Would Legalisation Stop People From Falling Into The Dangerous World Of Drugs?
Drugs. The epidemic that President Nixon declared a war on. In 1971, he announced the growing illegal drug consumption in the US as “public enemy number one” and that it was necessary to “wage a new, all out offensive” to rid the world of this global threat by means of radical punitive enforcement. That same year, Britain joined him in this drastic battle when parliament passed “The Misuse of Drugs Act”, an operation to abolish illicit narcotics production, trade and consumption. Forty seven years later, and the world’s drug laws have allowed illegal drugs to become a ubiquitous and entirely ungoverned 435 billion dollar global industry, fuelling international crime, corruption and conflict. Drugs are cheaper, more readily available and widely used than ever before — and the problem only continues to grow. Nothing will change unless we change our tactics in this decades old struggle. Despite almost half a century’s worth of a myriad of laws to curb use and cut crime, it is time for more drastic tactics, time for another radical advance.
We are losing the war on drugs. It is time to take a new approach. It is time to legalise. If drugs were legal they could be controlled. Like it or not, today, illicit drugs are a 435 billion dollar global industry dominated by organised criminal cartels. A golden opportunity governments of the world have gifted to society’s villains. Drug Lords and their cartels produce, trade and sell drugs to approximately 275 million users worldwide efficiently and as cheaply as any global brand. Of course under the blanket of prohibition business in the drugs world doesn’t run as usual. Drug kingpins aren’t your charismatic and amiable CEOs; they are the sort of people who smuggle drugs into the US by stuffing it in the coffins of fallen soldiers, the kind of people who enforce discipline on their employees through extreme threat and violence. And they don’t just reserve the guns for their own workers either. Prohibition means drug cartels don’t have courts or lawyers to sort out disputes so turn to violence to sort the problems out instead. In 2017 there were over 29,000 murders in Mexico — the highest on record, with drug violence getting the biggest blame. That’s usually only meagre cartel employees however. The kingpins themselves remain quite untouchable, their fortunes and influence over so many allow them to have weaponry as advanced as they could ever need and power over hundreds who will protect them to save their own skins. Neither do they fear the law, often keeping politicians and law enforcers sweet with cash injections. And evidence shows that their businesses suffer minimally when authorities do try to enforce laws; since 1981 approximately 150 billon dollars worth of tax money have been spent trying to prevent drugs such as cocaine, heroin and cannabis from penetrating US borders. However evidence shows that for every ton seized, several hundred more get through. In fact, Mexican drug cartels make an estimated $19 to $29 billion a year on drug sales in the United States — money maximised by their lack of tax payment. The government stance on no drugs mean illegal ‘companies’ have no need to contribute their fair share, resulting in every penny being available for kingpins to spend on whatever their heart desires. In the current system of prohibition there is no quality control on drugs. The substances available from vendors on UK street corners and nightclubs are often far travelled and much diluted.
The white powders and pills many dealers will present users with contain unknown dosages of other substances such as sugar, concrete or anti-malaria tablets. But not all preparations contain less; ‘super strength’ ecstasy pill availability has skyrocketed in recent years, potencies can be triple the strength they typically were in the 90s. People often have no idea what they’re actually taking or how harmful. As a result, worldwide there are approximately 250,000 deaths a year from drug use, a figure that will steadily climb if current laws stay intact. With legalisation, government could be in control again, not the multimillionaire, multi murdering criminals. As with alcohol or tobacco, drugs could become regulated and controlled, their production, trade and selling overseen by the state. Sellers would contribute their fair share in taxes, drugs would be purchased in regulated stores rather than in backstreets and nightclubs where users could be sure what they were buying was as safe as possible. They would not be encouraged into buying progressively “harder drugs” either. Prices of drugs would decrease dramatically, with rates no longer governed by a vacuum of crime. In fact, users would not risk facing the danger and violence of a drug dealer’s world at all — a world that will slowly diminish since it relies on addiction and crime to survive.
Legalisation of cannabis alone in the UK has been estimated to be able to earn the government up to £3.5 billion a year in tax revenues. That money could help to fund vital services like social work, support groups, health services and education that are currently forever being cut down, a backward approach that is ignoring the world’s social issues and increasing the chances of people turning to drugs in the first place. With our current prohibition obsession, people are thrown left, right and centre into prisons because of involvement in drug related crime. In European jails, drug offences are the most common reason for which people are locked up, making up a fifth of the total prison population. While some of these inmates are dealers or drug lords themselves, the majority will be there for acquisitive crimes committed to fund their habit. Our justice systems fill our prisons with these people then governments gape in bafflement when they realise they’re overcrowded. As a result of this State senseless logic, conditions have deteriorated greatly in recent years — two in five British prisons now considered unsafe. Prisons are completely out of control and drug use inside them is rife. Smugglers come in the form of visitors, bribed prison officers and drones that deliver substances directly to cell windows. As with many drugs, they are often mystery mixes with unknown ingredients and potencies, substances that put inmates and staff at constant risk. This allows addicts to continue to feed their habit with dangerous drugs, try new, more harmful ones and continue to receive no help whatsoever to stop. They slowly fester in prison and are no less drug dependent and are likely even more so when they are released. Many fear legalisation of drugs would ‘send out the wrong message’, giving people the green light to try them, causing a great and uncontrollable increase in use. However the vast majority of people don’t do this with government regulated and legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco. In places like the Netherlands where cannabis laws are among the most liberal in the world, its use is actually among the lowest in Europe.
There aren’t hordes of junked-up teens either, in fact it would appear without the attraction of doing something criminal, usage drops. Cannabis was decriminalised in the Netherlands in 1976. Prior to this around 10 per cent of 17 to 18 year olds used it. By 1985, the figure had dropped to just 6.5 per cent. In Portugal, personal possession of all drugs was decriminalised in 2001. Addicts began to get treatment rather than simply facing prison sentences, and in just fifteen years heroin deaths have decreased to a third of what they previously were. During that same time in the UK, where policies remained fixated on criminalisation and retribution, heroin deaths have risen by a over third and drug enforcement still costs every British taxpayer an estimated £400 a year — it’s an approach that is simply not working. When you hear stories of the crazed addicts who have ruined their lives with drugs or the dealers who are trapped in the clutches of a ruthless drugs cartel you wonder what on earth could possess a person to destroy their entire existence with drugs. Prohibition paints the picture to the world that all people who involve themselves with narcotics in any way are reckless menaces with chronic lifestyle problems. That they are the underclass of society who must be locked up, kept away off our streets and away from law abiding citizens. For years now prohibition has acted as a smoke screen to the real issues at the heart of the worldwide drug epidemic. The reasons why a person would misuse drugs. Not because they want to get themselves arrested and imprisoned, not because they want to tear themselves away from their families, live in constant danger and ill health, and not because they want to lose their life to drugs as 250,000 do every year. Very often, so many other factors result in a person misusing drugs. Trauma, abuse, poverty, exclusion, poor education and lack of opportunities are often the real reasons why so many get into drug use and dealing, why so many get into crime at all. As a result of prohibition, governments have created a vicious circle where after spending billions on drug enforcement, they can’t afford any services to support these people to prevent them getting into drugs in the first place.
This is at the root of many of societies great problems which could be relieved by legalisation. Those who burgle for goods to fund their addiction; those who inject into their groins because their arms and legs are so badly damaged from years of abuse and are treated in their thousands by the NHS, whose budget shortages are causing a UK wide healthcare crisis; those who fill prisons to breaking point and worsen their addictions while locked up. Prohibition puts people in danger, it doesn’t protect them and it hasn’t done that since the days the laws were introduced. Legalisation would stop so many from falling into the dangerous world of drugs. It wouldn’t only take control and regulate the ruthless drugs market, it would allow governments to prevent people from entering into organised crime and drug misuse. And the ability to do so is there; the great quantities of money earned from taxation of legalised drugs would go a long way to addressing these issues and solving the problem of illegal narcotics.
Drugs is a world of utter corruption, danger and chaos. The current laws are an equal match of absurdity, dysfunction and irrationality. Prohibition has not worked for almost half a century; it is a strategy that will not work in the future. Nixon was right all those years ago — the time is right to wage another new, all out offensive, but this time, to fight for legalisation, to seize back control — to finally strike victory and to win the war on drugs once and for all.
