The End of Prohibition

It was 75 years ago today that America ended its mostly failed experiment with Prohibition.

Prohibition ended on Dec. 5, 1933, when three states — Ohio, Pennsylvania and Utah — ratified the 21st Amendment — which repealed the 18th Amendment.

And syndicated columnist Froma Harrop says it's time to end the modern-day equivalent, "the so-called War on Drugs."

Those who oppose drug legalization should read the article. Not only does legalization make sense from a revenue standpoint, but, as Harrop points out, regulating the strength and purity of currently illegal drugs makes them less deadly.

Removing the "illegal" stigma from these drugs will make it more likely that those who need help will seek it. "We have treatments for alcoholism," Harrop writes, "but we don't ban alcohol." A valid point.

The "War on Drugs," Harrop observes, hasn't had the effect of inflating drug prices, thereby discouraging people from buying and consuming them. In fact, she says, "[t]he retail price of cocaine is now about half what it was in 1990."

Legalizing drugs also would take the profits out of the terrorists' pockets.

Harrop quotes a Harvard economist who contends that legalizing drugs could save $44 billion in enforcement costs while providing governments with up to $33 billion in revenues "were they to tax drugs as heavily as alcohol and tobacco."

It seems to me there would be all sorts of ripple effects from legalizing drugs — not the least of which would be the elimination of all the innocent victims of drive-by shootings from gang members and others involved in the illegal drug trade.

Economist Milton Friedman estimates that the criminalization of drugs has been responsible for more than 10,000 such fatalities — deaths of children, the elderly and other innocent bystanders — per year. These killings would cease if drugs were legalized, he says.

When was the last time you heard about someone being killed in a drive-by shooting that involved the sale of liquor?

"The war on drugs has led to gang violence, trampling of civil liberties, and military interventions abroad," writes Jacob Grier in The American Spectator. "Federalist principles are routinely ignored in medical marijuana raids, doctors face prosecution for prescribing painkillers, and ordinary adults must show their ID just to purchase effective cold medicine. The United States now has more than 300,000 people imprisoned for drug violations."

Harrop concedes that it won't be easy to end the "War on Drugs."

"Too many police, drug agents, bureaucrats, lawyers, judges, prison guards and sprayers of poppy fields have a stake in it," she says — and that, I presume, includes those companies that make their living testing other people's bodily fluids for trace evidence of recreational drug use. "But Prohibition was repealed once."

Indeed it was. And it took an economic crisis to make it happen.

A 'Modest Proposal'

Russ Smith writes, in SpliceToday.com, that the case for legalizing marijuana makes more sense today than ever.

With the recession getting worse by the day, it's a legitimate point to raise.

As Smith points out, the government, if it legalized marijuana, could "regulate the potency and purity," prohibit sales to anyone under 21, insist that "requisite health warnings would be prominently placed on each unit sold" and realize a significant windfall from the taxes on sales of the substance.

In the process, the black market would be virtually wiped out, and law enforcement could be much more efficient, focusing more of its attention on investigating and pursuing suspects in violent crimes. Last year, observes Smith, nearly 900,000 people were arrested for marijuana violations. Nearly 90% of them were "nabbed for 'personal use.'"

How many murderers or rapists slipped through law enforcement's fingers because the officers were too busy, as Smith puts it, needlessly disrupting lives?

"Violent crime ebbs and flows, often depending on locale, but someone please explain to me why people who favor smoking pot, which is arguably much less dangerous than excessive consumption of alcohol, are the prey of police officers across the country?" Smith writes.

"Maybe it’s a matter of low-hanging fruit, but the waste of time in arresting offenders, court appearances and in many instances, incarceration, is a crime in and of itself."

Even so, Smith acknowledges that legalization is unlikely.

"[T]he political bureaucracy ... would take years to implement such a dramatic change," he writes. "[A]ny economic windfall is in the future. Which is a shame, since given today’s perilous financial climate, a new infusion of cash, every single day, would help shorten a recession.

"Then again, if legislators acted now the benefits could be realized in time for the next, and inevitable, economic downturn."

Of course, there is an historical precedent for this. In the 1930s, less than a year after Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as president, the United States ended Prohibition. Organized crime lost its black market profits on alcohol while society gained jobs and tax revenue.

Smith says the legalization proposal is worth considering.

"[C]orrecting the travesty of arresting harmless and nonviolent citizens, plus the monetary gain, is extraordinarily compelling," he writes. "All that’s needed is a group of politicians with vision and guts to bring the issue to the forefront of debate in the United States."