Theft at the Public Till
United States passed a law creating a new legal category called “unacceptable practices?” Unacceptable practices would be those things which the majority of people in a community or nation would like to ban, stop, and prevent-but cannot do by legal means, at least not with any effective enforcement. Right now in America, this might include such things as alcohol, to- bacco, marijuana, cocaine, and pornography. These would be treated dif- ferently from murder and robbery; the practitioner would be regarded as someone who was doing something to him or herself. Society’s problems would be the social effects: the crime after a drink, the poor performance on the job, the added danger to others. Society would neither officially condone these things nor officially say that practitioners were criminal. Instead, the government would define strategies for minimizing use. One strategy might be making criminal penalties far more severe if an unacceptable practice were involved: a train engineer who took cocaine and then plowed his locomotive into a car, for instance, would be severely punished. The United States has such a strategy for alcohol already. It in- cludes severe drunk driving penalties, restrictions for minors, limits to the availability of alcohol (it is sold only during certain hours, or in certain stores), and general availability of Alcoholics Anonymous. People accept those limits. The most we could imagine adding is a substantial increase in taxes on alcohol to diminish its use. We have an increasingly effective strategy on tobacco, making it increasingly awkward and socially unpleasant for people to smoke. (The change about alcohol is slower, probably because there’s more social hypocrisy involved.) One of the great ironies of American drug policy is that anti-drug laws over the past century have tended to become most punitive long after the use of a drug has peaked. When drug use is at its height, so is tolerance; but as drugs recede from middle-class homes, their users are marginalized, scapegoated, and more readily punished. The price that society pays for harsh sanctions becomes invisible to most people. Musto thinks that our nation’s drug laws reflect cultural changes after the fact; though extreme punishments may help to limit a drug epidemic, the principal causes of its rise and fall lie elsewhere.
81
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online