Seventy-five years ago this month, America’s leaders had the good sense to end alcohol prohibition.
From 1920 to 1933, the drug known as alcohol was outlawed, and Americans were prohibited from manufacturing, transporting or selling that particular drug.
And when our leaders repealed that prohibition, they did it for reasons that, with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, are sadly obvious: Prohibition led to an unprecedented murder rate, as the drug dealers of that day settled turf battles the only way they could – out of court and in the streets. Prohibition yielded massive corruption throughout the judicial system; it yielded unregulated “bathtub gin,” which blinded and killed; it prevented police from dealing with rape and child abuse and it funded and armed a growing class of ruthless, glamorized thugs.
What Prohibition didn’t do, naturally, was stop folks from drinking.
In addition to the problems listed above, we also ended that futile “war on a drug” because we couldn’t afford its escalating costs during the Great Depression. Today, we face an economic crisis saddled with a far more expensive and dangerous, though equally futile, prohibition. We have come far and learned little.
The prohibition on drugs (cleverly declared as a “war” by President Nixon in 1970) has failed to meet a single one of its stated goals. After four decades and a trillion tax dollars; after 39 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses; after quadrupling our prison population to 2.4 million, drugs are now cheaper, more widely used and more potent than they were at the beginning of this futile effort. Most ominously, it is now easier for children to buy illegal drugs than it is to buy beer or cigarettes. Prohibition hasn’t prevented youthful drug use. It just provides the material incentive for some to hook others, typically using vulnerable children as “mules.”
Of course, the domestic murder rate has skyrocketed, as it did under similar circumstances in the Roaring 20s. But today, drug profits also fund international terrorists like the Taliban, al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
Cops know that when we arrest a rapist, the number of rapes in our community decrease, but when we arrest any level of drug dealer, we just create a job opportunity — quickly filled.
Baltimore is a prime example of what is wrong with the “war on drugs.” This uncontrolled criminal enterprise is responsible for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of young people in our communities over the past few decades. Innocent bystanders and children have been caught in the crossfire. Robbery victims of desperate addicts who are in debt to the mob have suffered needlessly. Good cops, my friends, have died fighting this ineffective, deceptive war.
Instead of being demonized, these dangerous drugs need to be legalized so we can take control away from the sales-hungry street dealers and international cartels that control them. These parasitic creations of prohibition will dry up only when we end prohibition.
Of course today’s illegal drugs are dangerous. That is why we need to set up a system of controlled regulation similar to what we did with alcohol.
The more dangerous the drug, the more important it is to legalize it, because nothing can be regulated and controlled when it is illegal. Nothing.
A recent Zogby poll showed that three out of four Americans now say the “war on drugs” is a failure, and so do the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators and 67 percent of police chiefs. When the new president and Congress determine our economic options, they should take a true accounting of our failed and expensive “drug war” before they think about cutting any essential public services.
Future generations will look back at our current situation and wonder why it took us so long to wake up to the dangerous folly of prohibition.
We woke up before. We can do it again.
Neill Franklin is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (www.leap.cc). He has been in police work since age 18 and has served as head of training for the Maryland State Police and as a commander for the Bureau of Drug and Criminal Enforcement. After retiring from MSP, he was recruited by the Baltimore Police commissioner to help reconstruct and command its Education and Training Section.
