End the Prohibition Era approach on drugs
Saturday, June 11, 2011 at 11:46AM 
I like Mary Anastasia O'Grady in the WSJ, because she is the rare prominent columnist who works the Western Hemisphere with such diligence. She's also unstinting in a lot of good ways, so when she writes approvingly of a recent blue-ribbon commission (George Shultz, Paul Volcker, Javier Solana, etc) issuing yet another call to end the war on drugs, I listen.
She talks about how John D. Rockefeller came out in 1932 and admitted that the whole conservative experiment had been a complete disaster, largely because it destroyed respect for the law. Rockefeller had been a huge supporter of Prohibition going in, committing resources.
What have we gotten with the drug war? Unbelievable incarceration rates, drugs still plentiful and easily accessed by those who want them (according to my HSer and college kid), and the militarization of our relationship with Latin America - opening the door to China.
We simply cannot secure a border when our own money constantly destabilizes it: we are fighting money with money, burning up resources in the process and punishing our neighbors unduly.
The madness needs to stop. Decriminalization isn't legalization. It just means you don't judicialize/criminalize all your tools.
Great piece.
Reader Comments (2)
Timely post on this topic, I'm halfway through a book "Toward Liquor Control" - a study of the failure of Prohibition and examination of the various options of how countries regulate alcohol paid for by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. published in 1933 as the country was leaving the Prohibition era. If you substitute "marijuana" for "spirits" or "alcohol" basically the same issues and arguments exist.
As I near my 60th birthday, I am still confounded by the binary "either/or" thinking of too many leaders, playing to the basest instincts of too many at the base, who are too uninformed. Yours is a consistently refreshing outlook -- meditative and facilitating, principled and particular, concurrently objective and subjective (holistic), and historically process-oriented. I am still engaged in your book, "Great Powers: America and the World After Bush", and am much impressed by your embrace of both Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian intents, aims, concerns, and considerations, as they relate to the development of a truly interdependent global future. In particular, the observation of construction being the opposite of war -- in the most profound sense -- has served as affirmation of my choices for action at this stage of my life.
The so-called "War on Drugs", along with other "wars" -- notably, terrorism -- are tactically unsound, as their strategic integrity is deeply flawed. Of course, this does not mean that what they intend to fight, for or against, is wrong, but it does point to one common element. In the course of global, civilized development, the needs of the many are the needs of the few; that is, when the least of us has a certain capacity to find personal significance, through access to our innate potentials, and can give it a place in the greater scheme (the greater good), hope soars and, along with it, faith. Thus, the root causes of desperation and devastation are eliminated, offering a self-determined and more positively purposeful alternative.
Thank you for your enlightened perspective.