The War On Drugs Is Far More Immoral Than Most Drug Use

[Canadense]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/04/the-war-on-drugs-is-far-more-immoral-than-most-drug-use/274651/#.UV1QoAF-zxU

The War on Drugs Is Far More Immoral Than Most
Drug Use

A prohibitionist says libertarians dismiss moral considerations
when they call for legalization. The truth is quite the opposite.

Reuters

In the Washington Post, Peter Wehner advises
the Republican Party to reassert itself as the anti-drug-legalization
party. "One of the main deterrents to drug use is because it is illegal.
If drugs become legal, their price will go down and use will go up," he
writes. "And marijuana is far more potent than in the past. Studies
have shown that adolescents and young adults who are heavy users of
marijuana suffer from disrupted brain development and cognitive
processing problems." Of course, no one is advocating that adolescent
marijuana be made legal. And does Wehner understand that prohibition
creates a powerful incentive for upping drug potency?

But rather than focus on mistaken arguments common to drug prohibitionists, I want
to address a relatively novel claim: "Many people cite the 'costs' of
and 'socioeconomic factors' behind drug use; rarely do people say that
drug use is wrong because it is morally problematic, because of what it
can do to mind and soul," Wehner writes. "In some liberal and
libertarian circles, the 'language of morality' is ridiculed. It is
considered unenlightened, benighted and simplistic. The role of the
state is to maximize individual liberty and be indifferent to human
character."

So take a look at the guy in the photo and make your choice: Is it more
moral to let him smoke, or to forcibly cage him with thieves, rapists,
and murderers?

What he doesn't seem to understand is that many advocates of individual liberty, myself
included, regard liberty itself as a moral imperative. I don't
want to ridicule the "language of morality." I want to state, as
forcefully as possible, that the War on Drugs is deeply, irredeemably
immoral; that it corrodes the minds and souls of those who prosecute it,
and creates incentives for bad behavior that those living under its
contours have always and will always find too powerful to resist. Drug
warriors may disagree, but they should not pretend that they are the
only ones making moral claims, and that their opponents are indifferent
to morality. Reformers are often morally outraged by prohibitionist
policies and worry that nannying degrades the character of citizens.

Perhaps I should be more specific.

See the man in the photo at the top of
this article? It isn't immoral for him to light a plant on fire, inhale
the smoke, and enjoy a mild high for a short time, presuming he doesn't
drive while high. But it would be immoral to react to his
plant-smoking by sending men with guns to forcibly arrest him, convict
him in a court, and lock him up for months or even years for a
victimless crime. That's the choice, dear reader. So take a look at the
guy in the photo and make your choice: Is it more moral to let him
smoke, or to forcibly cage him with thieves, rapists, and murderers?

Myown moral judgments don't stop there.

Denying marijuana to sick
people whose suffering it would ease is immoral.

When aparamilitary police squad raids a family home, battering down doors
without knocking, exploding flash grenades, shooting family pets, and
handcuffing children, all to recover a small number of marijuana plants,
the officers or the people who ordered them there are acting immorally.

When the United States reacts to the insatiable demand for
drugs by American citizens by pursuing prohibitionist policies abroad
that destabilize multiple foreign countries, it acts immorally.

Whenprosecutors coerce nonviolent drug offenders to risk their lives as
police informants under threat of draconian prison sentences, they act
immorally.

The dearth of empathy for nonviolent drug offenders serving years or even decades in prison is a moral
failure.

Because we have shifted the costs of drug abuse away
from the Americans who freely chose or would choose to use drugs and
toward society as a whole, imposing more costs on people who never chose
to use drugs but suffer from many harms of the black market, we have
achieved a morally dubious redistribution.

What about character?

When leaders like Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama support
policies that incarcerate young people for behavior that they
themselves engaged in without any apparent harm to themselves, their
futures, or anyone else, it is they who exhibit character
failures.

Of course, there are drug abusers who exhibit character
failures too. And when those failures affect other people, when they
steal or behave violently or recklessly, they ought to be punished. Law
enforcement could focus on catching them, and society could do far more
to rehabilitate addicts, if so much wealth wasn't squandered on an
obviously hopeless War on Drugs. Like a lot of people who favor ending
it, I believe a reformed policy would be a lot more moral.

[ntfsmount]

because of what it
can do to mind and soul

a cada materia que eu vejo eu me lembro de ja ter pensado isso sobre a guerra contra as drogas, é proibida só por que ´diziam´ fazer mal pra cabeca.

minha ideia seria de um dia todos os criadores desse absurdo de proibicao serem presos, tipo os olhos do mundo serem abertos, tamanha a quantidade de pessoas mortas depois da proibicao.

[mmonteiro]

"falso moralismo" é um pleonasmo

[dreadlocos]

Learning english...better late than never