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Jonathan Mueller - Insight Advantage
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Let's learn from tobacco how to reduce drug abuse
This comment was published in the Economists' Forum on the Financial Times webpage.
If you want to know more about the phase of my life menionted here you will need to buy me a pint, because I won't be posting the full details on the Web!
Jonathan Mueller (guest contributor): As a member of the US Foreign Service, I played a prominent role in the 'war on drugs', managing US assistance to the police forces of about half of South America. I received substantial recognition for my efforts re-directing funding from 'unsuccessful' to 'successful' programmes, some of which have been regarded as so successful that they have received billions of dollars of funding in the years since. Nevertheless, the great seizure figures we compiled were all just 'powder on the table', a great show but irrelevant.
The most basic principle of classical economics - supply and demand - explains why Buiter and Wolf are right. As long as people in rich countries, first of all the US, want drugs, there will be supply.
There are two aspects to the drug problem: the damage done by drug abuse, and the damage done by drug trafficking. In the case of the first, I know of no evidence that anyone does not take drugs because they are illegal, so another approach needs to be tried. In the US, in my lifetime we have cut tobacco consumption from 50 per cent of the population to 20 per cent without putting anybody in jail. It is not easy to do the same thing with drugs, but maybe we should try a more public-health-centred approach.
As for trafficking, Martin Wolf has already described the consequences with crystal clarity, so I will not repeat. We can end this part of the problem with the stroke of a pen!
The devil, of course, is in the details. De-criminalization, which to me means tolerating personal possession without legalizing distribution, accomplishes nothing - merely ratifies the status quo. To end trafficking, there must be a legal supply of drugs. But which? There is a whole host of psychotropic substances used for recreational purposes. Which can we accept, and on what terms?
Nevertheless, it is time to recognize that this 'war' has failed and look for a different approach.
Posted by: Jonathan Mueller | August 14, 2007 at 02:11 PM | Report this comment
Martin Wolf: I liked Jonathan Mueller's comment a great deal. Let me just clarify what I think of as the options, as between decriminalisation and legalisation.
Legalisation would involve going the current tobacco and alcohol route - taxation, product quality standards, restrictions on sales to minors, and so forth. Otherwise, all drugs would be for sale. Of course, manufacturers would be subject to standard legal penalties. If they sold things that killed people very quickly, they would be sued. But alcoholics cannot sue drinks companies. Smokers have sued tobacco companies, but only because they lied (as I understand it). So the sellers of drugs would have to put clearly on packets all the dangers attendant on using their various drugs.
I like this alternative, but know it is not going to happen. So the alternative would be to legalise relatively harmless drugs - cannabis, for example. I have seen no evidence that it is as dangerous as alcohol, which is a genuinely dangerous drug because it kills tens of thousands of innocent people in road accidents across the globe. But hard drugs would merely be decriminalised. By this I mean that trafficking would be illegal, but use would not be. So who would supply users? The answer is the state. Addicts would be registered through the health system and given maintenance doses, ideally under medical supervision. The volumes supplied would be sufficient to support one person's habit, not create a business. There would be no point to creating a business since users could obtain drugs readily in this way. This used to be British policy three decades or so ago. It worked very well. Since it stopped the number of hard drugs users has exploded, as has associated criminal activity of all kinds. It is a good example of stupid prohibitionism.
I presume there would be no market for really lethal drugs: few people are suicidal and, if they are, there are so many alternative ways of killing oneself.
Posted by: Martin Wolf | August 16, 2007 at 11:56 AM |
For the full discussion go to:
http://blogs.ft.com/wolfforum/2007/08/how-to-starve-t.html
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