Calling a Truce in the War on Drugs: Reason verus Barbarism

Don't you Feel Safer? Image by Flckr user OregonDOTThe juxtaposition of the Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and Steven Levitt's introduction of "The Daughter Rule" provided insight into both what is wrong with international drug policy, and why it probably will not soon be improved upon.  The Global Commission includes such luminaries as Paul Volcker, Kofi Annan, the former presidents of Columbia, Mexico and Switzerland, and the current Prime Minister of Greece.  They do not mince words:

The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. ...

End the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others. Challenge rather than reinforce common misconceptions about drug markets, drug use and drug dependence. ...

Encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens. ...

Offer health and treatment services to those in need. ...

Abolish abusive practices carried out in the name of treatment – such as forced detention, forced labor, and physical or psychological abuse – that contravene human rights standards and norms or that remove the right to self-determination. ...

Apply much the same principles and policies stated above to people involved in the lower ends of illegal drug markets, such as farmers, couriers and petty sellers. Many are themselves victims of violence and intimidation or are drug dependent. Arresting and incarcerating tens of millions of these people in recent decades has filled prisons and destroyed lives and families without reducing the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations. ...

Law enforcement efforts should focus not on reducing drug markets per se but rather on reducing their harms to individuals, communities and national security.

Bravo.  Not for any new policy innovations, but for being bold enough to speak unpopular truth. It is too bad that so many politicians wait until after they have power to voice their concerns about this barbaric war we have conducted against those dependent on drugs and the global poor engaged in one of the few sources of economic opportunity open to them.  I can only hope that some people pay attention and this spurs reform.

Somehow, I'm skeptical.  Too many people let their well-intentioned prejudices prevent them from advocating for change.  Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics, provides an apt metaphor for this bias:

It wasn’t until the U.S. government’s crackdown on internet poker last week that I came to realize that the primary determinant of where I stand with respect to government interference in activities comes down to the answer to a simple question: How would I feel if my daughter were engaged in that activity?

If the answer is that I wouldn’t want my daughter to do it, then I don’t mind the government passing a law against it. I wouldn’t want my daughter to be a cocaine addict or a prostitute, so in spite of the fact that it would probably be more economically efficient to legalize drugs and prostitution subject to heavy regulation/taxation, I don’t mind those activities being illegal.

Basically, Levitt knows that drug legalization is good policy, but he does not want his daughter to be a drug addict so he supports the ban on drugs.  Prioritizing the emotionally satisfying over what is right is maddeningly counterproductive even to Levitt's stated purpose. The fact is, drug criminalization does not prevent his daughter from doing drugs, it only opens the possibility of her going to jail for doing drugs.

In response to Levitt, Kevin Drum has a nice post about how people closer to these issues, who actually know people struggling with drug addiction, feel differently about drug legalization than those of us who are dispassionate policy professionals.  Fair enough, but that's not to say we are wrong. People whose support for drug criminalization is founded in emotional responses are genuinely and understandably mistaken. It is not immediately intuitive to hold both of these truths in your head: drugs can be very harmful, but making them illegal is even more destructive.

I know people in prison for drugs.  How does society, or Levitt's daughter, benefit from their separation from their families and their youth?  

I have done drugs.  Not recently, but that's the point.  I did some drugs and then I stopped when I decided I had other things I thought were more important.  How would society benefit if I were permanently prevented from those opportunities?  

SWAT teams kill innocent people in their homes in the name of the war on drugs. What benefit to society could possibly justify that?

The question is not "would I want my daughter to do that," but "would I want my daughter punished criminally for doing that?" It is ok to say no to both questions.