John Alcorn on the problems caused by the war on drugs

See Prohibitions: Mind Drugs and Policy. John Alcorn is Principal Lecturer in Formal Organizations, Shelby Cullom Davis Endowment, Trinity College, Connecticut. Excerpts:

"Manolis Galenianos and Alessandro Gavazza report find that the War on Drugs has backfired:

“in the past 30 years the United States has markedly increased the enforcement and severity of its drug laws—the so-called ‘war on drugs’—which has resulted in the tripling of arrests for drug-related offenses. Interestingly, during the same period, drugs have become dramatically cheaper and purer. [… .] our analysis suggests that increasing penalties may have contributed to the observed increased purity and affordability of retail drugs in the United States.”"

Carlos Dobkin and Nancy Nicosia find that a targeted ‘surge’ in the War on Drugs, against the market for illicit methamphetamines, had ephemeral results:

“A government effort to reduce the supply of methamphetamine precursors successfully disrupted the methamphetamine market and interrupted a trajectory of increasing usage. The price of methamphetamine tripled and purity declined from 90% to 20%. Simultaneously, amphetamine-related hospital and methamphetamine-related treatment admissions dropped 50% and 35%, respectively. Methamphetamine use among arrestees declined 55%. Although felony methamphetamine arrests fell 50%, there is no evidence of substantial reductions in property or violent crime. The impact was largely temporary. The price returned to its original level within four months; purity, hospital admissions, treatment admissions, and arrests approached pre intervention levels within eighteen months.”

Michael Huemer makes a case that punitive paternalism against consumers of mind drugs and punishment of suppliers of mind drugs are violations of natural rights:

“it is not just that we are punishing people for no good reason. We are punishing people for exercising their natural rights. Individuals have a right to use drugs. [… .] no one should be permitted to drive or operate heavy machinery while under the influence of drugs that impair their ability to do those things; nor should pregnant mothers be permitted to ingest drugs, if it can be proven that those drugs cause substantial risks to their babies [… .] But, in the great majority of cases, drug use does not harm anyone in […] ways that we normally take to merit criminal penalties—and should not be outlawed. [… .] The harm of being unjustly imprisoned is qualitatively comparable (though it usually ends sooner) to the harm of being enslaved. […] scapegoating and stereotyping of drug users and sellers […] is comparable to the racial prejudices of previous generations.”

Some moral philosophers worry that mind drugs and self-medication can become vice. Baruch Spinoza, although hardly a conformist, shares the worry about vice; but argues that prohibitions of vice tend to backfire:

“He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated—vices as they are—because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.” (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
Michael Huemer makes a case that punitive paternalism against consumers of mind drugs and punishment of suppliers of mind drugs are violations of natural rights:

“it is not just that we are punishing people for no good reason. We are punishing people for exercising their natural rights. Individuals have a right to use drugs. [… .] no one should be permitted to drive or operate heavy machinery while under the influence of drugs that impair their ability to do those things; nor should pregnant mothers be permitted to ingest drugs, if it can be proven that those drugs cause substantial risks to their babies [… .] But, in the great majority of cases, drug use does not harm anyone in […] ways that we normally take to merit criminal penalties—and should not be outlawed. [… .] The harm of being unjustly imprisoned is qualitatively comparable (though it usually ends sooner) to the harm of being enslaved. […] scapegoating and stereotyping of drug users and sellers […] is comparable to the racial prejudices of previous generations.”"

"Some moral philosophers worry that mind drugs and self-medication can become vice. Baruch Spinoza, although hardly a conformist, shares the worry about vice; but argues that prohibitions of vice tend to backfire:

“He who seeks to regulate everything by law is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what cannot be abolished, even though it be in itself harmful. How many evils spring from luxury, envy, avarice, drunkenness and the like, yet these are tolerated—vices as they are—because they cannot be prevented by legal enactments.” (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus [1670] Ch. xx, pp. 338-339)"

"Jessica Flanigan reports that regulations can backfire. For example, prescription can induce imprudent consumption:

“People think that if we didn’t have prescription requirements, people would accidentally overdose all the time. There’s some evidence from the 70’s that middle income countries in Europe that didn’t enforce prescription requirements actually had lower rates of accidental poisoning. People made riskier choices if they thought that their self-medication choices were authorized by a physician.” (p. 8)"

"Moreover, William Evans, Ethan Lieber, and Patrick Power report that the reformulation of OxyContin—a change designed to reduce abuse and illicit diversion—backfired by increasing heroin use:

“We attribute the recent quadrupling of heroin death rates to the August 2010 reformulation of an oft-abused prescription opioid, OxyContin. The new abuse-deterrent formulation led many consumers to substitute to an inexpensive alternative, heroin. Using structural break techniques and variation in substitution risk, we find that opioid consumption stops rising in August 2010, heroin deaths begin climbing the following month, and growth in heroin deaths was greater in areas with greater pre-reformulation access to heroin and opioids. The reformulation did not generate a reduction in combined heroin and opioid mortality: each prevented opioid death was replaced with a heroin death.”"

Gary Becker, Kevin Murphy, and Michael Grossman analyze a different approach to public policy about mind drugs: legalization with taxation, rather than complex regulation. Their model assumes—reasonably, I think—that ‘problem use’ of mind drugs under prohibition involves inelastic demand.  (Heavy users are addicts.)  Legalization with taxation is then superior to prohibition:

“a monetary tax could cause a greater reduction in output and increase in price than optimal enforcement against the same good would if it were illegal, even though some producers may go underground to avoid a monetary tax. When enforcement is costly, excise taxes and quantity restrictions are not equivalent. [… .] This means, in particular, that fighting a war on drugs by legalizing drug use and taxing consumption may be more effective in reducing consumption than continuing to prohibit the legal use of drugs. [… .] When demand is inelastic, quantity reductions through enforcement against illegal producers are very costly and can be disastrous. [… .] Suppliers who avoid detection make huge profits, which provides them with resources to corrupt officials and gives them incentives even to kill law enforcement officers and competitors.” (pp. 38, 40, & 60)"