Legalizing Drugs
A Solution With So Many Flaws
By Daniel Muniz

Legalization of drugs is actually a popular subject not only for liberals and libertarians but also for a number of conservatives. The basic premise is that the war on drugs is a failure but this country could easily solve many of its social problems by legalizing drugs. Violent crime would come to a screeching halt because drug kingpins all the way down to the local dealers would no longer be fighting turf wars for drug profits. Our prisons would be emptied and this nation could even enjoy the tax receipts generated from taxing drugs much the same way with alcohol and cigarettes.

The allure of this idea is really its simplicity. Everybody would just be fat, dumb, and happy because once drugs are decriminalized, violence would cease.

But this simplicity is also its downfall.

In a previous job, a co-worker from Panama once suggested that simplistic solution to me. I asked him if he personally knew any crack heads, coke heads, or any other junkies for that matter; not recreational users but addicts. He told me that knew of lots of people who do drugs but that he didn’t personally know any junkies. I often ask that question to people who are misty eyed (not red eyed) about drug legalization because they often are unaware of many of the severe social implications involved.

First, the crack heads I do know haven’t had a job in years. In fact, now that I am getting older, it would be about a decade that they have not maintained any meaningful employment. These addicts simply want to smoke crack all day at their leisure and don’t care how and where they live. And since they don’t want to get a job to support their habit or that a lot of junkies are unable to hold down a job, where does their money come from?

Many of them live a life of crime resorting to theft, burglary, or even robbery although some are also able to sponge off of their friends and family from time to time.

One particular crack head I knew from high school who I also went to college with once explained to me that he only steals from businesses since he knows that employees practice passive resistance (that is give an assailant anything he wants so you don’t get hurt). He knows he won’t get shot at although there is always a chance to get roughed up by security guards. And even when he is stoned, he refuses to break into a house because he doesn’t want to get killed by a homeowner although I am unsure how much control he really has over his faculties while he is in a drugged out stupor.

However, his partners in crime will steal and rob from absolutely anyone and anywhere, including your own house and even from drug dealers. Those thugs live life on the edge and they are really indifferent to what their fate may be. Of course my acquaintances are not anecdotal evidence because stealing and robbing to support a drug habit is problematic everywhere across the country.

Incidentally, some junkies are actually supported by their own families. Family members become enablers by providing them food, shelter, transportation, and even money so they don’t have to steal for it. These situations are tragic because lots of parents do not want their daughters to become crack whores or their sons to be homeless or become hoodlums. As a result, they are faced with the difficult choice of providing for their junkie children inside their own homes instead of having them live out on the streets.

Consequently, the proponents of drug legalization imagine a Utopian society where junkies are suddenly transformed into honest responsible citizens who can hold down long term employment much like their recreational user counterparts. This transformation will then lead to a safer better society.

That is not going to happen.

Right now addicts are already unable to properly function in society so legalization is not going to have much of an impact at all except for making it easier for them to buy drugs while encouraging a whole new set of junkies to get hooked. It takes a lot of treatment for a junkie to stop his or her destructive behavior. In fact, to completely stop the crimes that addicts commit for drug money, municipalities would have to give drugs away free of charge or tremendously subsidize them. Our local governments would then have to become enablers because that would be the only way to deter junkies from theft, burglary, and robbery to support their habit.

But we already live in a litigious environment of lawsuits for eating junk food loaded with cholesterol or trans-fat, smoking cigarettes, drunk driving, breathing car exhaust fumes, etc. Anything that is deemed unhealthy or dangerous can be subject to lawsuits so even if local governments did give away heroin and LSD they would be open to tremendous liability regardless of how egalitarian their intentions are.

However, many proponents (although not all of them) are unprepared to go to the extreme of giving drugs away for free. They like the idea but they don’t want to get caught up in the messiness of freely handing it out (although they don’t mind passing out clean needles).

Consequently, there will still be rampant crime by junkies needing to support their habit. Many supporters of decriminalization do not really have an honest answer about whether or not many addicts will give up their lifestyle of crime. It is just wishful thinking to believe that all of society’s problems will be solved when drugs are safe, legal, and cheap (or free).

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