Legal marijuana is rapidly becoming the norm in the US. Credit: Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
If there is one thing that pretty much everyone in the United States can agree on, it is that their mighty nation is bitterly divided. This was proved again by last week’s election, cleaving the country in two between its fractious red and blue regions that see the world so differently. Yet those voters turning out in unprecedented numbers have also proved that there is one unlikely issue that unites them all: the urgent need for drug reform in a nation suffering an epidemic of addiction.
A series of ballots were held in states across the country on this issue — and the results demonstrate that the disastrous War on Drugs, launched half a century ago by a crooked Republican president and adopted enthusiastically across the planet, is rapidly coming to an end in the US. The most dramatic advances were in a pair of staunchly Democrat states, yet even in some of the most conservative corners of the country such as Mississippi, Montana and South Dakota voters strongly backed measures to liberalise drug laws, even as they supported another term of Trump.
In every state where a proposed drug reform was on the ballot — there were six plus DC — it won. British politicians, so scared of electoral and media backlash on this issue, should note how far and how fast the American electorate has moved in the wake of the terrible opioid epidemic that struck the country so hard. A poll last week found cannabis legalisation is now backed by 68% of Americans — a figure that has more than doubled in two decades to its highest level yet, with almost half of Republicans supporting the idea. “Voters kept on being told that legalisation would unleash chaos but they can see that has not happened so now things are shifting further,” said one Democrat drug reform advocate.
Most striking was the passing of Measure 110 in Oregon. This western state was the first to decriminalise cannabis possession in 1973, just two years after Richard Nixon declared drugs “public enemy number one”, as his way of uniting Middle America against both African Americans demanding civil rights and hippies leading the anti-war movement. Now it has decriminalised possession for personal use of all drugs, while diverting funds from marijuana taxes into cash-starved harm reduction and treatment projects. People caught in possession of, say, heroin will be told to pay a $100 fine — but it is waived if they agree to enter recovery services.
Oregon’s bold move is “arguably the biggest blow to the war on drugs to date”, said Kassandra Frederique, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which pushed the idea. The reason is simple: the American state, like others struggling with high rates of addiction, has seen that trying to defeat the drug industry by locking up users is a failure that backfires on society. Almost one in eight people in Oregon admits to use of illicit substances over the past month. This results in about two deaths each day and more than 10 people convicted daily on drug charges. So they have chosen to follow Portugal’s successful stance, which was, in 2001, to decriminalise drugs and invest in public health efforts to fight addiction. The number of heroin users and drug-related deaths there has plummeted.
Meanwhile, Washington DC followed four other liberal cities in three states by agreeing to decriminalise therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs. The initiative to sanction the use of ayahuasca, magic mushrooms and mescaline was supported by more than three-quarters of voters, following on from the furious national debate that has broken out over policing and a milder one over use of such drugs for treating mental health problems. The push came from Melissa Lavasani, a mother of two and city government official whose depression was cured by microdosing. “What are the moms at school going to say about this?” was her first thought at the idea of publicity. Now we can see their answer: what a sensible idea.
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SubscribeProhibition has never worked. We should know since it was tried a hundred years ago under the same name. At the same time, let’s not pretend that legalizing everything will carry no cost. Of course, it will and ironically, the places that will feel the brunt of that cost are the ones leading the charge.
Those are the places where vagrants and junkies already get a pass, where shoplifting up to a certain dollar value is hand waved away, and where homeless users who harass taxpayers or commit property crimes face no threat of arrest. If that amounts to what the author sees as “progressive policies,” then the word progressive joins an ever-growing list of terms that no longer mean what the definition says they mean.
The punch line, however, is this: It is significant that one other US area where there is consensus across tribal divides is the allied issue of prison reform.
I am fairly sure that a reform measure was signed during the last four years. Can someone remind me who signed it, who stands to benefit the most from it, and what the major piece of legislation associated with Joe Biden was?
Wrong. Prohibition works perfectly well in Japan.
The US is not Japan. Perhaps you’ve noticed.
Japan has issues with legal drug abuse as their laws appear not to count benzodiazepines as any sort of problem, for a start.
Your post hints at what I think is a fundamental problem with policing in the US. It is in most cases expected to generate revenue.
(sadly, as is every other single thing in the US)
There is no point in pursuing the petty crimes of the poor and the vagrants because they have no money which to appropriate, so the only result could be to put them into a likely already overcrowded jail which costs money instead of making money.
The police are more likely to target middle class workers speeding because they are late to work and charge the $100 for it. or, catch the teenaged kids out in Dad’s car smoking pot or the like where they can confiscate the car and sell it or fleece Dad thousands to get his car back.
The push back at drug decriminalization doesn’t come from people who are morally opposed to drugs. It comes from the huge public and private legal machine that depends on the war on drugs to make money.
Legalise the lot! If idiots wish to indulge, let them, it’s Darwinian Self Selection (DSS).
After the greatest fiasco in US History (bar the burning of the White House) the era of Prohibition must surely point to the futility of these ridiculous ‘wars on drugs’.
Here in the UK, the spirt of the demon, Mary Whitehouse and her coven, still stalks the land, and it is almost impossible even to discuss the idea of DSS.
We look to the US to set us an example, and you know it makes sense, so get on with it.
The thing is it’s not even that – a lot of the harm involved in drug use comes from the legal situation. Remove the prohibition and you can you can start to address the problem that’s responsible for a lot of the deaths – users are in general unable to tell what dose and of what substance they are taking.
Further, if we put the right framework in place, and taxed things appropriately, not only would we save money on policing, but we’d also make enough to fund more services for those that do find themselves in trouble. A win-win and a kinder society to boot. What’s not to like?
An excellent reply if I may say so, thank you.
Unfortunately as I’m sure you are aware, an obstinate, yet substantial group of our society feel they have a god given right to tell the other lot how to behave. They are also in ‘total denial’ about the abject failure of ‘drug wars’, too numerous to mention.
Perhaps the disruption this present C-19 Plague/Panic has engendered, will provide the catalyst for long overdue change elsewhere? I live in hope, if not expectation.
The ‘war on’ is ridiculous, in keeping with just about every other ‘war on’ that govt has waged. But legalization is not without its own costs. In many cities in the US, vagrants face little chance of being arrested for property crimes or theft. Is a place like Oregon going to see more or less of that by making everything legal? In a sane world, freedom also has consequences and rights come with responsibilities.
It’s a little funny that people would have faith in govt’s ability to successfully manage this, be it through taxation or whatever else. It was govt that created this mess in the first place, the same govt that can barely manage potholes. Now we’re to believe it’s going to manage the oversight framework of a massive enterprise? Even states with legal weed have flourishing black markets. Nothing happens in a vacuum, not even something I basically agree with.
Does the “idiots that indulge” include alcohol. 😉
Off course not.
Why should ‘we” set the example? We are the younger one in the relationship.
Two months ago I thought we should, now definitely not.
We have become “an absolute shower” in the words of the late Terry Thomas.
We have been poisoning male children for the last 20 years for being “naughty” with ritalin which is meth . Add that to the “chemical castration ” drugs we give children we will be known as far more immoral than the Victorians sticking children up chimneys.
Ritalin aka methylphenidate is not crystal methamphetamine, nor any other kind of amphetamine. The ‘meth’ in both names simply refers to the presence of a single carbon atom in the respective molecular structure.
Because Ritalin is an analog of amphetamine, Adderall is a bi-phetamine and so on i think they all come under the speed heading. When “legal highs” were the thing a few years back the meth analog dimethylphenethylamine was sold to do the job methamphetamine does. I think some people can use speed/MDMA etc sensibly (including well made meth) but the vast majority will give in to the re-dosing urge and screw things up. Lots of kids who start on modafil, ritalin etc end up on much worse as teens and adults, so overall i think giving kids these is no different to selling meth to minors.
I’m no chemist, and maybe you’re right. A propos, I would consider myself one of your people who used speed sensibly. One day many years ago, I got lumbered with 480 philosophy of science essays which had to be marked in 72 hours, and got through the ordeal with my one and only purchase of a £10 bag of speed. Not an experience I wish ever to repeat, but it did the job.
i know what you mean… i think that uppers which leave you tired, aching and depressed after a few days use are easy not to get addicted too because the downside matches the up. I wonder if the youngsters fed on the stuff are more likely to become problem users as their brain chemistry
is already goinmg that way….
Serious drug addiction is tragic for the individual. The anti drug laws appear to be tragic for society.
A couple of notes of caution however, if we are to accept that the ‘virtue signalling’ of anti-drug laws is both ineffective and damaging – something I do believe.
1. If canabis and other relatively low harm drugs are legalised, will the pushers move into other drug markets?
2. If all drugs were legalised would the drug dealers all stop being criminals? What drives them? If it’s poverty then they’ll still want to ‘make a living another way’. If it’s belonging to a gang, power, rebellion and wealth will they move into other areas?
Without being against the thrust of the article, I’d say history shows in the UK at least that there were violent criminal gangs long before drug laws.
Personally I’d get rid of (nearly?) any law that limits personal informed adult freedom – that doesn’t materially/physically hurt others. We’ve tried right and leftwing authoritarian ‘Utopia’ creations and both are massive failures.
All? That seems unlikely, but it would remove the “easy money” aspect of what they do, and some of the glamour. I think some will certainly find other criminal enterprises, but there are few other criminal enterprises present on such a scale, and which have the collusion of such a large base of customers. I guess we might need to watch out for a corresponding rise in prostitution and pimping … ?
Agreed. And prostitution should be another thing to look at. Whatever your moral opinion on Sex Work, prostitution will happen – so best to do so in controlled voluntary environments, where at least they get the money and are far less likely to be victims of violence or forced onto drugs.
The Portuguese approach to heroin – give them away for free – has absolutely changed their situation there.
Pushers can’t sell the stuff, so the market has dried up.
Since the drugs are taken at the clinic, no-one is sharing heroin with new users at parties, drying up the stream of new users.
There is no panacea for drugs, there are still shuffling alcoholics in my town even though alcohol is legal.
But moralism is often the enemy of pragmatism.
Good questions. Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book has some interesting material suggesting that availability is very important and people do not necessarily spend a lot of time looking for alternatives if a readily available option is withdrawn. He cited crime as one example, but also suicides in San Francisco after netting/barriers were put on the Golden Gate bridge and also suicide rates among women during and after the UK transition from town gas to natural gas (overall suicides fell dramatically in both cases – there was very little displacement). Gladwell did not go into as much detail with crime and maybe the argument is going to be a lot less compelling. But we definitely should not assume that drugs criminals would automatically switch to other forms of criminality.
Yes there were ” violent criminal gangs long before drugs laws”, but the method we used to rid ourselves of such a menace would not, sadly, be acceptable today.
In about 1500 the English homicide rate was 20-40 per year, per 100K. By 1750 it had fallen to 2-4 per year, per 100K, eg, a ten fold reduction. How had this been achieved? Hanging. The execution rate was somewhere between 1 to 2%, perhaps proving the eugenics of execution.
Professor Keith Thomas’s ‘In pursuit of Civility’ (p 154) is particularly good on the English attitude to crime and punishment, which may explain why we became “the envy of less happier lands”.
Prussia/Germany had lower rates of execution and lower crime rate (Iron Kingdom; The rise and fall of Prussia)
And since genetic stock is similar how did they keep crime rate so low?
Discipline.
I would posit the cultural change wrought by Hamlet, Romeo and Juliette and a slew of other less well written anti-revenge plays around that time. English cultrue decided to deal with the problem head on.
A very interesting idea, thank you.
The plague helped as well.
Whilst I am in general agreement with this piece, is is a little too kind on Biden and Harris. Biden was substantially responsible for the 1994 Crime Bill that locked up countless people for decades (of life) for multiple minor drugs offences, while Harris joked about locking people up for possession then going home and smoking weed herself.
Either way, when Biden introduces a national lockdown and starts a couple of new military adventures, both of which eventualities he has more or less promised, the people of America will need recourse to drugs of all types.
it would seem that Unherd would require sanction when posters are clearly spreading the Qanon virus.
the war on drugs has also played a huge role in the militarization of our police forces not to mention financial incentives that lead to the use of ‘no knock’ warrants.
here in Oregon we legalized”by a vote of 55 percent plurality”the therapeutic use of psilocybin “shrooms”, to treat chronic mental health issues like PTSD and depression. Therapists also plan to use it to reduce anxiety for patients who are dying and to help people kick their addictions.
Don’t worry unemployed drug warriors, my state just voted for an additional $2 per pack cigarette tax. There’s still work for those who want to punish people for using recreational substances!
I found the headline to this article fairly misleading. I assumed from it that the writer was going to tell us that some US states have begun to re-consider their support for drug legalisation. Instead of that, the author is only repeating the well known facile arguments for normalising drug use. Disappointing.
Alcohol is a legal drug, and alcoholism is absolutely bloody rampant.
I think the US collective view has shifted in the last 2 generations: We see much closer to home the harms of both addiction illnesses and unrestrained hedonism. The state is no longer so comfortable trafficking coke + junk to get its way abroad or at home compared to the Nixon and Reagan eras. Even as a means of oppressing the excess (non) working classes its not going too well. Though most drug violence is gang on gang the police are up against some well armed outfits, some well organised, none going to think twice about killing cops or civilians as part of the job. UK seems about 40 years behind by comparison. Yet most of the ruling party admit to liking a bump when the mood takes them. If looking at them doesn’t put you off coke nothing will.
“Most of our blinkered politicians seem impervious to the rising tide of
these deaths of despair, which disproportionately hit the most deprived
communities they claim to care about in their hollow speeches.”
Perhaps if they gave up the drugs these ‘communities’ (which is a non-existent ‘thing’ in the sense meant) would cease to be ‘deprived’ or despairing? To call a group of people arbitrarily lumped together by geography or financial status (or ‘race’) as a ‘community’ is a falsehood. It presumes an identity of beliefs and interest in various people which does not exist.
Moist drug dealers are criminal in more than one way. They will not stop being criminal when drugs are legalized (their profits will disappear for one thing). All they will do (as is already being seen when this is tried) is move into worse forms of criminal activity (e.g. selling stronger, dangerous, unmonitored illegal versions of drugs, cigarettes or alcohol (some of which can make you go blind), or trafficking in women and underage children), to protect their income. They’re not all suddenly going to attend Church, or have ‘crises of belief’, begging for forgiveness.
And cannabis is not a ‘safe’ drug. There is abundant evidence of its connection to ‘psychosis’ quite apart from the fact that having someone high as a kite flying your plane (let alone monitoring activity in the nuclear power station, with access to levers) will not be a sensible thing to do,. Every lawful activity will need to have exhaustive checking procedures put in place. at vast expense and inconvenience to non-drug users.
‘Big Dope’ (generally supported by greedy billionaires) is lying about this so they can corner a what they see as a lucrative taxed market, that’s all.
I think you’re stretching some points there.
I don’t want my pilot drunk either or high on perscription drugs. Test them, criminal record/prison and loss of good job as a minimum. Presume similar to current alcohol rules.
Strong canabis isn’t harmless, but then many things aren’t. Smoking, alcohol, junk food, riding a motorbike, riding a horse are all examples of perfectly legal activities that run a risk of damaging the individual. If you want to stretch it I’d say lots of religion and political viewpoints seems to drive people crazy.
Agree on the criminal thing, though seems sensible to focus law enforcement activity on undoubtly evil crimes like people traffickers.
Strong alcohol isn’t harmless. Prohibition boosted sales of strong alcohol.
The US government literally made producers of industrial alcohol add toxic chemicals, with the full knowledge that this industrial alcohol was often distilled into drinking alcohol. Luckily this was mainly drunk by poorer people so it’s not ‘important’.
And we definitely need to make alcohol illegal as well, can’t have drunk people operating a nuclear power station either. Not to mention it’s well known that it causes a huge variety of physical and mental health problems.
What’s that? Most people can just have the odd drink of an evening and still work responsibility? And why is it you don’t think this can apply to other intoxicants?
You seem to be saying that we should keep drugs illegal because there is a finite number of “bad” people and having them selling drugs is better than the alternatives. This is neither a sensible nor supportable line of reasoning (not least given the harm the global illegal drug trade causes).
A fundamental error here is to assume criminal activity is driven solely by supply, rather than demand. Money makes criminals take risks, just as it does for everyone else in legal businesses. Why would a consumer start to demand a new and different product or service once they can legally buy the one they currently want? Whilst there clearly are significant examples of coercion, these likely happen much more in legalised markets (e.g. US opioid crisis, where the legal product is much worse than many illegal alternatives). Likewise, there is simply nothing like the demand in other criminal markets to absorb the slack without rendering those activities uneconomical through competition. Closing off the currently most profitable line of funding for criminals must by definition reduce the money moving into crime, the opportunities available, and so change the cost/benefit equation. If it is more profitable to work at the minimum wage, then why take the risk of prison time?
So no, someone who smokes weed is not suddenly going to feel the need to visit trafficked child prostitutes, and to imply otherwise is both naïve as well as rather offensive to the not insignificant proportion of the public who indulge in recreational drugs.
I almost completely agree. Almost…
They can legally buy the one they want but the government changes the cost benefit by regulating/taxing the price and availability out of easy reach and a realistic cost.
That brings the black market, the criminals and violence back in. Makes criminals of people doing something that would otherwise be completely legal if the government and it’s cronies were only able to wet their beak a little.
The government needs to get out of the markets, people’s lives and decision making as much as possible. Their default position should be to not interfere.