Was Joshua Shenk Successful - Coursework Example

Was Joshua Shenk Successful? In 1995, Joshua Shenk made the assertion that drugs should be legalized ina Washington Monthly article (Shenk, 1995). Shenk presented the predicament that drug legislation creates. Lawmakers intend to put a stop to the adverse effects of drugs including addiction and violence inherent in the drug trade. He suggested in the article that legalizing and tightly regulating drugs would resolve these problems which have only been exacerbated by existing policies. Shenk covered many of the negative social aspects that have originated from the current prohibition laws such as the consequences of drug dealing on poor neighborhoods, issues evolved from prison overcrowding, the erosion of individual rights, the propensity for corruption within law enforcement, the associated problems regarding alcohol and tobacco and the refusal of the federal government to fund the effective needle exchange programs. Since this article was written, lawmakers have shown little interest in alleviating the harm that current drug laws create. This discussion examines the arguments for the decriminalization of drugs and the detriment to society that has been allowed to continue by those of conservative political leanings. The evidence suggests that Shenk’s position paper has generally lacked the desired effectiveness in converting the conservatives’ view that morality laws be enacted no matter the human cost. Ultimately drug policy does come down to tradeoffs according to Shenk and others of like mind on the subject. The simple truth is that people are tempted by intoxicants. And, in a free society like ours, the rights of life and liberty will always be accompanied by people pursuing stiff drinks, or lines of cocaine, or marijuana cigarettes.  Now we know that the enormous efforts in law enforcement have yielded few benefits in curbing drug abuse and are a paltry disincentive for many drug users and would-be drug users. The prohibition experiment has failed. America’s war against recreational drugs is an example of good intentions gone terribly wrong. While this country squanders over $50 billion dollars annually on the efforts to stop illegal drugs, trafficking and use continue. It has been said that trying to stop drugs is like trying to stop the rain. Over half of the prisoners in jail are there for drug ‘crimes.’ This causes overcrowding which results in the early release of dangerous, violent criminals. This creates more of a public safety problem than does drug use. It is illogical from a societal view and inhumane to individuals who are marked as a criminal for life for activity that causes no harm to others. Those who are addicted receive little or no therapeutic help in prison. Instead of imprisoning people that need help, rehabilitation programs are a much more effective method to treat the problem but a rehabilitation system will not succeed if drugs continue to be illegal.  Drug abusers will hardly seek help from the same government that tosses them in jail for the same thing. The question many ask is; what crime is it to smoke a little pot? Who does it hurt? Smoking marijuana affects no one else nor infringes upon other’s rights. Still, if caught by the morality Gestapo, these people will forever be categorized amongst the murderers and rapists of society. While those that harm others certainly deserve the label ‘ex-convict,’ a student who shares a joint with their roommate in the privacy of the dorm room certainly does not. The hypocrisy of the drug war is apparent to even very young children. All illegal drugs combined account for about 4,500 deaths in this country per year while tobacco is responsible for murdering 400,000 people annually and alcohol ends 80,000 people’s lives every year. Legislators will not ban smoking because they indicate regulation regarding what adults do in privacy including what they can put into their bodies is clearly unconstitutional and an infringement on personal liberties.  Everyone can differentiate the distinction between a person that takes in an occasional alcoholic beverage and one who commits crimes while drunk.  Why can’t this simplistic reasoning be applied to drug users? Our code of law is founded upon a principle of presumptive rationality.  Rational adults should be allowed to make personal choices as long as those actions cause no harm to others.  The U.S. government is unequivocally unjustified in choosing this particular personal freedom to ignore at such colossal cost to society (Fu, 2006). Arguing for personal liberties when advocating the legalization of drugs might sound good to some but it ignores the serious consequences of endorsing this recommendation.  The War on Drugs is winnable as witnessed by the steady decrease of drug use experienced from the late 1970’s to the early ‘90s, before the ‘War on Drugs’ was put on the back-burner of political priority.  The key reason given for the legalization of drugs is typically that of personal choice, that it is okay if it does not harm anyone but the user. Those that espouse that opinion usually refer to the smoking of pot within one’s own home.  However, drugs do harm people other than the person that does them as the public pays increased insurance rates for drug-related health problems as well as higher taxes for court cases involving drugs and for rehabilitation centers. Even in cases where the casual use affects only the user, the government is fully within its constitutional powers to pass laws that protect people from hurting themselves, seatbelt laws as an example.  If you can get drugs like heroin by prescription, why not be able to use drugs which were pulled from pharmacy shelves because of dangerous side-effects? If a person can use heroin whenever they choose, then there is no reason for having to regulate other drugs.  If drugs were legalized, either the system of getting prescriptions would be non-existent or harder drugs such as heroin would be easier to obtain than prescription drugs that have been tested by the Food and Drug Administration.  Another argument made by legalization advocates is that organized crime will cease to exist if drugs are made legal. The legalization of drugs, however, would mean increased tax rates to pay for additional rehabilitation facilities and for court cases involving drug related crimes.  This excess taxation would lead to less expensive drugs to be the drug of choice keeping organized crime in business. A case in point is the Netherlands where crime increased after marijuana was legalized. If the U.S. legalizes drugs, more people will use and abuse them. This country has sufficient drug-related problems without adding to it by legalization (Li, 2006). Decriminalization implies different meanings to different people. To some it means simply legalization which takes the profit, thus the crime out of the drug trade. One interpretation involves three steps. The first is to make drugs such as marijuana legal under restricted circumstances, but not as controlled as it is now. Secondly, sound reasoning should prevail in substance abuse policies. The government should form a policy that is harsher in regards to alcohol and tobacco but not by enacting criminal laws. The third aspect is to manage our tax money more wisely and discontinue wasting billions of dollars on criminal law enforcement techniques. Instead, these funds should be diverted into treatment and abuse prevention. When speaking of the decriminalization of drugs, prohibition policies should be examined to determine their costs in relation to benefits, then compared with other options. Many citizens believe that the best combination of costs and benefit may look much the same as legalization. Varying degrees of decriminalization is often confused with total legalization. Alcohol is legal, for example, but it is not legal to operate a car under its influence or to sell it to those less than 21 years of age. Conversely, people speak of cocaine and the opiates as illegal, but doctors prescribe these drugs everyday (Nadalmann, 1990). Shenk and other proponents of drug legalization argue that the government’s drug policy, not drug abuse by individuals, is principally responsible for the observed relationship between drugs and crime. Drug laws make illicit drugs more expensive and higher drug prices increase crime because many serious drug users commit crimes to fund their habits. Violent crime among dealers is historically more clearly attributable to drug prohibition than it is among users. “When alcohol was an illicit drug, alcohol dealers settled their differences with firearms, just as cocaine dealers do today. But two liquor store owners are now no more likely to shoot one another than are two taxi drivers. Eliminate the drug laws, it is said, and most drug-related crime will also disappear” (Boyum & Kleiman, 2003). Some policy makers in the U.S. government are persuaded that the federal war on drugs, spurred on by media accounts of innocents victimized by drug-related violence, is a terrific failure. The governments fight, long and expensive, has not reduced the supply of illegal drugs on the streets of America. These policy makers, in an attempt to solve the drug problem have proposed legalizing drugs as an alternate strategy to a failed policy. Decriminalization supporters theorize that if marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and other drugs were legalized, several positive things would probably follow. Drug prices would fall enabling users to obtain their drugs at low, government-regulated prices. If prices were lower, users would not need to steal or to consort with true violent criminals in order to support their habits. “Levels of drug-related crime, and particularly violent crime, would significantly decline, resulting in less crowded courts, jails, and prisons thus allowing law-enforcement personnel to focus their energies on the violent criminals in society and the drug production, distribution, and sale would no longer be controlled by organized crime” (Inciardi & Saum, 1996). Concurring with this idea regarding the price of drugs, Kirby Cundiff (1994) said: “At the turn of the century, both heroin and aspirin were legally available and sold for approximately the same amount. Today aspirin can be purchased at the corner drug store for 20 cents per gram; heroin costs $50 per gram.” Due to the imprisonment risks now involved in its sale, the price of heroin rose drastically after it was deemed illegal. Before its criminalization, users could easily afford the drug and did not have to resort to theft. Taxpayers, through high crime rates caused by the war on drugs and high tax rates used to support the war on drugs, continue to fund this fruitless endeavor. Drug dealers, who are willing to kill each other for profits obtained from such a lucrative market and junkies, who cannot envision a life without the drug and are willing to rob and kill for money to support their habit, would not feel compelled to resort to these measures if drugs were legal and cheap. “During prohibition liquor store owners murdered each other to protect their turf just as drug dealers do today. Today, liquor store owners are generally peaceful. Eliminating the enormous profits involved in black-market businesses eliminates the motive for violent crime, and therefore the violent crime itself” (Cundiff, 1994). “According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1990 the United States spent $74.249 billion on justice system expenditures” (Maguire & Pastore, 1994). This figure includes federal, state, local, county and municipal expenditures. (1990 is the latest year for which data was available for the publication of the source book.) The major category of costs was police protection at $31.805 billion (42.8%) and corrections at $24.961 billion (33.6%). Between 1971 and 1990, the justice system expenditures have increased 606.0%. For the period 1979-1990, the figure is 185.3% and for the period 1985-1990, the figure is 62.8%. In the time frame since 1979, the percentage increase has been greatest for corrections. The expenditure for this activity increased 313.3% in the period 1979-1990 and increased 91.5% in the period 1985-1990 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1990, p. 1). The war on drugs is policy based on morals, not on public health, and is taking a grave toll on the economics and civil liberties of our society. “The U.S. government is spending an enormous amount of money to wage this war – a figure that has exploded in the last two decades. In 1981, the federal drug control budget stood at $1.5 billion. By 1991, it was $11 billion. Today, it is $17 billion” (“A Sane Drug Policy”, 1999). “In general, states that decriminalized marijuana possession in the 1970s reported savings in police and judicial resources” (Harrison, Backenheimer & Inciardi, 1995). Crime is on the rise overcrowding the prison system while inner cities are becoming unlivable decreasing chances for the economic revival in those areas, all as a consequence of a misguided war on drugs to prevent the misuse of drugs. These governmental drug programs have had very little if any reduction in the use of drugs but a great many innocent victims have had their lives ruined. “The harm which is being done by these programs is far greater than any conceivable good” (Friedman, 1991). “Most users of illegal drugs are not addicts, are employed, do not commit property crimes, and indeed are more likely to have crimes committed against them. Criminals gravitate toward the profits of dealing in drugs more often than drug use itself causes crime” (Rasmussen & Benson, 1994). Law enforcement has proved not to be an effective deterrence in drug use and have made the drug war less effective. The evidence shows that stricter enforcement laws have led to the use of even more potent and more dangerous drugs. Higher drug arrest rates have caused prison overcrowding and early releases of violent prisoners putting them back on the street which causes more problems and amplifies costs for the public both in personal terms and in judicial expenses. Drug dealers have resorted to juvenile street dealers, who face less severe sentences. “The escalation of enforcement increases property crime, violent crime, and corruption and does not reduce drug abuse and may increase it” (Rasmussen & Benson, 1994). There are only so many policemen on the street and as the police focus on drugs escalates, the protection of property and crimes involving bodily harm is thinned. When police raid an area known for drug traffic, the dealers disperse into new neighborhoods spreading violent crime outside the inner city. Stronger enforcement leads to higher drug prices which, in turn, instigate the cyclical effect of more dealers, more enforcement and less protection for the public. “For example, Illinois maintained its property crime rate while escalating the war on drugs, but traffic control and safety suffered, and the state’s highway death rate rose 1,200 percent faster than the national rate … The Comprehensive Crime Act of 1984 allowed local police to get money and therefore higher budgets from confiscated property involved in drug investigations” (Rasmussen & Benson, 1994). Police corruption, or at least the perception of it, has been suspect since this law was enacted. Police departments that are low in funds can simply plant drugs in a person’s car, then seize the car to be sold for profit. The dealers and law enforcement make a profit at the expense of not only civil liberties but in higher taxation for more police and prison related expenses. “The introduction of crack cocaine was a result, not the cause, of the augmented drug war. Public opinion did not generate it. Only two percent of people polled said that drugs were the most important problem in 1985, but 38 percent called it their most important concern in 1989, just as the drug war was being moved to the political back burner. Simply put, the police and judicial bureaucracies benefit from the drug war while dispensing justificatory propaganda and performing inefficiently at the public’s expense” (Rasmussen & Benson, 1994). The evidence is overwhelming that needle exchange programs (NEPs) are affective in the prevention and transmission of viruses and do not encourage drug use. However, Congress has severely limited the use of funding for NEPs for more than a decade. At the outset, Congress believed that NEPs would promote and encourage drug abuse and that their implementation would only serve to send a message that the national government endorsed drug use by promoting the dispersal of clean needles. Although numerous studies have countered this way of thinking, Congress still refuses to support these programs. Fear and ignorance within the public sector have trumped scientific data, again. The department of Health and Human Services (HHS) does not require Congress approval for the implementation of NEPs as it has the legal authorization to establish such programs itself. HHS has in its possession the facts regarding the effectiveness of NEPs and knows well the consequence of not utilizing these programs is the further spreading of deadly viruses. However, outside philosophical and political concerns have taken precedence over science, logic and human compassion. In 1998, Secretary of HHS Donna Shalala testified that “based on extensive scientific research, needle exchange programs are an effective component of a comprehensive strategy to reduce HIV transmission and do not encourage the use of illegal drugs” (“Policy Facts”, 2001). Nevertheless, the prohibition of federal funding for NEPs remains in effect. The support for lifting the federal ban on NEPs is growing and includes many well recognized, influential and credible sources such as Surgeon General David Satcher, the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the National Conference of Mayors and the American Public Health Association. In addition, the American public overwhelmingly supports the concept of NEPs. A recent poll conducted by the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation showed that 71 percent of those surveyed indicate that they would support eliminating the ban of federal funding for NEPs. In addition, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll concluded that 66 percent of the American public supported NEPs (“Policy Facts”, 2001). Access to syringes continues to be a critical health concern. Another concern is the method by which IDUs normally obtain their syringes when alternatives such as NEPs or legal purchases from pharmacies are not possible. They must go through illegal, ‘black market’ sources such as drug or needle dealers, from friends, ‘drug dens’ or from diabetics. Syringes obtained from these sources may or may not have been used or be sterile. Used syringes may be repackaged and sold as new while being contaminated with infected blood. If a NEP is not available in a community, the legalization of syringes sold by pharmacies without a prescription would be of some help in alleviating the problem (Gleghorn et al, 1995). “Most states have legal restrictions on the sale and distribution of sterile syringes” (Gostin et al, 1997). Drug laws serve to boost the cost of the drugs and heighten their appeal in terms of bringing more and more young people into the business of dealing in drugs. These higher prices mean more competition for prime selling positions and violent means of enforcing these territories. This results in a greater need for enforcement of the moral laws that define these drugs as illegal, forcing taxpayers to pay more in taxes to support these law enforcement programs even while suffering from a significant lack in police protection regarding safety and property. Meanwhile, the enforcement offices are increasingly viewed as corrupt as the doors open to them for widespread corruption and profit. Shenk’s argument that abolishing these laws will positively affect society in a myriad of ways was as true in 1995 as it is today. However, lawmakers still subscribe to a conservative position that lacks merit and harms society. References “A Sane Drug Policy.” (October, 1999). The Progressive. V. 63, I. 10, p. 8. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from Boyum, David & Kleiman, Mark. (Summer 2003). “Breaking the Drug-Crime Link.” Public Interest. p. 19+. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from Bureau of Justice Statistics. (1992) Justice Expenditure and Employment, 1990. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from < http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cjee92.pdf> Cundiff, Kirby. (August, 1994). “Crime and the Drug War.” Claustropobia. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from < http://w3.ag.uiuc.edu:8001/Liberty/Tales/CrimeAndDrugWar.Html> Friedman, Milton. (1 November, 1991). “Economic Freedom, Human Freedom, Political Freedom.” CalState East Bay College of Business and Economics [speech]. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from Fu, Edward. “Should Drugs be Legalized?” Drug Policy News. (March 8, 2006). Drug Policy Alliance. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from Gleghorn AA, Jones TS, Doherty MC, Celentano DD, Vlahov D. (1995). “Acquisition and use of needles and syringes by injecting drug users in Baltimore, Maryland.” Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology. Vol. 10, pp. 97-103. Gostin LO, Lazzarini Z, Flaherty K, Jones TS. (1997). “Prevention of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne diseases among injection drug users: A national survey on the regulation of syringes and needles.” Journal of the American Medical Association. Vol. 277, I. 1, pp. 53-62. Harrison, Lana; Backenheimer, Michael & Inciardi, James. (1995). “Cannibis Use in the United States: Implications for Policy.” Cannabisbeleid in Duitsland, Frankrijk en de Verenigde Staten. Peter Cohen & Arjan Sas (Eds.) (1996). Amsterdam, Centrum voor Drugsonderzoek, Universiteit van Amsterdam. pp. 254-258. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from Inciardi, James & Saum, Christine. (Spring 1996). “Legalization Madness.” Public Interest. N. 123, p. 72+. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from Li, Sean. “Should Drugs be Legalized?” Drug Policy News. (March 8, 2006). Drug Policy Alliance. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from Maguire, Kathleen & Pastore, Ann (Eds.). 1994. Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1993. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, USGPO. Nadelmann, Ethan. “Should Some Illegal Drugs be Legalized?” Science and Technology. Vol. 6, 1990, pp. 43-46. “Policy Facts: Needle Exchange Facts.” (June 2001). The Body. Brochure by the Aids Action Council. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from Rasmussen, David & Benson, Bruce. (Fall, 1994). “The Economic Anatomy of a Drug War: Criminal Justice in the Commons.” The Independent Review. V. 1, N. 2. Full text article available January 6, 2007 from < http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=36&articleID=483> Shenk, Joshua Wolf. (October 1995). “Why You Can Hate Drugs and Still Want to Legalize Them.” The Washington Monthly. pp. 32-40. Read More