concluding, "[Marijuana's] relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it."
The USA spends $69 billion a year on the drug war, builds 900 new prison beds and hires 150 more correction officers every two weeks, arrests someone on a drug charge every 17 seconds, jails more people than any nation and has killed over 100,000 citizens in the drug war.
In 1914 when there were no prohibited drugs 1.3% of our population was addicted to drugs, today 1.3% of our population is still addicted to drugs but there’s way more crime and violence because of the huge profits prohibition generates. Drugs today are more potent, more readily available and often less expensive than they were in the early 70’s when Richard Nixon started the war on drugs. Every time you look at the news you see more and more drug busts involving bigger and bigger quantities of drugs, not less and less... doesn't that call for change?
There’s only been one drug success story in US history, tobacco, by far the most deadly and one of the most addictive drugs. Almost half the users quit because of regulation, accurate information and medical treatment. No one went to jail and no one got killed.
Not one person in history has ever died from marijuana
1997 annual American deaths caused by drugs:
Tobacco ........................ 400,000
Alcohol ........................ 100,000
All Legal Drugs .......... 20,000
All Illegal Drugs ....... 15,000
Caffeine ............................ 2,000
Aspirin .................................. 500
Marijuana ............................... 0
Source: United States Government,
National Institute On Drug Abuse,
Bureau Of Mortality Statistics.
Marijuana And Hemp The Untold Story
The right; to freedom of religion, free speech, a free press, to keep and bear arms, to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects against unreasonable search and seizure, to life, liberty and property, to be protected from having your property taken by the government without due process of law and without just compensation, to confront the witnesses against you, to be protected from excessive bail, excessive fines, cruel and unusual punishment, to vote and many others have been denied to millions of Americans in the name of the drug war.
If you are called for jury duty and you don’t agree with the law the person is charged with, you have the right to vote not guilty, no matter what evidence is produced. Jurors implementing this right in all non-violent drug cases will shut down the ridiculous laws of prohibition. One juror in each case is all it takes. The bottom line is a juror has the right to judge not only the accused person but the LAW the person is accused of breaking. Don’t be intimidated stick to your position Vote Not Guilty in all non-violent drug cases.
We hold these truths to be self-evident -- that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . . that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. (Excerpt from the US Declaration of Independence)
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