Drugs Decriminalisation — Why it Should, And Won’t, Happen Anytime Soon
“Parents beware. Your children homeward bound from school are being introduced to a new danger in the form of a drug cigarette: marihuana. A Chicago mother watching her daughter die as an indirect result of marihuana addiction, told officers that at least 50 of the girl’s young friends were slaves to the narcotic, continuing addiction until they deteriorate, mentally become insane and turn to violent crime and murder!”
Virulent anti-marijuana propaganda in the USA, circa 1930s (my highlighting) — Grass Documentary
The Powerful Truth: Legalisation, Falling Incarceration Rates, and Health Benefits
Results from other countries would suggest that drugs-related imprisonments would decline if drugs were legalised: Portugal, a poster-child for drug decriminalisation, reported drug-related offenders halved in 13 years to represent just under 21% of the prison population.
“Common knowledge” would say that crime would rise with decriminalisation, but statistics from 11 countries studied suggest otherwise. Importantly, we must factor in that, for example in Mexico, around 93% of crime goes unreported, so possible increases in reported robbery or theft post decriminalisation can be explained by police “us[ing] the time saved by no longer arresting drug users to tackle (and record) other low-level crimes”.
Large falls in costs in the criminal justice system from reducing low-level drugs arrests mean more time and resources to deal with other types of crime, and also puts less pressure on prisons. From a health perspective, supervised injection sites can dramatically reduce the HIV/AIDS problem, as in Portugal:
The Unfortunate Example of Mexico
With the Felipe Calderón presidency and the Guerra contra el narco, homicide rates tripled. With a return to the power of the PRI party, things have got even worse: homicide rates are reaching new highs under Peña Nieto.
Mexico is infamous for being corrupt across all levels of society. This is a story for another day, but the important takeaway is, as Lord Acton famously said, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Here’s the reason: where previously municipal- and state-level agreements existed between politicians and drugs traffickers, this changed under Calderón with the empowerment of the Federal Police. Fondly known as Calderón’s Police, this force can and is monetising this power given they wield absolute power over the whole of Mexico’s main access points and highways.
The crude reality is that power structures and political party-drugs trafficker truces that developed during the 71 years of rule the PRI party were broken, and violence exploded. This previous tacit agreement politicans — narcos to allow production, transit and distribution is, unfortunately for Calderón and Mexican residents, an excellent guide as to what judicial legality might look like: fewer homicides, and less crime.
The War on Drugs Oxymoron — Creating War During Peacetime
On the marijuana subject, it is key to mention that it has been used for medicinal and spiritual purposes since for at least 2,400 years — this isn’t something new. In the early 1900s, marijuana was openly shipped in on boats in to the USA.
Only under the auspices of the first USA drugs tzar and law-and-order evangelist Harry Anslinger who passed the State Narcotics Act in the early 1930s, where marijuana went from being legal in all states (see here) to becoming illegal within a decade. Anslinger also helped shape negative global public attitude toward marijuana for generations to come, which hit home in Mexico when it unsuccessfully tried to turn drugs use into a health, and not criminal, problem.
Prohibition was an abject failure, whilst recent examples discourage similarly: vociferations from George Bush and Tony Blair that the opium scourge was a key justification for the invasion of Afghanistan have now been proven vacuous if not downright cynical, where production has since gone 200% higher under US/NATO since 2001 than under Taliban rule from the mid 90s. Nothing could smell more fishy. In fact, so important is this explosion that the ex British ambassador to Afghanistan has called openly for heroin legalisation.
It’s not all plain sailing. Consider localised effects of legalisation on Mexican cartels, which were generating 30–40% of their revenues from marijuana sales. With legalisation in some states in the USA, sales have dropped 40%. This in turn creates a smaller pie which increases competition — the famous J-curve effect where violence gets worse before it gets better — as well as the cartels branching out into other products like opiates.
Twisted Incentives for All Parties Involved
Fundamentally, the challenge of decriminalisation isn’t one of facts or well-woven intellect as it is fighting powerful vested interests on many fronts.
The continued criminalisation of drugs favours the multi-billion dollar privatised prison industry as well as firearms and weapons companies. These industries will lobby until the cows come home to keep the gravy flowing. Fighting drugs also keeps the prices high, something which benefits the sellers. The police departments get more funding, whilst global banks, always working both sides of the trade, fund those successful companies whilst laundering the drugs money.
More scandalously, and not surprising given that they’re backed up by the only form of legal violence, governments are linked to the drugs trade (such as the heroin trade in Afghanistan seen above). Being the largest consumer drugs on the planet, and with largest military to defend it, the USA was inevitably to be involved, a “conspiracy theory” so mainstream that it has its own Wikipedia page. In short, you’re seeing dancing unicorns if you think decriminalisation to become a top political priority any time soon.
