Harshing on the Prohibitionists

I know that the war on drugs doesn’t get much press anymore. I suppose this could be due to shifting priorities in these post-9/11 times, but I often suspect that this lack of interest can also be attributed to the open secret — prohibitionists do not even want to acknowledge it, let alone discuss or debate it — that the war on drugs has become (as if it was not always such) untenable.

Back in the 1970s and 80s, prohibitionists had a seemingly endless arsenal of talking points in defense of the drug war. But that once impermeable wall of rhetoric began to crumble in the 1990s as the drug policy reform movement matured, setting aside its “hippie” roots in favor of a more pragmatic approach.

Drug policy reform is no longer about peoples’ right to get high on whatever intoxicants they may choose, an assertion that made it easy for prohibitionists to put reformers on the defensive. Now that drug policy reform has become a crusade against the black market and the gangsterism it fosters, it is the prohibitionists who are on the defensive.

Even though we have maintained the logical upper hand for over a decade, we must never waiver in our efforts to bring the industries and markets of the underground economy out of the shadows and into the light. We must continue to harsh on the prohibitionists and the horrors of prohibition.

One method that works very well but is hardly ever employed by reformers are emotional appeals on behalf of protecting our children from drug dealers and this system that allows them to continue to operate their low-risk, high-profit, regulation and tax-free enterprises in our childrens’ schools.

A few choice harshing points for the thoughtful reformers’ arsenal:

• If you support the war on drugs, you are in favor of our children having easy access (black market dealers do not ask for I.D.) to drugs that have gotten steadily purer, cheaper and more plentiful since the 1970s.
• If you support the war on drugs, you also support the cartels. Politics making for strange bedfellows, drug kingpins, whose livelihoods depend upon the protections and benefits of prohibitionist policies, are among the staunchest prohibitionists.
• If you support the war on drugs, you must want yet another generation of our inner city youth to grow up fast and die young in an atmosphere of crime, degradation and fear.
• If you support the war on drugs, you also support organized crime and all the violence of gangsterism.
• For the sake of our children, we should not “legalize” illegal drugs, but rather regulate unregulated drugs.

Please feel free to plagiarize the above. I don’t even care about receiving credit as long as I get to see other reformers putting it to good use. And remember, the war on drugs is the “drug problem,” masquerading as a solution to itself. Just like Prohibition (1919-1933 R.I.P.).