Prohibition and the inability to learn from past mistakes

I will start with saying I am against prohibition for non-utilitarian reasons. I believe you can do what you wish with your body, as long as you don’t harm someone. I also believe prohibition is among the most damaging and destructive government policies. Sadly most people do not share my views.

“I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.” - Robert Frost

I find it both tragic and hard to understand – how people are so capable of cognitive dissonance as to not be able to learn from history at all. I talked to a lot of people who were in complete agreement, usually while having a nice bourbon, that alcohol prohibition was a disastrous policy in the U.S, and the very next moment aggressively defend their preferred prohibition, drugs, gambling, alcohol or others. All this is despite the fact that prohibition never, ever worked. Not even with the threat of the death penalty.

On the surface of things, it is somewhat understandable when someone sees a social problem to want a solution. But prohibition is not that solution. Smuggling always takes place – coffee, butter, margarine, alcohol, drugs, all have been unsuccessfully banned throughout history. Whenever there will be people who want something, providers will appear, there is just too much money at stake. Whenever government prohibits so called vice, it simply creates a black market, which is more dangerous for all involved. The foundation of prohibition lies in moralists who want to shape the world to their views and profiteers from the status quo, Bootleggers and Baptists, as the saying goes.

Bootleggers and Baptists

But heroin is different they will say, based on zero reason and a combination of emotion and propaganda stuck in their heads all their lives. Not it is not is my answer. It is a substance people use to alter their bodily functions. People have been using them since Paleolithic cave man discovered certain plants. Hell animals get high when given the chance. You will never stop that. But heroin kills people!!! So does alcohol. Banning will not change that. And you can see it by the number of overdoses in countries with bans.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The parallels between alcohol and drugs are many when it comes to prohibition. When alcohol was banned the consumption moved from lighter, harder to smuggle beer and wine to harder but more compact whiskey and rum. In drugs, dealers make a lot of effort to push heroin rather than 'shrooms. During prohibition people died of bad bootleg alcohol, like people die of badly cut heroin. More people die of bad heroin then of heroin. Your dealer changes the dosage, you overdose. Your dealer gets arrested; you go to a new one which cuts differently, you overdose. You get a batch with some impurities that get to your blood, you die.

Cops and politicians became even more corrupt as bribes were flowing from the huge profits from traffic. Organized crime thrived and became more violent. Drug cartels, terrosrist, dictator got more power and spilled more blood. The jails filled.

Even more importantly people lost respect for the law. If the law said you can’t have a beer after work, screw the law. Just like now many law abiding people will smoke a joint or two and not consider themselves criminals.

Hell, governments cannot keep drugs out of jails, so even turning the entire country into a prison camp would not do the trick. The most that drug warriors can hope to accomplish is to impose costs on traffickers that are high enough to raise retail prices, thereby discouraging consumption. But history shows not even this happened, not with alcohol or with drugs. In fact the stronger the prohibition and penalties, the more risky it becomes and the more violent the dealers became, as they have more to lose from being caught.
So if we ask if government should ban drugs – from a rights point of view the answer is a definite no. If we ask if government can successfully ban drugs, the answer is again a resounding no. But the issues press on. At great cost in both human suffering and money.

“I don't think drugs are bad. I used to be a hippie. I think drugs are fun. Now I'm a conservative. I think fun is bad.” —P.J. O’Rourke

Moralists tend to blame all sorts of social problems on drugs and support the various government bans on various substances. Guns, drugs, sugar, trans-fats are bad, evil, at fault for society’s ills and human problems. This is blaming social problems on inanimate objects and advocating prohibition of said objects. And prohibition infringes individual rights to choice.

Supporters of bans also make the “feel safe” argument – e.g. I don’t want some drugged individual to attack me on the streets, but drug violence is mostly caused by prohibition and there is no clear evidence that a significant number of individuals on drugs become suddenly violent. And even in prohibition that guy will still be drugged and will still attack you if he is so inclined.

Prohibition keeps cost high enough that many addicts have problems maintaining a stash, but it does not make them quit, more often it makes them violent, increasing the risk to other people. The violence is not caused by drugs, as some may think, but by the absence of drugs for addicts.

Prohibition increases the stigma attached to drugs and makes it less likely for addicts to seek help. It makes both addicts and abused sex workers apprehensive about going to the police, risk being either arrest or worse if the cops are corrupt and in league with the criminals, which is often the case.

Irrespective of prohibition measures people still do drugs. Some say that making them illegal deters some, but this is hardly the case. People who are naturally inclined to risky behavior, like drugs, are willing to take the risk imposed by illegality. Illegality makes them even more attractive to some.

George Carlin: selling is legal, fucking is legal, why isn’t selling fucking legal

Same applies to prostitution and gambling. Overall it is often about personal choice. And although it can seem good to protect people from themselves, it simply does not work. And it takes up precious resources to keep consenting adults from doing what they want. The real crimes – sex slavery, forced prostitution, breaking fingers to collect debt - go on. Blanket bans achieve nothing, except put the actual victims at the mercy of criminals and black markets.

To summarize a long post, prohibition of vice is one of the most destructive current government policies, and it is hard to fight against due to massive propaganda by government and media. And the profits are huge – drugs, gambling and prostitution probably generate trillion dollar revenues. How much of the profit of organised crime comes from this? What is a stronger blow to the mob then legalizing these industries?

I could have made this post more data driven, but in my experience data does not sway people who feel they are right so usually I attempt an appeal to reason and morality. Because to keep doing what we are doing is crazy