American Consequences - March 2019

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or over 100 years, America’s drug war has been a part of our lives. For those, like me, who grew up consuming Reagan-era anti-drug propaganda, the drug war resembled a holy crusade of purification more than a criminal-justice problem. Murderers, robbers, and rapists were treated as criminals of opportunity and desire, but drug users were moralized in the language of sin and redemption. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I asked the most basic and fundamental question about the drug war: Why do heroin addicts get cages and alcoholics get treatment?

Only by asking that question was I able to cut through the pall of anti-drug propaganda that had been pulled over my eyes. It’s often observed that, during wartime, home-front propaganda focuses on dehumanizing the enemy. The Vietnamese became “Gooks,” Germans became “Huns,” and Japanese became “Japs.” Converting your enemy to a subhuman thing seems almost necessary if we’re going to ask soldiers to do something that is supposed to be morally prohibited – namely kill another human being. Similarly, spending a day on the front lines of the drug war and then going out for drinks after work requires some form of mental gymnastics. Illicit drug users become “junkies,” while alcoholics are lovingly given the bucolic name “lushes.” The drug war, like so many legal prohibitions on vices and private behavior, is rooted in the dehumanization of the drug users usually based on racial stereotypes and moralistic class warfare. That’s why heroin users get cages. But heroin users – as well as users of other illicit drugs – get more than cages. Due to drug prohibition, illicit drug users get

dangerous and overly potent drugs. Due to drug prohibition, we all get a hostile and increasingly ineffective system of law enforcement that violates civil liberties on a daily basis. And due to drug prohibition, we have millions of people under some form of criminal-justice supervision, whether it's jail, prison, or probation, all because of the racially charged fears of white men 80-100 years ago. Many of the costs of drug prohibition are well known, but some of the most insidious and invidious costs are under-discussed. Listen... CREATING AND KILLING DRUG ADDICTS Black-market drugs are often tainted with various impurities and poisons. Their potency is often unknown, endangering users with the possibility of overdose. These are well-known consequences of drug prohibition. A less well- known consequence, however, is how drug prohibition makes drugs stronger and therefore both more dangerous and more addictive. It’s easy to see why. Under prohibition, illicit smugglers prefer the highest-potency version of a drug in order to make smuggling

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March 2019

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