Save the Dream

By Crispin Sartwell

 

As Mexican President Vicente Fox backs off a bill to legalize possession of small quantities of illegal drugs, including cocaine and heroin, it is worth remembering some of the obvious reasons why drugs should remain illegal.

 

For one thing, as many have argued, the unenforceable prohibition on drugs brings the law into contempt. When average citizens of your country know they are criminals, they lose respect for law and for the agents of the law.

 

But contempt for the law is the sure ≠ indeed really the only ≠ sign of a free people. People who respect the law simply on the grounds that it is law deserve every nasty little thing that happens to them after that. They ought to spend some time cultivating moral and intellectual autonomy.

 

I, personally, doubt that ending the war on drugs could reduce the contempt ≠ verging on total - with which any decent American regards the law. For that, weπd have to legalize, speeding, tax evasion, and gay marriage. Still, we must move with circumspection.

 

Secondly, of course, in a situation of legalization, the government would regulate drugs, and massively profit through tax revenues. That is the last thing that anyone should want.

 

In Pennsylvania, where I live, the state is currently the only authorized distributor of wine, liquor, and gambling services. Itπs hard even to come up with a decent bottle of champagne or a reasonable game of cards (hard, but, thank God, not impossible). Most states are extremely dependent on income from the tobacco settlement and from taxes on cigarettes.

 

The government, that is, is already the primary purveyor of vice in our great nation, and itπs a small step from here to a government thatπs your primary pornographer, pimp, and narcotics dealer. I would not object to this at all if they delivered these key services efficiently. But no.

 

If you think weπve got a wasteful bureaucracy now, just wait until the American state is the cocaine kingpin. The government canπt even deliver hurricane aid, much less heroin to all the Americans who need it.

 

At any rate, like any decent proponent of American capitalism, I would far prefer to see Afghan warlords and Mexican organized crime figures make the money and provide these essential medical services. The American government will simply use the increased revenue to fund the war/torture machine.

 

By comparison to Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, drug cartels are positively benevolent.

 

Now I hear your objection. Youπre saying that the drug issue is not primarily practical, but is a matter of principle. Youπre saying that no government has the right to tell people what they can and cannot put into their own bodies.

 

Youπre saying that if a government has such a right, there is no power that it does not in principle possess, that to interfere that intimately with the basic conduct of each person with regard to their own lives is to claim unlimited despotic power.

 

Youπre saying that a government that claims the right to tell you what you can and cannot put into your body is claiming the right to tell you whether or not to breathe.

 

Well, of course youπre right about that. But in public policy debates, we have to be practical. And practically speaking, turning the drug supply chain over to the bureaucracy while increasing the tax base and the credibility of the law would simply be disastrous.

 

And that is why keeping drugs illegal is saving the American dream.