The War on Drugs: A Critical Analysis

A) Introduction
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims maybe the
most oppressive… those who torment us for our own good will torment us
without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis
Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident,
lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered
in which they hold to be motivated by high ideals towards virtuous ends.
Isabel Paterson
“This is not a war on drugs; this is a war on people-our people…”
Jack Cole Retired undercover Narcotics
officer (& founder of LEAP)
"Whether drugs lead to illumination or degradation depends on the spirit in
which one takes them."
George
Andrews
"A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes
when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an @%
$^."
Frank
Zappa
"I’ve never had a problem with drugs. I’ve had a problem with police."
Keith
Richards

"Casual drug users should be taken out and shot."

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 Daryl Gates Former
Los Angeles Chief of Police

"Drug misuse is not a disease; it is a decision, like the decision to step out in
front of a moving car. You would not call that a disease but an error in
judgment."
Phillip K.
Dick

"Vices are their own punishment."

Aesop

"Cocaine habit forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I’ve been using it for
years."
Tallulah
Bankhead

"Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana
never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research,
and does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if you take every reefer
madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition
has done far more harm than marijuana ever could."
P. J.
O’Rourke

"You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother."

Harry J. Anslinger Early
Drug Warrior

B) The Pros & Cons of Recreational Drug Use

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Recreational drug use (depending on the specific drug, dosage, etc.) has
been associated with impaired cognitive processes, altered perception,
impaired memory, poor judgment, impaired motor control, and reduced
reaction times. Likewise, it has been sometimes related to impulsive,
reckless, irresponsible, antisocial, or violent behavioral tendencies. Many
drugs are psychologically habit-forming or physically addictive. And many
are potentially toxic or have serious side effects. Not surprisingly, drug use,
abuse, and addiction have been found to be associated with a wide range of
social problem including:
• Premature death.
• Assorted serious or chronic health problems (including overdoses).
• Assorted serious or chronic mental health problems (including
depression, suicide attempts, increased risk of mental illness, etc.).
• Increased accidents and related deaths, injuries, and damage, etc.
• Linkages to crime, violence, victimization, etc. (According to the 2004
survey of inmates in state and federal correctional facilities, about 1/4 of
those incarcerated for violent crime and about 40% of those imprisoned for
property crime acted while high on drugs. Only about 17% reported
committing crime to obtain drug money.).
• Assorted family-related problems (i.e. divorce, spousal abuse, child abuse
or neglect, etc.)
• Increased risks of unwanted pregnancy, STD infections, etc. (especially
among younger users).
• Assorted educational problems (i.e. dropouts, poor grades, etc.).
• Assorted work-related problems (i.e. unemployment, missed work, lost
productivity, etc.).
• Increasing homelessness, vagrancy, and related problems.
• Increased risk of poverty, increased welfare expenses, etc.
• Community breakdown or collapse.

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While (illegal) drugs use clearly results in harm to many individuals,
communities, and the larger society, there are reasons to believe that
prohibitionists tend to exaggerate the causal linkage between illegal drug
use per se and various “drug-related” social problems, or over-hype the
social harms caused by illegal usage:
Self-selection & spuriousness; Just because illegal drug use and some social
problems are correlated doesn’t prove mean it causes them…this is
especially important here because illegal drug use involves strong, self-
selection.
Drug use itself may be caused by other social problems. For instance, people
with mental health problems sometimes use illegal drugs to self-medicate.
More generally, troubled people or troublemakers may actively seek out
drugs. Never forget illegal drug use involves self-selection.
Many problems “associated” with illegal drug use may be caused by
prohibition itself. We need to be careful in sorting out the bad effects of drug
use versus those of drug prohibition.
The causal chain involving drug use, intoxication, bad behavior, and actual
harm is very complex and involves numerous variables. It is often unclear
what (if any) causal roles drugs played in particular cases. Just because
someone tests positive for drugs following an arrest or a traffic accident
doesn’t always mean they were stoned at the time. Likewise, just because
drugs are mentioned in an emergency room report doesn’t mean that drugs
caused the health problem. Identifying which cases actually result from drug
use is tricky, and common methods for classifying such cases often appear
to give inflated estimates.
A minority of drug users (especially heavy users, chronic abusers, and
addicts) appears to badly skew the statistical relationships between drugs
and other problems. These statistical outliers give the false impression that
just using illegal drugs strongly predisposes users to harm themselves or
others when, in fact, most users are at moderately low risk of doing so.

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Drug-related “negative externalities” imposed widely on the general public
may be much lower than commonly assumed. With the exception of
predatory crime, most of the social costs of illegal drug use appear to be
borne primarily by drug users and those closely associated with them
(especially family and friends). Random strangers are typically at much
lower risk of harm. This is clearly so for things like drug overdoses (although
some costs are imposed on taxpayers). Of course, innocent strangers are
hurt or killed by reckless drug users. But even in the worst cases – like drunk
driving – innocent strangers are not the most likely victims. In 2006, 80% of
auto-related fatalities involving alcohol impairment were the drunk drivers
themselves, their passengers, and/or and drunk pedestrians. (Similar points
can be made regarding victims of alcohol-related violence). While we know
somewhat less about the negative externalities associated with illegal drugs,
it seems quite likely that the same general point applies.
Prohibition-driven alarmism badly exaggerates and sensationalizes the
negative consequences of illegal drug use. False or misleading antidrug
stories and statistics are all too common. All this is further reinforced by our
tendency to fixate on the negative consequences of drug use while ignoring
any positive ones. Just mentioning the possibility that some people might
actually benefit from their drug use or use drugs for good reasons is
extremely controversial.
While drug use, abuse, and addiction clearly cause or contribute to some
very real (and sometimes extremely serious) problems, there are some good
reasons to be skeptical about extreme claims attributing massive social
harm to illegal drug use.
Our public debates over recreational drugs often focus almost exclusively on
drug-related social harm while ignoring the fact that drugs often produce
some offsetting benefits.
Alcohol offers an excellent example. We know that alcohol causes very
serious social problems. According to a recent World Health Organization
study (2011), drinking accounts for almost 4% of all deaths worldwide killing

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more people than AIDS, TB or violence. The WHO study estimates that about
2.5 million people around the world die every year from alcohol-related
causes. In some countries, the death toll is shockingly high. In Russia and
the Commonwealth of Independent States about 20% of deaths are
attributed to alcohol. The study estimates that about 11% of drinkers
engage in bouts of heavy drinking weekly. Most (about 80%) of these
problem drinkers are male. As a result, alcohol poses the greatest single risk
factor for death for males between the ages of 15 and 59.
But these (admittedly horrifying) statistics are only part of the total picture.
According to 2011 Dietary Guidelines published by the US Department of
Agriculture, “Alcohol consumption may have beneficial effects when
consumed in moderation (up to three drinks daily). Strong evidence from
observational studies has shown that moderate alcohol consumption is
associated with a lowered risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as reduced
risk in all causes of mortality among middle-aged and older adults, and may
help to keep cognitive function intact with age.”
Although it is well established that moderate drinkers significantly outlive
nondrinkers, some critics argue that drinking itself provides little to no real
health benefits. Some argue that drinkers live longer because those who are
in worse health tend to stop drinking. Others argue that moderate drinkers
have healthier lifestyles than non-drinkers.
These criticisms don’t hold up too well under close examination.
First, some of the health benefits of alcohol have well understood biological
causes (like why the blood thinning properties of alcohol reduce risks
associated with heart attacks).
Secondly, the health benefits of moderate drinking persist even after
controlling for a wide range of other risk factors (relating to differential
mortality) including smoking, diet, weight, exercise, and a variety of health
problems.
Finally it turns out that even heavy drinkers outlive non-drinkers on average!
Holahan and associates (2010) followed over 1800 subjects over a period of

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20 years. During this period, 69% of nondrinkers died, but only 60% of
heavy drinkers died. Moderate drinkers had the lowest mortality rates (with
only 41% dying).
It appears that heavy drinkers tend to moderate their drinking over time. A
longitudinal study by Delucchi and Kaskutos (2010) followed a sample of
alcohol-dependent problem drinkers (who had initially not been in treatment
for at least one year). Eleven years later, males in the study had reduced
their alcohol intake by 51%. Women reduced their consumption by even
more (57%). Even so, both male and female subjects were “still drinking far
more than the average adult drinker. Most heavy drinkers maintain a steady
level of heavy alcohol consumption over time,” says Dr. Delucchi. He added,
“it’s pretty toxic, but somehow they manage to keep drinking at a fairly
sustained level. Our people were functional, for the most part. They had
addresses, a lot of them had insurance at baseline, and they’re not at the
‘bottom of the barrel’—which is interesting.” Evidently, a lot of heavy
drinkers manage to muddle on in spite of their drinking.
As far as the criticism that drinkers just have healthier lifestyles, this may be
true. But observe that this implies that moderate drinking is highly
compatible with healthier lifestyles, and that whatever ill effects are
associated with such drinking are fairly small.
It should be stressed that moderate drinking is associated with a wide range
of other positive outcomes:
a) Higher Incomes—Peters and Stringham (2006) found that drinkers earn
more at their jobs compared to non-drinkers. While women drinkers gain
more income (14%) than male drinkers (10%), men who go to bars monthly
receive even bigger boosts (another 7%) but women do not. Stringham
explains that, “social drinking builds social capital…social drinkers are
networking, building relationships, and adding contacts to their Blackberries
that result in bigger paychecks.”

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b) More Active Social Lives—Research shows that moderate drinkers tend to
be social drinkers. They tend to have more friends and engage in more
social activities compared to non-drinkers.
c) More Education—Moderate drinkers are also more likely to have
undergraduate, graduate, or professional degrees. This might be due to
heavy exposure to alcohol on campus. On the other hand, there is evidence
that childhood intelligence correlates positively with later frequency of
alcohol consumption. This relationship holds up even after controlling for
numerous other variables that might influence adult drinking.
d) More Exercise—Believe it or not, it appears that drinkers exercise more
than non-drinkers. Survey research indicates that the more people drink, the
more they exercise (with heavy drinkers exercising the most). (It might be
that greater exercise causes more drinking).
e) Less Depression—While there is a strong positive relationship between
alcoholism and depression, it appears that most drinkers may be at less risk
of depression when compared to non-drinkers. Skogen and his associates
(2009) surveyed more than 38,000 in Norway. They found that the heaviest
drinkers reported the most anxieties. But for depression, even the heavy
drinkers reported significantly less than non-drinkers. A note of caution is in
order here. Non-drinkers in this study were more likely to have health
problems…which might help explain both why they abstained from alcohol
and why they were at a greater risk for depression. Also, some abstainers
were former alcoholics. While these points offer some support to those who
take a skeptical position on the benefits of alcohol consumption, drinking still
appears to have decreased depression for most subjects.
Such results suggest a number of possible (indirect) ways that alcohol
consumption might improve health or extend life (beyond the purely
biological effects of alcohol). Critics may be right that the lifestyles of
drinkers matter. But it is not clear that drinkers would make the same
lifestyle choices if they did not drink.

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In any case, the logical conclusion is that moderate drinking itself produces
numerous important benefits, or (at the very least) is quite compatible with
healthy and happy lifestyles. To a much lesser degree, even heavy drinking
(but not hardcore alcoholism) confers some benefits (along with some
obvious problems or costs). While there are undoubtedly good reasons for
heavier drinkers to abstain, abstinence doesn’t guarantee improved well
being.
While we’ve focused on alcohol here, a few more general points need to be
made:
1) Some illicit drugs appear to offer real benefits to their users. ‘Special K’
(i.e. ketamine) offers rapid relief from depression and bipolar disorder.
Numerous claims have been made about possible medicinal uses for
marijuana (although such claims remain heavily distributed and
controversial). Conceivably, such benefits (if real) might confer advantages
upon recreational users (just like recreational drinking does). Of course, it is
quite possible that many illicit drugs offer few real benefits or whatever
benefits they do offer are dwarfed by the harm they cause.
2) We know a lot less about the possible benefits of most illicit drugs than we
do about alcohol. Several factors contribute to our ignorance including
relatively small populations of long-term casual users, uncooperative
subjects (due in part to the illegal status of their drugs), and lack of
institutional support for such research. By contrast, research focusing on
drug-related harms is well funded.
3) The possible benefits of drug use extend well beyond the more tangible
ones like increased longevity. For example, social drinking plays important
social functions (like promoting social bonding and increasing group
cohesion) at colleges, in the military, in some corporations, etc. The same
point may apply to many illicit drugs, too.
4) Rational drug policies should consider both the social costs and benefits
associated with particular drugs. Even if a drug causes very serious harm,
this does not necessarily mean that the drug should be criminalized. We

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shouldn’t fixate just on the social costs. Instead we need to focus on the net
social costs.
5) The relative costs and benefits of recreational drug use depend heavily on
how the drugs are used. For example, hardcore alcoholics who chronically
drive drunk produce very different outcomes than law-abiding wine tasters.
Whenever possible, we should focus prohibition efforts (or regulatory efforts
if drugs are legalized) on drug abusers (who create lots of problems for
themselves and others) and much less on moderate users. This is especially
so if most moderate users clearly benefit in important ways from their drug
use. This is why using policy metrics like the raw number of illegal drug
users is so irrational. Policies that attempt to minimize the number of illegal
drug consumers and expend large amounts of resources busting casual users
are not only extremely inefficient (in terms of reducing drug-related social
damages) and unjust (in terms of punishing many people who are neither
harming themselves or others); such policies may be repressing people’s
efforts to improve their lives. We need to remember that prohibition is not
an end in itself. Rather it is a means to an end (i.e., to promote the general
welfare of the public). If some drugs really offer significant benefits when
used (in moderation), this imposes tradeoffs upon us whether we like it or
not. Just because a drug offers great benefits to some people, doesn’t
necessarily imply that it should be legalized. But it strongly suggests that we
should seriously consider alternatives to its prohibition. And it raises the
possibility that it might be wise to tolerate some drug abuse by a minority of
users so that a majority of moderate users could prosper.
C) Prohibition Regimes, Goals, & Strategies
1) Prohibition Regimes, Goals, & Strategies
[Under Construction]
I. Prohibition Regimes
a. Legalization
b. Decriminalization
c. Criminalization

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II. Prohibition Goals
a. Raising the costs or risks of illegal drug activities
b. Reducing drug accessibility/interrupting supply
c. Raising illegal drug prices
d. Stigmatizing drugs and drug users
e. Disrupting or destroying illegal drug organizations (and their
finances/resources)
III. (Criminalized) Prohibitionist Strategies
a. Deterrence and incarceration
b. Drug seizures and eradication
c. Drug interdiction/anti-drug foreign aid
d. Regulating and restricting drug ingredients, paraphernalia, etc.
e. Asset seizures, seizure of “drug money,” etc.
f. Coercive drug treatment (or other harm reduction methods)
g. Public (anti-drug) education
h. Drug Testing Programs

2) Criminalized Prohibition in the U.S.

• Compared to most industrialized countries, U.S. prohibition policies are very
punitive. Domestic law enforcement dominates antidrug spending.
• Since 1980, the number of drug-related arrests in the U.S. has increased
dramatically.
• Since the early 1990s, there has been a clear increase in arrests for drug
possession (but much less so for sales or manufacturing). Today, a sizeable
majority of drug-related arrests are for possession. This growth in arrests involves
an increasing number of marijuana arrests (often for possession of fairly small
amounts of pot). The typical arrestee for marijuana is younger than 30. From 1990-
2002, marijuana arrests rose 113% while arrests for other illicit drugs rose only
10%.
• Most drug arrests occur after someone is randomly stopped by the police and
patted down, stopped at various sites (i.e. D.U.I. checkpoints, airport security
checks, etc.), searched after a traffic infraction/accident, or after an arrest for some
non drug crime. Only a small fraction of drug arrests arise from active drug
investigations, drug stings, undercover operations, etc.

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• Since 1980, prison and jail populations in the U.S. have skyrocketed. While
other factors are involved, one of the driving forces behind this increase has been
the “War on Drugs.” There have been very large increases in drug-related
incarcerations at the State and local levels. Currently, about 1 in 100 Americans are
incarcerated, on parole, or on probation. About 1 in 36 Americans are either
incarcerated on parole, or on prohibition.
• The U.S. leads the world in both total prisoners incarcerated and incarceration
rates per capita by wide margins. For instance, U.S. incarceration rates are vastly
higher than other modern industrialized countries.
• The “War on Drugs” is very expensive. According to a recent AP news article by
Martha Mendoza, over the past 40 years the “War on Drugs” has cost about $1
trillion. When President Nixon first declared the Drug War, he budgeted $100
million. By 2010, we are spending over 15 billion per year. This is about 31 times
as much (after adjusting for inflation). The 2010 budget will spend about #10
billion on antidrug law enforcement and interdiction (a record amount in terms of
raw spending).
• The “War on Drugs” has had a disproportionate impact on African Americans
(and more recently upon Hispanics) in terms of far higher rates of drug arrests and
incarcerations compared to whites. In 2002, blacks were admitted to state prisons
for drug-related crimes at about 10 times the rate of whites—even though survey
research indicates that blacks and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate.
• Criminalized drug prohibition has also resulted in rising numbers of women
being incarcerated (especially for African Americans and Hispanics).
• These comments on drug-related incarceration require a few qualifications.
First, most of those incarcerated for “drug-related” offenses were often convicted of
other (sometimes serious) crimes. Or were convicted of drug distribution crimes.
(Rand Corporation’s Jonathan Caulkins estimates that at least 85% of those in jail
for drug law violations were involved in illegal drug distribution. Others estimate
much lower percentages.) Or had preexisting criminal records. Or were violating
probation conditions from past crimes. Second, far more people are arrested for
drug offenses than are actually incarcerated.
• Anti-drug penalties in the U.S. often include “collateral sanctions” (beyond fines
or incarceration). For example, students convicted on even misdemeanor

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marijuana possession charges can lose federal aid, grants, or become ineligible for
work study programs. [The same is not true, however, for those convicted of
serious violent crimes like murder, rape, or robbery!] A federal felony conviction for
(say) growing a marijuana plant could result in being banned from adoption/foster
parenting, suspension of one’s driver’s license, denial of federal housing assistance,
loss or suspensions of professional licenses (for practicing law, teaching,
professional transportation driving, etc.) and (in a few states) loss of voting
privileges.
• The “War on Drugs” has vastly expanded state police powers (i.e. more
searches, property seizures, etc.). At the same time, the scope of prohibition has
increased well beyond laws against drug possession, sales, or manufacturing to
include criminalizing or regulating an ever broadening range of loosely associated
activities or items (i.e. restricting drug making ingredients, drug paraphernalia laws,
broad laws used against “drug money”, etc.). And it has contributed heavily to the
militarization of the police, the use of “no-knock warrants,” and the use of highly
aggressive tactics employed in everyday searches or arrests (sometimes resulting
in tragic results). On a typical day, about 100-150 drug raids are estimated to
occur. Most appear to either result in only misdemeanor charges or no charges at
all. Innocent citizens are sometimes terrorized (or worse) by SWAT squads busting
down the wrong door. Because no standardized records are kept on drug raids, we
don't know how often such cases occur. But numerous such cases have been
reported in the news media (including needless shooting of police, innocent citizens,
and countless family dogs).
• Despite highly criminalized drug laws and large rates of drug-related
incarceration, studies continue to show that the U.S. has relatively high rates of
illegal drug-use compared to most other industrialized countries. One recent study
(published online at Plos Medicine) based on WHO data found the U.S. had the
highest per capita rate of illegal drug use among 17 nations studied. For some hard
drugs (like cocaine), U.S. drug use dwarfed other nations. [Of course, this one study
doesn’t prove that American Drug policies are responsible for high rates of illegal
drug use. And like many such international drug studies, there are complex
methodological issues in comparing drug use accurately across countries.]

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 • Still, drug prohibition in the U.S. can claim some notable successes in
the “War on Drugs”. Illegal drug use among the young has been
greatly reduced over the past few decades. In 1979, almost 50% of
high school seniors reported using illicit drugs. By 2008 this fell to as
low as 22.3% by some estimates. Even greater strides have been
made in reducing illegal drug use in the military. And, at various times,
antidrug law enforcement has succeeded in reducing the use of
particular (often very dangerous) drugs like heroin, crack, meth, etc. A
very recent example is a 12% decline in positive workplace drug tests
for cocaine reported by the DEA. In a few cases, busting a large scale
drug distributor or producers has disrupted illegal markets (for drugs
like heroin, LSD, and ecstasy) for extended periods – even for years.

Illegal Drugs & Nondrug Crime

Drug prohibition is often justified as an anticrime strategy since illegal drugs (like
PCP and meth) are associated with violence. Those arrested for serious crimes
often test positive for drugs and/or alcohol (70% or more in some studies).
Surveys of criminal populations indicate widespread drug use among those with
records of nondrug crimes. Sizable portions of inmates acknowledge having been
intoxicated during the crime for which they were later incarcerated. For example,
a 1998 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found that many male convicts admit
having been intoxicated (29%)) during their crime. As for specific offenses, 26.8%
of murders, 39.9% of assaults, and 36.6% of property crimes committed by male
(Federal and State prison) inmates occurred when they were intoxicated. The
figures for female inmates were somewhat lower. Finally, we know that illegal
drug addicts commit many predatory crimes to support their drug habits.
Upon closer inspection, however, the link between illegal drug use and crime is
very complex. The same can be said for how prohibition affects crime. In fact,
there is a growing body of research which suggests that prohibition actually drives
up nondrug crime rates.

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The rapid escalation in the war on drugs involves tradeoffs in terms of law
enforcement resources. Investing more resources into fighting illegal drugs means
less are being used for more traditional law enforcement efforts against nondrug
crimes. This weakens deterrence against such crimes. To quote Bruce Benson
(2009), “the tradeoff hypothesis for police resources (has been) tested in a
substantial number of empirical studies using different data sets, different data
periods, and different empirical techniques. Support for the hypothesis that drug
enforcement causes (more) property crime is robust across these studies. It
appears that drug enforcement causes (more) violent crime. Finally, a recent
study suggests that the use of scarce prison space to punish drug offenders also
may lead to more (nondrug) crime.”
What about the localized impact of drug enforcement? Sherman and associates
(2009) report on a police experiment in Kansas City, MO. During the early 1990’s
some randomly selected blocks were targeted for drug raids while others were not.
After comparing areas there was only a very modest (about 8%) reduction in
crimes reported to the police in areas where drug raids occurred. The number of
drug arrests in an area had no effect. And these localized crime reductions quickly
decayed over time (typically disappearing in 1 or 2 weeks). Other studies indicate
that more drug arrests may actually lead to later increases in crime in the same
local areas. For instance, Shepard and Blackley (2005) analyzed data from 62
counties in New York state form 1996 – 2000, and found no support for the claim
that drug arrest decreases local crime arrests. Instead, higher per capita drug
arrests (and arrests for hard drugs) were associated with later increased levels of
all types of crime (except assault). They concluded that drug arrests had diverted
police efforts and resources away from deterring other types of crime.
Another critical factor is that illegal drugs are strongly associated with black
market violence. Because drugs are illegal, this creates incentives for turf wars,
gang conflict, etc. Violence becomes profitable. It is used to monopolize illegal
drug sales in specific areas, control graft within criminal gangs, and to silence
suspected snitches. Lower level drug dealers and users are themselves frequently
victims of predatory crime. Disputes on drugs and money (or interpersonal

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conflicts involving people under the influence of drugs) can, easily escalate into
violence in such a volatile environment.
A recent report (2010) issued by the Urban Health Research Initiative (a HIV
research group in Canada) surveyed English language studies on the relationship
between antidrug law enforcement and violence. Thirteen of fifteen studies (87%)
found that increased law enforcement against drugs increased violence. Police
crackdowns appeared to destabilize drug markets which, in turn, led to increased
territorial feuds between rival gangs.
Further, the tendency for illegal drug addicts to engage in crime to support
their habits is mostly a product of the illegal status of their drugs (as this
artificially increases drug prices). But any policies that drive up drug prices
or restrict access to drugs can produce more crime even if the drugs are still
legal to use. From 2008-10, there were about 1800 pharmacy robberies
typically involving either junkies seeking a fix or gangs stealing drugs to sell
illegally. In some areas, the problem has gotten so bad that some drug
stores have stopped dispensing Oxycontin. Others have had to resort to new
strategies like surveillance cameras, installing bulletproof glass partitions,
security guards, etc.
Also, busting illegal drug users labels them as criminals. Research shows that
when addicts are given legal access to drugs, their criminal activities tends to
decline substantially. This shouldn’t be too surprising given that we seldom
encounter smokers or drinkers who rob people to support their smoking or drinking
habits.
The drug ridden, crime infested ghetto captures our imaginations. It seems to give
irrefutable evidence that drugs cause nondrug crime. This image is misleading.
Notice these drug ravaged slums exist under prohibition. Undoubtedly,
concentrating large numbers of drug addicts and abusers into a small area causes
more crime. Some of this is attributable to the psychopharmacological effects of
their drug use. But this is only part of the story. Black market violence and the
perverse impact of prohibition on addicts play an important role in promoting
crimes in these neighborhoods. At the same time, the same social conditions (i.e.

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social disorganization, poverty, etc) which attracted illegal drug suppliers and
users into a neighborhood (or led those living there to start using drugs) are the
same type factors which often produce high rates of nondrug crime (even without
the presence of illegal drugs). Finally, the sheer visibility of drug use or sales
introduces a subtle bias. Drug use and sales occur (out of sight) in a wide variety
of areas, many of which have moderately low crime rates. But, because drug use
and sales are less visible, we don’t make the connection.
More generally, there are major problems with any simplistic drugs cause
(nondrug) crime theories. Yes, there is a loose (positive) correlation between
crime and illegal drug use. Yet, many criminals engage in all sorts of risky,
hedonistic, or deviant behavior. So, it isn’t surprising to find many of them getting
high. And there are big problems with the time-ordering observed with illegal drug
use and crime. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics study, about half of
inmates only started using major illegal drugs after their first arrest for a nondrug
offence. This figure rises to 60% if we focus on regular illegal drug use. On
average, their drug use started up about two years after their first nondrug-related
arrest. Also, many criminals continue committing crimes long after stopping their
use of illegal drugs.
Most illegal drug users are not particularly inclined towards crime; current or past.
While (nondrug) criminals are likely to have used illegal drugs, a large majority of
illegal drug users never commit any serious crime. After all, almost half of the
adult population in the U.S. has used illegal drugs at some point in their lives.
What about those who have been arrested for drug offences? Benson and
Rasmussen’s study of drug arrestees in Florida during the late 1980’s sheds some
light on this topic. For those arrested on drug possession charges, over 75% had
no history of any violent crime arrest. A small minority of drug possession
arrestees (2.3%) accounted for a grossly disproportionate share (34.4%) of violent
crime arrests. But the most common type of prior arrests for drug possession
offenders was for earlier drug offenses (most typically for drug possession). Those
who had been arrested for drug supply offenses were somewhat more likely to

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have prior records of nondrug arrests (especially for property crimes). Still, even a
majority of this group had no history of nondrug offenses.
Those arrested for simple drug sales had lower rates of criminal recidivism than
nondrug-related offenders. Rates of recidivism for drug possession arrestees were
even lower. When drug offenders did reoffend, they were far more likely to break
drug laws than to be arrested for nondrug (violent or property) crimes. Given that,
crime rates have fallen and the rates of drug possession arrests have risen over
the past 20 years, those arrested for drug possession today would be expected to
be much less prone to nondrug crime compared to those in the earlier study. The
same can be said (only more so) for all those illegal drug users who have never
been arrested. Arresting large numbers of illegal drug users in hopes of catching
hardened and dangerous criminals is an extremely inefficient (not to mention
unjust) strategy.
While quantifying the amount of crime attributable to the psychoactive effects of
illegal drugs has proven very difficult, there are reasons to believe it may not
cause near as much crime as most people suspect. Goldstein and his associates
(1989) analyzed 414 “drug-related” homicides in New York City. They found that
few murders were caused by the psychoactive effects of illegal drugs. Instead,
most were the result of black market violence. Due to methodical problems, this
study may have seriously underestimated the contribution of drug effects on
homicides. Some other studies have found that drug use per se contributes much
more heavily to “drug-related” murders. This debate is difficult to resolve given all
the problems inherent to trying to classify the causes of specific violent crimes.
After all, it is often impossible to determine whether drugs really caused (or heavily
contributed to) a specific case of violence. To further complicate matters,
separating out the confounding influences of other factors like alcohol intoxication
or mental illness is a real problem. Still, what we know about patterns of illegal
drug use, and the behavioral effects of specific illegal drugs strongly suggest a
conservative estimate of the amount of violence attributable to illegal drug use.
Illegal drugs known to be associated with violent, aggressive, or antisocial behavior
(like PCP or meth) are used infrequently. Cocaine is used much more commonly

18
and is sometimes associated with violence (especially when chronically abused for
long periods). But, the most widely used illegal drugs don’t appear to produce
violent tendencies in most users. Most studies have found that marijuana (by far
the most commonly used illegal drug) is not associated with violence. Some
studies suggest it may actually make most people less inclined to violence. Even
heroin appears to reduce tendencies towards aggression.
The fact that so many convicts admit to having been intoxicated during the
crime(s) that led to their incarceration may appear to be strong evidence of the
role of drugs in causing crime. Of course, some crimes were really caused by drug
use (or made more serious by it). But we need to remember that sober criminals
will probably be much less likely to get caught in the first place, and that most
crimes are not solved. In other words, it may simply be the case that drug abusing
criminals are heavily overrepresented among those incompetent enough to get
busted. Some (perhaps many) of the crimes committed under the influence of
illegal drugs probably would have still occurred even if the crooks hadn’t been
high. And then there is the matter of how many crimes did not occur (or were
made less serious) because illegal drug use made someone less aggressive or
because they became so impaired as to be unable to perform a criminal act.
In conclusion, the psychopharmacological effects of illegal drugs cause some
crime. In other cases, it may prevent or interfere with crime. And it probably
leads to more criminals being caught for their crimes. At the same time, drug
prohibition itself causes or contributes to crime in a variety of ways. The bulk of
evidence suggests that drug prohibition causes far more crime than it prevents.

D) Why do People Use Drugs?

…… To be discussed in class

E) Histories of Intoxicants and Prohibitions (some key

points)

19
 • The use of intoxicants dates back thousands of years, and has
occurred across the world (in every type of society). Indeed, it is
difficult to name a society with no history of drug use. Most societies
have (often quite successfully) integrated drug use into their patterns
of everyday life and cultural practices…into their family lives, religions,
ceremonies, celebration, etc.
• Numerous species use intoxicants. Arguably, animals (including
humans) and intoxicating plants have co-evolved together. If so, the
desire to use recreational drugs or enjoy being intoxicated are part of
our nature.
• By the 1400-1500s, Europeans were beginning to spread a variety of
geographically localized drugs to other parts of the world, and by the
late 1600s, a world-wide trade in intoxicants had emerged.
• In the industrialized world (including the U.S.), a wide variety of
intoxicants (including opium, cocaine, etc.) were legally consumed,
bought, and sold in the period from 1700-1900. By the 1800s, new
man-made, synthesized, or chemically altered drugs were also being
invented, produced, and legally used.
• Although there were various attempts at drug prohibition prior to 1900,
such early prohibition tended to be localized, unsystematic, loosely
organized, etc. But most intoxicants have been legal in most societies
throughout most of human history, and the 1st truly modern
prohibitions didn’t occur until the 1900s. Prior to 1906, there were no
federal antidrug laws in the U.S. No age restrictions. No mandatory
drug labeling laws. No legal restrictions on the sale, distribution, or
production of any recreational drug. With the exception of alcohol,
there were very few organized efforts to ban any recreational drugs.

F) Prohibition in the U.S. (Alcohol): Some Key Points

20
• Prior to alcohol prohibition, alcohol consumption per capita had been
falling for decades, and people were drinking more beer and wine but
less hard alcohol.
• During the late 1800s and early 1900s, several states and local
governments established various localized drug or alcohol prohibitions.
In fact, about half of the U.S. population lived in “dry” communities
prior to federal alcohol prohibition.
• Still prior to 1906, there were no federal antidrug laws; no age
restrictions, no mandatory ingredient labeling, no restrictions on
production, distribution, or sales, etc.
• There were, however, a series of organized attempts to ban booze on a
national scale.
• A temporary alcohol prohibition was instituted for a short period during
WWI, and then quickly rescinded.
• After earlier failed attempts at federal prohibition, the 18th Amendment
was passed in 1917 and ratified in 1918. This led to the passage of the
Volstead Act in 1919.
• Almost immediately, prohibition produced unintended (and
undesirable) effects. For example, organized crime grew dramatically
as did rates of violent crime (often involving turf wars between
competing gangs).
• Alcohol consumption did appear to fall considerably in the 1st 12-18
months of prohibition.
• Afterward, however, alcohol consumption rose steadily throughout the
remaining years of prohibition. Warburton estimated that beer (463%),
spirits (520%), and wine (100%) consumption increased dramatically
from 1921-29.
• Such increases occurred despite increasing law enforcement
throughout prohibition; every year, there were more arrests, more

21
 seizures, more incarcerations, and more government spending on
prohibition.
• While prohibition may have been effective in some areas, it was widely
(sometimes flagrantly) violated in many large cities and numerous
smaller towns; Illegal bars or “speakeasies” sprang up in vast numbers
across the country.
• There is continuing debate over how high alcohol consumption had
grown by the end of prohibition (in large part because of limited or low
quality data). Estimates vary widely. But several studies indicate that
drinking by the end of prohibition had risen to levels only slightly lower
than just prior to prohibition (and some studies suggest that
consumption may have actually been higher by the end of prohibition).
For example, economist Jeff Miron estimates that prohibition had very
little impact on alcohol consumption (with a range of a small increase
to a small decrease). Still others (like Harvard professor Mark Moore)
estimate that prohibition had still substantially decreased alcohol
consumption. Even if consumption was somewhat lower at the end of
prohibition, it may just be that prohibition was “saved by the bell.”
That is, there were clear trends toward increasing alcohol consumption
throughout most of the prohibition period, and if prohibition had not
been repealed when it was, illegal consumption would have quickly
surpassed pre-prohibition levels (assuming such trends continued).
• During the same period, trends toward lower alcohol consumption
continued in numerous industrialized nations which had not enacted
alcohol prohibition.
• Estimates of alcohol-related social problems during prohibition (ex:
cirrhosis, drunk driving/wrecks, public intoxication, etc.) are even more
controversial and uncertain. For example, Mark Moore argues that
prohibition led to declining rates of cirrhosis and alcoholic psychosis, a
50% decline in drunk and disorderly arrests, etc. Such claims, however,
remain heavily disputed. More recently, Jeff Miron has shown that
22
 alcohol -related problems (like hospitalizations) relating to heavier
drinking (or more toxic alcohol) increased during prohibition. His
analysis also indicates that cirrhosis rates had begun falling prior to
alcohol prohibition but then (after few years) began to rise, during
prohibition. Combined deaths from alcoholism, overdoses, and
accidental poisoning soared (Miron and Zweibel, 1991). So, too, did
alcohol-related hospitalizations.
• A solid argument can be made that prohibition resulted in more
“polarized” patterns of alcohol consumption, and those who did drink
illegally appear to have drank more to excess, become more
intoxicated, etc. For example, Hanson (1923) reported a 41% increase
in drunk and disorderly arrests and an 81% increase in drunken driving
arrests in his study of 30 large cities. Whatever the case, prohibition
did appear to alter the patterns of alcohol and drug consumption in
some unintended ways.
• For example, people began to substitute toward the few remaining
legal forms of alcohol (i.e. sacramental wines, medical alcohol, patent
medicines) or other (then legal) drugs (like narcotics, marijuana, etc.)
• Serious problems involving toxic alcohol (or near substitutes) emerged
and resulted in large numbers of deaths or serious illnesses (involving
lead poisoning from “moonshine,” toxic patent medicines (like “jake”),
and serious problems from drinking antifreeze or wood alcohol).
• Prohibition prompted people to drink “more booze and less beer” (in
other words, to drink more strong alcoholic beverages like whisky but
less low alcoholic beverages like beer).
• And alcohol drinking and intoxication appeared to spread rapidly to
some groups (like women and teenagers) who had previously drunk
very little or rarely became intoxicated (especially in public).
• In 1933, the 21st amendment was ratified and alcohol prohibition was
repealed. After the repeal of prohibition, alcohol regulation was

23
 returned to the individual states, and most states quickly legalized
alcohol (with various restrictions).
• After prohibition, alcohol consumption did rise slowly in the decades
that followed; a debate continues over how much of this increase was
due to the repeal of prohibition per se (since drinking was rising during
most of the prohibition period and might well have continued to rise if
prohibition had continued).
• Estimates of increasing consumption vary. At the higher end, some
studies suggest that repealing prohibition may have led to a 10-20%
increase in alcohol consumption; other studies indicate that repeal was
responsible for much lower rates of increase.
• Contrary to dire predictions made by prohibitionists, however, there
was no rapid growth in alcohol consumption, no explosion in
alcoholism, nor was there any epidemic of public drunkenness.
• Also, some alcohol-related problems (like drunk driving, liver disease,
etc.) slowly increased in the decades following prohibition.
• While increasing alcohol use undoubtedly played a key role in the
worsening of such problems, there were probably other factors
involved. For example, increasing rates of drunk driving accidents and
fatalities were influenced by other factors such as the growing number
of vehicles on the road (and more miles traveled) during this period.
And this rise occurred during a period where law enforcement against
drunk driving was typically very soft. (This latter point illustrates that
legalizers would be wise to support very strong laws against reckless,
antisocial, or highly disruptive behaviors under the influence of drugs!)
Still, it should be emphasized that alcohol consumption and some
related social problems did increase after prohibition, and that the
repeal of prohibition may have contributed (perhaps substantially) to
such problematic trends.

24
• To further complicate the picture, however, most other industrialized
countries (which had never experienced any alcohol prohibition) did
not exhibit trends toward rising alcohol consumption or related social
problems (and several continued to have falling rates of drinking). This
point may suggest that prohibition itself may have altered patterns of
later alcohol consumption in the U.S. (perhaps creating a culture of
abuse that lasted for an entire generation).
• By the 1970s, alcohol consumption reached its peak in the US. Over
roughly the past 30 years, alcohol consumption per capita has steadily
declined (and more people are slowly shifting away from harder
alcoholic beverages and toward weaker drinks (like beer or wine).
• Over the same period, there is strong evidence that many alcohol-
related social problems have rapidly declined; For example, the
number of drunk driving fatalities fell 36% from 1982-2006 and even
more (63%) for teenagers (according to alcoholstats.com). Such large
declines occurred despite rapid growth in vehicles on the road and
average miles traveled during this period.
• In conclusion, the aftermath of alcohol prohibition demonstrates that
legalization can result in more drug use and abuse. Whether the
repeal of prohibition itself actually caused increasing trends in alcohol
consumption, however, remains debatable. But it did not result in
explosive growth in alcohol consumption or any kind of social disaster.
It also illustrates that (at least in the long run) legalization can result in
strong and persistent downward trends in drug use, abuse, and
addiction (and related social problems). At the very least, it shows that
drug use can decline substantially without prohibition (as it did prior to
prohibition and then again over the past few decades). And it is
consistent with the argument that such declines occurred exactly
because alcohol is legal.

25
 …Prohibition of opium and marijuana will be
discussed in class…

G) Problematic Assumptions, Assertions, and Arguments

Proponents of drug prohibition have been known to make a number of

dubious or debatable arguments:

• Overstating the prevalence of illegal drug abuse and addiction (relative

to moderate or causal use)
• Overstating the risks associated with illegal drug use; exaggerating the
social harm caused by illegal drug use.
• Arbitrarily categorizing psychoactive substances into "good drugs"
(i.e., legal drugs, medicines) versus "bad drugs" (illegal ones); failing to
recognize that almost any drug can be misused or abused, and that
almost any drug can be used in moderation without any ill-effects.
• Ignoring the role of self-selection in determining who uses illegal drugs,
and understating important differences between illegal users (esp.
abusers and addicts) vs. non-users.
• Assuming that many (or most) people are irrational, weak-willed, and
fail to learn from experience (or that of others).
• Assuming that moderate drug use is unsustainable (or even
impossible) for most people.
• Assuming that there are no reasonable, rational, or morally justified
reasons to use illegal drugs (or worse still, it doesn’t matter!)
• Asserting an exaggerated view of drug use progression, addition, and
withdrawal.

26
• Deemphasizing personal choice, free will, and individual responsibility
with regards to drug abusers and addicts (and unintentionally
rationalizing / excusing their poor choices and bad acts).
• Advocating the punishment of moderate, responsible, or otherwise law-
abiding users for the harms produced disproportionately by less
responsible drug users, abusers, and addicts.
• Assuming that social control efforts and resources are best used
broadly against illegal drugs per se (as opposed to a narrower focus on
the poor choices or bad acts of specific drug users who break laws,
harm others, act recklessly, etc.)
• Assuming behavioral problems involving intoxication are a simple,
deterministic, and almost inevitable (biological) consequence of drug
use.
• Assuming that the intensity or prevalence of most drug-related social
problems are a simple function of total drug consumption or the
number of (illegal) drug users.
• Attributing any declines in illegal drug use to successful prohibition but
treating increases in usage as proof of the need for even stronger
prohibition.
• Assuming that absent prohibition, there are no (effective) social
mechanisms for regulating drug abuse, addiction, and related social
problems.
• Assuming that rates of drug use are a simple function of antidrug
enforcement; ignoring or deemphasizing the casual role of social
factors (many of which are difficult or impossible to control) in shaping
drug use.
• Use of overheated rhetoric, loaded metaphors, misleading statistics,
and junk science.

27
 • Claims that incarceration (or longer sentences) is effective in reducing
later drug use by drug offenders (or more generally reducing their
rates of criminal recidivism).
• Assumptions that prohibition agencies and other antidrug enforcers
have strong incentives to use effective tactics and strategies.
• Making exaggerated claims about the deterrence impact of antidrug
laws (and overstating the effectiveness of other prohibition tactics).

H) Background Information
In the following sections, we will present background information on drug use
among the young addicts and addiction, comparative and historical
evidence, legal drugs, and prescription drugs.
There are all sorts of possible methodological issues, questions, or problems
with such information. Such problems can be pretty severe. A 2010 study
published in the journal Pediatrics illustrates how serious drug-related
measurement problems can be. Researchers studied 430 intercity teenagers
and their parents. Subjects were first surveyed about their drug use, and
then later given drug tests for cocaine and opiates. Despite the fact that
subjects knew in advance that they would be drug tested, many still lied
about their drug use. Kids were 52% more likely to test positive for cocaine
use than to openly admit using coke when asked. Likewise, parents greatly
underreported their own use of cocaine and opiates. Finally, parents
seriously underestimated drug use by their own children. Such results
suggest that self (or parent) report surveys on illicit drugs may grossly
underestimate drug use...at least among some high-risk populations.
Readers should be especially cautious in interpreting historical findings
(which often involve making debatable assumptions, sometimes using low
quality or incomplete data, etc.). A similar extra caution goes for any and all
international comparisons. The quality of data varies considerably across
countries. Different countries sometimes define and measure similar

28
variables in very different ways. I encourage you to be skeptical readers.
Given the sheer number and complexity of the methodological issues
involved, it is hard to tell if all this might somehow bias the evidence against
or in favor of prohibition. To make our presentation manageable, I will only
discuss methodological issues in a few cases where I feel it is absolutely
critical to interpreting the evidence correctly.

1) Drug Use Among the Young

General Comments

• For whatever reasons (immaturity, inexperience, curiosity, etc), the

young are more prone towards both legal and illegal drug abuse than
those who are older.

• Historically, drug use (and whatever problems it caused) was heavily

concentrated among mature adults in most societies. By contrast,
recreational drug abuse and intoxication by youngsters is far more
common in modern societies. The youth drug culture is a fairly recent
cultural phenomenon, and the shift in patterns of drug use by age
coincided largely with modern prohibition efforts.
• In the U.S., drug abuse tends to peak in the late teens or earlier
twenties and then decline substantially with age.
• In the U.S., the younger that kids start using drugs, the more prone
they are to later drug abuse and addiction. Even occasional marijuana
use by kids is associated with increased risk of drug abuse and related
problems in adulthood. The greater their drug use, the more drug-
related problems kids tend to have later in their lives. Those who try
drugs early (13 or before) are prone to have various risk factors like
addicted parents, severely dysfunctional families, histories of child
abuse, etc. There is also evidence suggesting that youngsters may be

29
 more vulnerable to forming addictions to some specific drugs (like
cocaine).
• Anderson (1998) found that personal and social marginalization encourages
youngsters to start doing drugs. Experimental research by Mead and
associates (2010) that suggests people who feel socially excluded are more
likely to buy or use goods associated with group membership in order to gain
social acceptance (even if it is detrimental to their well-being). In one such
experiment, subjects who felt excluded were more willing to use cocaine.
Negative social reactions may prompt drug use in other ways too. Luke
(2011) found that both boys and girls who are bullied are at an increased risk
of depression. Bullied girls (but not boys) become increasingly likely to use
drugs (including Marijuana).
• Studies by Biernacki (1996) and Waldorf, et al. (1991) show that initial drug
experimentation tends to be associated with a conscious desire to change
one's personal identity.
• Childhood personality traits can predict future substance abuse. Researchers
from the Personality and Psychopathology Group at the Universitst Jaume (in
Spain) have found that traits like low responsibility, impulsivity, and
disinhibition (or novelty-seeking) in adolescence predicts later alcohol abuse
among later teenage drinking. Moffitt, Caspi, and their associates (2011)
studied over 1000 kids from New Zealand beginning at 3 years old and
continuing until they reached age 32. Kids who were initially rated as being
low in self-control by parents, teachers, observers, and themselves were later
at greater risk for a wide variety of personal problems...including becoming
dependent upon tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and other illicit drugs. Caspi
and Moffit found similar results for a sample of 500 pairs of fraternal twins in
Brittian, Lee and colleagues (2011) analyzed results from 27 long-term
studies of children with ADHD. They found that ADHD kids are at greater risk
of drug addiction (and some other problems).
• A new study by SAMHSA (2011) found that almost 6% of 12-14 year olds
drank alcohol within the past month. The vast majority (over 93%) got their
alcohol free. Almost 45% received or took it from home. Almost 1 in 6

30
 (15.7%) or about 111,000 kids were given booze by their parents of
guardians.
• Under prohibition, youngsters typically learn to use drugs by
interacting with other young drug users (like the blind leading the
blind).
• Illegal drug distributors often aggressively market their drugs to
youngsters. Some dealers add candy flavors to drugs like
methamphetamines, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Others sell drugs
like ecstasy in cartoon-shaped forms. Of course, nobody “cards”
anybody. And many dealers target school students as customers.
Such strategies put Joe Camel to shame.
• The same vast informal social networks that are used to distribute
illegal drugs are often used to recruit new (young) users.
• Unintentionally, differential punishment for youth offenders
encourages the use of minors to sell drugs, and has encouraged the
growth of violent youth gangs.
• Under prohibition, “soft drugs” become “gateway drugs.”
Unintentionally, prohibition creates an artificial linkage between drugs
like marijuana and access to harder drugs.
• In the end, a combination of factors – network recruitment, peer
pressure, problematic social definitions, profit motives, the “buzz” of
getting high, and the sheer excitement of lawbreaking –work together
to sustain a young drug culture.
• Both legal and illegal drug use among the young in the U.S. peaked in
the U.S. in the late 1970s.
• After falling for well over a decade, youth drug use rose in the mid-to-
late 1990s; more recently, drug use among the young (esp. the very
young) has declined substantially. By 2008, the roughly 10 year
decline in drug use among the young appeared to be reversing itself.
Total illicit drug use by 9th – 12th graders rose led by a substantial

31
 increase in marijuana use. Both Ecstasy use and underage drinking
increased. There was little or no change with respect to most other
drugs. Smoking among the young continued to decline. In fact, in
some age groups, more kids were smoking pot within the last month
than cigarettes! Inhalant use among 12 year olds is now more
common than either cigarette or pot smoking. The same is true for the
recreational use of prescription drugs. All this shows an emerging
trend for younger kids to increasingly experiment with more dangerous
drugs.
• Forty years after the “War on Drugs” was first declared high school
kids today are using illegal drugs at the same rate as those in 1970.
• Some trends offer evidence for the possible success of drug prohibition
with regards to the young.
• In spite of the recent declines, drug use and abuse among the young in
the U.S. (and most other industrialized countries) appears to be far
more common today than before drug prohibition.
• Indeed, the rapid growth of (illegal) drug use among the young did not
occur until decades after the institutionalization of drug prohibition.
• And whatever declines in drug usage under prohibition in the past few
decades, illegal drug use among the young continues to exhibit a
seemingly endless series of drug fads and scares.
• Young people often find innovative (and dangerous) ways to get high
(i.e. huffing, abusing super-caffeinated energy drinks, robotripping,
etc.)
• In the U.S., there is a great variation across various youth groups and
subcultures in terms of drug use and abuse.
• In international comparisons of prohibition regimes, more punitive or
criminalized approaches (like that used in the U.S.) do not appear to be
any better at (systematically) reducing drug use and abuse among the
young (compared to less punitive approaches).

32
 • Compared to other industrialized countries, the U.S. has high rates of
illicit drug use among the young. For example, according to 1999
monitoring the future survey data, American 10th graders had much
higher rates of marijuana use (41%), compared to European youths
(17%). American youths were also more prone to use amphetamines
cocaine, hallucinogens, and ecstasy (but not heroin).

2) Addicts, Addiction & Withdrawal

• Under prohibition, most illegal drug users are casual, moderate, or short-
term users.
• Most illegal drug users tend to use softer or less addictive drugs (as
opposed to “hard drugs”). The use of marijuana use is far more common
than that of any hard drug.
• Although claims that marijuana is a “gateway drug” to hard drugs are
commonly made, many studies have found no causal connection between
marijuana and hard drug use.
• Only a small fraction of illegal drug users become chronic abusers, and
only a small fraction of these abusers become addicts. This is even true (to a
lesser degree) for hard drug users. This small fraction of illegal drug users
consumes a very disproportionate share of (especially harder) illegal drugs.
• Those addicted to legal drugs outnumber illegal drug addicts by a wide
margin.
• The large majority of illegal drug users stop using illegal drugs (in most
cases voluntarily without arrest or therapy); the same is true (to a lesser
extent) of both legal and illegal addicts.
• A small fraction of drug users (esp. abusers and addicts) account for a
greatly disproportionate share of most drug-related social problems.
• In 2005, according to NHSDA survey data, only fairly small percentages of
lifetime cocaine (16.4%), crack (17.4%), heroin (10.7%), and meth (12.5%)

33
users had used the drug within the past year. Even smaller percentages of
lifetime users of cocaine (7.1%), crack (8.6%), heroin (3.8%), or meth (4.9%)
had used the drug within the past month. Further, heavy drug users make up
only a small fraction of hard drug users. Consider cocaine. Kandel, Murphy,
and Karus (1985) found that for coke users in a random sample of 25 years
olds only about 9% reported using it more than 100 times, and about 3%
reported using it more than 1000 times. Erickson (1994) found very similar
results among a (nonrandom) sample of Canadian cocaine users. In both of
these studies, the majority of users were occasional and infrequent users
(most of whom had used cocaine less than ten times). Erickson found these
occasional users were typically employed, lived stable home lives, used only
at parties or special occasions, and tended to view cocaine use as very risky.

• Other (typically small scale) studies have identified long term-controlled

users of addictive drugs. For example, Murphy, Reinarmon, and Waldorf
(1989) and Waldorf, Reinarmon, and Murphy (1991) interviewed 21 cocaine
users in the San Francisco area in 1974-75 and 1985. By the end of this
period, 15 out of 21 had maintained controlled usage for over a decade. Only
5 reported extended periods of uncontrolled cocaine use (and four of those
had quit for at least a few years prior to the final interview). And this problem
minority tended to drift in and out of periods of controlled usage and abuse.
Perhaps surprisingly, all were gainfully employed (many in white collar or
professional jobs). Other studies (like Blackwell (1982) and Zinberg (1984))
have been documented long time heroine users who did not appear to be
addicts. Zinberg was able to re-interview 60% of his original subjects a year
or two later. He found no net tendency for their drug use to escalate over
time. Both studies found that some (but not all) of their subjects were regular
heroin users over extended periods who still managed to live fairly normal
lives, hold down jobs, and not engage in other types of criminal activity.

34
• Addicts and chronic abusers do tend to differ from more casual users
(and non-users) in terms of personal characteristics, criminal records,
employment records, etc. Drug abuse and addiction are closely associated
with serious mental illnesses. And addicts tend to have “addictive
personality” traits. Also, there is evidence that addiction tends to run in
families. This may indicate that some people are biologically inclined
towards addiction (while others are less so). Or it could indicate that
childhood socialization (or other family-related factors) place some people at
higher risk. In either case, it suggests that the risks of drug addiction vary
widely (and many may be at low risk).

• Although it hasn't been conclusively proven, some evidence loosely

suggests that illegal drug abusers may have lower than average IQs. We
know that they tend to do poorly in school. And we know that cigarette
smokers have lower IQ than nonsmokers on average.
• Addicts and chronic abusers tend to have troubled personal histories
involving (often serious) patterns of behavior (or psychological) problems
preceding their drug use, abuse, or addiction.
• Former addicts often continue to engage in criminal, antisocial, or
reckless behavior after quitting their drug use.
• The disease model dominates modern drug addition research and therapy.
This model emphasizes the involuntary aspects of drug addition and abuse. It also
stresses the critical role of the chemical properties and psychopharmacological
effects of specific drugs in explaining their addictiveness. (In support of this view,
there is overwhelming evidence that different drugs vary greatly in their addiction
potential.) And it portrays the addition process as highly patterned (typically
involving clear stages of progression).

• While the specific properties of a drug play an important role in explaining its
addictiveness, such properties do not strictly determine whether a particular
person will get addicted to a given drug when they use it, how quickly, how

35
intensely, or how difficult it will be to later stop. The intrinsic properties of a given
drug are only one factor among many others (i.e. individual biology and
psychological traits, social influence, learned responses, etc.) which combine in
complex ways to shape drug addiction. (Very similar points can be made about
the behavioral effects of particular drugs. Once again, drug intoxication from
different drugs is (loosely) associated with different behavioral tendencies but the
inherent properties of a drug do not necessarily determine how someone will act
under its influence.)

• A huge body of research shows the extent of serious social problems relating to
drug addiction (and the difficulties associated with drug withdrawal).

• Although drug addiction and abuse are a serious problem for some users
of addictive prescription drugs, there are a large number of chronic pain
sufferers who have been able to use highly addictive drugs (like opiates) for
extended periods without becoming addicted; For short term users, the vast
majority never form addictions.
• While the risks of drug abuse and addiction are raised for those whose
professions provide continued access to addictive drugs, the vast majority
never forms addictions.
• In several notorious cases, researchers have grossly overestimated or
exaggerated the addictiveness of drugs like crack, heroin, etc.; These
misleading results were then spread and further embellished by prohibition
agents and the mass media.
• Skeptics argue that it is actually much harder to get addicted (even to
drugs like heroin, crack, and meth), and much easier to quit once one is
addicted than is generally believed.
• Contrary to what most people assume, alcohol and nicotine may be more
addictive than heroin, cocaine, and most other illegal drugs. (Notice that this
observation may have some troubling implications for drug legalization! In

36
other words, booze and tobacco may be more addictive because they are
legal!
• Skeptics argue that while some people are biologically or psychologically
predisposed to addiction, most people do not easily form drug addictions.
• For adults (and to a lesser degree even minors), a plausible argument
can be made that a high proportion of those prone to chronic abuse or
addiction are currently using drugs or have done so in the past (and since
quit); At the same time, the number of individuals at high risk of potential
addiction (or abuse) among current non-users and moderate users would be
expected to be fairly small.
• If so, this would limit the number of new addicts (or abusers) even if
numerous addictive drugs were legalized, widely available, and cheaply
priced.
• It is also worth noting that drug addiction has become heavily
medicalized in most modern societies, giving rise to a huge drug
treatment/rehabilitation industry.
• Drug treatment appears to be somewhat effective in reducing drug use in the
short run. O’Brien and McLellan (1996) provide estimates for “success rates”
(defined as at least a 50% reduction on the ASI drug-taking scale over a 6 month
period): alcoholism (50%), opiates (60%), cocaine (55%), and nicotine (30%).
Success rates vary according to the personal characteristics of the addict. So, for
example, an otherwise well adjusted physician would have a better chance of
kicking a cocaine habit versus an unemployed pregnant teenager. The longer the
time frame, the lower the success rate. In other words, many addicts later relapse.
According to the worst-case estimates, 90% of addicts who enter rehab will be
using drugs again within 5 years. Clearly rehab is no cure all. Still, it appears to
help many people temporarily quit or slow down their drug use. Many do quit with
repeated treatments. Numerous studies indicate that drug treatment is more cost
effective than criminal penalties in terms of reducing drug abuse.

37
• Large numbers of addicts and abusers are forced into treatment. Not too
surprisingly, large majorities of those undergoing treatment deny they need help.
Patient non-compliance severely reduces the success rates of drug treatment and
wastes scarce therapy resources. State mandated coercive drug treatment is a
major source of such problems. (To make matters worse, the number of people
forced into rehab is rising rapidly. Most (92%) are youngsters under the age of 18.
85 percent of those forced into treatment for pot were forced into it by courts or
schools. In many cases, there appears to be little real effort given to distinguishing
users from those with serious drug problems.)

• Labeling large numbers of drug users as addicts or abusers might be

expected to produce “labeling effects,” and ultimately tend to
(unintentionally) reinforce future drug use and abuse among those so
labeled.
• The coexistence of the drug treatment industry and drug prohibition
create a two-tier system for dealing with illegal drug use, abuse, and
addiction and raises the problem of unequal treatment of illegal drug users
under the law (according to race, ethnicity, social class, etc.).
• The drug treatment industry/profession has strong institutional incentives
to promote a strong anti-recreational drug ideology and support drug
prohibition; On the other hand, it sometimes comes into competition and
conflict with the prohibition state over issues like harm reduction strategies
(which would further increase medicalization).

3) Comparative and Historical Evidence

• Societies across the world and throughout history have had to deal with
drug use, intoxication, and related problems (and have typically done so
without prohibition until roughly 100 years ago).
• Prior to the early 1900’s, many (now illegal) drugs were legal in
industrializing countries across the world, and large segments of their

38
populations abstained or used such drugs in moderation (although there
were sometimes problems with drug abuse, addiction, and occasional drug
epidemics in some countries.).
• While some poor agrarian societies (like China, Iran, and Thailand) have
experienced very large-scale and persistent problems with drugs, such cases
appear somewhat rare (and have not occurred in modern industrial
societies.).
• Rising rates of illegal drug use or even full-blown drug epidemics have
sometimes occurred in countries with repressive regimes with extremely
severe antidrug laws (like in the USSR during the 1980s, or even more
recently in Iran).
• By contrast, modern industrialized countries have been far less vulnerable to
chronic widespread addiction. The clearest exception is nicotine, which continues
to addict large numbers in industrialized countries around the world (many of
which have higher rates of smoking than the U.S.). To a lesser degree, alcoholism
is still somewhat common in most industrialized societies. Still, in the modern era,
only moderately small fractions of those in most industrialized countries are
seriously abusing alcohol on a frequent basis at any point in time. While
alcoholism is a very real social problem, it is a fairly manageable one. Russia
stands alone as the extreme worst case. According to Irene Denisova, heavy
drinking “reduces life expectancy by nine to ten years on average”. Advanced
cases of alcohol-related diseases are appearing among young Russians (especially
men)…even among teenagers. As for drugs like opiates or cocaine, widespread
persistent addiction is virtually unknown in the industrialized world. (Of course,
prohibitionists would have us believe this is because of drug prohibition.)

• Even some of the supposedly worst cases of widespread drug abuse and
addiction are open to debate. Traditional histories of China in the 1800’s and early
1900’s paint a grim picture of rampant opium abuse. Dikotter, Laamann, and Xin’s
“Narcotic Culture” (2004) offers a radical historical reinterpretation. Based on the
most recent evidence, they present a compelling case that popular claims about
39
opium abuse in China have been wildly exaggerated. Their study found that
moderate opium use by the masses (with little adverse effects on their health or
longevity) was the norm. Opium abuse was strongly constrained by a complex
web of cultured practices and traditions. While opium was used recreationally (and
sometimes abused), its main use was as a folk medicine to treat various ailments.
Horror stories about emaciated drug slaves were rooted (in part) in confusing the
effects of opium use with those of poverty, malnutrition, and various common
diseases. Further, the ideological interests of powerful interests – Chinese
Nationalists, British Imperialists, Christian Missionaries, and (much later) Chinese
Communists – were critical in perpetuating the myth of an opium plague. From
1880 until World War II, the Chinese government (along with the English)
attempted to impose a 60 year prohibition on opium in China. Ironically, this effort
appeared to undermine the pre-existing culture of drug moderation. More Chinese
turned towards stronger opiates like heroin and morphine, and opiate addiction
rates rose rapidly. Some began using cocaine and other drugs. Some began
injecting drugs. Many others went from smoking opium to smoking tobacco (which
continues to be a major public health problem in China today). During this period,
China experienced many of the same problems (i.e. black markets, overcrowded
prisons, etc) that we face in the U.S. now. Eventually, opiate use was effectively
(and brutally) repressed by Mao’s communist regime (showing that drug
prohibition can sometimes work very well when using extreme measures like
executing suspected drug suppliers or users without a trial). If this revisionist
account is accurate, it exposes one of the greatest antidrug stories of all time as a
myth. Moreover, it would clearly demonstrate that moderate use of highly
addictive drugs by the masses is quite possible. And it would provide a classic
example of drug prohibition producing increased drug abuse and addiction.

• In some cases (like Japan, Singapore, etc.), prohibition has succeeded in

keeping illegal drug use at very low levels for extended periods. To a lesser
extent, some European countries have had some success in criminalizing
drugs.

40
• In most industrialized countries, however, prohibition has produced far
less impressive results.
• Other industrialized countries continue to struggle with their own
prohibition efforts. Just like the U.S., Europe has experienced falling prices
for harder drugs combined with little change in illegal drug consumption. A
recent rapid rise in cocaine use offers one (troubling) example. According to
a very recent report by the Telegraph, the price of a gram of heroin has
fallen to 25 pounds (down from 74 pounds in 1998). And in some areas, a
“line” of cocaine now costs less than a pint of lager or a typical glass of wine!
None of this bodes well for European prohibition.
• Weatherburn and Lind (1997) found no evidence that Australian efforts to
restrict heroin supply had any effect on the availability, price, or purity of the
drug.
• Worldwide, about 5% of adults use illegal drugs.
• During the modern era of worldwide drug prohibition, the use of several
popular illegal drugs is increasing with each new generation worldwide. But
for legal drugs, there is no clear upward trend across generations.
• Looking at the big picture, the Global Illicit Drug Market Report (1998 to
2007) concludes that the global drug problem has not been reduced, and
that there is “a lack of evidence” that antidrug measures like crop
eradication, seizures, or arrests can realistically decrease global drug
production or consumption.
• Illegal drugs are a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry. According to
recent estimates, it accounts for about 1% of all commerce on Earth.
• When comparing European countries with softer demand side policies
(like the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain) to countries with much stricter
policies, there appears to be little difference in their impact. (Supply side
policies are very similar across Europe.) For example, heroin prices (in U.S.
dollars) are about the same across softer and harsher antidrug regimes.
Cocaine prices, however, tend to be lower in countries with stricter antidrug

41
policies. This appears to offer evidence in favor of stronger demand control
policies. But this effect disappears after controlling for differences in
average incomes across countries. In other words, coke users have to pay
about the same percentage of their incomes per gram of cocaine regardless
of what type of prohibition policies are being employed.
• In the U.S. (and most other industrialized countries), recent rates of
illegal drug use appear to be higher than the use of the same (or similar)
drugs prior to drug prohibition.
• The consumption of most legal drugs has fallen substantially in usage
during the past 50 or more years in the U.S., In fact, only a very few legal
recreational drugs (like caffeine) increased substantially in usage during the
past 50 or more years in the U.S.
• Over roughly the past 30 years, the rate of both legal and illegal drug use
has declined substantially in the U.S., and the same is true for (legal and
illegal) drug use by the young. Over the past 20+ years, illegal drug use has
remained fairly stable.
• The modern drug culture in the U.S. did not emerge until decades after
the institution of drug prohibition (although the “roaring 20’s” offers a partial
exception).
• In international comparisons of prohibition regimes, there is little
evidence that more punitive or criminalized approaches (like that used in the
U.S.) are more effective in either reducing illegal drug use (or
abuse/addiction) or reducing drug-related social problems.
• Correlations between per capita government antidrug spending and
illegal drug use are weak. For example, both Sweden and the U.S. have high
rates of antidrug spending per capita but the rates of illegal drug use in the
U.S. are much higher. By contrast, Greece has very low rates of antidrug
spending and even lower rates of illegal drug use than Sweden.
• Likewise, variations in drug-arrest rates across countries have little or no
effect on illegal drug use rates.

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• Several industrialized countries which use “softer” versions of prohibition
but achieve much lower rates of illegal drug use, hard drug use and
addiction, etc. ( and more favorable patterns of drug related social problems)
compared to the U.S..
• The Netherlands deserves special attention here. In 1976, the
Netherlands effectively decriminalized small amounts of marijuana to be sold
in coffee shops. Marijuana production and possession for personal use are a
misdemeanor, and such laws are rarely enforced. (Mass production,
importing, or exporting any illegal drug, however, is highly criminalized). For
several years, there was no noticeable increase in marijuana use among the
young. During the period from 1984 to 1992, however, marijuana smoking
among those 18 to 20 years old increased substantially (perhaps doubling).
But by the late 1990’s, pot use stabilized and then declined somewhat
among the young. Research indicates that most Dutch marijuana smokers
(aged 12 and up) are infrequent or short-term users. Compared to the U.S.
(and most European countries), both past month and lifetime use of
marijuana is much lower among the Dutch. According to some estimates
those aged 12 and up in the U.S. are over twice as likely to currently be
smoking pot. The Dutch also are much less likely to use hard drugs like
heroin. (Such drugs remain highly criminalized in the Netherlands.) The
Dutch accomplished such results despite softer drug laws with marijuana,
lower drug-related law enforcement expenditures per capita, and much lower
incarceration rates than the U.S. The Dutch also experience much lower
rates of homicide and other violent crimes. Recently the Netherlands have
moved towards somewhat tougher drug laws (like decreasing the numbers of
shops that sell pot, raising the minimum age to purchase pot in such shops
from 16 to 18, banning the sale of “magic mushrooms,” etc.)
• Recent drug decriminalization in Portugal had yielded very positive early
results. Although Portugal has long enjoyed low rates of illegal drug use
compared to most of Europe, the use of illicit drugs did rise during the 1990s.
So, too, did drug-related public health problems. In 2001, Portugal

43
decriminalized the use, purchase, and possession of small amounts of any
recreational drug…Including heroin, cocaine, amphetamines, etc.!!! Those in
possession of small quantities of drugs can still be searched and have their
drugs confiscated. They might be fined or forced into community service
(after appearing before a panel of psychiatrists, social workers, etc.).
Addicts are encouraged to seek treatment. Most causal drug users,
however, are not turned over to this panel. Many critics predicted an
explosion in drug abuse (and “drug tourism”). There has been a slight
increase in drug use. While more people are trying illicit drugs, most of the
increase appears to be in short-term experimental usage. From 2001 to
2007, past year illicit drug use among those aged 15-64 increased only a tiny
amount (from 3.4% to 3.7%). At the same time, the estimates of problem
drug users fell. Fewer prison inmates are now reporting using heroin. The
largest (but still fairly small) increase in lifetime use of illegal drugs occurred
for young adults aged 20-24. Even these small increases need to be put into
context. First, since people may be more willing to self-report legal drug use
(as opposed to illegal use), some of this supposed increase may be
illusionary. For mature adults, there is another reason that these results may
be misleading. Due to generational differences, somewhat older people (who
are less likely to have ever used illegal drugs) are slowly replaced in specific
age categories by somewhat younger people (who are somewhat more likely
to have used illegal drugs in their past). As people age in and out of specific
age ranges, this gives the false impression that lifetime illegal drug use is
rising across various age categories. Second, illegal drug use continued to
increase throughout most of Europe including countries with far more
punitive antidrug policies. In fact, the largest increases occurred in European
countries that have harsher antidrug laws. Third, Portugal remained at or
near the bottom of the list of European countries in every category of illegal
drug use. Fourth, after decriminalization, new infections among drug users
dropped sharply (including HIV, hepatitis B and C, etc). Prior to
decriminalization, drug addicts made up 45% of HIV cases. Now it is only

44
about 20%. Likewise, drug overdoses declined sharply. Drug-related
mortality rates fell. And more people are voluntarily seeking drug treatment.
So, even if these (small) increases in drug use were real, the public health
consequences have still been quite positive. Finally, among youngsters (age
13-18), there had been a small decline in drug use. Such (admittedly very
small) declines occurred for virtually every type of drug. While the
Portuguese experiment with drug decriminalization has yielded very
promising results, it is still far too early to draw any strong conclusions at
this point.
• Switzerland has suffered from high rates of drug addiction for decades.
In the early 1980s, the Swiss began experimenting with their drug policies.
By the mid-1990s, Switzerland began experimenting with providing heroin
(or other hard drugs) to some heroin addicts in a series of small pilot studies.
By 1998, the Swiss instituted a much larger 10-year experiment with
prescription heroin targeted at hardcore addicts who had failed to kick their
habits with standard therapies. Such addicts were allowed to purchase and
use heroin at designated locations. (The Swiss continued to experiment with
other addiction programs involving “injection rooms”, needle exchanges, and
methadone clinics for a much larger group of addicts during this period.) For
those in the prescription heroin program, rates of crime fell substantially.
Permanent employment rose. And the health of addicts improved. Drug
overdoses fell dramatically. And, new infections from diseases like HIV were
rare (although many addicts entered the program already infected). In late
2008, Swiss voters approved legalized heroin prescriptions for certified
addicts by a wide margin (68% voted in favor). In the same election,
however, only 38% voted to decriminalize marijuana.
• Sweden, on the other hand, has been offered as an example of
prohibition success. Combining high per capita anti-drug spending with
aggressive tactics (like patrolling bars and arresting anyone suspected of
being high), Sweden has achieved low levels of illegal (and legal) drug use
compared to most of Europe. At the same time, however, Sweden has rates

45
of chronic drug abuse and addiction at (or above) the average for Europe.
And it has comparatively high rates of drug-related deaths (extremely high
by some estimates).
• Several studies have compared states (like New York, California,
Nebraska, Ohio, etc.) that have decriminalized (small amounts of) marijuana
to other states, which have not done so, and found little or no increase in
marijuana use with regards to decriminalization. Indeed, some studies found
that states, which continue to criminalize possession of small amounts of
marijuana, saw increases in cannabis use (during the 1990’s) than states
that treated such offenses as civil infractions (involving drug seizures and
small fines). Decriminalizing marijuana did not lead to substantial increases
in the use of alcohol or hard drugs.
• Illegal drug use varies substantially across the U.S. A 2009 report by the Abuse
and Mental Health Administration found that rates of illegal in the past month
ranged from 12.5% in Rhode Island to only 5.2% Iowa. The same two states had
the highest and lowest rates of marijuana use, respectively. As for other illegal
drugs, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota had the lowest rates of usage (2.6%).
The highest rates (5.5%) were found in Rhode Island and Arizona.

• Rates of illegal drug use across states are almost unrelated to variations in
drug arrest rates by state.

• According to a report (last updated in 2008) issued by the Marijuana Policy

Project Foundation (a decriminalization advocacy group), every state with medical
marijuana laws has experienced declining pot use among the young since passing
these laws. In some age groups, such declines have been quite large (50% or
more). It should be noted that marijuana smoking among the young has been
decreasing nationwide during this period. But declines in medical marijuana states
have been (slightly) greater than those in states without such laws. This
contradicts more alarmist claims that medical marijuana laws would greatly
increase pot smoking among kids. Critics have a much better case for claiming it
46
has increased recreation pot smoking among adults in some areas. If so, however,
early results don’t indicate any substantial increase in drug-related problems in
these areas.

• There have been numerous cases where the illegal use of specific
drugs has risen substantially for an extended period in spite of drug
prohibition.
• More generally, with or without prohibition, drug use has varied widely
across societies, over time, and across various groups/subcultures.
• Such findings strongly suggest that cultural or social differences between
societies (and probably between smaller groups/subcultures as well) are
more important in determining patterns of drug use than drug laws per se.
• Illegal drug use also appears to be strongly influenced by demographic
variables. For example, countries with younger or more urbanized
populations tend to have higher per capita illegal drug use compared to
those with older or more rural populations. Countries with higher
percentages of young males tend to use more illicit drugs. And so on.
Unfortunately, studies analyzing complex multivariate demographic effects
on illegal drug use (and evaluating prohibition effects accordingly) are sorely
lacking.
• Rates of illegal drug use are strongly influenced by economic factors.
High income countries tend to consume far more illegal drugs per capita
than poor ones. And differences in rates of drug use between industrialized
countries can be heavily influenced by currency exchange rates. For
instance, over the past several years, the U.S. dollar fell substantially relative
to the Euro. This resulted in rising cocaine prices in the U.S. but falling prices
in Europe. So much so that it became theoretically possible to make money
by smuggling coke from the U.S. to Europe. As Europe became a more
profitable market, international distributors began to reroute their product
(mostly through Africa into Spain). The short term result has been to create

47
a growing cocaine epidemic in some parts of Europe (while rates of cocaine
use in the U.S. have declined). With a world black market, illegal drugs flow
to where they find the greatest profits.
• Another example is China where rapidly rising incomes appear to be
associated with rapidly increasing consumption of opiates (and other illegal
drugs).
• Likewise, rates of illegal drug use are influenced by geography, climate,
etc. For example, Iran appears to have an extremely high rate of heroin
addiction (despite an authoritarian regime using draconian punishments) due
mostly to their proximity to opium producing Afghanistan.
• Some attempts at drug legalization or decriminalization, have produced
some unfavorable results (such as in Zurich, Sweden). Some countries (like
Sweden, U.K., and the Netherlands) have backtracked on drug law
liberalization at some points.
• On the other hand, the early results of decriminalization in Britain appear
promising. Since pot was downgraded to a non-arrest able offense in 2004,
pot use among 16-24 year olds has declined by about 20% by 2007 and
potency decreased about 25%. The early results of drug decriminalization in
Portugal are even more impressive. The details of how drugs are
decriminalized are very important in terms of the social outcomes.
• In several cases (Spain, Canada, the Netherlands), drug
decriminalization has resulted in (at least short term) increases illegal drug
use. Such increases, however, have not been extreme.
• Increases in self-reported drug use following drug legalization or
decriminalization need to be treated with caution. It may just reflect an
increased willingness uses to report legal drug use (compared to making
self-incriminating admissions of illegal drug use). If so, such increase may be
(partially) illusionary.

4) Legal Drugs

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• Legal drugs like alcohol, nicotine, and (especially) caffeine are consumed
far more frequently them any illegal drugs by a wide margin. And users tend
to have much longer drug using “careers” with legal drugs relative to illegal
ones.
• Legal drug addicts greatly outnumber illegal drug addicts.
• Alcohol and tobacco account far more social harm than all illegal drugs
combined by a wide margin.
• These latter points may (or may not) offer strong support for prohibition.
• Legal drugs tend to be cheap, widely accessible, and (in many cases)
openly publicly consumed.
• At the same time, legal drugs tend to be purer, more consistent in
potency, and safer to use (relative to illegal drugs).

• In contrast to illegal drugs, legal drug markets tend to gravitate toward

softer (or less potent) drugs, and encourage moderate usage (although there
continue to be problems with abuse of such drugs).

• Unlike illegal drugs, legal drugs can be openly publicly regulated and
taxed.

• With legal drugs, a combination of law enforcement, informal social

controls, and other strategies (i.e. harm controls, drug treatment, public
education, etc) are used to address drug-related social problems; Law
enforcement efforts are focused on specific individuals (who break laws, act
disorderly or recklessly, etc) rather than on drugs or drug use per se.

• There is a large body of research on legal drug regulations. While the

results are complex and somewhat inconsistent, many studies indicated that
limiting access to legal drugs(through policies like sales/distribution
licensing, serving time restrictions, etc.) tend to decrease legal drug use,

49
abuse, and addiction. The same can be said for increasing legal drug prices
(through taxation). Restrictions on legal drugs have sometimes been found
to reduce drug-related problems like drunk-driving. In other cases, such
policies appeared to have little impact. In still others, such regulations
appear to actually make matters worse. For example, some studies have
suggested that mandatory closing times for taverns actually tend to increase
drunken driving accidents, injuries, or fatalities.
• Since drug prohibition decreases access to illegal drugs and tends to
raise their street prices, such finding offer some support for prohibition. Of
course, how effectively prohibition is decreasing access or raising prices is an
open question. But conceivably, it could have strong antidrug effects.
• Observe, however, that many such regulations (like minimum age, I.D.
checking, vender licensing, restrictions of sales hours or days, etc.) are
simply not practically applicable to illegal drugs. The same goes for taxes on
drugs.
• Such research findings clearly undermine the case for “pure” (i.e.
unregulated) legalization.
• But such findings offer support for regulated versions of legalization (or
decriminalization). In other words, such research suggests that legal drug
abuse or addiction can be successfully moderated with some (often minor)
restrictions on drug sales or consumption.
• Legal and illegal drug use is positively correlated (especially among the
young). For example, current illicit drug use (for those aged 12 to17) is
almost nine times higher for those who had smoked cigarettes in the past
month vs. those who had not smoked. Another example is that those who
have used alcohol (aged 21 or over) are over four times as likely to use illicit
drugs compared to those who have never used alcohol.
• Over the past several decades, both legal and illegal drug use has
substantially declined in the U.S.

50
• There have been similar decreases in legal and illegal drug use by young
people.
• In contrast to illegal drugs, legal drug addicts are far more likely to be
“functional addicts” and most addicts do eventually quit (often without
treatment).
• Some legal drugs (like alcohol and nicotine) are extremely addictive.
• Legal drug addiction tends to be associated with less severe patterns of
social harm (relative to illegal drug addicts).
• One obvious exception to this rule is caffeine, which has steadily
increased in usage. And it is increasingly sold in more concentrated forms
(as in energy drinks, caffeine pills etc.). Caffeine abuse is also on the rise
(especially among the young). Occasionally, this results in serious adverse
reactions or even death. Still, caffeine is used in moderation by the vast
majority of users. And substantial numbers of people avoid it (think of
decaffeinated coffee or sodas).
• About 75% of kids consume caffeine daily. According to a recent study (2010)
published in the Journal of Pediatrics, kids between the ages of 8-12 typically
consume the equivalent of three cans of caffeinated sodas per day.
• The US government recently banned the sales of caffeinated alcohol drinks,
including Four Loco, Sparxx and Joose. Some public health activists are now
warning that non-alcoholic energy drinks like Red Bull, Rockstar, and Monster may
pose serious health risks. To quote Mary Claire O'Brien, a professor at the Wake
Forest Medical School, "These pre-mixed alcoholic energy drinks are only a fraction
of the true public health risk...Regular energy drinks might pose just as great a
threat to individual and public health and safety." Such critics point to a variety of
serious adverse health effects associated with consuming high levels of caffeine,
and point out that with kids, pre-existing health conditions may be at especially
high risk. They point out that energy drinks often contain various other ingredients
whose health effects are poorly understood. Dr. John Higgins says, "teens and
young adults both are consuming energy drinks at an alarming rate, we need to
determine whether long-term use of energy drinks by this population will translate
into deleterious effects later." (Given the tone of such comments, one has to

51
wonder how long it will be before a political movement forms to regulate, restrict, or
prohibit energy beverages).
• In contrast to illegal drugs, legal drug use tends to exhibit much less
volatility, and epidemics tend to be rare.
• Legal drug markets do not generate turf wars, gang violence, or other
unintended side effects of prohibition.

5) Prescription Drugs

• In comparison with other legal drugs, the situation involving prescription

drugs is more complicated: a mixture of medical and recreational uses,
coexistence of heavy regulation and supervision of most users with a thriving
black market in such drugs, etc…
• Evaluating trends in prescription drugs is complicated by the popular
assumption that medical use of such drugs is beneficial. To further
complicate matters, unauthorized self-medication is criminalized even if it
has the same intent and/or same outcome as doctor prescribed medication.
• There is clear evidence that large numbers of patients recreationally use
or abuse prescription drugs. Unlike most other legal drugs, the overall level
of prescription drug abuse does not appear to have fallen over the past 30
years (if anything it is increasing, perhaps dramatically).
• For instance, an Associated Press analysis of DEA statistics indicates that
retail sales of 5 major painkillers rose 90% from 1997 to 2005. This rapid
increase coincided with several indicators of recreational use and abuse of
prescription painkillers (i.e. drug rehabs, overdoes, etc). In some areas of
the country prescription painkiller overdoses and addictions have soared as
these drugs flow in from states with loose drug controls and lots of pain
clinics (like Florida). In 2008, about 500 people died in Kentucky alone of
prescription drug overdoses. Nationally, hospitalizations for prescription
overdoses (opiates, sedatives, and tranquilizers) rose by 65% from 1999 to
2006.

52
• Nationally, hospitalizations for prescription overdoses (opiates, sedatives,
and tranquilizers) rose by 65% from 1999 to 2006.
• Over the past several years, abuse or recreational use of prescription
drugs appears to have increased among the young. For example,
emergency calls to poison control centers involving teens abusing ADHD
drugs increased 76% from 1998-2005. This coincided with an 86% increase
in ADHD prescriptions for kids (aged 10-19) over the same period.
• The larger medical and pharmaceutical industries have greatly expanded
the therapeutic use of mind, mood, and behavior altering drugs to treat an
ever growing list of problems including learning disabilities, depression,
anxiety disorders, and various behavior problems (often involving children,
the elderly, etc.).
• In 2004, 33 Million people in the U.S. (or roughly 10% of the population)
used at least one psychiatric drug.
• In 2006, 13.5 billion dollars of antidepressants were sold, and such sales
were rising rapidly.
• In 2006, about 9% of American teens were taking antidepressants.
Youngsters (19 and younger) in the U.S. are more than 3 times likely to use
psychotropic medications compared to those in Germany, and more than
twice as likely as those in the Netherlands.
• More and more youngsters and young adults are getting prescriptions for
opiates, sedatives, and stimulants. According to Furtund and his colleagues
(2010), prescription rates for such medications rose from 83.% to 16.1%
among young adults from 1994-2007. For adolescents, it rose from 6.4 to
11.2%. Higher prescription rates for drugs with high potential for abuse
occurred across a wide range of clinical settings.
• The medical definition of conditions requiring or permitting such
prescriptions has broadened dramatically in the U.S.
• During this period of expanding prescription drug use, there has been a
marked increase in related overdoses. While research remains limited on this

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topic, one recent study by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission (based
on 2007 autopsies) found that prescription drug-related deaths were three
times those for all illegal drugs combined. In another recent study
(published in the Archives of Internal Medicine), sociologist David Phillips
found that according to death certificates issued in the U.S. from 1983-2004,
the number of people dying at home from combinations of medications,
street drugs or alcohol increased nearly 3200% (from 92 in 1983 to 3792 in
2004). Phillips and his colleges also found more than 500% increases in
people dying at home due to medication overdoses. There studies suggest
that prescription drug related overdoses have risen dramatically and now
appear to be far more common that overdoses involving only illegal drugs.
• Some critics have argued that the trend toward increasing rates of
clinical depression is nothing more than over-medicalizing basic human
sadness (or what used to be called “the blues”), and using powerful
psychoactive drugs to numb people’s pain (with often undesirable
consequences).
• Other critics have raised serious questions about the desirability of
drugging large numbers of juveniles, adolescents, or teenagers.
• And still others have argued that such “treatments” are too often used to
control disruptive behaviors in schools, nursing homes, and mental hospitals
( and used coercively).
• Whatever the case, prescription regulations and laws allow the legal but
highly restricted use of some drugs but only when authorized by official
gatekeepers (i.e. doctors, pharmacists, etc) or when used for purposes of
social control by the state.
• Government actions to criminalize the abuse of prescription drugs have
sometimes resulted in highly controversial policies. For example, because
most strong pain medications can be abused and are addictive, the state has
become increasingly restrictive with such drugs. As a result, some severe or
chronic pain sufferers may have been under-medicated. And some

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physicians who aggressively treat such conditions have been legally
harassed, lost their medical licenses, or criminally prosecuted.

I) Some Unintended Consequences of Drug Prohibition

The official intent of laws often bears little to their actual consequences.
Laws often unintentionally change the incentives and available choices of
people. This causes them to act in new unanticipated ways. Undoubtedly,
prohibition policies produce a variety of unintended (and often undesirable)
consequences. Before moving on to broadly discuss the unintended effects
of antidrug laws, let’s start with a couple of more specific examples to give
you a feel for the basic idea.
A couple of years ago, some states in the American southwest enacted
restrictions on the legal sale of ingredients used in the manufacturing of
methamphetamines. The intent was to reduce meth abuse and addiction.
They also hoped to reduce accidents and injuries associated with meth
production (itself largely an unintended consequence of criminalizing meth).
And it seemed to work. Well, sort of… Meth lab seizures declined. So, too, did
emergency room visits arising from meth-making accidents. But the number
of medical emergencies involving drug overdoses began to rapidly rise. And,
so too, did rehab admissions. Apparently, the law was somewhat effective
against small-scale localized meth producers. But the black market quickly
responded by moving production over the nearby Mexican border (where
there were no such restrictions on meth ingredients). To make matters
worse, Mexican drug manufactures shifted towards “crystal meth”(a similar
but even more potent and addictive drug). This, in turn, resulted in increased
problems with addiction and overdoses.
More recently, meth producers are adopting a new drug recipe (i.e., “shake
and bake”), which requires fewer controlled ingredients and doesn’t require
traditional meth labs to make. As a result, busting meth labs is becoming
less effective prohibition strategy. Recently, portable small-scale meth labs
(called “trash labs”) are showing up. Meth producers are using automobiles

55
as makeshift drug labs to manufacture small amounts of meth. Using friends
or fellow meth users (known as “smurfer’s”) to buy regulated meth
ingredients in small quantities, they operate across multiple jurisdictions.
Once a batch of meth is made, toxic leftovers are quickly put into garbage
bags and dumped along the roadside (creating toxic hazards in the process).
In other words, cracking down on larger scale labs has driven meth
production into much smaller highly decentralized (and now mobilized) labs.
This has contributed to rising meth consumption in many states in the past
couple of years.
States (Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma), that enacted laws that created
electronic state data bases to monitor all sales of pseudoephedrine products
saw greater increases (67%) in meth-related incidents (arrests, seizures, and
abandoned meth labs found) in 2009 compared to the national average
increase (34%)
Or consider another example. Some studies of drunk driving accidents
(Kentucky and Texas) to have compared “dry” V.S. “wet” counties. Contrary
to some earlier research, recent studies have found substantially higher
drunk driving accidents per capita in dry countries compared to wet
counties. In most dry counties, alcohol use is legal but the sale of alcohol is
banned. Apparently, those in dry counties are more likely to drink and drive,
and to do so for much farther distances ( as they travel to far away bars or
liquor stories in wet counties). Perhaps more surprisingly, a couple of recent
studies have found similar consequences for local laws that ban smoking in
bars.
More generally, drug prohibition appears to produce a wide variety of
unintended and undesirable consequences:

• Increased crime (violent, gang, organized, predatory, etc.), turf wars,

increased cost of addiction, etc. (While drug use per se probably facilitates
some crime, there is ample evidence that highly profitable black market in
drugs contribute heavily to “drug –related” violence and crime.)

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• Increased levels of incarceration (with strong racial, ethnic, and class
effects). To quote drug prohibition critic Jack Cole, “In 1993, under the most
racist regime in modern history, South Africa’s Apartheid Law, 851 black
were imprisoned per 100,000 population. In 2008, under United States Drug
Prohibition Law we imprisoned males 18 years old and above per 100,000 at
rates by race of: 943 White men, 2,777 Hispanic men, and 6, 444 black
men.” While the ‘War on Drugs” does not account for all these racial
disparities, it has contributed very heavily.
• Increased state power (i.e. property seizures, greater search and seizure
powers, more government surveillance, militarization of police, etc.)
• Increased problems with corruption, false arrests, bungled raids, and
disrespect for the law).
• Increased drug potency, and addictiveness
• Unintentional health effects (interfering with the effective control of pain,
contributing to the spread of AIDS, overdoses, etc.). Prohibition contributes
to such problems in various ways including: increasing impurities,
contaminants, or toxic additives (like embalming fluid, deworming
medication, etc.); producing greater variation and uncertainty in drug
potency (which contributes heavily to accidental overdoses); creating
perverse substitution effects (which push illegal drug users away from safer
drugs towards more dangerous ones), encouraging dangerous practices like
needle sharing and so on. For example, drug overdoses have been steadily
rising for almost 40 years. In 2009, there were about 20,000 overdoses.
• A recent study by Miech and colleagues (2010) shows that accidental
poisonings (mostly from prescription and illegal drug overdoses) have
increased dramatically (more than tenfold for some groups) since the 1960s.
Not too surprisingly Baby Boomers are at much greater risk of accidental
poisoning than people (of the same age) were decades ago. This
troublesome trend is not found just among aging hippies, however. The
same trend appears for most age groups and birth cohorts. White women

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and children in 2005-07 were about 9 times as likely to die from accidental
poisoning compared to those in 1968-69. For older White women it was even
worse. For women in their early 50s, only 1 in 100,000 died from these
poisonings in 1968. By 2007, their odds had worsened to about 15 in
100,000. Similar trends were observed for African Americans.
• Undermining human rights and democracy in many third world countries.
For a good discussion of such problems, I refer interested readers to
"Narcophobia," by Fernanda Mena and Dick Hobbs (2010).
• Unintentionally providing support for terrorism, drug cartels, foreign drug
wars, etc. (For example, a recent U.N. report estimated that the Taliban
pulled in over $ 100 million from the illegal opium trade in 2007. Closer to
home, illegal drugs are currently funding crime, political instability and
terrorism in Latin America, and contributing in a rapid rise in violent crime in
Mexico). Several notable public officials have hinted at Mexico possibly
becoming a failed narco-state. Of course, such claims remain speculative
and controversial. (Very recently, Mexico has decriminalized small amounts
of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, and LSD. At the same
time, Mexico continues to aggressively engage in a bloody struggle with drug
traffickers.)

***************

So, prohibition policies unintentionally harm many people (including lots of

innocents). These damages are every bit as real and tragic as any harm
done by illegal drugs. Yet, for some reason, most people react more
intensely when drugs (or drug users) hurt or kill people. It’s all too easy to
personalize and emotionalize the problems caused by drug abuse. We react
strongly to horror stories about kids strung out on drugs, stoned killers,
tragic overdoses, and senseless drug-related accidents. The damages are
direct, immediate, and concrete making for compelling stories and vivid
images. There are obvious “bad guys” to blame. By contrast, the damages

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done by prohibition typically involve highly complex and indirect causation.
Drug laws are impersonal and abstract. Prohibition agents are supposed to
be the “good guys”. Many people just don’t make the connection. To
further confuse matters, the problems caused by prohibition and illegal drug
use often run together. To distinguish the difference, we have to analytically
separate these effects. Someone overdoses on contaminated drugs. A child
is killed in a (drug-related) drive by shooting. A poor neighborhood is
overrun with illegal drug dealers. People frequently blame illegal drug use or
users in such cases… even when our drug policies contributed heavily to the
bad outcomes. The tainted drugs were illegal street drugs. Drive-by
shootings aren’t motivated by legal drugs. Legal drug distributors may
contribute to more localized problems with drinking or smoking but they
don’t terrorize entire neighborhoods. And so on… Prohibition defenders
loudly disown any responsibility for such problems and seek to (falsely) lay
all the blame on illegal drugs. When bad thing (unintentionally) happen to
illegal drug users as the result of prohibition efforts, people are not inclined
to sympathize too much.
In conclusion, many people appear to seriously underestimate (or devalue)
the harm down by our drug policies, or misattribute it to illegal drugs.

J) Does Drug Prohibition Really Reduce

Illegal Drug Use (and related social problems)?

Introduction

While there may be a plausible argument that prohibition per se creates

many negative side-effects and causes more problems than it solves, such
conclusions are only as good as the underlying analysis. In other words, one
needs to systematically compare the costs versus the benefits of prohibition,
measure and quantify all relevant effects, etc…Unfortunately, such analysis
involves making numerous (often controversial) assumptions and complex

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methodological decisions. Not surprisingly, researchers often reach very
different conclusions depending on which variables are included in the
analysis, how they are measured, etc... And such analysis can easily be
manipulated to either support or oppose the war on drugs. While cost-benefit
analysis may be a very useful policy evaluation tool (if used with great care),
it is unlikely to influence too many people’s opinions on drug prohibition,
much less settle the debate decisively.

Whatever the limitations of cost/benefit analysis, it has some advantages. In

particular, it forces us to consider all the costs and benefits associated with
prohibition and related-drug use. Should the suffering of those incarcerated
for drug law violations be viewed as one of the costs of prohibition (and
counted against whatever benefits it produces)? (If not, why not?) Obviously,
some people derive great pleasure from recreational drug use. Should their
lost enjoyment be counted as one of the costs of prohibition? (If not, why
not?) What about the possible practical benefits of non-recreational illegal
drug use (i.e. using drugs to stay alert, to go to sleep, to control nausea or
pain, etc.)? Once we acknowledge that drug use sometimes produces
positive consequences, we start asking “crazy” questions. Could it be that
recreational drug use is a net benefit to society? Granted, this doesn’t seem
too likely. Still, I continue to be amazed at how many people reflexively
reject the very question as absurd or socially irresponsible. But I had to ask
it. Fixating solely on the social costs of illegal drug use is illogical. At the very
least, it leads us to overestimate the net benefits of prohibition. Some may
argue that there really are good reasons to (say) place little value on the
artificial, fleeting highs of stoners and hippies. Maybe so. maybe not. And
that is another advantage of cost/benefit analysis. It forces us to explicitly
state and justify our basic assumptions regarding the possible advantages
and disadvantages of both drug prohibition and drug use.

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Of course any cost-benefit analysis, which might justify prohibition, would
need to show that it substantially reduces the consumption of (illegal) drugs
and reduces the social harms associated with such drug use. Most people
seem to accept this assumption on face value as not merely plausible but
almost undeniable. After all, isn’t it only common sense that prohibition
deters illegal drug use, reduces drug abuse and addiction, and decreases all
the very obvious problems that arise from drug intoxication? To challenge
such an assumption is almost like questioning whether water is wet or the
sky is blue. Many people seem to assume that it is just something that any
reasonable person knows.

But is it really true that drug prohibition actually reduces the use of illegal
drugs substantially? Shouldn’t prohibition be judged not on its intentions but
on its actual consequences? How much does it really reduce drug use (and
related social problems) in the long run? How powerful are prohibition
deterrence effects? Do variables associated with stronger prohibition
enforcement correlate strongly with lower rates of illegal drug use? How
does prohibition actually affect patterns of illegal drug use (i.e. who uses
what drugs, how often and how much, in what circumstances, how do users
behave under the influence, etc.)? Is it possible that it might unintentionally
increase drug abuse or addiction among those who do use drugs illegally?
Perhaps increase the social harms associated with illegal drug use and
intoxication? Is it possible that prohibition actually causes more drug
epidemics? Is it even possible that prohibition might actually increase
recreational drug use and intoxication in the long-run? What would we
predict about such outcomes from major sociological theories? For example,
how might prohibition shape how people socially define drug use,
intoxication, and behavior under the influence? Or how might it alter the
incentives of illegal drug users? And what does the evidence regarding drugs
really show? Was the use of now illegal drugs really higher before
prohibition? How does illegal drug use vary across cultures and subcultures

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(and what are the implications)? Do societies with more criminalized
prohibition (like the U.S.) really have lower rates of illegal drug use, abuse,
and addiction compared to countries with “softer” forms of prohibition? How
do trends and patterns of illegal drug use compare with those for legal
drugs?

These questions go to the heart of the prohibition debate. Rather than just
assuming that drug prohibition dramatically reduces drug abuse, addiction,
and related social problems, let’s take a look at some relevant theoretical
arguments and evidence…And then you can decide for yourself.

1) Theoretical Arguments

In this section, we will focus on how various theoretical perspectives apply to

drug prohibition, illegal drug use, etc. First, we will explore rational choice
perspectives on various drug-related issues. Second, we will look at drug
prohibition from an interactionist perspective. Next, we will consider some
theoretical explanations about drug epidemics. Finally, we will apply social
network analysis to drug prohibition. While we will bounce around from
subtopic to subtopic quite a bit, all these various topics relate to the central
issue regarding the effects of prohibition on drug use, abuse, and related
social problems. Some points will focus on limitations or problems with
prohibition that reduce its effectiveness. Other points will show how
prohibition may be counterproductive (i.e. actually increasing drug abuse or
addiction). Still other points still focus on how prohibition worsens drug-
related social problems. But each and every point ties into the basic
question: Does drug prohibition really reduce illegal drug use and related
social problems?

Rational Choice Perspective

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 Deterrence

At first glance, rational choice theory would seem to support the

effectiveness of drug prohibition. By raising the costs or risks of drug
use and sales, one might expect a very large reduction in illegal drug
activity. Despite somewhat harsh drug laws in the U.S. (and large
numbers of people arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses), there
are several reasons to believe that anti-drug deterrence effects are
fairly weak…

Weak Deterrence

• Substantial numbers of people in the U.S. (perhaps 5% or more of the

U.S. population) currently use illegal drugs, and for those 18-25 years old,
about 20% have used an illegal drug in the past month. Among adults, life-
time use of illegal drugs is close to 50%. To quote prohibition critic Jack Cole,
…”the number of people in the U.S. above age twelve who used illegal drugs
(increased) from 4 million (two percent of the population) in 1965 to 112
million (46 percent of the population) in 2005….” This dramatic increase
occurred despite rapid increases in antidrug enforcement. To again quote
Jack Cole. “The Drug Enforcement Administration of the federal government
had 2,775 employees when it was created in 1972…By 2005, DEA had
quadrupled its staff to 10, 894 but its budget…increased to 34 times the
original amount-from $65 million in 1972 to over $ 2.1 billion in 2006.” Yet,
drug use skyrocketed during this period. All this raises serious doubts about
antidrug deterrence.
• The relationship between illegal drug use in the U.S. and the various
measures of prohibition intensity (i.e. antidrug spending, seizures, drug
arrests/ incarcerations, etc.) appears to be weak and inconsistent over time.

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• While illegal drug use in the U.S. has declined over the past 30 years
(coinciding with stronger prohibition efforts), the use of many legal drugs is
down over the same period.
• Steadily falling street prices for many illegal drugs (including marijuana,
heroin, cocaine, etc.)
• Little or no evidence of reduced illegal drug accessibility over time.
• Most estimates suggest only a moderately small percentage of illegal
drugs are seized by the government.
• Research by Kilmer (2002) found that the probability of arrest for
cannabis possession is typically quite small (only roughly 2-3% of users were
arrested in a number of Western countries studied). At the same, the rate of
marijuana use varied widely across these same countries. Those countries
with the highest rates of marijuana usage have arrest rates for pot
possession fairly similar to those with low rates of usage.
• Journalist Jacob Sullum observes, “there is no obvious relationship
between marijuana arrests and marijuana use (in the U.S.)." Increases in
arrests do not seem to be driven by increases in consumption, and busting
more pot smokers does not seem to result in less pot smoking. While the
odds of getting arrested have roughly doubled since the early 1990s, the
overall level of use is no lower now than it was then and may be somewhat
higher…” Prohibition advocate Joseph Califano makes a similar point," from
1993 to 2005, a 107% increase in marijuana arrests was accompanied by a
100% increase in marijuana users. "These observations are particularly
relevant here because half of all drug arrests are marijuana arrests.
• MacCoun and Reuters (2003) estimated that the chance of actually being
sent to prison for any single sale of cocaine is roughly 1 in 10,000. For
cocaine use, the odds would be significantly lower. Survey research typically
shows that people don’t rate illegality or fear of legal punishment at or near
the top of reasons for choosing not to use illegal drugs. Responses like “not

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interested”, “fear of overdose”, “health concerns”, or “disappointing
friends/family”, are far more popular reasons to not use illicit drugs.

• Variations in perceptions of the certainty and severity of drug-related

punishment explain little (often 5% or less) of variations in self-reported drug
use.

• Research shows that increased severity of punishment often results in

decreased certainty of punishment (as more defendants aggressively fight
charges, judges and juries become less likely to convict, etc.). So, trends
toward harsher drug sentences may produce unintended and offsetting
reductions in the certainty of punishment.

• Increasing the severity of punishment for illegal drugs (or drug-related

activities) often has only a fleeting effect on illegal drug use.

• A Justice Policy Institute report (2007) reports results that raise deep
doubts about antidrug deterrence. 198 of the most populated countries in
the U.S. (making up about half of the U.S. population) were analyzed. The
results were shocking! There was virtually no relationship between drug
arrest rates and illegal drug use rates in these countries. (Arrest rates were
strongly correlated, however, with police/judicial budget size, poverty rates,
unemployment rates, and proportion of the population, which was African
American.) Similar results were found for state-by-state comparative
analysis. These results suggest that antidrug enforcement is extremely
inefficient, haphazard, inconsistent, and somewhat arbitrary. This, in turn,
raises serious questions about how effectively law enforcement deters illegal
drug use.

• Social groups who are arrested on illegal drug charges at high rates often
use illegal drugs less often than groups who are arrested at much lower
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rates. Despite much higher drug-related arrest rates, African Americans
appear to use illegal drugs at roughly the same rate as whites. Male illegal
drug users are arrested at much higher rates than female illegal drug users,
yet males are still more prone to use illegal drugs than women. Similar
points can be made for the poor, less religious people, large city dwellers,
etc. There is one important exception: mature adults are more likely to be
arrested for drug offenses and less likely to use illegal drugs compared to
those in their teens or early twenties. But for most social groups, higher
risks of drug arrests don’t correspond to substantial reductions in illegal drug
use.

• Illegal drug users can often reduce their risk of drug arrests fairly easily.
Contrary to popular belief, most drug-related arrests are not the result of
active drug investigations or clever sting operations. Rather, many drug
arrests occur when someone is searched after being stopped or arrested for
some other offense (involving everything from minor traffic infractions to
serious crimes). Many more occur due to random searches at DUI
checkpoints, airport screenings, etc. In some cities, police aggressively “pat
down” passersby in what amounts to large-scale random searches. Cautious
illegal drug users can greatly reduce their risks of drug arrests substantially
by not using or buying drugs in open public view, not smuggling drugs into
situations where searches are known to occur, not carrying drugs around
constantly in their car or walking around in public with drugs, driving safely,
not committing crimes while in possession of drugs, etc. To put it simply, the
easier it is to evade law enforcement, the weaker the deterrent.

• In most cases, actual criminal penalties for lesser drug offenses (like
those involved with most possession arrests) do not involve much (if any) jail
time.

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• Even with more serious drug charges, sentences are often substantially
reduced through plea-bargaining.

• Theoretically, one would expect weak deterrent effects if the risk of

punishment per drug-related event or episode was low (and there are
several reasons to strongly suspect that this is the case).

• Those who are convicted for drug crimes often continue to use illegal
drugs. In a study of a small sample of Canadians convicted for simple pot
possession, Erickson (1976) found that neither more severe punishment nor
higher perceived certainty of future punishment had any significant
deterrence on the intent to use pot again. Contrary to deterrence theory,
those who perceived a greater likelihood of drug arrests were actually more
inclined to use pot.

Factors Limiting Deterrence

A number of practical constraints limit the deterrence impacts of anti-drug

laws:

• Normal Legal/ Procedural Constraints; our legal system makes it harder to

arrest and convict drug offenders
• Political Constraints; Some effective antidrug measures are not employed
(or not used aggressively) for political reasons.
• Community Support Constraints; Some antidrug measures are not used
for fear of undermining community support for law enforcement.
• High Search Costs (and the “whack-a-mole” problem); finding illegal
drugs is a "needle in a haystack" problem; and the "needle" is constantly
moving around and attempting to defeat the law.
• Adaptive Responses/ Strategies by Drug Markets; Those who produce or
distribute illegal drugs are constantly adopting new strategies to defeat
prohibition efforts.

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• Substitution Effects; Drug users can switch from one drug to other (legal
or illegal) ones when prohibition cuts off the supply of some drug or drives
up it's price.
• Successful prohibition drives up drug prices and profits, and encourages
more supply.
• Sheer overload of the criminal justice systems; every year thousands of
drug cases are dropped largely due to a lack of prosecutorial resources.

…Likewise, some other prohibitionist strategies (like raising prices, etc.) may
be less effective than generally assumed.

There are good reasons to suspect that informal social controls (and self
control) are at least as important (if not more so) in regulating recreational
drug use compared to formal social controls.
The Incentives of Prohibition Enforcement
Prohibition enforcers are constantly facing new challenges including new law
evasion strategies and technologies by illegal drug suppliers, the emergence
of new drugs, the reemergence of older ones, changing drug supply routes,
etc. They must contend with multiple competing black markets in different
drugs. The structure of these markets varies widely as do their methods of
production, distribution, and prohibition evasion. Enforcement measures
that are very effective against one may be much less so against another one.
And some illegal drugs will be more destructive than others. To be really
effective, anti-drug enforcement must prioritize its goals carefully, allocate
resources efficiently, calibrate its tactics to suit particular drug markets, and
then execute its strategies effectively. It must constantly monitor the
effectiveness of various strategies and adjust quickly when one fails. And, it
must constantly adapt to changing black market conditions and illegal
supplier behavior. To work well, prohibition needs to be smart, agile,
aggressive, unrelenting, and widespread.

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Yet, over time, prohibition seems to be less effective (as demonstrated by
falling illegal drug prices combined with stable drug consumption). Drug
arrests vary dramatically across the U.S. but with little or no relationship to
the amount of drug use in particular areas. Highly questionable antidrug
strategies (like mass scale arrests for possession of small amounts of pot)
continue to be used in many areas despite research indicating that it has
little effect on illegal drug abuse or related social problems. Other
approaches (like drug treatment) that appear to be far more cost effective in
reducing drug abuse appear to be seriously underutilized. The government
has repeatedly increased budgets for already expensive antidrug programs
that appeared to have little or no impact on illegal drug consumption. And
then there are all those cases of waste and incompetence (e.g. sloppy record
keeping, lost evidence, bungled drug raids) and outright corruption (e.g.
payoffs, planting evidence, and cops ripping off dealers). Further, there are
serious issues about how effectively the priorities and efforts against
different drugs. At best, their efforts are only loosely related to the social
harm associated with particular drugs. This problem only gets worse as
more and more drugs are banned
While mistakes in law enforcement are probably inevitable, some of the
common methods used in enforcing drug laws compound such problems
greatly.
For example, using police dogs to sniff out illegal drugs appears to produce
lots of false positives. A Chicago Tribune survey of traffic stops in the
suburbs of Chicago found that police found drugs in less than half the cases
where the dogs supposedly smelled drugs. For Hispanic drivers, police dogs
gave false alerts almost three-fourths of the time.
Lisa Lit and associates (2011) found that police dog handlers might be
unconsciously signaling their dogs how to react. Their study was designed to
either fool handlers in thinking there were drugs (or explosives) in certain
places, or fool the dogs (by planting hidden sausages). In fact, there were no
drugs (or explosives) planted anywhere. There were only 21 searchers (out

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of 144) where no false alerts occurred. The other 123 searchers produced
225 false alerts. In most cases, these false alerts occurred where handlers
had been tricked into believing there were drugs in a specific spot.
Another example is the use of unreliable informants while we lack
comprehensive data on how many false searches occur, it appears that
many (perhaps most) searches find no illegal drugs. If such methods are as
unreliable as they appear, prohibition agents waste a lot of time and money
(to say nothing about harassing innocent citizens).
A central problem is weak incentives for prohibition agents (and police).
Winning the war on drugs (supposing that such a thing was even possible)
would be organizational suicide for prohibition agencies. More importantly,
nobody gets rich by better enforcing antidrug laws. Prohibition enforcers
often appear to have other motives or goals (as opposed to actually reducing
illegal drug use) like expanding organizational turf/power, increasing funding,
getting positive press coverage, gaining popular or political support, or
serving the personal ambitions of organizational leaders. For example, while
doing lots of low level drug busts for minor possession appears to be a fairly
inefficient strategy. But such methods are all too common. For example,
low-level marijuana arrests now account for 15% of all arrests in New York
City. More people were recently arrested for pot possession in one year
(2010) than were arrested for the same offense from 1978-1996. Such an
approach has some advantages: high visibility, low risk to law enforcement,
etc. For those who benefit by running up flashy drug arrest/conviction
statistics and appearing to be “tough on crime,” it seems to work very well.
Consider another example. Due to modest incomes and career-related
frustrations, some (bad) prohibition agents or cops pursue their own financial
self-interests (like taking brides) or career advancement (such as framing
innocent citizens to generate more drug arrests).
Many law enforcers sometimes appear to fixate on short-term gains over
better long-term approaches. For instance, Caulkins and Associates (1997)
estimated that drug treatment was far more cost-efficient in reducing

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cocaine use in the long run than either conventional law enforcement or
longer jail sentences. Perhaps because longer sentences can be very cost
efficient for short time periods, the criminal justice system choose to
implement tougher (and mandatory minimum) sentencing even though the
effectiveness of such an approach declines rapidly over time (and is much
less cost-efficient than drug treatment in the long run). One result has been
a vast increase in (very expensive) drug-related incarcerations.
Many law enforcement agencies have attempted to strengthen the
incentives to fight against drugs. A good example is where law enforcement
organizations are allowed to share in the proceeds from the sale of assets
seized in drug busts/arrests. Such policies do substantially increase drug
arrests and seizures of “drug money”, cars, etc. Unfortunately, it has often
led to serious accusations of police corruption, overzealous enforcement
(often against innocent people), and other abuses.
By contrast, illegal drug suppliers have very strong incentive to utilize
effective prohibition evasion strategies and technologies. Natural selection
also plays a role. Those suppliers who fail to adapt will either be busted up
by law enforcement or lose market share to more efficient (and often more
ruthless) competitors. As a result, black markets in drugs tend to be very
efficient and quickly adapt to new challenges or changing conditions. When
one supply route is cut off, another one is quickly opened. When drug
interdiction is stepped up in one country, production shifts to another one.
When illegal smuggling is repressed, domestic production rises. Restrictions
on drug-making ingredients leads to new drug formulas. Even though the
prohibition state is extremely large and powerful, it is still often at a
competitive disadvantage against more nimble, flexible, and better-
motivated opponents.

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 Moral Hazard, Trust & Black Markets

The purity and potency of street drugs tends to vary a great deal. As a result,
illegal drug consumers don't really know what they're buying. Intermittent
interruptions in drug supplies probably explains some of this variation. But this
doesn't really explain why the price to purity ratio of illegal drugs varies so much
(as opposed to seeing even larger variations in prices with fairly stable levels of
purity).
Black markets differ from legal markets in some critical respects. Consumers of
legal goods and services are free to openly compare the prices and quality of what
they buy. Rival producers or sellers must constantly compete to attract and hold
their customers. This gives them strong incentives to engage in effective quality
control. This is reinforced by consumer regulations, consumer reporting, and the
threat of lawsuits. Even so, some legal businesses still engage in shady practices
(like offering substandard goods at inflated prices). But this problem is much worse
with black markets where illegal suppliers have greater incentives and more
opportunities to cheat their customers. Absent open competition (and a legal
framework to punish consumer fraud), many unscrupulous illegal drug dealers sell
heavily diluted, altered, or fake drugs.
This creates serious problems for both illegal drug buyers and sellers. For drug
consumers, it means getting ripped off (i.e., paying good money for bad quality
drugs). It also adds to a heightened risk of drug overdoses (when users
underestimate the strength of a particular batch of drugs) or accidental poisonings
(like when drugs are cut with dangerous chemicals). As for dealers, they too risk
being ripped off by other dealers higher in the supply chain. At the same time,
consumer fraud and poor quality control tend to drive off customers, making it
harder to charge higher prices for (genuinely) stronger drugs. And it creates more
violence against dealers, arising out of disputes over the quality of drugs.
(As an aside, a working paper by Galeniamos, et al. (2009) argues that law
enforcement could use this to their advantage. Rather than basing drug charges on
the raw weight of illegal drugs, penalties could be greatly reduced for selling weaker
or diluted drugs. This would increase incentives for more dealers to rip off more

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users which, in turn, would drive increasingly frustrated and dissatisfied users away
from illegal drugs.)
Illegal drug sellers and buyers use various strategies to manage such problems.
Some of the tricks that work well in legal markets, however, often don't work so well
in black markets. For example, shoppers can sometimes reduce uncertainty about
product quality by watching what others are buying and then buying the same thing
(like when people pick a restaurant in an unfamiliar area because it's crowded). But
prohibition tends to reduce the public visibility of drug sales (although this trick can
still work in open air drug markets). Sometimes users can pick up on other signals
about drug potency (like when drug addicts seeking out particular batches of drugs
following a rash of overdoses).
Another strategy would be to stock up on high quality merchandise when one can
find it. Again, there are problems here. It hardly eliminates problems with rip offs
(since clever fraudsters may give or sell someone high quality drugs up front and
then substitute inferior drugs at a later date). This strategy also runs serious legal
risks since you need to buy, transport, and store larger amounts of illegal
contraband. And this puts buyers at greater risk of drug robberies if others know
about their drug stashes.
Likewise, illegal drug dealers have problems using some strategies that work well
for legal businesses. For example, product branding is a common strategy to signal
product quality and build consumer confidence. Think of McDonald's or Coke.
Illegal drug suppliers have repeatedly tried the same strategy (like selling ecstasy
tablets shaped to look like President Obama or putting sales logos on vacuum
packeted bags of pot). Once again, such an approach is problematic. Branding
increases risks of detection by law enforcement. And rival competitors don't have
to respect copyrights in the black market. So brands are quickly pirated by others
who can then use them to sell substandard drugs at inflated prices, which defeats
the whole purpose of branding.
The underlying problem here is establishing trust and predictability in an illegal
market. The simplest and most effective strategy appears to be to distribute drugs
through interpersonal relationships where personal relationships and social
reputations decrease uncertainty and mistrust. (Observe this simultaneously
reduces problems with snitches and undercover cops.) In most (but not all) illegal
drug markets, drugs are distributed through direct marketing, almost like

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tupperware parties. Partying and socializing blurs together with salesmanship.
Sellers establish trust with their customers while buyers freely sample the
merchandise.
The illegal drug world is all about who you know. Those at the periphery of the drug
world have few reliable contacts to find decent quality drugs. They are at the
mercy of strangers, and often get ripped off. By comparison, those with consistent
access to high quality drugs are well connected. Good drugs are prestige goods
that confer status or popularity upon those who possess them (assuming they share
with others). So, creating more linkages or connections in drug distribution
networks is socially rewarded. This promotes the growth of these networks.
With this market structure, dealers have stronger incentives to control the quality of
drugs sold to their regular customers. (and to show them favoritism in other ways,
too). For instance, repeat customers may be given the first opportunity to buy the
highest quality merchandise. Or they may be offered price discounts (which is why
chronic users typically pay less for their drugs than occasional users). With drugs
like heroin or cocaine, it appears that heavier users are often (at least partially)
shielded from short-term spikes. This occurs partly because the economics of
international drug production and distribution. But it sometimes involves local
dealers temporarily taking losses in order to keep their best customers happy.
This point exposes an old myth about drug "pushers" who prey on their helplessly
addicted clients. Of course, drug users are dependent on their dealers. But dealers
are also highly dependent on their repeat customers. Loyal customers not only
provide a steady stream of income. They offer other rewards (like steering
customers to a dealer, buying drug making ingredients to make meth, ect.). If a
dealer doesn't treat them right, they can always find another dealer. This mutual
dependence shapes transactions between buyers and sellers.
Finally, all this helps explain why prohibition efforts are typically far more successful
in (temporarily) reducing the potency of street drugs than there are in pushing up
illegal drug prices.

Rational Addicts, Illegal Drug Prices, & Consumption

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Economist Gary Becker argues that even drug addicts are “rational”. They
seek to satisfy their wants and desires, weigh the potential benefits and
costs of their drug-related choices, and attempt to make good decisions
given their own tastes/preferences and their available choices. In other
words, drug use (even by addicts) is governed by the same basic logic as any
other type of consumption (i.e., utility maximization). Granted, addicts tend
to focus very heavily on the immediate benefits and costs associated with
their drug use. And most are probably somewhat insensitive to variations in
the price of their drugs (especially w.r.t. short-term changes in price). Still,
Becker argues that even hard core junkies are far more sensitive to lasting
price changes in their drugs than most people realize.
To the degree that prohibition succeeds in driving drug prices, it would be
expected to reduce drug abuse, dependency, and addiction. Most experts
agree that prohibition does raise illegal drug prices (over their legal market
prices). Undoubtedly, this puts downward pressure on illegal drug use.
Arguably, this may be one of the most effective methods for decreasing drug
use… to the degree they can keep pushing up drug prices. (It may have
other advantages too. Research on alcohol taxes indicates that raising the
price of alcohol appears to reduce alcohol-related problems like drunk-
driving among teens. The same might apply to other drugs).

Drug enforcement imposes risks on illegal producers and distributors, which

eventually results in higher drug prices. For instance, Kuziemko and Levitt (2001)
analyzed data from large cities between 1985--1996, and found that cocaine prices
are positively correlated with both the certainty and the severity of punishment for
drug crimes.
Legalizing drugs would be expected to decrease their prices and increase their
consumption. This might be especially problematic for the young (who are believed
to be more price sensitive that more mature adults). Grossman and Chaloupka
(2001) estimated a 10% decrease in cocaine prices would result in a 10% increase
in the number of young cocaine users, along with a 3% increase in the frequency of
cocaine use among younger users. Pacula and associated (2000) estimated a 10%

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decrease in marijuana prices would increase the number of high school seniors who
smoked pot by about 3%.
Conceivably, legalizing drugs might dramatically reduce their prices. A recent study
by the Rand Corp. (2010) estimated that legalizing pot in California would have
reduced marijuana prices by 80% or more. If so, a bag of high quality pot sold for
about $38 (or about $1.50 per joint). They projected that this would have increased
marijuana consumption by 50-100%. This would have raised pot use to rates last
seen during the late 1970s, at the peak of illegal drug use in the US..
But there is considerable disagreement about both how sensitive illegal drug users
are to price changes and how much legalization would reduce drug prices. For
instance, economist Jeffrey Miron points out that price markups on legal products
like coffee, tea, chocolate, or beer are often similar to those observed for illegal
drugs. While he acknowledged that prohibition drives up illegal drug prices, he
argues that such increases are probably significantly smaller than commonly
believed.
Whatever the case, forecasting how much drug use might increase in the aftermath
of legalization is extremely speculative. Beau Kilmer, lead author of the Rand study
mentioned earlier, openly admits, "there is considerable uncertainty about the
impact that legalizing marijuana in California will have on consumption." The
fundamental problem is that we are forced to extrapolate beyond the available
data. This is a cardinal sin in forecasting. To again quote Kilmer, "No government
has legalized the production and distribution of marijuana for general use, so there
is little evidence on which to base any prediction about how this might work..."
Translation: We don't really know how much prices would fall or how people would
respond to these falling prices.
Concerns about declining prices of newly legalized drugs causing a surge in drug
consumption may be a moot point anyway. Well-known economist Gary Becker
(among others) argues that falling prices could easily be offset by raising taxes on
drugs. Not everyone agrees, however. Some are concerned that there are practical
limits to taxing legal drugs. If taxes are raised too high, this might encourage
widespread tax evasion or lead to the emergence of new black markets in untaxed,
unregulated drugs. Our experiences with excise taxes on legal drugs, however,
suggests that legal drug markets can bear moderately high taxes without producing
large scale problems with evasion. If so, drug consumption could be effectively

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managed through taxation without the need for any drug prohibition. (1) The more
addictive a particular drug, the less price sensitive addicts will tend to be
(i.e. increasing illegal drug prices will be the least effective in reducing the
use of the most addictive drugs); (2) Some illegal drug users (like those who
are older, wealthier, or better educated) appear to be less price sensitive
than others and will be harder to deter; (3) Temporary price increases for
illegal drugs often has little or no effect on illegal drug use (especially among
addicts); (4) Many antidrug tactics (like busting dealers) typically result in
only short-term interruptions in supply and temporary increases in price; (5)
Over time, the street prices of most illegal drugs has fallen substantially
(even while their potency has increased). For example, the price of cocaine
in the U.S. fell by over 80% from 1981 to 1996 (after adjusting for inflation
and drug purity); (6) Artificially increasing the price of illegal drugs tends to
increase illegal drug profits which attracts new suppliers into illegal drug
markets, encourages the development of new strategies to beat the
prohibition system, etc. Over time, increasing illegal drug supply will result
in downward pressures on illegal drug prices which (at least partially) offset
prohibition efforts to raise their prices; (7) One reason that U.S. street prices
for illegal drugs are so much higher than their import prices is that
Americans have high average incomes compared to those in other countries
along the illegal supply routes. Americans pay more for all sorts of legal
goods and services compared to (say) Mexicans. Just because Americans
pay high prices for drugs doesn’t necessarily mean that this is the result of
effective American prohibition policies.

Nondrug Reinforcers

Recreational drug use often reduces the availability of nondrug Reinforcers.

In other words, it interferes with a variety of nondrug-related activities (or

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social relationships), which are important sources of satisfaction/pleasure.
These nondrug reinforcers compete for the time, money, and attention of
drug users, and are often incompatible with prolonged drug abuse. For
instance, employment typically limits opportunities for being high all the
time. Many drug users may simply not feel the need to chronically use drugs
if their needs are being met in other ways (i.e. interesting activities, good
friends, competing in sports, etc.). Or they may feel that they have more to
lose by abusing drugs. All this suggests that increasing the availability of
nondrug reinforcers will tend to reduce drug abuse, dependency, and
addiction. After conducting life histories of alcoholics and heroin addicts,
Valliant (1966, 1973, and 1988) concluded that addicts often use drugs in
the first place due to limited alternatives. Later success with drug
withdrawal depends largely on addicts finding gratifying nondrug
alternatives. Or consider a historical example. Robins, et al. (1975) studying
returning Vietnam war veterans. They found that most (85%) had been
offered heroin while in Vietnam, many (43%) tried it, and more than a few
(19%) formed drug dependencies to opiates. Yet, within roughly one year of
returning to the U.S., only about 12% of those who were originally hooked on
heroin in Vietnam were still using the drug. This compared with estimated
relapse rates of about 90% (over a one year period) for civilian heroin
addicts undergoing drug detox during this period. The best explanation for
the relatively low rates of relapses among returning war vets appears to be
that those who got addicted in Vietnam did so in a situation involving high
levels of stress combined with very limited availability of many nondrug
reinforcers. Returning to the U.S. vastly increased their opportunities to find
satisfaction in ways other than drug use. By contrast, civilian junkies
typically underwent no such dramatic changes in their environments or lives.
Or consider how drug dependency correlates with employment, income, and
marriage. In each case, chronic drug abuse or addiction correlates
negatively with variables closely associated with the availability of nondrug
Reinforcers.

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Finally, numerous human and animal experimental studies indicate that drug
use tends to decline when an organism is provided a stimulus-enriched
environment or otherwise offered more nondrug reinforcers. On the other
hand, (social) organisms who are socially isolated, placed in impoverished
environments, or put under stress are more likely to form addictions or
reengage in drug-seeking behavior (or after such behaviors have earlier
been extinguished). A recent (2008) study by Solinas and associates found
that cocaine addictions by lab rats could be reversed by environmental
enrichment. This also weakened the linkage between cocaine use and
environmental stimuli associated with it. This is important because the cues
are known to trigger drug cravings. Such findings illustrate how strongly
environment influences drug addiction.
Prohibitionists tend to ignore this whole issue. If anything, prohibition tends
to restrict the availability of nondrug reinforcers for illegal drug users. Drug
arrests tend to reduce income and employment opportunities. Clearly,
incarceration deprives people of their freedom to pursue satisfaction in all
sorts of ways (although it also restricts access to drugs, too). School drug
testing probably deters many younger drug users from participating in sports
or other extra-curricular activities. Getting caught with drugs often results in
expulsion or prompts kids to drop out of school. And so on.
To the degree that prohibition does restrict the availability of nondrug
reinforcers, it would be expected to (unintentionally) increase rates of drug
abuse, dependency, and addiction among illegal drug users.
Perceived Risks of Drug Use
Rational choice theory would predict that those who perceive higher risks
associated with the use of any particular drug will be less inclined to use it.
The more risk adverse the person, the stronger this effect. The evidence
strongly supports this prediction. The (perceived) risks associated with
drugs are one of the best predictors of drug use among the young. A 2009
Study by Chomynova, Miller, and Beck’s analyzed survey responses from
almost 23,000 students from 8 European countries. They found that drug

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and alcohol abstainers perceived the highest health-related (and other) risks
w.r.t. alcohol and drugs. Fairly similar results were found for experimental
drinkers. Regular alcohol drinkers perceived moderately high risks for drugs,
too. These drinkers, however, tended to underestimate the risks associated
with alcohol. Illegal drug users perceived the lowest risks for both alcohol
and drugs. Unlike regular drug users, experimental users disapproved of
regular drug use.
Further, many regular drug users make strong distinctions between the risks
associated with different drugs. Even chronic drug users tend to avoid drugs
that they perceive as very risky (and use such drugs only very rarely and in
small quantities). Patricia Erickson (1982) questioned 85 Canadians who had
been arrested for cannabis possession. Most of her subjects viewed opiates,
hallucinogens, and amphetamines as very dangerous drugs. Many had not
tried these drugs. While cocaine was viewed as somewhat dangerous, it was
typically viewed as less risky than other hard drugs. Substantially more had
tried it. Marijuana was viewed as virtually harmless, and most subjects were
heavy marijuana smokers. Except for marijuana, increased exposure to
specific drugs was associated with greater perceived risks. White and
Associates’ (2009) study of Australian ecstasy users showed that they are
well aware of various drug-related risks (including risks to physical or mental
health, potential problems with addiction/dependency, and possible
undesirable behavioral effects) associated with particular drugs. They made
complex distinctions between “party drugs” (i.e. ecstasy, crystal meth,
cocaine, ketamine (or “special K” and GHB) in terms of the types of risks that
each drug poses.
Finally, most illegal drug users consume softer and safer drugs like
marijuana. Far fewer use harder and more dangerous drugs. And life
threatening drug overdoses (and overdose deaths) are fairly rare among
illegal drug users. This is exactly what you’d expect to find if most drug
users are fairly rational, risk-adverse, and well informed about drug risks.

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Prohibition defenders often argue that illegal drug users are deeply irrational,
grossly ignorant of drug-related risks, or extremely insensitive to such risks.
Undoubtedly, this is true in some cases. And, yes, there are some common
misperceptions about the risks of drug use. In particular, youngsters tend to
underestimate the risks associated with legal drugs (especially alcohol),
prescription drugs, and drugs outside their generation’s cultural experience.
And some social groups (like the young, the poor, and the less educated)
appear to be less sensitive to drug-related risks compared to others (even
when such risks are recognized). Nevertheless, most people (including most
illegal drug users) appear to be moderately well informed with the risks
associated with common recreational drugs, and can distinguish between the
relative risks of different drugs fairly effectively. If anything, many people
appear to seriously overestimate the risks associated with illegal drugs…
especially w.r.t. “scary drugs” associated with very recent and widely
publicized drug panics. Most people are probably far more knowledgeable
about such risks than they are about things like geography, history, or
mathematics. And more experienced illegal drug users are probably far
better informed about drug-risks than the average person. Ironically,
prohibitionists often assume that illegal drug users are rational, risk adverse,
and well informed when it comes to criminal drug penalties or increased
prices for illegal drugs. Yet, they often act as if these same people are
oblivious to the dangers of drug use.
While the bulk of evidence supports rational choice theory on the topic of
perceived risks, there is one clear exception. Research indicates that some
(typically younger) people view drugs as very dangerous in the abstract but
still believe that they personally are at little or no risk using the very same
drugs. Dillard Midboe, and Klein 2009) found that college students who had
unrealistically optimistic beliefs about their own drinking (i.e., believing that
they were less likely to have drinking problems than other students) were
actually significantly more likely to form later drinking problems than
students who were not so (overly) optimistic.

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Conversely, the more rational, risk adverse, and well-informed illegal drug
users are, the greater the likelihood that prohibition will do more harm than
good. Rational drug users do their own risk evaluation and management.
Most make fairly sane and reasonable decisions most of the time. Some will
make poor decisions, suffer negative consequences and learn from their
mistakes. Drug laws can easily distort such self-regulation of risk. Drug laws
are typically very loosely calibrated with the actual risks associated with
specific drugs. For example, drug laws rarely, if ever, consider how much
drugs a person uses at any particular time. Drug penalties often ignore the
potency or purity in determining the punishment. Of course, safer drugs like
marijuana are typically punished far less severely than more dangerous
drugs. But prohibition impacts the relative price and availability of various
drugs in ways that often have almost nothing to do with the relative health
risks of these drugs. This can easily result in perverse substitution effects.
Reducing access to safer illegal drugs invites the use of other more readily
available (but far more dangerous) drugs. Think of prescription drug abuse
or the use of inhalants by the young. Driving up the price of (say) cocaine
may lead to the use of cheaper but even more dangerous drugs like
methamphetamines. Of course, drug laws discourage the use of drugs like
pot and ecstasy in favor of legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco despite
research (like Nutt and Associate’s 2009 study published in the Lancet)
showing these latter drugs to be far more dangerous. In various ways, drug
prohibition can push users away from safer drugs and towards more harmful
ones. This problem is greatly reinforced by U.S. prohibition policies that
heavily target pot users. It is probably no coincidence that periods involving
rapidly rising marijuana arrests coincide with rising hard drug usage. While it
is still possible that prohibition still saves lives on net (by discouraging illegal
drug use in the first place), it appears to make the illegal drug use which still
occurs far more dangerous. And it probably winds up hurting more
reasonable drug users in order to save those who are more reckless or
foolhardy.

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 Drug Testing and Deterrence
Most drug testing programs increase the costs of recreational drug use both
by penalizing drug use (i.e. job loss, reprimands, expulsions, suspensions,
etc.) and by increasing the chance of getting caught. Deterrence theory
would predict that such programs would reduce drug use. How well do these
programs really work?
In some cases, drug-testing has yielded very impressive results. Drug-
testing in the U.S. military has been a prohibition success story. Survey
research indicates that drug use prevalence in the military fell from 27.6% in
1980 (when testing was implemented) to 3.4% in 1992. This decline was
much larger than the decline in drug use among civilians (most of whom
were not being tested) during this period. A working paper by Mehay and
Pacula (1999) showed that the rates of drug use among military personnel
and their civilian counterparts were very similar prior to the institution of
military drug-testing. Rates of drug use diverged only after afterward. This
may have been due (at least in part) to drug users avoiding military service.
After attempting to adjust for this possibility, Mehay and Pacula estimated
that drug testing reduced drug use in the military by somewhere between 4-
16%. Borak (1988) estimated that the Navy’s drug testing program deterred
almost 60% of potential drug use. There are several methodological and
statistical reasons to suspect that such studies may overestimate the impact
of military drug-testing somewhat. Still, most experts believe that these
deterrence effects were very real and fairly strong.
Workplace drug testing has also produced favorable results. According to
Quest Diagnostics, a large drug testing firm, their drug positive urine
samples have decreased from 13.6% in 1988 to 3.6% in 2008. Numerous
sources report that after instituting drug testing, most companies experience
substantial declines in positive test results (in the 50-80% range) within the
first year of testing.

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Strong cautions, however, are urged in interpreting these results. Most job-
related drug testing is of the employment screening/pre-employment variety.
Repeated random tests of workers are believed to be far more effective in
deterring employee drug use. Unfortunately, these types of programs are
very expensive (and have other disadvantages). So most employers use
drug testing primarily to screen new employees. This raises some serious
problems. Industry insiders are rumored to jokingly call them “intelligence
tests” because they can be so easily beaten. Falling rates of failed drug
tests may just show that more workers have figured out how to cheat the
system. Many drugs become undetectable within just a few days. The
simplest way to successfully cheat the test is to temporarily stop using
drugs. This problem is compounded by the common use of cheaper but far
less sensitive testing methods (like urine testing). Marijuana is an exception.
Because it is fat soluble, it can be detected much longer after one quits by
using standard drug tests. Ironically, drug testing is typically far better at
catching occasional pot smokers than chronic abusers of many harder drugs.
(This is much less true for employers who use other methods like testing hair
samples.) Or one could switch to drugs unlikely to be tested (since most
drug tests only cover a limited list of common drugs). Or, in some cases, one
may be able to openly declare prescription drug use… in effect getting a
medical excuse to secretly abuse pharmaceuticals. Or one could just roll the
dice, and hope to get lucky (i.e. a false negative result). Others try to stack
the deck. A whole mini-industry has grown up selling tricks that allow one to
supposedly cheat. Some tricks work. Others don’t. Cheating strategies (and
counter measures against them) are constantly evolving as drug testers and
cheaters constantly try to outsmart each other. Or, if all else fails, one could
simply avoid applying for jobs involving drug tests.
While there are many reasons to question how much work place drug testing
has really reduced drug use, it appears to have worked moderately well.
This is especially so for companies that do repeated random testing of their

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employees. And such testing programs are becoming increasingly common
over time.
Finally, school drug testing has typically produced fairly disappointing
results. For example, researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed
survey results from about 76,000 students (grades 8, 10, and 12) from 1998-
2001. Ryoko and Associates (2003) compared these students’ rates of self-
reported drug use for schools with drug testing programs vs. those without it.
After controlling for a variety of demographic variables (that might explain
variations in drug use across schools), they found no significant differences
between schools with and without drug testing. In a follow up study, the
University of Michigan research team compared schools with random drug
testing programs to other schools. Again, no significant differences were
found. Goldberg and Associates (2008) studied high school student athletes
in Oregon from 2001 to 2003, and compared the drug use of those who
faced random drug testing with those who did not. Once again, no
significant differences were found. Athletes who were tested, however, were
less inclined to believe that drug testing was a good reason not to use drugs
or to believe that high school officials strongly opposed drug use.
To be fair, several studies have shown that self-reported drug use often
declines after initiation of drug testing. But it is unclear if this effect is real.
Students may be less willing to report their own drug use after drug testing is
imposed no matter assurances that their answers are anonymous. Or they
just might just be telling researches what they think they want to hear.
Other justifications for school drug testing are even less compelling… either
too vague to really test (i.e. “it sends the right message”) or not really
supported by evidence (i.e. “it gives kids an excuse not to use drugs”).
In some cases, drug-testing programs appear to be very effective in
deterring drug use. But being effective doesn’t necessarily translate into
being desirable. Drug testing involves trade offs. To be most effective, it
typically requires repeated random tests, which, in turn, means greater
expenses for testing and more false positive results. False positives can

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occur due to lab errors or because the tests confuse a prohibited drug with
something else (i.e. foods, medicines, dietary supplements, etc.). The rate at
which false positives occur vary widely due to a variety of factors (i.e. which
drugs are being tested for, what type test is being used, who conducts the
tests, etc.). What is the likelihood that someone who has failed a drug test is
actually innocent? Even if the rate of false positives in the population being
tested is fairly small, a surprisingly high fraction of those who fail the test
may be totally innocent if the proportion of drug users in the population
being tested is also small. Most programs have developed policies to deal
with this problem but these strategies are hardly fool proof. As a result,
some innocent people will inevitably be fired, reprimanded, suspended,
expelled, etc. This is especially the case when one tests a large number of
people repeatedly over an extended period of time. But this is the most
effective way to catch or deter actual drug users. So, the more effective a
program is in terms of reducing drug use, the greater the costs (in terms of
both expenses and false positives ) to catch a drug user. These problems
are even worse if very few people are using drugs in the first place (for
reasons unrelated to drug testing per se).

Rational Choice Hypotheses

• Prohibition will tend to induce some people to not use (or quit using)
illegal drugs.
• Increasing arrests, longer sentences, and other increases in enforcement
will be more effective in deterring drug use for casual users relative to more
committed drug users.
• Those who do not use illegal drugs will tend to desire drugs less (or be
more risk-aversive) compared to illegal users. On average, such non-users

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would be lower risk in terms of use, abuse, or addiction (relative to illegal
users) if such drugs were legalized.
• Increasing enforcement will result in more decentralized and personalized
drug distribution networks.
• Increasing enforcement will increase social cohesion in drug user
networks, strengthen drug-related norms, and exert social pressure to use
drugs more frequently, use harder drugs, etc.
• Increasing enforcement will result in an increase (both quantitatively and
qualitatively) in drug use among persons who continue to do drugs.
• Increasing anti-drug enforcement will tend to produce more “polarized”
patterns of drug use (and non-use).
• Increased enforcement will increase consumption of legal drugs and
readily available (but still illegal) drugs, and encourage the development of
new recreational drugs. Existing illegal drugs may be chemically re-
engineered (i.e., "designer drugs") or entirely new drugs emerge. New "legal
highs" are constantly appearing. Recent examples in the US include salvia
(a psychedelic) and spice (an herbal marijuana substitute). In the UIK,
mephedrone (aka miaow-maiow), a popular stimulant, has risen in
popularity. There are many readily available and perfectly legal products
(such as many petrochemicals) that can get people high. And there are
numerous common plants that are psychoactive (including nutmeg, catnip,
dill. juniper, parsley, and morning glories).
• Richard Cowan (1986) proposed the “Iron Law of Prohibition”: the more
intense law enforcement, the more potent a prohibited substance becomes.
(This occurs for a combination of reasons. Drug penalties are typically
determined by the bulk weight of illegal drugs seized, not by the amount of
active ingredients. Imposing fixed per weight unit, penalties on (say) a
pound of marijuana (regardless of its potency) tends to have a greater
impact on the price of cheaper and lower quality pot than it does on more
expensive and higher quality pot. Just think how imposing a $5000 per car

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tariff (regardless of the car’s price or quality) would effect what kinds of cars
were imported. More potent drugs tend to generate more profit per unit
which helps offset increased risks or costs incurred by drug suppliers. Lower
quality drugs may not generate enough profits to justify the increased risk.
And more potent drugs are typically more physically compact and easier to
smuggle. Theoretical models by Galenianos and Associates (currently under
review) suggest that uncertainty about drug potency and high search costs
in illegal drug markets plays some role, too. Whatever the case, Cowan’s
law has strong empirical support. Over time, there has been a clear
tendency for many illegal drugs to increase in potency, addictive users, and
toxicity.)
• Illegal drugs will have substantially greater variation in potency (and
more additives or impurities) compared to legal drugs.
• Prohibition will increase the rates of overdoses among those who
continue using illegal drugs.
• To the degree that prohibition successfully restricts the supply of illegal
drugs, it will tend to increase their price which, in turn, will tend to decrease
illegal drug consumption.
• Rising illegal drug prices will tend to increase illegal drug profits, and
increase supply in the long run. Also, prohibition will tend to reduce the
market concentration of illegal drug producers/distribution, and increase
price completion between suppliers such outcomes will tend to drive illegal
drug prices down over time (at least partially offsetting prohibition efforts to
artificially increase drug prices).
• Temporarily raising illegal drug prices will tend to have relatively little
impact on illicit drug use (especially w.r.t. more addictive drugs) compared
to long-term price increases.
• To the degree that prohibition reduces the availability of alternative
nondrug reinforcers among illicit drug users, it will increase their drug
dependencies.

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Symbolic Interactionist Approach

The Power of Social Meaning/ Expectations

According to the interactionist view, drug use, our behavior while

intoxicated, and other drug-related activities (and outcomes) will be largely
determined by who we associate (and use drugs) with, how drugs (or
intoxication) are socially defined within such groups, etc. By associating with
more experienced illegal drug users, new users are exposed to drug-related
social definitions favorable to recreational drug use and intoxication. And
new users will learn ways to neutralize common arguments or social
pressures against illegal drug use. Such definitions may effectively immunize
these novices against antidrug messages by the government. And newer
users learn to adjust their expectations so as to be less worried about legal
penalties.

There are numerous theoretical and empirical reasons to argue that drug
prohibition strengthens such social effects among illegal drug users, and
(unintentionally) encourages more drug abuse and addiction, more
dysfunctional drug-related behavior, etc.

Interactionists stress social influences, social meanings/expectations, etc.

Such social influences can encourage illegal drug use. The more people we
know who use drugs, the longer our associations with these drug users, and
the stronger our social relationships with them, the more prone we are to
use drugs ourselves. Among other things, such relationships expose us to
positive definitions of drug use and users. But social influences can work in
the opposite direction, too. The more people we know who don’t use drugs
and disapprove of their use, the more we are exposed to negative drug-
related definitions and social pressures, and the less likely we are to use
drugs. For example, kids who are close to their parents are less prone to
illegal drug use (especially if their parents do not use drugs themselves and

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actively discourage drug use). Kids who regularly eat meals wit their families
are only 40% as likely to use alcohol and 33% as likely to try pot compared
to other kids. Likewise religious influences tend to reduce drug use.
Numerous studies have shown an inverse relationship between religiosity
and drug use. This relationship is strengthened considerably if one regularly
associates with religious peers who actively disapprove of drug use.

The more general point is that illegal drug use is typically a very social
activity, and it is often strongly affected by social factors. Further, many
people are exposed to competing or contradictory social definitions relating
to drugs. The relative strength, frequency, and duration of exposure to
these competing definitions tend to strongly affect who uses illegal drugs
and who does not.

Howard Becker’s “Becoming a Marijuana

User”(1953)

• Becker conducted (observational) research in order to explain how

marijuana smoking becomes an important element of one’s sense of self.
• In his study, ONLY those who initially smoked pot with others went on to
become long term marijuana users; Those who tried it alone either didn’t get
high or didn’t enjoy the experience. In either case, they stopped smoking
pot.
• Those who did smoke with other (more experienced) users learned a new
culture, drug-related rituals, practical drug knowledge (i.e. how to obtain
drugs, how to spot “good weed”, how much to pay, how to clean seeds and
roll a joint, etc.) and even how to get high.
• Novices also learned how to experience being high as a pleasurable
experience. Marijuana had both positive and negative psychological effects,
and to enjoy the experience, new users were coached to focus on more
pleasurable aspects of being high, and taught to control, deemphasize, or

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ignore the more unpleasant affects. In other words, new users learned from
other pot smokers to interpret their own internal experiences in such a way
to make it enjoyable. Becker’s analysis rejects the common assumption that
how we experience drugs is a simple and automatic biological reaction.
• Becker found that becoming a marijuana user is a long slow social
process.
• In particular, smoking marijuana slowly becomes associated with
important social relationships, social bonding, group membership and
identification, etc…
• After an extended period of interacting (and using drugs) with fellow pot
smokers, the novice smoker slowly internalized being a marijuana smoker
into his sense of self; By this point smoking marijuana is not just something
the person does but part of who he is.
• Also, Becker studied some ex-marijuana smokers, and found that only
those who stopped interacting with other pot smokers for an extended
period would go on to eventually become ex-smokers; Like becoming a
smoker in the first place, becoming an ex-marijuana smoker was a long slow
process.

Labeling Effects

• Labeling theory predicts that being arrested, convicted, and incarcerated on

drug charges will increase later drug use. The empirical evidence supports this

claim (but it doesn’t support bolder claims that most drug abuse is caused by casual

users being arbitrarily labeled as problem drug users):

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• 1) The large majority of illegal drug users (most of whom have never been

arrested on drug chargers) quit using illegal drugs by early adulthood.

• 2) Those who served time in jail use illegal drugs at a substantially higher rate

than similar people without prison records. The same is true—even more so—for

those incarcerated for drug-related offenses. When these drug offenders are later

re-arrested in the future (as many will be), in most cases, it will be on more drug

charges (most typically on minor possession charges).

• 3) Conceivably, these drug convicts might have been at greater risk of future

drug abuse compared to other illegal drug users who were not incarcerated. Who

winds up in jail (and who does not) is largely random. Most incarcerated drug

offenders either had pre-existing (non-drug criminal) records or here charged for

drug production or distribution (as opposed to mere drug possession). Many

already had personal histories of substance abuse pre-dating their first drug arrests,

convictions, or incarcerations. As a result, some “labeling effects” might be

spurious or illusionary.

• 4) On the other hand, many future drug abusers or addicts were only occasional

drug users, at the time of their first encounters with the criminal justice systems,

many had never used any highly addictive drugs until after their first arrests.

Indeed, some are first introduced to hard drugs while in jail.

• 5) Compared to similar addicts outside jail, incarcerated addicts are at a higher

risk of later drug relapses.

• 6) Having a prison record limits legitimate career opportunities, hinders

educational achievement, and reduces prospects for upward social mobility.

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Incarceration breaks up families and restricts later opportunities for marriage. To

put all this in context, it is pretty well established that things like full-time

employment, educational attainment, and marriage are strongly associated with

successfully “maturing out” of illegal drug use.

• 7) Incarceration disrupts pre-existing social networks and replaces them with

deviant associations. Ex-cons often associate with a crowd that condones or openly

promotes illegal drugs. At the same time, their social networks provide them with

sources for illegal drugs (or potential customers to whom they can sell drugs).

• 8) Being labeled as a drug convict or addict is highly stigmatizing. Many report

feelings of shame, embarrassment, etc. They often experience negative social

reactions, discrimination, and face barriers to engaging in various normal

mainstream activities. Research indicates that social rejection tends to make

people more susceptible to social pressures to use illegal drugs (in order to fit in).

Many report lying about their prior drug offenses or actively trying to hide their

current drug use from others. When successful, this impression management

insulates illegal drug users from anti-drug social pressures. Such tendencies are

reinforced by the illegal status of their drugs.

• 9) Many ex-cons with drug problems have poor self-esteem. At least for novice

users, kids with low self-esteem are more prone to experiment with illegal drugs

compared to those with higher self-esteem. Low self-esteem tends to precede drug

use. Drug use itself is associated with later declines in self-esteem, too. So poor

self-esteem may cause people to use drugs, even in the absence of any formal

labeling.

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• 10) Many people develop serious drug problems without ever being arrested on

any drug-related charges, much less incarcerated. While labeling can fuel drug

abuse, it is clearly not a necessary condition for abuse.

• 11) There doesn’t seem to be any real scientific consensus on the magnitude of

labeling effects on illegal drug use. But given the sheer number of people in jail for

drug offenses, even fairly weak labeling effects could easily produce quite a bit of

additional drug abuse.

• 12) Being labeled as an addict or abuser, and being forced into involuntary drug

treatment may also unintentionally reinforce drug use in the future (although a lot

more research is needed before reaching any firm conclusion here).

Cultural Variation in Drug Use and Intoxication

• Drug use has varied across groups and societies throughout history.
Some societies have experienced serious large scale problems w.r.t
substance abuse while others have only relatively minor problems.
• Sociologist David Hanson has argued that the way that societies or
groups define and interpret drug use will largely determine patterns of drug
abuse. For instance, some cultural groups (like the Irish and Russians) tend
to define drinking as an occasion to party hard, raise hell, and get drunk. By
contrast, others (like the Chinese, Italians, and Jews) tend to stress moderate
and responsible alcohol consumption (often associated with daily meals,
family activities, and religious events). Such moderation cultures tend to
have far fewer problems with alcoholism or public drunkenness compared to
Russians or the Irish.

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• Hanson argues that societies or groups tend to get exactly the type of
drug related behaviors they accept, tolerate, or expect. So for instance, if a
culture teaches that drinking makes people friendly, they will tend to have
few problems with violent drunks.
• Cultural variations in drug use often persist with or without prohibition.
Even when facing the same or similar anti-drug laws, some groups (like
Mormons) have very low rate of (legal or illegal) drug use within their
communities. Other groups (like “Deadheads” or “Hell’s Angels”) have
chronically high rates of recreational drug use. And similar cultural variations
existed prior to drug prohibition. And it continues to occur with respect to
legal drugs.
• Likewise, there are large variations in what recreational drugs are used
by what groups in which time periods. Other than marijuana (and to a lesser
degree cocaine and opiates), patterns of illegal drug use are notoriously
faddish. And there are large regional variations in which illegal drugs are
most popular. The same is true with respect to the choice of drugs by various
subculture groups.
• As these examples illustrate, there is clear evidence of widespread and
persistent cultural variation in drug use and intoxication patterns (as well as
with related attitudes and values). Such variation points to the power of
social definitions and social norms, w.r.t. drugs. And it strongly suggests that
drug policies may be less import than informal social controls or cultural
attitudes in influencing patterns of drug use.

Abstinence & Moderation

• Prohibition promotes total abstinence with regards to illegal drugs (and

rejects moderate or controlled usage as unrealistic, impractical, or just plain
dangerous).

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• Some religious groups (like the Amish, Mormons, etc.) prohibit (or
strongly discourage) recreational drug use of any kind, and often succeed in
achieving very low rates of drug use within their own communities.
• When individuals leave such religions or religious communities, however,
they often tend to exhibit serious problems with drug abuse/ addiction
(compared to the larger population).
• In other words, in abstinence subcultures, drugs are typically viewed as
sinful, powerful, enticing, and as an “all-or-nothing” proposition. And while
such social definitions and norms can suppress drug use (under the proper
conditions), individuals from such groups are often ill-prepared to make their
own drug-related choices (when such drugs become readily available) absent
strong social pressure, constant social monitoring, etc.
• Likewise, drug treatment programs which emphasize total abstinence
(like AA, Narcotics Anonymous, etc.) have had some (limited) successes in
reducing drug use; While their success rates are similar to alternative
programs (which encourage controlled usage), when people do relapse in
programs like AA, the outcomes are typically worse (compared to other
programs that do not stress total abstinence).
• Abstinence-based drug education program (like D.A.R.E.) appear to have
little or no effect on later drug use or abuse in the long run; Without strong
and continuing anti-drug social pressure, such program appear to have no
lasting influence on most youngsters.
• Cochran and Tesser (1996) argued that failures related to certain types of
(inhibitionary) goals could produce perverse responses. An inhibitionary goal refers
to something one is trying to reduce or eliminate entirely. Examples include weight
loss goals, quitting drinking, etc. Such goals are often approached in an all or
nothing manner. Momentary infractions may be viewed as failures (regardless of
good behaviors before or after). Perceived failure increases anxiety and reduces
self-monitoring. Suppressing thoughts about the forbidden act can produce
rebound effects (where suppressed thoughts or desires later enter consciousness
spontaneously and more frequently). This can result in binging behavior. So, a

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dieter who cheats or fails to lose enough weight may react with a binge of
over0eating. Such "What-the-Hell" effects appear to apply equally well to drug
abstainers who "fall off the wagon" into periodic bouts of excessive drug use.
• Total abstinence may be effective in some cases. It may be the only
option for those who are literally incapable of moderate drug use.
Unfortunately, such an approach does nothing to encourage moderation or
responsible behavior once prohibited substances are used. If anything, drugs
are viewed as seductive and uncontrollable. Absent constant social pressure,
many people may be easily tempted to experiment with drugs and are ill
prepared to do so. Such zero tolerance approaches depend on external social
pressures (combined with legal sanctions). The whole point is to deny
personal choice, independent thinking, self-control, and learning from
experience. The focus is on never using drugs...period. It most certainly is
not about deciding which drugs to use, under what circumstances, how much
or how often, how to behave under the influence, and knowing when to stop.
Zero tolerance for recreational drug use may stop some people from using
drugs but only by interfering with the formation of social norms or definitions
which might otherwise regulate (responsible) drug use. And it undermines all
attempts to promote more self-control among drug users.
• Many people are long-term moderate drug users. This is so even with
powerful intoxicants or highly addictive drugs. The most obvious example is
alcohol. More extreme examples include long time controlled heroin or
cocaine users. Such controlled usage requires moderate drug users to define
their own drug use (and themselves personally) in specific ways. They
prioritize other parts of their lives (like work or family) over drug use. Drug
use is not a central aspect of their sense of self. They view drug use as
enjoyable, potentially dangerous but manageable. They tend to value
individual responsibility, autonomy, and independence. They actively
monitor and control their drug use, and are quick to cut back or stop if
problems occur. Self-control is critical. But this means more than just
having an iron will. It means consciously imposing structure on one’s drug

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use. Warburton, Turnbull, and Hough (2005) report that controlled heroin
users impose rules upon themselves like not injecting, not buying drugs if
you can’t afford it, not using far more than 2 or 3 days in a row, buying a set
amount and then stopping, not using drugs to escape one’s problems, etc.
Controlled users often party only on (say) weekends or special occasions.
Others view heroin as a special treat used to reward oneself for some
accomplishment. The larger point is that controlled usage is both a state of
mind and a way of living.
• As for those who do quit drugs and go on to practice abstinence it
matters whether they quit voluntarily or not in terms of how they perceive
their own motivation and self-control. External sanctions tend to work only
so long as they are present. In their absence, many will relapse. Their
earlier decisions to stop doing drugs may be interpreted as involuntary. IF
so, they may still feel motivated to do drugs. Or they may still feel
motivated to do drugs. Or they may feel they lack the confidence or self-
efficacy to quit, even if they want to. Imposing abstinence is not particularly
compatible with someone developing internal motivation and a sense of self-
control to stop. By contrast, when someone voluntarily quits, she is more
likely to feel motivated to stop, more in control of her own actions, and she
in consciously develop strategies to cope with whatever problems or
temptations she might encounter.
• Some who have already developed serious drug problems have been
able to later engage in controlled drug use for extended periods. Many do so
with therapies that encourage self-control, self-monitoring, structured drug
use with clear boundaries/rules, etc. this approach is certainly no cure all.
Some controlled users lapse into periods of uncontrolled usage (with or
without therapy). Some eventually fall into extended periods of chronic
abuse. Still, such approaches appear to work at least as well as more
traditional abstinence approaches.
• To learn how to use drugs in moderation, people need to be allowed to
use drugs…ideally openly and publicly. This requires condoning responsible

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or relatively harmless drug use. (This does not mean that drug users should
be protected from the judgment of others, negative social pressures, or
antidrug discrimination. Concerned parties need simple freedom to regulate
or restrict drug use or intoxication on their property, under their
employment, by their children, and so on. The whole point here is to
promote strong informal social controls!) Likewise, the commercial
production and sales of drugs must be permitted (within some regulatory
frame work). Otherwise, illegal drugs would be driven underground
producing black markets and undermining moderate drug use in the process.
Coercive measures would still be required when drug users misbehave
(especially when they do so in public or harm or endanger others). What is
critical is that law enforcement target the actual misconduct of specific drug
users. Targeted enforcement would reinforce moderation by clarifying what
is what is not acceptable drug-related behavior (and by strongly discouraging
the latter). Finally, a social movement working to promote moderate drug
use might be very useful. Prohibition does absolutely nothing to encourage
such a movement (choosing instead to subsidize antidrug or abstinence
groups). In conclusion, moderation requires institutional support to flourish.
It certainly is not encouraged by forced abstinence. Prohibition is totally
incompatible with developing a culture of moderation.
The Psychology of Intoxication
Research challenges our popular beliefs about altered states of consciousness. For
example, a growing body of research suggests that being drunk or high is heavily
influenced by our expectations. Numerous studies have investigated the placebo
effects of consuming what one (falsely) believes to be alcohol or other drugs. For
instance, Dr. Raudenbush and a team of student researchers from Wheeling Jesuit
University recently presented (as yet unpublished) research results on how
consuming non-alcoholic beer (under false pretenses) produced “sham intoxication”
effects including impaired cognitive functioning. Assefi and Garry (2003) found
alcohol placebo effects where students who had been tricked into believing they
had consumed alcohol were more susceptible to memory distortions. Another study

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by Fillmore et al. (1994) indicated that just believing one had consumed alcohol
produced symptoms of intoxication and sensorimotor impairment (even though no
alcohol had really been consumed). Other studies have shown placebo effects for
caffeine (e.g., Harrell and Juliano, 2009; Fillmore et al., 1994, etc.). While placebo
effects for most illegal drugs have not been investigated in depth, there have been
a few studies involving marijuana. Cami and associates (1990) found that
experienced marijuana smokers felt powerful subjective effects when given a
marijuana placebo.
Such results suggest that people's expectations about altered states of
consciousness can have powerful effects on how they psychologically respond to
drug use. If one expects intoxication to be pleasant, it is more likely to be
subjectively experienced as pleasurable. Conversely, if one had negative
experiences, intoxication tends to be much less pleasurable. Research by Phil,
Segal, and Shea (1978) experimentally manipulated expectations about what would
happen to their subjects (60 experienced pot smokers). Half were (falsely) told they
would receive random electrical shocks after smoking pot. These subjects reported
becoming less intoxicated (and enjoying the experience less) compared to other pot
smokers who had received no earlier warnings about being shocked.
Some research suggests that drug-related expectancies can influence us in even
more surprising ways. Subra and associates (2010) studied 78 French students by
exposing them to certain kinds of words before exposing them to certain kinds of
words before having them engage in a very frustrating task. Some were primed
with alcohol-related words like "vodka" or "whisky" while others saw aggression-
related words (i.e., "attack") or neutral words (i.e., "water"). After being mislead
that they might have to repeat the unpleasant task, they were asked to rate the
psychologist conducting the study. These ratings supposedly had a major impact
on his career future. Those originally exposed to alcohol-related words were just as
vindictive in their ratings as those exposed to aggressive words. Both these groups
were significantly more hostile towards the researcher than those primed with
neutral words. This suggests that just thinking about alcohol may sometimes
unconsciously predispose people towards more antisocial responses...even when
they are totally sober.
All this raises serious questions about the popular belief that the influence of drugs
is purely pharmacological. To put it bluntly, the chemical properties of drugs don't

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determine how people subjectively experience intoxication. Nor does it determine
how they think, feel, or act under the influence of drugs.
Of course, recreational drugs do have real pharmacological effects. In fact, most of
the placebo studies cited earlier found evidence of such effects. At high dosages,
such effects can be extremely powerful (sometimes dwarfing expectancy effects).
Be aware that there are some (probably serious) methodological problems involved
with recreational drug placebo studies. There are ethical, legal, and practical
constraints with respect to administering high doses of (real) intoxicants to subjects.
And there are serious questions about how effective placebo treatments really are
in terms of tricking subjects into believing they have been given real drugs. Some
critics believe that such methodological problems raise serious doubts about the
validity of such research. Not too surprisingly, there is continuing debate over the
relative impact of purely pharmacological versus expectancy effects. Even so, the
best available evidence appears to support the existence of expectancy effects.
Recognizing the importance of drug-related expectancies highlights how others
influence our subjective experiences under the influence of drugs. Drug-related
expectancies typically don't arise in a social vacuum. Sociologist James Orcutt
points out that having more friends who use pot or alcohol tends to lower our own
perceived probabilities of negative outcomes associated with these drugs.
Conversely, having more friends who smoke pot increases the perceived probability
of positive outcomes. (The same is not true for alcohol.) Presumably, similar points
might be made about a variety of other recreational drugs, too.
Finally, all this raises some interesting questions about the unintended
psychological effects of prohibition on how pleasurable people find illegal drug use
and how great a value they place upon their drugs. Prohibitionists often portray
illegal drugs as powerful mind-altering substances. While this might scare some
potential users away, it might also alter the expectations of those who do
experiment with illegal drugs so as to make their drug experiences more intense,
satisfying, or pleasurable.
Or it might influence the subjective experiences of illegal drug users in more subtle
ways. Consumer scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that how much people
enjoy consuming various goods (or how they rate their properties) is often strongly
influenced by their unconscious ways of thinking about the products. Wine tasters
are more prone to feel a wine has complex flavors if they think it is expensive. Pain

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killers seem to work better when they cost more. While admittedly speculative, it
seems plausible that very similar framing effects might occur with respect to illegal
drugs. If so, driving up illegal drug prices might have the perverse effect of making
the use of these drugs seem more pleasurable (and, hence, worth more). By
greatly restricting open access to and with public visibility of illegal drugs,
prohibition might increase their perceived scarcity. Once again this might enhance
the subjective experience of getting high (for the same reason that consuming rare
things often seems like a special treat). Or consider how the very illegality of the
drug might produce odd framing effects. If you're willing to undertake the risk of
arrest and endure all the hassles of procuring illegal drugs, your own behavior
suggests that getting high must be really enjoyable.
Conceivably prohibition might make getting high less satisfying in some ways (like
by associating intoxication with arrests or other negative outcomes).
In any case, once we acknowledge the importance of expectancies (and other
psychological effects), we have to start asking how prohibition might influence
people's subjective experiences under the influence of drugs, and how this might
affect their consumption of illegal drugs.

The Social Meaning of Intoxication (and Behavior Under

the Influence)
How people act while intoxicated is not just determined by the chemical or
biological effects of the drug(s) used; Rather, such behavior is influenced by
a complex combination of variables including personal characteristics,
situational factors, etc. (as well as the psychoactive effects of the drug(s) per
se).

• In particular, social definitions, expectations, and norms associated with

intoxication (and related behavior) can encourage more intoxication and
more problematic behavior under the influence (i.e. antisocial behavior,
violence, recklessness, etc.)

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• For example, research on Native American tribes in the past shows that
some tribes used alcohol-soaked celebrations as a “timeout” (i.e. temporarily
suspending social norms and inhibitions) during occasions involving mass
public drunkenness. Such celebrations often got extremely rowdy, resulting
in property damage, fights, sexual assaults, and even murders. Afterwards,
such troubling episodes and incidents were forgiven and “forgotten” (at least
until the next party, where old grudges would be settled…).

• Interested readers should see MacAndrew and Gadjerton's (1969)

"Drunken Comportment."

• Such research illustrates how some social groups encourage intoxication

and bad behavior, and rationalize or excuse bad acts after the fact.
• How people act under the influence of drugs is shaped by societal
reactions. Labeling theorists, cultural anthropologists, and other social
scientists have long argued that how everyday people (including nondrug
users) react to those under the influence of drugs often unintentionally
encourages or provokes bad behavior from them. The same point applies to
the reactions of legal authorities. If people expect trouble from those who
appear to be “high”, this can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those
who do get intoxicated may internalize other people’s expectations of
antisocial, reckless, or disruptive behavior and act accordingly. Or others
may inadvertently do little things to trigger bad behaviors. Simple
misunderstandings are more likely to escalate into interpersonal conflicts.
• While the psychopharmacological properties of particular drugs affect
behavior under their influence, it does not determine it. After all, vast
numbers of people get drunk or high and still manage to behave moderately
well. Those who do misbehave when using a given drug often misbehave in
very different ways. While behavioral tendencies do vary according to what
drug is used (and how much), several (social, situational, or psychological)
factors appear to strongly influence behavior while intoxicated.

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• This latter point is widely supported by studies on the link between
alcohol use and antisocial behavior: a) According to the theory of selective
disinhibition (Parker and Rebhun, 1995), it is the interaction between alcohol
use and various social factors that produce violence in some circumstances
but not in others. (for example, urban alcohol consumption per capita is
strongly (positively) correlated with some types of homicide, (involving
friends, families, etc.) but not others (involving strangers). The weak link
between drinking and violence between strangers may be due to more
restrictive social norms governing the interactions between strangers in
public settings); b) According to expectancy theory (Collins and Messer-
Schmidt, 1993), the apparent link between alcohol and violence is (in large
part) a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, people who believe that
alcohol causes antisocial behavior are more inclined to engage in such
behavior when drinking; c) Social learning theories posit that drug-related
behaviors are learned through social interaction. Behaviors by others which
are rewarded are more likely to be emulated. (for instance, Coggins and
McKellar (1995) provide support for the influence of parental socialization…
especially how they drink and act at home.)

Attempts to Manipulate the Social Meaning of Drugs

Drug education programs and antidrug media campaigns presuppose that
the social meaning attached to drugs strongly influences their use. These
programs deliberately set out to alter how people perceive drug use and
users.
How effective have these programs been?
Let’s start with drug education. The largest school drug education program
in the U.S. is D.A.R.E. Some studies have found D.A.R.E. to be somewhat
effective in reducing drug use among the young. Unfortunately, such studies
have had serious methodological problems, and (at best) suggest that
D.A.R.E. may have some moderately weak and very short-term effects on

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drug use and drug-related attitudes. Better quality research has been
repeatedly unable to find any significant long term differences in drug use
between those given drug education compared to those who were not.
Within a year or so, those who graduate the D.A.R.E. program are using
drugs at roughly the same rate as those who did not. Some studies have
found even worse results. For example, Dennis Rosenbaum found that
D.A.R.E. graduates are more likely to smoke, drink, and use illegal drugs in
later years. Several studies have concluded that the more time spent in
D.A.R.E., the more positive kid’s attitudes towards drugs become, the more
negative their attitudes towards police, and the more inclined they are to
engage in delinquency.
What about antidrug ads/public services messages? The overall results are
quite mixed. Some studies have found evidence supporting the
effectiveness of some antidrug media campaigns in promoting antidrug
attitudes and/or reducing drug use. Other studies have found such
messages often have little or no lasting effect on drug-related attitudes,
perceptions of the risks associated with drugs, or on drug use. Still other
research indicates that some antidrug ads appear to actually increase illegal
drug use among the young. Perhaps, these ads trigger psychological
reactance (i.e. wanting to do something because you’re told you can’t do it).
Research by Carson Wagner suggests that antidrug ads can inspire increased
curiosity about drugs, which, in turn, promotes more favorable attitudes
towards drugs and an increased willingness to try them. He found that those
who pay the most attention to antidrug ads are the most likely to do drugs.
Or to put it another way, antidrug ads work best when kids don’t pay too
much attention.
Nor do antidrug media messages appear to have been particularly effective
in increasing the perceived riskiness of drug use. At best, the results have
been very inconsistent. From 1989-2004, a litany of antidrug public services
commercials coincided with increased percentages of teenagers who viewed
heroin and amphetamines as very dangerous drugs. At the same time,

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however, the percentage of teenagers who viewed marijuana, LSD, and
cocaine as dangerous drugs declined by even greater amounts. A later
media blitz targeted at ecstasy users did appear to work fairly well both in
terms of increasing perceived risks and reducing drug use. And a newer
antidrug program, "Above the Influence" has shown some promising results
in early studies.
If antidrug media campaigns are judged in relation to variations in drug use
among the young (who were the primary targets of these ads), the results
are very disappointing. From the late 1980s-2000, young Americans were
bombarded with antidrug ads on TV, in movies, in videogames, and
elsewhere. Spending on antidrug messages rose during much of this period.
And it remained very high throughout the whole period. By the early 1990s,
drug use among teenagers and adolescence steadily began to rise. And
those increases continued throughout the 90s. By 2000, drug use among
the young began a slow, steady, and fairly large decline. But these
decreases with large cuts in the Drug Czar’s antidrug advertising budget.
Antidrug programs probably have helped spread all sorts of drug facts and
myths to a mass audience. But attempts at manipulating attitudes towards
drugs have proven remarkably difficult. The social meaning attached to drug
use appears to be strongly influenced by many things over which drug
education and programs have little direct control… like people’s everyday
experiences, social interactions with families, friends, etc., etc. Those who
experiment with drugs (or know others who do) often form their opinion
primarily on this basis. Using (say) pot with no obvious negative effects
tends to undermine the credibility and persuasiveness of antidrug ads.
Illegal drug users may just ignore antidrug messages/education or may
interpret them in very counterintuitive ways. Warnings about the dangers of
drugs may unintentionally send the signal that drugs are powerful and
extremely pleasurable. Pictures of kids abusing drugs may suggest that drug
use is socially acceptable or desirable despite explicit statements to the

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contrary. And antidrug ads sometimes unintentionally convey useful
information about how to use or obtain drugs.
Further, people are constantly being exposed to competing definitions of
recreational drug use. Some television shows and movies still glamorize
drugs. And there is an entire pro-drug counter culture with it’s own music,
videos, etc. For example, researchers at the University of Pittsburg Medical
School analyzed 279 of the most popular songs of 2005 (as determined by
Billboard Magazine). They found about one third made explicit references to
drugs or alcohol. Alcohol was referred to in over 23% of songs, marijuana in
almost 14%, and tobacco in about 3%. Drugs and booze were commonly
associated with sex, partying, and humor. Far more songs (68%) referred to
mostly positive consequences than to mostly negative ones (18%). Only four
songs had explicit antidrug messages. The researchers estimated that a
typical adolescent would hear about 8 drug or alcohol song references per
day, or over 30,000 per year. Social networking sites allow youngsters to
share pictures of intoxicated friends and wild parties. Drug use is sometimes
depicted positively in movies. Think of "The Pineapple Express." Or go to
YouTube and look for videos of kids getting high. And so on…
So it is not too surprising that antidrug media campaigns and education
programs have been somewhat ineffective. Arguably, these antidrug
programs have been far more effective in legitimizing drug prohibition
(among nondrug users) than they have been in actually reducing illegal drug
use.

Peer Group Influence

Why do some kids use drugs while others do not (or use them very little)?
For those who do use drugs, why do some (but not others) follow a similar
pattern of starting with legal drugs like cigarettes or alcohol before moving
to marijuana and then later to harder illegal drugs? Why do these stages of
drug use typically occur during predictable age ranges? To address these
questions, Denise Kandel’s selective interaction theory stresses peer group

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influence. As youngsters mature, most grow away from their families. As
families exert less influence over them, their peers tend to influence them
more. Just having one friend who smokes pot doubles the chances that a
teenager will use marijuana. Such peer influence, however, is neither
random nor involuntary. Rather, it is highly selective. Kids seek out others
with similar values, attitudes, and interests. Many troubled or
unconventional kids will gravitate towards kids with nonconventional life
styles (including drug use). Or they may actively seek out drug users. At the
same time, deviant groups (like “druggies”) selectively recruit others into
their social circle. Of course, many other youngsters (with very different
values) will gravitate into other (non drug using) cliques. Over time, some
young drug users will seek out or be drawn into increasingly deviant
subcultures where they will be exposed to and encouraged to use harder
drugs. Some others, however, will either continue to hang out with the same
old gang (and continue using the same old kinds of drugs) or they will begin
to move away from the drug culture (and eventually quit). In general, those
with certain values or traits (like being thrill seekers or risk takers) will be
most prone towards escalating use of harder drugs. But it will also depend
upon factors affecting specific individuals (like personal crisis, overdoses,
arrest, etc.) which may interrupt or reverse drug progression. (Observe that
Kandel’s theory was the original basis for claiming that marijuana is a
“gateway” drug.)
Peer pressure continues to influence drug use by mature adults as they age.
For example, Moos and Associates (2010) conducted longitudinal research on
over 900 mature drinkers beginning in 1986 when they were in their mid-
fifties and continuing the study for roughly 20 years. They found that those
who drank more heavily in later life regularly associated with people with
fairly liberal attitudes towards alcohol, had more active social lives, and had
above average incomes. Such results indicate that hanging around with the
“wrong crowd” (i.e. those who condone frequent or heavy drug use or
engage in it themselves) encourages more drug abuse over time. But it also

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suggests that selective interaction plays a critical role as heavier drug users
actively seek out others who will facilitate their drug abuse. At the same
time, social relationships with people who disapprove of their drug use tend
to weaken or end as time goes on. (Also, observe that having higher
incomes – or perhaps, more power, authority, or social status—can
encourage more drug abuse. This might explain why so many celebrities
appear to have such serious drug problems. In any case, having money
obviously makes drugs and a party life style affordable. More subtly, it may
insolate more affluent drug users from many of the troubles their drug use
causes.)
While social relationships can strongly influence drug use, it can work I the
opposite direction. In the most extreme cases, extended periods of drug
abuse can result in social withdrawal and rejection (even by other drug
users) eventually leading to social isolation and marginalization. By this
point, social influences over these hardcore drug abusers often become
extremely weak. Their continued drug use is driven by deeply engrained
attitudes, their sense of self (especially if they view themselves as addicts),
chemical addiction, and sheer habit. If and when they stop using drugs is
typically a matter of episodes of personal crisis (like poor health, overdoses,
homelessness, etc.) as opposed to the influence of social pressures.

Some Implications

1) Prohibition alters patterns of drug-related social interactions (resulting in

diverse illegal drug subcultures).

With or without prohibition, some groups will regularly use drugs together.
But prohibition, some groups will regularly use drugs together. But
prohibition greatly reinforces this tendency. At the micro-level, selective
interaction and socialization produces drug cliques. At the macro-level,

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illegal drug sub-cultures emerge as those with similar values and tastes
cluster together to use specific types of drugs. This creates variation across
illegal drug subcultures. For example, meth users tend to differ substantially
from crack cocaine users in terms of their social characteristics.

2) Under prohibition, legal drugs become normalized

Artificially dividing drugs into legal and illegal categories tends to legitimize
legal drugs (just as it delegitimizes illegal ones). It signals that some drugs
are socially acceptable (while others are not). Conventional people flock to
conventional drugs like alcohol and caffeine. The same used to be true for
nicotine before the recent creeping prohibition stigmatized smokers. Under
prohibition, the legal status of drugs strongly influence which drugs are
widely consumed by the mass of ordinary people. Without prohibition, other
factors -- like drug potency, pleasurability, addictiveness, price, and side-
effects – would determine which drugs were most widely used. (Contrary to
alarmist claims, this wouldn’t necessarily produce a shift towards in the use
of more dangerous drugs. If anything, just the opposite is more likely.)

3) Prohibition distorts the perceived risks of legal vs. illegal drugs

Classifying some drugs as legal while outlawing others gives the (often false)
impression that legal drugs are less potent, less addictive, and safer. To a
lesser degree, a similar point can be made about prescription drugs. Think
of kids who believe that oxycontin is safe because it is a medicine. At the
other extreme, the health risks of harder illegal drugs (as well as their
addictiveness) are often grossly exaggerated.

4) Prohibition alters patterns of drug use progression

Drug users form a social hierarchy. The use of legal drugs, softer drugs, and
moderate social drug use is typically more socially acceptable. Using illegal
drugs, harder drugs, and chronic or heavy usage tends to be far more

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deviant. Similar points apply to the social status of drug users themselves.
So, social drinkers typically possess much greater status than heroin junkies.
Observe that drug progression tends to mirror this hierarchy. Moving
towards harder drugs typically involves associating with more and more
deviant groups. The fact that most novices start out with legal drugs before
moving on to softer illegal drugs and only later to harder illegal ones (of they
ever do) is no accident. If the legal status of specific drugs were changed
(legalizing some or criminalizing others) this could easily alter the order in
which these drugs were first tried and at what ages.

5) Prohibition creates an artificial link between the use of marijuana and

that of harder illegal drugs

Marijuana occupies a midway position between legal and (harder) illegal

drugs exactly because it is illegal. Selective interaction then funnels curious
novices towards pot. Then some of them go on to other illegal drugs. The
illegal status of marijuana makes it somewhat more deviant (relative to legal
drugs) which serves to attract those who actively seek out mere deviant peer
groups. The illegality of pot then tends to weaken peer pressure among pot
smokers against illegal drug use. Finally, it increases access to harder drugs
(because illegal drug networks are somewhat interconnected).

6) Prohibition alters drug use within illegal drug subcultures

Selective interaction, socialization, and labeling effects combine to

encourage more drug use and intoxication among illegal drug users. For
example, labeling drug users as deviants encourages them to act
accordingly.

7) Successful prohibition relies on stigmatizing drug users (but this can

backfire!)

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To work well, prohibition needs most people to voluntarily desist from using
drugs. This requires branding illegal drug users as outcasts, losers, etc. If
effective, this discourages others from interacting with them. (Also, notice
that illegal drug users are then exposed to less counter veiling social
influences which makes them even more prone to use drugs.) The more
stigmatized “druggies” become, the more people will shun them (and
pressure others to do the same). When opportunities for illegal drug use
arise, more people will say no and more will actively cooperate with law
enforcement efforts against drugs. This is the best case scenario. But
manipulating people’s drug-related attitudes is very tricky. It can even
backfire… unintentionally causing more drug use rather than less. If illegal
drug use rises for whatever reasons, peer pressure begins to work against
prohibition. The same social processes which worked to the advantage of
prohibition in some cases can work in the opposite direction – amplifying
illegal drug use – when prohibition efforts falter. When many people come to
view drug use as non-deviant (or even worse, as “cool”), prohibition must
rely on trying to deter people against their will (which can prove to be
extremely difficult).

Prohibition agencies work hard at stigmatizing illegal drugs. How successful

are their efforts? Merely criminalizing drugs doesn’t appear to have much
impact. Judging from surveys about marijuana smoking (as well as the social
characteristics of pot smokers), causal marijuana use isn’t highly deviant.
Prohibition may stigmatize it somewhat… but apparently not by too much.

Prohibition may be far more effective against harder drugs. Or maybe not.
The issue here is not whether using hard drugs is deviant. (It is!). The
analytical problem is that many people might view the use of dangerous
addictive drugs in a very negative way regardless of the legal status of those
drugs. Nor is this idle speculation. There is supporting evidence for this
claim including the deviant status of some legal drug abuse (like alcoholism),

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historical cases where then legal drugs like heroin and cocaine became
highly stigmatized (contributing heavily to their criminalization), the
tendency for low status people to seek out hard drugs, the tendency for drug
abuse to produce downward social mobility, etc. Still, it seems very likely
that prohibition really does stigmatize hard drug use (probably more in some
cases than others). How much so, however, remains an open question.

• Legalization would alter age-related patterns of drug use; drug use would
slowly shift away from younger users (especially for the very young) towards
more mature adults. Observe that this would contribute to further decreases
in various drug-related social problems for which younger drug users are
disproportionately responsible. The average age for novices to begin
experimenting with drugs would rise (contributing to fewer drug users
becoming chronic abusers to addicts later in life).

Prohibition and Problematic Social Definitions

Under prohibition, problematic social definitions regarding drugs,

intoxication, and behavior under the influence tend to thrive (esp. among the
young). Drug use is tied to group identities, social bonding, and social
acceptance. Drug use and intoxication are associated with having fun,
cutting loose, blowing off stream, hooking up, reducing inhibitions, etc. Or it
becomes a rite of passage. Or it is viewed as an act of rebellion against
authority. Or maybe it’s just about fitting in, being cool, etc. Such social
definitions tend to promote more drug use, more intoxication, and encourage
more misbehavior under the influence. It’s no exaggeration to say that the
drug culture romanticizes and glorifies intoxication. And when things go
wrong, such definitions can be used (after the fact) to excuse or rationalize
harmful acts under the influence. By contrast, social definitions or norms
emphasizing moderation, personal responsibility, and good conduct (under

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the influence) tend to be much less common or popular in the underground
(illegal) drug culture.

The idea that prohibition itself reinforces the drug culture and promotes
more drug abuse and intoxication strikes many people as counterintuitive.
But many others argue that prohibition turns illicit substances into
“forbidden fruit” which tempts people (who otherwise might have little
interest) into using illegal drugs. This is more than mere folk wisdom.
Brehm’s reactance theory (1968) predicts that individuals who perceive their
freedom to be threatened or actually restricted often respond by placing a
higher value on what is prohibited (i.e. desiring it more), or by performing
prohibited acts (so as to reestablish their freedoms). Those who study
“reverse psychology” have made similar arguments. Such predictions have
repeatedly found support in research studies. Of particular interest here,
Engs and Hanson (1989) tested reactance theory by looking at how
underage drinking laws effect alcohol consumption. As predicted, higher
percentages of underage college students were heavy drinkers compared to
those who were aged 21 or above. Also, as expected, higher percentages of
those age 21 and above were light or infrequent drinkers, or abstained from
alcohol. Such results indicate that restricting or prohibiting drug use can
sometimes increase drug use and abuse.

The drug culture reinforces reactance and gives it social meaning. Illegal
drug users are exposed to a variety of drug related rationalizations (i.e. “it’s
nobodies’ business”, “I’m not hurting anyone else”, etc.), which serve to
immunize illicit drug users from antidrug social pressures, education, or
propaganda. Other rationalizations cast drug laws as unfair or irrational.
Prohibition defenders are commonly portrayed as ignorant, prudish, or
hypocritical. Drug law enforcers are villanized. Behavioral codes like "no
snitching" are greatly reinforced. All this encourages an “us vs. them”

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mentality, increases social cohesion, strengthens conformity among illegal
drug users, and ultimately encourages more drug use.
Not surprisingly, drugs have often become symbols of rebellion, radical self-
exploration, or personal liberation. For example, in the 1920’s, women were
banned from smoking in public in New York City. A brilliant marketer named
Eddie Bernays hired models to openly smoke at an Easter Parade. When the
press showed up, these attractive well dressed women explained to them
that they were smoking in public to protest against discriminatory
antismoking laws (and to fight for women’s rights). They referred to their
cigarettes as “torches of freedom.” Just as Bernays had hoped, his staged
“protest” was covered in the New York Times. Apparently, his stunt was very
successful in promoting smoking among women. In the years that followed,
women who smoked in movies were constantly pictured as sexy, mysterious,
ambitions/career oriented, quick-witted, and independent minded. Faint
echoes of cigarettes as a symbol of women’s liberation continued well into
the 1960s and 70s (with the infamous, “You’ve come a long way, baby” ads
for Virginia Slims).
At the same time, illegal drug use has often been viewed as a transgressive
act, edgy, etc. Illegal drug users are often portrayed as outlaws, rebels, or
bad boys. The very fact that drugs are illegal may make their use seem
more “authentic.” Research by Randal Rose and his colleges (1992, 2001)
indicates that people are more likely to conform when they view behavior as
rooted in real intentions or motives as opposed to mere conformity. Risking
arrest and public ridicule suggests that one really likes doing drugs
(especially if one is using more potent drugs, using drugs heavily or
continuing to use drugs despite adverse consequences). All this makes illegal
drug users more attractive social role models. . .at least among the crowd of
people who are curious about doing drugs, or drawn to rule-breakers.

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Legal drug abuse is sometimes associated with it's own deviant subcultures.
But criminalizing a drug greatly reinforces this tendency. Our (dysfunctional)
illegal drug cultures are very much a product of prohibition.

Some Thoughts on Destigmatization & Social Contagion

Many people fear that drug use would increase dramatically in the immediate
aftermath of legalization. Such fears are very understandable. To some degree,
prohibition does repress illegal drug consumption. Legalizing drugs would unleash
pent up demand. By simultaneously removing legal penalties, increasing
availability, and reducing the price of newly legalized drugs, legalization would be
expected to increase drug consumption. . .at least in the short run.
How much would drug use increase? The unsatisfying answer is that we don’t really
know. A lot would depend upon the specifics of how drugs were legalized.
Unregulated or pure legalization poses the greatest risks. By comparison, regulated
legalization poses smaller risks. Imposing high excise taxes on drugs, restricting
public consumption, regulating drug advertising, and criminalizing public
intoxication might result in only small increases in drug use.
Critics of legalization argue, however, that drug legalization is a radical and
dangerous social experiment (even in its more regulated forms). They claim that
drug abuse would spread quickly and soon become widespread.
We know that drug use can sometimes rise rapidly among the young. We know all
about drug epidemics. We know that drug abuse and addiction can sometimes
become very persistent large-scale social problems (like alcoholism in Russia, or
cigarette smoking in so many countries).
At the same time, we know that social influences and conformity play important
roles in recreational drug use. Many people use drugs (at least initially) in order to
be socially accepted. People are often guided less by their own internal compasses

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and easily swayed by social pressures. Some might feel compelled to get high even
they secretly would prefer not to. Various social processes or mechanisms might
amplify the spread of drug use across large segments of the population.
Many have argued that legalization would destigmatize drugs. More and more
people might view newly legalized drugs as socially acceptable, weakening social
pressures that would have otherwise inhibited drug use.
But illegality is not necessary for stigmatization. Many perfectly legal things (like
mental illness, poor hygiene, vulgarity, etc.) are commonly treated as extremely
deviant in many situations. More to the point, some things associated with legal
drugs (like public intoxication, alcoholism, and smoking) are often viewed very
negatively. Of course, drugs like meth or crack are far more stigmatized. But this
begs a question: would these drugs really be widely accepted if they were legal?
Nor is it clear how much the most popular illegal drugs (like pot) are really
stigmatized in the first place.
Even if legalization destigmatized newly legalized drugs, inhibition is only a major
issue if lots of people have an urge to do drugs (but refrain due to external
constraints or pressures). Of course, many people (probably the vast majority) enjoy
some form of intoxication. Some people would stay high all the time if they could.
Granted, legalization could increase drug use among such people undoubtedly with
some very negative consequences. But most people aren’t hardcore hedonists. In
fact, most people appear to have little or no interest in using most (now illegal)
drugs. This is especially so for the more potent or addictive ones. And when people
do use drugs, most don’t seem to want to get too high too often. So, disinhibition
effects might be fairly weak.
Some might argue that legalization would somehow alter drugs-related tastes or
values so as to increase drug consumption. (Exactly how or why this would happen
is rarely explained in my experience.)
Once again, however, there are some serious problems with such claims. Prohibition
enforcers have had very limited success in manipulating drug-related attitudes,
beliefs, or tastes. This really isn’t very surprising. People’s drug tastes and
preferences are deeply rooted in a complex combination of social, psychological,
and biological factors which appear to be largely unrelated to the legal status of
drugs. For instance, it’s hard to see how legalization would alter people’s willingness
to take risks or their needs for intense subjective experiences. Likewise, it is unclear

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why legalization would somehow make states of intoxication any more pleasurable.
Granted, it might alter some drug-related consequences. For example, if drug safety
improved after legalization, some people might be more willing to do some drugs.
But legalizing drugs won’t just erase all the inherent problems or risks attached to
their use. While the legality or illegality of a drug may influence our choices to use it
or not, it might have very little impact on our underlying tastes and preferences.
Similar arguments apply to moral values. Once again, such values are deeply rooted
in personal experiences, past socialization, and related—in complex ways—to our
broader attitudes towards the social world. Kurzlan, Dukes, and Weedon (2010)
found that whether someone views recreational drug use as immoral depends
heavily upon their views on sexuality. Those who hold negative attitudes toward
promiscuity are much more likely to see drugs as immoral. Surprising, this effect is
stronger than the influence of religiosity or political conservatism (both of which
predispose people to see drugs as immoral). It’s hard to see how legalizing drugs
would change such deeply engrained moral attitudes.
Also, many people exhibit little or no desire to use legal drugs. A solid majority of
American either drinks infrequently or do not drink at all. According to a (2007)
SAMHSA national survey, about one third of those 12 or older had not consumed
any alcohol within the past year, and almost half hadn’t drank within the past
month. Much larger numbers abstain from nicotine products. Just because a drug is
legal doesn’t necessarily mean that most people will want to use it.
Perhaps all this talk about tastes and values places too much emphasis on
individual choices, and puts too little emphasis on things like social pressure,
conformity, and herd-like behavior in groups. Maybe we should view drugs like an
infectious disease, which if left unconstrained by prohibition, would naturally spread
rapidly and widely in the general population.
The empirical case for social contagion is actually pretty weak. If drugs really
spread like a communicable disease, then we’d expect to see: (1) very high rates of
legal drug use and abuse in the general population; (2) the risks of legal drug abuse
and addiction to be only weakly related to individual characteristics or differences;
(3) rates of legal drug use to be similar across social groups or subcultures; (4) the
relative popularity of both legal and illegal drugs to fluctuate wildly just like social
fads; and (5) rates of illegal drug use to be especially volatile (as minor changes in
usage would be amplified).

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 None of these predictions holds up under scrutiny.
One problem is that not everyone is equally susceptible to social pressures. Some
people are just more internally motivated than others. Many people actively choose
to abstain from drug use in general, selectively abstain from using specific drugs, or
choose to use drugs in moderation.
In some respects, recreational drugs are just another consumer good. Tastes and
preferences (and moral values) matter. The more people are internally motivated
(or just insensitive to external pressures), the less “contagious” drugs will be. With
or without prohibition, self-regulation or restraint limits the spread of drugs.
Another problem is that many of those most prone to social conformity may be
surrounded by people; who either don’t use drugs or actively disapprove of their
use. With or without prohibition, there will be social pressures against drugs in
many families, groups, or communities. It isn’t at all clear why legalization would
somehow alter patterns of social interaction in such a way that nondrug users
suddenly started associating with drug users. Even if this were to occur, it is unclear
if this would be a bad thing (causing more nonusers to use drugs) or a good thing
(reducing drug use among those who were already using them).
Further, conformity is not as simple as “monkey see, monkey do.” How much
people conform depends upon group properties like group size, unanimity,
cohesion, etc. Moreover, most people are pretty selective about who they emulate.
We are most likely to conform to those we identify with, who perceive as similar to
ourselves, who we find socially attractive (or are high in status), or who we perceive
to have good motives. To the degree that drugs do spread through contagion, it
might not spread evenly or very broadly.
(Observe that prohibition encourages blind conformity with respect to illegal drugs.
Prohibition is all about using external incentives to imose conformity to drug laws.
Prohibition efforts do encourage people to resist pro-drug social pressures. Whether
these efforts are successful or not, however, the implicit message is to make drug-
related decisions based not on your own judgment but rather on external rewards
and punishments, the expectations of others, etc. One unintended effect may be to
decrease consistency in drug use across various situations.)
Still another problem is that we are not talking about a naive or inexperience
population when it comes to drugs. A majority of the population has direct personal
experience with using some illegal drugs. If drugs were legalized, choices to use

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drugs or not would be guided (to some degree) by personal tastes and values
rooted in actual experience. As for those without any personal history of illegal drug
use, most are well aware of the potential risks associated with drugs. Many will have
had plenty of experience resisting pro-drug social pressures. (on the other hand,
legalizing drugs would render illegality useless as an excuse not to do drugs.) If we
think about drugs as a communicable disease, we need to remember that our
population has been exposed for a long time and may have developed widespread
immunity.
While legalizing drugs might unleash social forces that encourage more people to
try drugs (or do more drugs), there are good reasons to be skeptical about claims
that destigmization or social contagion would amplify drug use. Strong contagion
effects are especially improbable.
Understanding what would happen if we legalized drugs depends both on
understanding the social forces that would shape patterns of drug use in the
absence of prohibition, and understanding the social effects produced by prohibition
policies themselves. It depends on making reasonable sociological assumptions
about things like social influences, conformity, social contagion, and social
networks.
Prohibition supporters often make strong claims about how much drug use would
increase if drugs were legalized. These claims are often treated like they were self-
evident, obvious, and virtually undeniable. But they are based on unstated (and
rarely examined) sociological assumptions. Before jumping to any conclusions, we
should critically inspect those assumptions. Prohibitionists assume that various
social processes would inevitably drive up drug use in the absence of prohibition.
They assume that prohibition is fairly effective at repressing illegal drug use. And
they assume that prohibition has few unintended (negative) consequences. They
rarely even consider the possibility that prohibition policies themselves might be
counterproductive (i.e. causing more drug use or abuse). If they are correct about
these assumptions, their dire predictions about explosive increases in drug
consumption (and related social problems) appear reasonable. If their assumptions
are flawed (as I believe them to be), their pessimistic predictions are wildly
unrealistic.

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Drug Volatility & Epidemics
• Drug epidemics are spread primarily through interpersonal relationships.
Newer users tend to be especially “contagious” in terms of initiating still
more new users. Longer term users (especially addicts) tend to be far less
contagious. In the early stages of rapid growth, the number of new users
rises rapidly. Most users are moderate or occasional users. Eventually, this
process slows down due to fewer new users (as nonusers develop
“immunities” or the pool of most vulnerable potential users is depleted).
More moderate users begin quitting but those who continue using tend to
become heavier users (perhaps addicts). So, it is quite possible that both the
number of abusers and addicts, and the total amount of drugs consumed
continue to rise (at least for a while) even as the total number of users
declines rapidly.

• The greater the unwillingness of potential new users to try a particular

drug, the less potential for a drug epidemic. NHSDA data from 1965-1999
indicates that the more dangerous the drug, the fewer new users tend to try
the drug (and the older the average new user is if they do). This helps
explain the relative infrequency of very large scale drug epidemics (without
a reference to prohibition policies).

• There are several reasons to strongly suspect that prohibitions increase

the volatility of drug use (sometimes resulting in drug epidemics).

• Youngsters tend to avoid drugs associated with fairly recent drug scares
or epidemics because they are perceived as especially dangerous. The same
youth, however, are prone to grossly underestimate the risks or dangers
associated with drugs outside their experience (including ones that caused
very serious problems in the past). This “generational forgetting” helps
explain why some drugs spread rapidly among the young while others do

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not. It also helps explain why drugs that have remained very unpopular for
very long periods of time sometimes erupt into widespread usage apparently
out of nowhere. More importantly, it suggests that artificially repressing the
use of any specific drug may eventually lead later generations to become
more vulnerable to drug epidemics involving that drug.

• Without prohibition, (now legal) drug use would persist over time. And it
would be more publicly visible. Our drug-related cultural experience would
be constantly renewed. And it would be spread broadly across various
subcultures and across geographical areas. But under prohibition, an
apparent success in suppressing a specific drug in one group or area is often
followed by a later reemergence of the same drug in a different group or
area. Artificially cut off from continuing experience with a drug, various
subpopulations never really learn to cope with or control their usage. Or
they slowly forget how over time. When a new drug is introduced (or an old
one reintroduced after an extended absence) into these vulnerable groups,
there is a strong potential for a rapidly growing drug problem.

• Theoretically speaking, Emile Durkheim argued that artificially keeping

deviant behavior below their “maintenance levels” (i.e. natural or equilibrium
values) could lead to epidemic spreads of such behaviors

• Similar ideas have appeared in the natural or biological sciences. For

instance, with respect to communicable diseases, temporarily eliminating a
disease can reduce “herd immunity” over time and lead to later epidemics. If
the disease had been allowed to persist at a low level (i.e. chronic low
infection rates), on the other hand, this would preserved herd immunity and
prevented future epidemics. Very similar arguments have been made that
artificially suppressing small forest fires creates conditions that greatly
increases the chances of large scale forest fires in the future. And so on…

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• There is also empirical evidence. Consider heroin epidemics in the U.S..
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were a series of such epidemics
mostly centered around large cities. Heroin would appear first in some inner
city neighborhoods, and then spread out in quasi-circular patterns
(sometimes skipping over some areas as it spreads outwards). And heroin
often hopped from one city to another city. But within the neighborhoods
and communities where the epidemic first started, heroin use tended to
decline or almost disappear. And this pattern of collapsing heroin use would
slowly follow the original path of the drug epidemic. At the same time, in
most areas, heroin epidemics appeared to peak out and decline BEFORE
heroin arrests or seizures began to rise rapidly. By the time arrests or
seizures had peaked, heroin use had already declined to low levels. And
news media coverage of the heroin epidemic tended to lag well behind law
enforcement. In other words, at most, police actions only helped end an
epidemic that was quickly collapsing without interference. ….Observe that
illegal drug use was already rapidly declining by the time that law
enforcement is just getting mobilized to fight the drug epidemic, and it had
fallen off dramatically well before drug arrests peaked. Media coverage was
even slower to emerge, and by the time such coverage of the drug epidemic
was peaking, the actual epidemic in the area was virtually past….

• There have been numerous other historical cases of drug epidemics in

the U.S. (and elsewhere) that burnt themselves out or collapsed prior to drug
prohibition.

• Such examples indicated that drug epidemics can and have been self-
correcting or self-extinguishing in the past.

• This suggests that there are social mechanisms or processes that reduce
drug use, abuse, and addiction independent of prohibition. There are a

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number of possibilities. People may learn to avoid drug abuse through
personal experience or by observing others. As social problems associated
with a drug grows, this may alter social norms relating to drug use, or alter
how parents socialize their children about drugs. Likewise, social
organizations negatively impacted by drug abuse may develop strategies to
control such drug problems. And the worst addicts and abusers may be killed
off, arrested for other criminal behaviors, etc.. Of course, which of these
mechanisms or processes (or others) is most responsible for declining drug
abuse is open to debate. But some such processes are clearly operating
independent of prohibition efforts.

• It should be noted that legal drugs do not tend to exhibit the same
volatility often seen with illegal drugs. For example, we rarely see anything
that resembles alcohol epidemics spreading rapidly across the country,
hopping from city to city, and destroying entire communities in the process.
This suggests that prohibition itself makes epidemics larger, more frequent,
and more harmful. Chronic but moderately low levels of drug use may be
artificially suppressed below their “maintenance levels” by prohibition. And
prohibition may also interfere with or weaken social processes that would
otherwise tend to reduce drug use and abuse. In either case, it would tend to
make (illegal) drug use far more volatile over time.

• Not all illegal drugs are equally volatile. While marijuana consumption has
fluctuated under drug prohibition, it has not shown erratic reoccurring spikes in
usage. By contrast, addictive illegal drugs exhibit far more volatility. This
suggests that the addictiveness of a drug (as well as its other negative side
effects, potency, etc) is an important factor in determining whether it produces
intermittent drug epidemics or not. The role of drug addictiveness in spurring drug
epidemics seems obvious. Perhaps less obvious is that all the negative
consequences of abusing such a drug (including suffering associated with addition)
appears to contribute to abrupt declines in usage after the epidemic has peaked.

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• If prohibition encourages drug epidemics, this raises the possibility that
it might be extremely counterproductive. Drug epidemics produce all sort of
suffering. And it is logically possible that prohibition might actually increase
rates of drug addiction over time (if drug addiction rates peaked at high
levels during epidemics, if such epidemics were frequent, or both). So even if
prohibition was somewhat successful in reducing drug addiction most of the
time (which may or may not be true), it might still lead to higher average
addiction rates in the long term.

Social Networks & Illegal Drugs

• Prohibition encourages illegal drug users to associate with other drug

users. By stigmatizing illegal drugs, it tends to weaken social ties to
conventional society. It imposes risks on associating with nondrug users.
Under prohibition, hanging around with drug users is also critical in gaining
access to drugs. (Observe, this is not the case with legal drugs). And
forming ties to illegal drug users and suppliers is socially rewarded in the
underground drug culture. People with the most social connections (and the
most access to illegal drugs) tend to be high in social status. Social status
revolves around knowing people, throwing partying, having and sharing
drugs, etc. all this encourages the growth of illegal drug user networks
under prohibition. (It also facilitates the drug trade, promotes more drug use
and intoxication, etc.)

• Novices are often first introduced to drugs by friends, domestic partners,

or spouses. This is true both for softer drugs like pot and harder drugs like
meth and heroin.

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• Conversely, some types of social relationships appear to insulate people from
drug use. For example, Flemming, White, and Catalano (2010) studied over 900
youngsters starting from 1st or 2nd grade. In the 2 year period after high school,
young adults who were romantically involved were less inclined to drink or smoke
pot compared to those who were not involved. It appeared that those who were
attached romantically spent less time with drug-using peers. The exception to this
rule was having a spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend who drank heavily or smoked pot.
In this case, their partners were at greater risk of drinking and marijuana use
compared to other youngsters (including those who were unattached).
• Drugs are frequently procured from friends or family members. Consider
marijuana. According to a SAMHSA survey (2006), 53% of those (age 12 or older)
who smoked pot within the last year either got it for free or shared it with someone
they knew. Of the 43% who bought their marijuana, 78% got it from a friend.
Another 3% got it from a relative or family member. Only 16% got it from a
stranger or someone they didn't know well. To a lesser degree, recreational use of
prescription drugs follows a similar pattern with most people obtaining their drugs
from friends or family. Surprisingly, prescription drug abusers often get their drugs
from friends and relatives. According to a recent SAMHSA survey, almost 70% of
those abusers got their drugs this way (as opposed to getting them legally from a
doctor).

• Social network analysis indicates that our behavior is often indirectly

influenced by those who associate with the people we know. This can occur
even when we don’t even know the people linked to us through our
networks. And we can be influenced by people several links removed from
us. Knowing a heavy drinker increases the odds that a person will drink
heavily themselves by 50%. Having a friend of a friend who drinks heavily
increases it by 36%. Even being connected by a third degree of separation
to a heavy drinker increases the chances of someone drinking heavily by
15%. Things like cigarette smoking, weight gain or loss, depression, or
sexual behaviors have been also found to spread through social networks.
The same appears to be true for illegal drugs.

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• Illegal drug distribution involves highly decentralized social networks
• Such networks have often proven capable of effectively distributing large
amounts of illegal drugs despite law enforcement efforts.
• Changes in drug-related social networks may alter patterns of drug use.
For example, author Ryan Grim argues that recent declines in pot smoking
among youngsters is primarily the result of changing patterns of parental
supervision, more structured leisure time activities and, especially, charges
in peer interaction patterns (rooted in the rapid growth of internet use, social
networking, texting, cell phone use, etc.). All this led to less free time for
kids to congregate with other kids away from adults in order to get high.
Also, by reducing face-to-face interaction among kids outside of school, it
weakened their drug networks, reduced peer pressure to smoke pot, and
reduced easy access to marijuana. Grim’s argument is supported by
research. Kintsche and Associates (2009) analyzed responses from over
98,000 15 year-old students from 31 countries (in North America and
Europe). In most countries (including the U.S.), marijuana use among these
youngsters declined from 2002 and 2006 (which coincides with increasingly
widespread social networking and internet use among the young). During
this period, the number of evenings spent away from home with friends
declined in most countries. At the same time, youngsters who went out with
their friends at night more frequently were also more likely to smoke pot.
Grim argues that the same underlying changes in interaction patterns among
kids have contributed to increased abuse of pharmaceuticals (especially
among more technologically save kids). The net result has been more a shift
in what types of drugs are used rather than a reduction in drug use per se.
• Drug networks use interpersonal relationships to reduce prohibition-
related costs/risks, and weaken the deterrence effects of prohibition.
• At the same time, this method of network distribution encourages more
interactions and stronger personal relationships between drug users.

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• Such networks will tend to strengthen social influences and pressures
relating to illegal drug use.
• Such network will also tend to spread drug-related information, rumors,
and gossip very effectively.
• Such networks often provide vast opportunities for “network recruitment”
of new drug users; In other words, new potential users will be exposed to
illegal drugs (and often encouraged to use them) through friends, relatives,
neighbors, co-workers, etc. Such network recruitment effects work against
prohibition efforts. Theoretically, such effects might even lead to a net
increase in drug users under prohibition.
• In summary, the same networks that are used to distribute illegal drugs
and evade law enforcement will also function to spread drug information,
amplify social pressure, and recruit new users. By contrast, most legal drugs
are distributed on an impersonal basis which tends to reduce social
pressures towards drug use or intoxication, limit the tendencies for drug
abuse to spread through networks of personal relationships, and limit
network recruitment of new drug users.

Problems with Legitimacy

Successful prohibition depends on most people obeying drug laws with
little or no compulsion either because they don’t want to use drugs, or out of
respect for the law. If voluntary consent were to decline, more coercive
measures would be required to deter lawbreakers. But hunting for illegal
drugs and punishing drug offenders is extremely costly. Prohibition resources
are limited. Jails and courts can quickly become overcrowded. (This is
already a problem. In 2009, almost 1 out of 4 drug cases brought by the
Federal government had to be dropped because prosecutors were
overstretched.) As illegal drug use widens, prohibition efforts can no longer
be focused narrowly on small subpopulation of illegal drug users. Fewer
people cooperate with police. Prohibition becomes increasingly less effective.

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 Arguably, the legitimacy of drug laws may have a greater impact on
illegal drug use than deterrence. Illegal drug use has sometimes soared
during crisis of legitimacy for law enforcement (like in the 1960s and early
70s, or during alcohol prohibition). Once disrespect for the law becomes
widespread, law enforcers face an uphill fight.
Like any other authority figures, prohibition enforces face potential threats to
their legitimacy. But drug laws seem especially vulnerable to such problems
for several reasons:
1) Illegal drug use is a ‘victimless crime”. . .at least in the sense that drug
use is voluntary and doesn’t result in any clear harm to anyone in
many cases.
2) Enforcement measures are sometimes highly coercive, invasive, and
intrusive.
3) Harsh penalties for drug offenders (mostly against suppliers) may
strike some people as disproportionately severe (compared to other
serious crimes), and hence, unjust.
4) Many people question the effectiveness of antidrug policies (which
trends to undermine perceived legitimacy).
5) Wide variations in punishments received by similar offenders often
seem arbitrary.
6) Differential impact of drug arrests and conviction rates across different
social groups raises the issue of possible discrimination in the
enforcement of drug laws (such as racial bias against blacks or
Hispanics).
7) There are increasing doubts about some of the underlying justifications
for prohibition. A recent Rasmussen poll (2010) found only 17% of
adult respondents felt that marijuana was more dangerous than
alcohol. A (slight) majority of adult drinkers agreed that booze was
riskier than pot. And almost half (46%) said smoking cigarettes was
riskier than pot. This has to raise some doubt about the wisdom or
fairness of some of our drug laws.

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 8) Prohibition enforcement is all too fallible. Innocent people are
constantly being hassled. There are false arrests, bungled drug raids,
corrupt cops, and a litany of other public relations disasters.
9) Given their long history of grossly exaggerating drug related risks or
problems, prohibition agencies have seriously undermined their
creditability.
10) To maintain public engagement and political support, prohibition
agencies must engage in constant scare mongering about new
emerging drug threats. This risks panic fatigue burnout, etc.
The legitimacy of drug laws already seems to be weakening. The fact that so
many people break drug laws is very suggestive. So, too, are all those polls
showing fewer people supporting the criminalization of marijuana. While a
majority still opposes legalizing pot, there is a very clear decline in support
for such laws among younger people. Survey research has documented a
continuing decline in faith, trust, and confidence in the government, in
general, and law enforcement, in particular. Some polls show most
respondents expressing doubts about the effectiveness of prohibition.
Finally, respect for drug laws appears to be pretty weak among many social
groups (who not coincidently are among the most likely to break these laws.)
This bodes poorly for prohibition. It would help explain why prohibition
policies are becoming increasing less efficient over time (as more antidrug
inputs have less and less effect). Declining legitimacy threatens to increase
illegal drug use in the future. If so, it may be necessary to escalate the “war
on drugs” and more coercive measures (i.e. more arrests, more in coercions,
longer sentences, etc.) just to keep rates of illegal drug use at current levels.
Whether there would be much political support for ramping up antidrug
efforts is unclear, however, since declining legitimacy might seriously
undermine political supports for prohibition. At some point, prohibition could
become politically unsustainable.

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 Conclusion (Theory Section)

I have presented a series of theoretical arguments regarding potential

limitations on the effectiveness of prohibition, how prohibition might actually
increase drug abuse in some ways, and why it might unintentionally produce
more drug-related social problems. In response, prohibition supporters could
point out that our antidrug policies reduce illegal drug use in a variety of
ways (perhaps far more effectively than I have suggested). (This is a good
point! I do not deny that prohibition does reduce drug use in some ways.
The central debate is about the relative strength of these competing effects.)

2) EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
On the Effectiveness of Prohibition: An Empirical
Overview
So how well does prohibition really work? Does it really substantially
reduce illegal drug use, abuse, and addiction?
Let’s look at the evidence:
• Prior to drug prohibition, only a very few societies suffered from
persistent, large scale, and socially devastating pattern of drug abuse
and addiction. By contrast, most societies experienced much less
severe drug problems, and many had only relatively minor problems.
• These were some drug epidemics during the 1800s and early 1900s in
industrializing countries (including the U.S.).
• These early drug epidemics were rooted in cultural views of drugs at the
time. In the U.S., a naïve population often viewed very powerful
addictive drugs (like opiates or cocaine) as “wonder drugs”, “cure alls”,
etc. And the idea of drug addiction was poorly understood at the time.
• There early epidemics collapsed on their own without the aid of any
systematic or large scale prohibition efforts. This provides evidence for

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 the existence of (extra legal) social processes or mechanisms which
tend to control the rapid spread of addictive drugs (absent prohibition).
• Even during the peak of these early drug epidemics, the number of
chronic abusers or addicts appears to have been moderately low (and
often largely confined to small subpopulations). Historical studies
(Brecher (1972), Ledoin (1973) Courtwright (1982)) estimate that rates
of opiate dependence or addiction never reached 1% of the population
in the U.S. or the U.K. anytime during the 1800’s. (While some
estimates of drug addiction circa 1900 are substantially higher, they
don't correspond very well to what we know about the importation of
opiates.) After these epidemics, such drug use declined dramatically.
Even if drug addiction rates were higher than some estimates suggest,
it is pretty clear that addicts were becoming increasingly rare in the
first decade of the 1900s (before opiates were criminalized). At least for
opiates, many of these who remained addicts were socially functional
(much more so than alcoholics or modern illegal drug use). Even when
some very addictive drugs were totally legal, most people (probably the
vast majority) either abstained, used such drugs in moderation, or
abused them for only short periods before voluntarily quitting.
• Under drug prohibition, there have been numerous illegal drug
epidemics. For example, over roughly the past 40 years, there have
been illegal drug epidemics involving opiates, cocaine, and (arguably)
methamphetamines in the U.S.
• Both before and after drug prohibition, drug epidemics virtually always
involved addictive drugs. But the (legal) use of some addictive drugs
like alcohol or nicotine has not produced epidemics in modern times. In
modern industrial societies, legal drug epidemics are virtually unheard
of. By contrast, illegal drugs exhibit far more volatility in consumption
patterns and are prone to epidemics.
• More importantly, illegal drug epidemics over the past few decades in
the U.S. do not appear to be any less frequent, widespread, or socially

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 destructive than those in the decades prior to drug prohibition. (With
the possible exception of a short period in the late 1800s--early 1900s).
• In most industrialized countries (including the U.S. ) recent rates of
illegal drug consumption appear to be higher than the use of the same
(or similar )drugs prior to prohibition. This is clearly true for cannabis
and probably true for numerous other drugs. Increasing drug use is
especially pronounced among the young.
• International research indicates strong generational differences between
older and younger birth cohorts around the world in terms of their use
of drugs like marijuana and cocaine. More and more people are using
illegal drugs with each new generation. These generational differences
emerged while these drugs were globally prohibited and while
prohibition efforts were being escalated worldwide. For legal drugs like
alcohol and tobacco, however, generational differences in drug use are
much less pronounced (and far less consistent).
• By contrast, the use of legal drugs like alcohol and nicotine has declined
substantially over the same period in many countries (especially over
the past 30 years in the U.S.). Likewise, rate of alcoholism and nicotine
addiction have sharply declined. And most related social problems have
significantly decreased. The same can be said (to an even greater
extent) for younger people.
• Illegal drugs have tended to become increasingly more potent and
addictive over time. This is not true for legal drugs.
• Today, legal drugs like alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine remain widely
consumed (far more so than any illegal drug by a very wide margin).
Also legal drugs addicts strongly outnumber illegal drug addicts.
Arguably alcohol and tobacco products combine to cause much more
social harm than all illegal drugs combined. All these points offer
possible support for prohibition since the popularity of legal drugs
might be explained by their legality per se (i.e., easy access, low price,
no criminal deterrent, less social stigma, etc.).
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• For illegal drugs, the relative unpopularity of harder and more addictive
drugs might be explained by the harsher criminal penalties attached to
these drugs. In other words, it might be evidence showing (differential)
deterrence effects. On the other hand, both the popularity of alcohol
and nicotine and the unpopularity of illegal hard drugs may reflect the
tastes and preferences of drugs users to a large extent. There is strong
supporting evidence for this interpretation. Alcohol has been consumed
for thousands of years in cultures around the world. Prior to drug
prohibition, in the U.S., alcohol and tobacco were far more widely
consumed (and resulted in far more addictions) than other (then legal)
drugs like opium, morphine, heroin, cocaine, marijuana, etc.. And
during alcohol prohibition, illegal alcohol consumption (and addiction)
was far greater than that of any other then legal drugs (like marijuana,
cocaine, and stimulants) … with the exception of nicotine. The same
historical evidence shows that harder and more addictive drugs were
relatively unpopular in the U.S. both before and after drug prohibition.
• We need to remember that criminalizing drugs is a political process.
Prohibiting very widely consumed drugs is very problematic. So, too, is
legally banning drugs used primarily by upper class, powerful, or
politically well organized groups. In either case, it involves potentially
strong political opposition, possibly substantial losses in tax revenues,
more problems with black markets, etc. This suggests that alcohol and
nicotine are legal because they are so popular rather than the other
way around. As for illegal drugs, it is much easier to ban unpopular
drugs. It is easier still if the drug is used primarily by powerless, lower
class, or socially stigmatized groups. The result is that the least popular
drugs used by the least powerful people will be the most likely to be
criminalized (and most severely punished). These points suggest that
the use of illegal drugs would be substantially lower than that of legal
drugs even if prohibition is totally ineffective in reducing illegal drug
use! The relative popularity of legal drugs over illegal ones may just be

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 an artifact in the way that some drugs are politically chosen to be
banned and others are not. If so, this clearly offers no support for
prohibition.
• The use of legal drugs is not independent of illegal drug consumption.
Legal and illegal drugs are substitute goods. Part of the reason that
legal drugs are so widely used and abused in the first place is that so
many other drugs are illegal.
• If legal drugs are so widely consumed primarily because of their legal
status, then legally prohibiting such drugs would be expected to
drastically reduce their use. There is evidence from alcohol prohibition
that bears directly on this question. While the topic of alcohol
consumption is still debated, several studies have estimated that
drinking either decreased slightly or even increased a bit from the
beginning to the end of prohibition era. Other studies have found that
alcohol prohibition reversed an earlier trend towards falling alcohol
consumption in the years before prohibition.
• As these earlier points demonstrate, there are several reasons to believe
that neither the popularity of alcohol and nicotine nor the unpopularity
of illegal hard drugs necessarily offers much support for drug
prohibition.
• A body of research on government regulations of legal drugs indicates
that decreasing or limiting access to (legal) drugs or raising its prices
(through taxation) often results in decreased in its use, abuse, and
addiction. In many cases however, such restrictions are not particularly
large. In some cases, such regulations reduce various (legal) drug-
related problems. In other cases, however, it appears to actually make
matters worse. Clearly these findings undermine the case for “pure”
(i.e. unregulated) drug legalization. Such findings may offer support for
drug prohibition (since it limits access to drugs for drugs and raises
their prices). On the other hand, it offers as much (or more) support for

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 state-regulated forms of legalization (like those of alcohol and tobacco).
Observe that many types of such regulations (like I.D. checks, minimum
age laws, sales or distribution licensing, mandatory closing times for
bars, etc.) can only be practically applied to legal drugs.
• Many illegal drugs remain widely available in the U.S. (especially among
the young) according to survey research. Changes in the availability of
most illegal drugs over time correlate only very weakly with changes in
the intensity of prohibition efforts.
• Even under the most extreme conditions, restricting access to drugs has
often proven very difficult. Consider drug use in prisons and jails.
Despite all sorts of restrictions on contact with outsiders, surveillance,
random searches, and various other antidrug measures, drug use in
many prisons appears fairly common. In a WHO study, Moller and
associates (2007) report that up to 50% of inmates in European jails
use pot while incarcerated. Other studies have documented injection
drug use (usually heroin) in European prisons. Estimates vary widely
across countries from about 1% to as much as 11% of inmates injecting
drugs in jail. In 2001, the New South Wales Inmate Health Survey
found that cannabis use is fairly common in some Australian prisons.
40% of female inmates and 45% of male inmates use pot in jail. Other
drugs widely used in jail included amphetamines (females – 20%, males
– 10%), heroin (females – 32%, males – 23%) and cocaine (females –
15%, males – 7%). So far, I have been unable to find comparable data
for the U.S. but there is lots of evidence (like drug overdoses/deaths,
drug seizures, and needle/syringe seizures in many jails) suggesting
that U.S. prisons are hardly drug free. It should be stressed that
criminal populations outside jail tend to have very high rates of illegal
drug use. Based on interviews and drug tests of almost 4,000 arrestees
from 10 large cities, the Office of National Drug Control Policy recently
reported that roughly half tested positive for one or more illegal drugs.
Rates of drug use in prison do appear to be substantially lower than for

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 similar people outside prison. But drug use in jail hardly disappears.
Despite all the obvious barriers to drug smuggling into jail, many
people still find a way to get high. Where there is a will, there is a way.
• Recent declines (over the past 30 years) in illegal drug use in the U.S.
(and elsewhere) also offer some support for (recent) prohibition efforts.
The same can be said for even more recent declines in drug use by the
young, or more general declines in the use of some hard drugs (like
cocaine). These declines in illegal drug use coincided with decreasing
rates of legal drug use. And similar declines in illegal drug use occurred
in many other industrialized nations which had softer anti-drug policies.
• Still, most of this decline in illegal drug use occurred over a very short
time span (during the early to mid-1980s), with little net change during
most of the period since the war on drugs was first declared (1970-
present).
• Some countries have had some (limited) successes with their prohibition
policies. But most countries (including the U.S.) have had far less
impressive results. Despite high rates of drug arrests and
incarcerations , anti-drug deterrence appears to be fairly weak in the
U.S. The probability of arrest for any individual act of drug use or sales
is extremely low. And the typical punishment for low level drug crimes
is typically not severe. In the U.S., vast numbers of people have used
illegal drugs sometime during their lives. Close to 10% appear to have
recently used illegal drugs (and among the young, the rate of illegal
drug use is substantially higher.)
• Most research shows that drug prohibition raises illegal drug prices,
which, in turn, reduce their consumption. To increase prices, prohibition
must restrict supply over extended periods. This has proven difficult.
Arresting drug dealers or cracking down on illegal drug organizations
tends to only temporarily interrupt supply. This drives up illegal drug
prices and profits. This, in turn, encourages other drug dealers to
increase their supply and it attracts new suppliers into the market. This

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 is why black markets in drugs are so resilient. At the same time,
prohibition encourages price competition by illegal suppliers (by
keeping larger firms from establishing large market shares and
charging higher prices). Theoretical models developed by Poret and
Tejedo (2005) suggests that this effect alone may render prohibition
efforts against drugs like heroine or cocaine ineffective. If so, the
quantity of such drugs sold would be unaffected by law enforcement
efforts. Also illegal drug suppliers avoid taxes, minimum wages/social
security contributions, expensive government regulations, etc.. All this
undermines prohibition efforts to keep drug prices high. Even to the
degree they succeed, their efforts are undermined in other ways.
Increasing illegal drug prices encourages (sometimes very perverse)
substitutions towards legal drugs or relative cheap illegal drugs (like
meth or crack). And the whole effort assumes that most illegal drug
users are price sensitive. The evidence here is quite mixed but some
studies indicate that the demand for illegal drug is “inelastic”(i.e. not
very price sensitive)…especially for heavy drug users and addicts. If so,
driving up illegal drug prices may have fairly disappointing results.
Further, any success in reducing illegal drug use through price
increases just demonstrates that the same basic thing might be
achieved by legalizing and (perhaps heavily) taxing these drugs.
• Over the past few decades, the street prices for illegal drugs have been
falling. This trend is even stronger once it is adjusted for inflation and
drug potency. During most of this period, illegal drug consumption has
been moderately stable. All this suggests that drug prohibition in the
U.S. is becoming less effective over time. While prohibition clearly
reduces open public access to illegal drugs, studies have repeatedly
found that large numbers of youngsters (and others) continue to say
that they can obtain illegal drugs with very little effort.
• Illegal drug prevalence (i.e. the sheer number of drug users) and the
social harm associated with illegal drug use can vary independently.

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 For example, during the rapid decline in illegal drug users in the 1980s
coincided with rising problems with drug-related crime, overdoses, the
spread of HIV, etc. (as a growing minority of drug users began using
drugs like coke, crack, etc). So, reductions in illegal drug prevalence do
not always correspond to less drug-related suffering. Another example
is current trends for increasing drug-related deaths (during a period
with fairly stable illegal drug use). In 2003, drug deaths were more
common than traffic fatalities in only 8 states. By 2006, it was 16
states. Granted, traffic fatalities were falling. But drug overdoses and
deaths (from both illegal and prescription drugs) were rising rapidly.
• While there is a very loose (positive) relationship between variations in
“soft” and “hard” drug use, they often vary somewhat independently.
• Likewise the sheer number of illegal drug users and the number of
heavy users (including chronic abusers or addicts) can vary
independently. Sweden, for example, has moderately low rates of
illegal drug use but moderately high rates of heavy illegal drug users,
addicts, etc. Further, rates of illegal drug users can fall (rise) even
while the rates of heavy users are rising (falling). Another example is
how declining numbers of marijuana smokers in Australia since the mid
1990s coincided with an increase in heavy pot smokers. (This has
resulted in a large increase in marijuana dependence cases and
cannabis-related health problems in Australian hospitals. This
reinforces the earlier point that drug prevalence and social harm can
vary independently.)
• There is a very loose tendency over time for decreases in illegal drug
use (perhaps due to successful prohibition efforts) to lead to later
decreases in heavy illegal drug use, addiction, etc. Such effects,
however, are not typically too strong. And there are typically very long
time lags (often several years) before recent reductions in illegal drug
users lead to much later declines in heavy illegal drug users.

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• The amount of illegal drugs seized typically has little statistical
association with rates of illegal drug use. The amount of illegal drugs
seized typically has little effect on illegal drug consumption.
• Increasing antidrug enforcement efforts often have little effect on the
number of new illegal drug users. For instance, variations in new users
and federal antidrug spending are virtually uncorrelated both for illegal
drug use in general and for numerous specific drugs (like marijuana,
heroin, cocaine, crack, and meth). (The evidence for rates of arrests for
a specific drug and rates of new users for the same drug is
substantially stronger…but still moderately weak in many cases.)
• According to most estimates, only a small percentage of illegal drugs
are seized or eradicated by law enforcement. Drug smuggling into the
U.S. appears to be rising. Recent efforts at international drug
interdiction and eradication have largely proven futile. Prior to the late
1940s, world production of opiates dramatically declined. More recent
results are much less impressive. From 1987 to 2003, world production
of cocaine and heroine increased. While the U.S. was successful in a
few cases in reducing drug production in some countries, this was
more than offset by increased production elsewhere. During the same
period, vast quantities of illegal drugs continue to be smuggled into the
U.S.
• Research on the effectiveness of anti-drug public service messages
has often produced disappointing results. In some cases, it appears
that youngsters who watch more anti-drug ads are actually
significantly more likely to use drugs. Likewise, anti-drug education
programs (like D.A.R.E.) have yielded very poor results in terms of
achieving lasting reductions in drug use by youngsters.
• Federal, state, and local governments combine to spend about 15
billion dollars per year on drug treatment programs. Their
effectiveness is unclear because most of these programs do not
release data on their success/failure rates, and most of the techniques

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 used are scientifically untested. There is loose (largely anecdotal)
evidence that many hardcore drug abusers and addicts (who
repeatedly jump form one program to another one) are not being
helped effectively.
• Over roughly the past 40 years, correlations between measure of
prohibition efforts (i.e. arrests, convictions, seizures, enforcement
spending etc.) and illegal drug use in the U.S. are fairly weak. This is
true both for drug use in general and for a variety of specific drugs.
Further, patterns of changes in these variables over time do not show
any consistent tendency for increasing antidrug enforcement to lead to
later decreases in illegal drug use. These results give little or no
support for the claim that increasing enforcement causes illegal drug
use to decline.
• International comparisons of prohibition regimes do not indicate that
countries (like the U.S.) with more criminalized anti-drug policies are
any more effective in reducing illegal drug use than those with less
punitive prohibition regimes. In fact, the U.S. appears to have
substantially higher rates of illegal drug use, abuse, and addiction than
many other industrialized countries (most of which have softer anti-
drug policies). Nor do more criminalized approaches appear to be any
better at reducing drug use among the young. Further correlations
between per capita anti-drug spending and illegal drug use across
countries are very weak. The same is true for drug arrest rates and
illegal drug consumption.
• Drug decriminalization has produced very mixed results. In some
cases it has resulted in increased drug abuse and related problems. In
other cases, the results have been far more favorable. One obvious
problem with highly localized drug decriminalization is “drug tourism”
where drug users, abusers, and addicts from other areas (where drugs
remain criminalized) migrate to or visit an area to party (often
engaging in all sorts of anti-social behavior in the process). In some
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 cases (like the Netherlands and Canada) decriminalization has resulted
in increases in illegal drug use. Such increases have typically not been
too large (although the number of Canadians who smoked marijuana
doubled after pot decriminalization in the early 1990’s.) At this point,
we do not really know if these short run increases will persist, increase
more, or decrease in the long term. In the Netherlands, pot
decriminalization had little effect for a few years followed by years of
increasing marijuana use. But then these earlier increases were
partially reversed by later declines in usage. By contrast, Canada has
yet to experience any reversal in their upward trends in pot smoking.
There are good reasons, however, to believe that such post-
decriminalization increases in drug use may be exaggerated. Research
has shown that people are substantially less likely to self-report illegal
drug use…especially for highly criminalized and socially stigmatized
drugs. So, when a drug is decriminalized, more people will tend to
acknowledge using it…even if there has been no real increase in
usage. This can give the illusion that decriminalization had increased
drug use by far more than it actually has. Of course, it is still possible
(indeed likely) that drug use really is increasing in Canada. The tricky
question is by how much.
• Some economists have published recent studies on drug
decriminalization. Based on his study of Australia, Williams (2003)
found that marijuana decriminalization increased the number of male
pot smokers over age 25 (but did not result in increases for any other
group). Further, he found that it had no effect whatsoever on the
frequency of marijuana smoking. Saffer and Choloupka (2007)
estimated (very tentatively!) that decriminalization would increase the
number of pot smokers in the U.S. by about 8%. According to their
estimates, decriminalizing cocaine and heroine would result in about
260,000 new regular coke users and 47,000 new regular heroine users.

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 • Our experience with drug legalization is extremely limited. But the
repeal of alcohol prohibition shows that legalization can result in
substantial declines in drug use, abuse, and addiction in the long term.
The same goes for drug-related social problems. (Admittedly alcohol
consumption did rise in the decade just following repeal. Even so, this
initial increase was neither explosive, nor socially devastating. But,
eventually, such increases ceased and then reversed direction with
alcohol consumption, alcoholism and related social problems
dramatically declining.)
• There has been great variation in drug use, intoxication, and related
problems across cultures and over time. Likewise, there has been
widespread cultural variation in how people tend to behave under the
influence of various drugs. Such cultural variation occurred prior to
drug prohibition and persists after many decades of ongoing
prohibition. And such variations often persist across different
subcultures living in the same areas and facing the same anti-drug
laws. All this implies that social or cultural factors play an important
role in determining patterns of drug use (leaving over less drug use
variation to be explained by anti-drug policies).
• Large-scale social changes can alter patterns of drug use. Drug use is
shaped indirectly by a variety of social factors over which prohibition
enforcers have little or no control.

***************

So, how well does prohibition really work?

While there is some evidence in support of drug prohibition, most of it
appears weak upon close inspection. Even the most favorable evidence for
prohibition does not indicate that it substantially reduces recreational drug

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use in the long run. Undoubtedly, some will disagree. Contrary to all the
counterevidence, some may still conclude that the case for prohibition
remains strong. Others may acknowledge weaknesses in the case for
prohibition but still decide that legalization is just too risky. Prohibition
supporters might be able to present more or better evidence in support of
their position. Or they might dispute some of the findings presented earlier
(or the interpretations of such evidence). Or they might argue, perhaps
correctly, that the evidence is too incomplete to draw any firm conclusions.
So who is right? What does the evidence really show? You will just have to
make up your own minds.

3) So What Would Happen If We legalized Drugs???

Qualifications and Cautions

• The following predictions involve the impact of the legalization (not

decriminalization!) of most or all illegal drugs.
• In practice however, such legalization could be done slowly,
incrementally, and experimentally.
• Undoubtedly, the details of how drugs were legalized would be
extremely important (especially in determining the short term
consequences of legalization).
• The following predictions focus on the long-run effects of legalization;
Shorter-run predications would involve far more uncertainties and
more potential for (temporary) negative consequences.
• It is assumed that legalization would still involve formal social controls
used against drug-related violence, recklessness, etc. In other words,
criminal laws would need to be applied aggressively to those who are
publicly intoxicated, addicted, etc.

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• In practice, legalization could still involve a number of other policies
(i.e. various harm reduction strategies, selective drug testing, drug
treatment, “sin taxes”, underage drug laws, public intoxication laws, or
various regulations or restrictions on public use, or sales, etc).
Predictions

• In the long run, legalization might result in (probably small) increases

in drug use. Or it could lead to declining drug use over time. But it is
extremely unlikely that it would result in explosive growth in drug use
or persistent patterns of large scale drug abuse or addiction.
• Legalization will tend to decrease chronic drug abuse and addition over
time.
• Even if drug consumption, the number of drug users, or other
measures of drug use did increase, it would be mostly to an increase in
moderate or occasional users, soft drug users, etc.
• In the long run, drug use would tend to become less polarized:
moderate drug use tending to rise, and hardcore drug abuse and
addiction tending to fall.
• The ratio of soft drug use to hard drug use would tend to rise over
time, and average drug potency, toxicity, and addictiveness would
tend to decline.
• Drug use volatility would decrease in the long run, and drug epidemics
would become more rare.
• A wide variety of drug-related social problems would tend to decrease
in magnitude or prevalence over time.
• Some chronic (but manageable) problems with substance abuse and
addiction would persist, indefinitely.
• Social problems associated with prohibition itself would tend to
(rapidly) decline or disappear.

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 • While addiction may well involve purely psychological elements, it
should be stressed that there is overwhelming evidence that it also
involves real, biological causes and effects. For example, Dr. Nova
Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, points out
that recent imaging studies on the brains of drug abusers show
damage to the prefrontal cortex. Such deficits are typically associated
with impulsivity, and compulsive or dysfunctional behaviors.
• Legalization would alter age-related patterns of drug use; drug use
would slowly shift away from younger users (especially for the very
young) towards more mature adults. Observe that this would
contribute to further decreases in various drug-related social problems
for which younger drug users are disproportionately responsible. The
average age for novices to begin experimenting with drugs would rise
(contributing to fewer drug users becoming chronic abusers to addicts
later in life).

4) On the legalization of Hard Drugs

The issue of legalizing potent, addictive drugs deserves special
mention. Many of you may be extremely skeptical about such an idea. If
anything, you would expect legalizing such drugs to produce rapid increases
in their use, rising numbers of addicts, and far more drug-related social
problems. Admittedly, legalization of addictive drugs involves risks and
uncertainties. There is evidence supporting caution about legalizing such
drugs. There is a vast literature documenting the addictive properties of
many illegal drugs (as well as their negative side effects). And we know that
the use of such drugs is typically correlated with a wide range of social
problems. And we know that addiction to legal drugs like alcohol and
nicotine are far more common than addiction to illegal drugs. And there is
some evidence indicating that legal addictive drugs are more difficult to quit.

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(suggesting that legalizing other addictive drugs might make them harder to
quit too).

While addiction may well involve purely psychological elements, it should be

stressed that there is overwhelming evidence that it also involves real, biological
causes and effects. For example, Dr. Nova Volkow, Director of the National Institute
on Drug Abuse, points out that recent imaging studies on the brains of drug abusers
show damage to the prefrontal cortex. Such deficits are typically associated with
impulsivity, and compulsive or dysfunctional behaviors.
Before declaring victory for the prohibition of addictive drugs, let’s look at
some counter arguments and evidence:
• There are good reasons to suspect that the addictiveness of many illegal
drugs has been greatly exaggerated. For example, most illegal drug
abusers and addicts voluntarily quit (typically without drug treatment).
This is true even for the most addictive illegal drugs. Contrary to popular
opinion, withdrawal symptoms for drugs like heroin are not typically too
severe. And many people use potentially addictive drugs (like cocaine or
even crack cocaine) without forming addictions. Occasional heroin and
cocaine users strongly outnumber regular users. Consider
amphetamines. Images of speed freaks, tweekers, or meth heads come
to mind. But such chronic abusers or addicts are the exception not the
rule. Amphetamines were legal and widely used in the U.S. into the
1950’s. At various points, amphetamines were commonly used by
housewives, truck drivers, college students, and others. And
amphetamines were regularly used by the military during World War II,
the Korean War, and Vietnam War. According to some estimates, up to
200 million amphetamine pills were consumed by the U.S. military. More
recently, large numbers of youngsters regularly use amphetamines to
treat conditions like ADHD over extended periods. While such large scale
use of stimulants undoubtedly leads some people to form dependencies
or addictions, most people (typically the vast majority) do not. Even

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 among recreational users of powerful addictive drugs like
methamphetamines, most users are either short term or occasional
users.
• The vast majority of those considered to be dependent upon drugs
strongly deny that they need or want treatment.
• Some researchers are finding that eating high fat foods produces changes in
the brain similar to those caused by heroin or cocaine (perhaps explaining
compulsive overeating by some people). Paul Kenny (2010) found that rats
continue to eat fatty treats even when they are conditioned to expect electrical
shocks. Others argue that sweets are addictive. Lenoir and associates (2009)
found that lab rats preferred sweetened fluids (containing either sucrose or
saccharin over cocaine. This was so when dosages were increased to produce
intoxication. Even cocaine-addicted rats favored intensely sweet rewards over
cocaine! Psychologist Bart Hoebert has even claimed that sugar may be a
“gateway drug”. More generally, all sorts of things (like tanning, exercising, video
game playing, etc) are habit forming. For instance, recent research by Susan
Moeller (2010) indicates that some college students experience cravings and
psychological withdrawal symptoms when deprived of cell phones, the Internet,
and social media sites. Somehow we manage to cope with all sorts of things
associated with compulsive (sometimes harmful) behaviors. In most cases, we do
so without resorting to criminalizing the substance, object, or activities involved.
Prohibition defenders would undoubtedly argue that these compulsive disorders
are profoundly different than drug addition. While there is strong evidence that
some drugs have strong potential for addiction, it is an open question whether the
addictions associated with these drugs are really so different than nondrug
addictions.

• Some (admittedly controversial) research by Theodore Dalrymple (and

others) argues that many common claims about addiction are
exaggerated and misleading; our popular beliefs about addiction and
withdrawal involve romanticized mythology. It is based on pop-culture

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 fiction, and manipulative self-presentations (by addicts), and no small
amount of self-serving propaganda by the drug treatment profession.
Popular beliefs about drug addicts trace back to early highly
sensationalized (probably fictionalized) books from the 1800’s like
“Confessions of an English Opium Eater.” Similar inaccurate stereotypes
of addicts continue to appear in the entertainment and news media
today. Dalrymple argues that addicts commonly play on popular
misconceptions about addition to escape responsibility, elicit sympathy,
or get what they want. He reports on covertly observing addicts joking
among each other how they manipulated therapists and others by using
their additions as excuses. Their self-presentations then change
dramatically when discussing their drug habits with those who treat
them.
• Some go even further. Controversial psychologist Jeffery Scholar argues
that “addiction is a choice…Addiction isn’t a disease; it’s a way of life.”
While he doesn’t deny the existence of withdrawal symptoms, he flatly
states,” anyone can stop or moderate their use of addictive drugs
anytime they want to.” Scholar believes that the disease model of
addiction itself acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and makes it harder to
quit.
• Such skepticism about addiction and withdrawal is supported by other
research (or observations) involving high rates of voluntary withdrawal,
“rational addicts,” “functional addicts,” and cases of long-term controlled
usage of addictive drugs (like heroin) by some people.
• In his book “The Cult of Pharmacology” (2006), psychologist Richard DeGrande
attacks the classical disease model of addiction on several grounds. He points out
that many addicts just don’t fit the model (i.e. drifting in and out of periods of drug
succession, moderation, and abuse repeatedly, drug use varying dramatically
according to an addict’s life circumstances or emotional states, supposedly
hardcore addicts who spontaneously quit, etc). Experiments show that animals
learn to associate morphine and neutral stimuli (like sounds or lights) when the

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two are paired together. When later exposed to the neutral stimulus alone,
animals exhibit the same behaviors as when initially given morphine. In a similar
way, environmental or social cues can trigger intense cravings for drugs in people
even long after they have quit. This may help explain why many addicts relapse
long after withdrawal symptoms have ceased. Also, many people form strong
dependencies (even experiencing cravings or withdrawal symptoms) for various
(nondrug) objects or activities like gambling or the Internet. Contrary to the
disease model, treating addicts by substituting their drugs in other forms (like with
nicotine patches) hasn’t proven too effective. Based on such evidence, DeGrande
concludes that addiction is primarily learned and socially shaped behavior (rather
than being rooted in the intrinsic properties of drugs).
• Based on such evidence, some skeptical addiction experts (admittedly a
small minority in their field) have concluded that it is actually much
harder to get addicted (even to the most addictive drugs) and much
easier to quit than most people realize.
• Further, the addictiveness of a drug is not determined solely by its
chemical properties. Animal research indicates that compulsive use of
additive drugs is highly sensitive to an organism’s environment. Animals
placed in stimulus enriched environments are much less prone to
compulsive drug use. Still other research on drug abuse (like that on
binge drinking) shows that many people are heavily influenced by various
social or situational factors (in terms of their drug consumption). Other
research indicates that people are more prone to form drug
dependencies (and less likely to quit) if nondrug reinforcers are in very
limited supply. Also, there is mounting evidence that indicates that some
people (but not many) are biologically predisposed to drug abuse or
addiction. Such results indicate that we tend to over attribute
addictiveness to drugs per se and often ignore other factors.
• Drug addiction research is often conducted or sponsored by organizations
with strong antidrug ideologies, which have strong incentives to make
extreme claims about illegal drug addictiveness. This introduces the
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 potential for serious bias in the research process. Further, there have
been numerous cases where antidrug experts or prohibition authorities
have made widely exaggerated or false claims about the addictiveness of
illegal drugs. Likewise, such sources have repeatedly reported drug
research findings in highly selective or misleading ways. The news media
often reports such claims uncritically (and sensationalizes drug addiction
in various ways).
• Further, most research on drugs like heroin are conducted on either those
in rehab or those being supervised by the criminal justice system. This
almost guarantees a biased sample of users with the worst cases being
heavily over-represented.
• The whole idea of drug addiction is somewhat controversial. Or it should
be. There are lingering questions about just how reliably we can
distinguish between those driven to use drugs by real biological
addictions versus those who voluntarily choose to use drugs because
they enjoy their affects… Or between those who can’t stop using drugs
versus those who just don’t want to stop. Of course, physical addiction
involves real biological components. But unlike a broken arm or diabetes,
it also involves all sorts of choices, tastes, values, etc... And the diagnosis
of addiction is an inherently value-laden social label imposed upon people
against their will. Those who are compelled into drug treatment have
strong incentives to submit and play along. If they refuse to acknowledge
their “drug problem”, this will only offers more proof of their addiction.
This system is not built to avoid falsely labeling drug users as hardcore
abusers or addicts. Nor is it designed to promote conservative estimates
of the number of drug addicts or abusers.
• While illegal drug abuse and addiction is correlated with various social
problems, we need to be cautious before jumping to the stronger
conclusion that such drug use causes such problems. Remember that
correlations are not necessarily proof of causation. Correlations can be
spurious. For example, both illegal drug use and (say) antisocial behavior
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 may have some underlying common cause. This is especially important
because illegal drug use involves self-selection. And we know that illegal
drug addicts differ from other people in numerous ways. We may be
blaming drugs (or drug addiction) unfairly for the sins (or personality
flaws) of drug users themselves. In other words, the very kind of people
who seek out and become addicted to harder drugs are the type who
tend to get into all sorts of other trouble (with or without drugs).
• Also, we need to be careful not to conflate problems caused by drug
addiction per se with those caused by drug prohibition. For example,
illegal use of addictive drugs is correlated with crime. But this may
largely be an artifact of our drug laws. Prohibition drives up illegal drug
prices, which, in turn, motivate addicts to engage in more crime for
money. And prohibition creates incentives for black market violence.
Prohibitionists assume that addicts cause so many problems for reasons
totally unrelated to our drug laws. Such problems are assumed to be the
inevitable outcomes of drug addiction per se. But what if this is mistaken?
What if illegal drug addicts create so many problems exactly because
their drugs are illegal? Might illegal drug addicts cause more social harm
than legal drug addicts even if they used exactly the same drug? There
are historical comparisons between legal vs. illegal alcohol, opiate, and
cocaine addicts that suggests that this is so.
• Unlike legal drugs, illegal drugs tend to vary unpredictably in terms of
potency. Also, illegal drugs are prone to contamination (sometimes
involving highly toxic substances). This contributes to more problems
with illegal drug overdoses. Even so, only about one tenth of one percent
of all deaths in the U.S. were directly linked to illegal drug use per se
(overdoses, suicides, etc.) Many will be surprised to know that there is a
long history of research indicating that opiate addiction is not extremely
dangerous (absent problems associated with its illegality). A 2001 CDC
cohort study found that only about ½ of 1% of frequent heroin or cocaine
users die yearly from acute drug-related causes even with all the

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 additional health hazards posed by drug laws. Due to needle sharing,
injectable illegal drugs have been linked to the spread of a variety of
diseases (such as A.I.D.S.). Again, such problem appears to be worsened
considerably by drug prohibition.

• Prohibition can hinder the treatment of addiction. Consider ibogaine, a

hallucinogenic African plant. Early research sows very promising results for using
it to treat various types of drug addictions (i.e. cocaine, opiate, methamphetamine)
and alcoholism. It is reported to reduce cravings and withdrawal symptoms, and to
promote introspection. Some hardcore addicts claim to have kicked long term
drug habits with a single treatment. Ibogaine may or may not prove to be an anti-
addiction wonder drug. It has some clear drawbacks including potentially fatal
side-effects. Even through recreational use of ibogaine is very rare, it is a
controlled substance, so drug addicts who wish to use it to treat their addictions
inside the U.S. must do so illegally.
• Most recreational (legal and illegal) drug users prefer softer and less
addictive drugs over harder and more addictive ones. And this was true
before drug prohibition in the U.S.. The recreation use of opiates and
cocaine was not very widespread, and addiction to such drugs was rarer
still (although there were drug epidemic periods when addiction rates
rose sharply).
• The use of harder drugs itself involves inherent risks (including death)
which will deter many potential users. Some others may experiment,
suffer some bad consequences, and quickly quit. Also, these drugs have
such potent effects that some people will find the experience to be very
unpleasant. And drug use will often be incompatible with many activities
(making it inconvenient, impractical, and undesirable for many people in
many situations). Prohibitionists presuppose that most drug users are
insensitive to such risks or problems. The actual evidence suggests
otherwise. Hard drugs are unpopular for many reasons that have little to

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 do with drug prohibition policies. If so, such drugs would remain
unpopular even if legalized.
• Harder drugs tend to attract deviant and low status individuals. And
chronic hard drug abuse or addiction tends to result in downward social
mobility and declining social status. Drugs are used predominately by
low status people tend to be viewed as more deviant or low class. This
would deter many would be users even if these drugs were legal.
• Once people form chemical dependencies to illegal drugs, deterring their
drug use is extremely difficult. They aggressively search for a fix.
Addicts are notorious for being insensitive to legal penalties and short-
term price increases. Arrests and incarceration don't reduce later drug
use. (Worse, such antidrug efforts may actually discourage drug abusers
or addicts from quitting by reducing nondrug reinforcers, impeding drug
treatment, etc.)
• To a lesser degree, novice drug users who are eager to try potent addictive
drugs are difficult to deter given their nonconformity, alienation from conventional
society, and sheer willingness to take risks. Arguably, attempting to prohibit such
drugs may make them even more attractive to rebellious youths seeking out
forbidden pleasures and deviant peers.
• Drug epidemics have continued to occur under prohibition. These (illegal)
drug epidemics appear to be no less frequent, widespread, or socially
destructive than those that occurred in the pre-prohibition era (often
involving the same or similar drugs). Modern drug epidemics virtually
always involve illegal (addictive) drugs. By contrast, legal drug epidemics
are almost unheard of. This suggests that prohibition is actually
producing drug epidemics. If so, it raises the possibility that prohibition
may be extremely counterproductive. Of course, drug epidemics are
socially destructive. But there are more subtle implications. Suppose that
without prohibition, a society would experience chronic problems with
drug addiction but virtually never experience any drug epidemics.
Contrast this scenario with one in which prohibition is instituted and

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 actually succeeds in driving down drug addiction rates most of the time
for prolonged periods. Unfortunately, occasionally there would be large
drug epidemics. So long as the rates of addiction during epidemics
exceed the average rate of addiction without prohibition, it is possible
that prohibition will produce higher average addiction rates over time
(even if prohibition actually works well much of the time).
• Prior to drug prohibition, drug epidemics collapsed on their own. Even
after prohibition, some epidemics appeared to be collapsing before any
concerted law enforcement intervention. All this indicates that these are
(extralegal) social mechanism that operates to control runaway drug
abuse or addiction.
• Smaller scale eruptions of hard drug abuse are extremely frequent in the
modern era. Over the past 40 years, the U.S. has experienced a litany of
problems with addictive drugs (including barbiturates, amphetamines,
heroin, cocaine, crack, oxycontin, other painkiller, and
methamphetamines). Every success story in the war on (addictive) drugs
is built upon some earlier failure. Meth use is declining. This is good news
but only because it had grown into such a big problem in the first place.
Then it again rises later. And time after time, the spread of one addictive
drug follows on the footsteps of declines in some other illegal addictive
drug. Despite large declines in illegal drug use since their peak in the late
1970s, drug abuse today is arguably more dangerous today (due to the
spread of meth, crack, oxycontin, etc.)
• Rates of illegal drug addiction vary substantially across cultures or
subcultures (and over time) even under the same or similar antidrug
laws.
• Societies with harsher antidrug laws sometimes have higher rates of
illegal drug addiction than countries with less severe policies. More
punitive policies do not appear to systematically reduce rates of drug
addiction (although some Asian countries like Japan and China offer
possible exceptions to this rule).
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• Under prohibition, illicit drugs tend to become more potent. In some
cases (like crack cocaine), black markets move towards drugs with faster,
more intense, and shorter lasting highs. In other cases, prohibiting one
drug leads to perverse substitution effects towards even more dangerous
drugs. At the same time, prohibition tends to produce more drug abuse
(and a relative shift towards harder drugs) among illegal drug users. All
this results in more addicts with more intense addictions. By increasing
the potency of illegal drugs used by novices in the early stages of forming
addictions, prohibition produces stronger dependencies and higher
tolerance levels among future addicts. Addicts seek to maintain some
level of the psychoactive chemicals in their systems. The specific level
will depend (in part) upon their individual history of drug use. By starting
out with more potent drugs, those who do form addictions will later
require higher dosages, higher drug potencies, or more frequent use to
satisfy their drug habits. And they will be more likely to form addictions in
the first place. Further, prohibition produces artificial linkages between
the use of “soft” and “hard” drugs, (i.e. the so called gateway effect). The
(unintended) result is to promote the use of more addictive drugs among
illegal drug users. Finally illegal drug addicts tend to be more
dysfunctional relative to legal addicts (although this problem may be
offset by the tendency for legal addicts to remain addicted for longer
periods).
• Legalizing harder and more addictive drugs would allow less potent (and
sometimes less addictive) variations of these drugs to be bought and
sold. Indeed, these would compete for market share with more potent
versions. In the days before opiates were banned, opium smoking was
more popular than heroin among opiate users. Even today, some groups
in Latin America regularly chew coca leaves or drink coca tea but rarely
(if ever) use cocaine. We know that legal drugs like alcohol are most
popularly bought and sold in less potent forms (like beer or wine). The
same might even prove true for opiates or cocaine.

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• Prohibition may also contribute to drug epidemics by (unintentionally)
altering the methods of drug use (i.e. inhaling, smoking, injection, etc.).
There have been numerous cases where prohibition efforts appeared to
(unintentionally) encourage illegal drug users to employ methods with a
greater addiction potential, more dangerous methods, etc.
• Prohibition efforts will be partially offset as illegal drug users substitute
from illegal to legal drugs. Fewer junkies, more drunks! Part of the reason
that there are so many legal drug addicts in the first place is that so
many other drugs are illegal.
• Prohibition efforts tend to create only temporary shortages of addictive
drugs. This does tend to drives up drug prices, and tends to decrease
consumption in the short run. But it increases black market profits, drives
up future supplies, and results in following prices later on.
• The Vancouver Injection Drug Study followed a group of over 1,000
intravenous drug users for over ten years. The results were recently
published (2008) in the medical journal Addiction. The study found that
incarceration had virtually no effect on later illegal drug use. Instead,
incarcerated addicts were significantly less likely to quit their habits
compared to those who were not incarcerated.
• Prohibitionists talk like there is some vast army of potential addicts in the
general population. One common fallacy is to estimate addiction rates for
users of (illegal) addictive drugs, and then extrapolate to the general
populous. But this assumes that vast numbers of people would use hard
drugs if legalized. (According to a recent Zogby poll less than 1% of
respondents said they would use drugs like heroin or cocaine if they were
legal.) Further, it assumes that people would become addicted to such
drugs at rates similar to those who currently use these drugs illegally. But
even when opiates and cocaine were legal, only a moderately small
fraction of the population used such drugs recreationally, and fewer still
become addicts. Also, we know that the vast majority of people use

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 alcohol without forming addictions. Substantial numbers use powerful
prescription drugs without becoming addicted. Such controlled usage of
potentially addictive substances strongly suggests that many (probably
most) people are at very low risk of drug addiction even if such drugs
were openly available, cheaply priced, and legal. Once again, it should be
stressed that illegal drug use involves self-selection. There is no reason to
believe that illegal drug addicts were randomly selected from the general
population. So there is no reason to believe that their (drug-related)
behavior is in any way representative of how others would behave. A
good argument can be made that a substantial portion of those at high
risk at addition are already using drugs, currently addicted, or used drugs
in the past (and since quit). This would limit any increases in new addicts
even if the most addictive drugs were legalized.
• While research does indicate that increasing access to addictive drugs
tends to lead to more addicts, such findings show that such accessibility
effects are typically much weaker than most people suppose. Some
research on accessibility w.r.t. illegal drugs has found almost no effects in
some cases. Other research has found that variations in antidrug
enforcement often have little impact on illegal drug availability. Some
widely available drugs are either rarely recreationally used (like
inhalants) or rarely abused (like caffeine). At the same time, large
declines in illicit drug consumption sometimes coincides with only small
decreases in drug availability (like with ecstasy and amphetamine) or
even with increasing availability (like with cocaine). More to the point,
there is evidence showing that even access to highly addictive drugs
often results in only small increases in addiction rates. Doctors,
pharmacists, and others with regular access to prescription drugs are at
any slightly higher risk of (prescription) drug addiction. Addiction rates in
this population remain fairly low (although higher than for the general
population). Even with access to drugs like morphine or oxycontin,
doctors are still far more prone to become alcoholics than prescription

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 drug addicts. Similar points apply to police officers with access to illegal
drug seizures or those engaged in undercover drug operations. (It should
be noted that job-related stress probably plays some role in higher
addiction rate for these occupations. If so, it would mean that
accessibility effects were even weaker.) And although illegal drug dealers
often use their own products, it doesn’t appear that most hard drug
dealers are addicts. Further, substantial numbers of youths report access
to illegal addictive drugs. According to a 2005 MTF survey, high school
seniors reported that amphetamines (50%), cocaine (47%), or heroin
(30%) are either “very easy” or “fairly easy” to obtain. Such results
demonstrate serious problems with prohibition attempts to limit drug
accessibility among the young. More to the point, despite moderately
widespread access, very few youngsters choose to try such drugs. Similar
points can be made about college students. (Still should be noted that
younger people tend both to have greater access to such drugs and are
more prone to use them compared to more mature adults. More
generally, increased access does tend to increase drug use somewhat.
So, for example, someone living in a neighborhood with lots of heroin use
is more likely to become a heroin addict. Both these points offer some
support for the possible benefits of prohibition.)
• The very fact that so many people oppose legalizing addictive drugs
indicates that the dangers of such drugs are widely known and suggests
that many people would be little inclined to use them if they were legal.
• The use of addictive legal drugs like alcohol and nicotine has
substantially declined in the U.S. (and many other countries) over
extended periods. Likewise, there have been corresponding decreases in
their drug related problems. At the very least, this shows that the legal
consumption of legal drugs can fall over time. But it also suggests that
such declines may have occurred exactly because these drugs were
legal.

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• No other drug even comes close to nicotine in terms of producing
widespread addition in industrialized countries around the world. Why
so? Nicotine is the antithesis of harder drugs like meth or heroin. While
it is very addictive if you keep smoking, many smokers can intermittently
slow down or temporarily stop with little difficulty in their first few years
of smoking. Unlike more potent drugs, it doesn’t produce an intense
buzz, any visible symptoms, intoxication, or noticeable behavioral
effects. Of course, long-term adverse health effects are well established.
Still, in the short run, smoking is moderately safe. After someone
becomes addicted, withdrawal symptoms are mildly unpleasant but
certainly not agonizing. Smoking became so popular in the first place
because it doesn’t appear to be a dangerous mind-altering substance.
Even though many people had long suspected that smoking was
unhealthy, in the past the general public seriously underestimated the
long term risks. Observe that smoking began to steadily decline only
after the ill effects of smoking were widely publicized (including
mandatory warning labels on cigarette packages). Smoking peaked in
the U.S. during the mid-1960’s with over half of adult men and about a
third of women smoking. Today, the percentage of adults smoking in the
U.S. is below 20% and falling fast driven by even faster declines in
smoking by youngsters. And those who are smoking tend to smoke less than
those in the past. In the mid-1960s, over 55% of smokers smoked a pack of
cigarettes or more per day. By 2007, it had fallen to 40%. Moderate smokers
(who use 10 or more cigarettes per day) also declined. While aggressive
antismoking regulations and taxation played some role in these recent
declines, the strong downward trends in smoking started well before
such policies were instituted. The point is that the drugs with the
strongest potential for wide scale abuse are those that seem fairly
benign, not those that are well known to be dangerous, highly addictive,
mind and behavior altering drugs. Even so, widespread awareness of the
risks of such drugs can substantially reduce their use over time.

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• There has been widespread experimentation with various legal drug
regulations, drug treatment/therapy programs, and harm reduction
strategies (like needle exchange programs, methadone clinics, and even
heroine prescriptions for addicts). These approaches (while quite
controversial) sometimes appear to be effective in reducing the negative
social consequences of drug abuse and addiction. Such approaches are
compatible with regulated versions of drug legalization (or
decriminalization). Of course law enforcement efforts against antisocial,
harmful, reckless, or socially disruptive conduct would still play a critical
role in dealing with the minority of illegal drug users (mostly abusers and
addicts) who account for a disproportionate share of social problems.
Under legalization, such police efforts would target the actual
misbehaviors of specific drugs abusers or addicts (rather than broadly
targeting the possession, use, production, or distribution of illegal drugs).
Then drug treatment, mandatory drug testing, or other approaches could
be used selectively for those with the worst drug problems. A
combination of such approaches could help reduce drug addiction
substantially over time.
• The legalization of addictive drugs could produce some clear benefits like
improving the health of addicts, reducing the spread of some infectious
diseases, weakening the link between addiction and predatorial crime (by
reducing the sheer cost of addiction), encouraging more addicts to
voluntarily seek treatment, etc.

Gateway Effects

Many people claim that marijuana is a "gateway drug." Those who smoke pot are
supposedly more prone to use harder drugs in the future, and to go on to become
chronic users or addicts. Such claims are supported by some evidence: but the bulk

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of evidence especially that from the most rigorous, methodologically sound
research) raise serious doubts about this hypothesis:
• Strong correlations between pot and harder drug use clearly exist but are
often misinterpreted. While the vast majority of (say) cocaine users have
used marijuana (90% or more by some estimates), most marijuana users
(more than 5 in 6 according to some estimates) have never used cocaine.
And most of those who do experiment with hard drugs do so only for short
periods. So, only a small fraction of pot users become hard drug addicts.
• A RAND study (2002) indicated that adolescents who were predisposed
towards drug use were more inclined to use both marijuana and other
(harder) drugs. Such youths tended to smoke pot before using other drugs
primarily because of easy access or availability of the drug. They concluded
that the evidence does not support marijuana being a gateway drug.
Marijuana acts as a “gateway drug” because it shares overlapping illegal
drug networks with other illicit drugs. Thus, becoming a pot smoker
increases access to other illegal drugs. But only because it is illegal.
• Morral, McCaffery, and Paddock (2003) developed models that accurately
reproduced actual data for marijuana and harder drug use without assuming
any gateway effects. Instead, their models were built on the simple
assumption that some youngsters are just more inclined to use both
marijuana and harder drugs than others (for whatever reason).
• More generally, gateway effects tend to decrease or disappear after
controlling for other variables involving a person’s characteristics or social
circumstances. For instance, the likelihood that someone will become
addicted to heroin can be predicted fairly accurately using variables like
family history of addiction, availability of heroin in their community, and
psychological traits like being a risk taker. Once these types of factors are
considered, whether someone smoked marijuana has little predictive value.
• Further, many youngsters start smoking pot at fairly early ages. But the
early use of any kind of drugs is associated with progression to stronger

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drugs. So, it is easy to mistake the impact of early drug use per se with that
of using marijuana, in specific.
• Golub and Johnson (2002) point out that patterns of drug progression
have changed dramatically over generations. The gateway model fits “baby
boomers” the best. But it fits those born before WW2 very poorly. Also,
increased pot use by the young during the 1900s did not produce any
upsurge in hard drug use.
• Jeffrey DeSimone (1998) studied the effect of pot use on later cocaine use. He
used advanced statistical techniques to estimate the relationship between
marijuana use and unobserved individual differences that might somehow explain
why different individuals would be more or less inclined to use cocaine. Even after
controlling for those individual characteristics, he still found that past pot use
increased the probability of later cocaine use by 29%. This study provides some of
the strongest evidence in favor of the gateway hypothesis (in that it shows pot use
itself might substantially increase the risk of later hard drug use). But it raises
some doubts, too. First, it shows that most of the variance (70%) in using cocaine
can't be explained by earlier pot use. Second, it doesn’t really show that pot use
itself causes cocaine use. While it controls for individual differences, it leaves open
the question of whether the legal status of marijuana (rather than some inherent
property of pot) might account for some (or all) of the relationship between using
pot and coke.
• Research by Agrawal and associates (2004) investigated possible gateway
effects among twins. They found a strong relationship between early marijuana use
and the later use of other drugs. If one twin smoked pot at an early age, then the
other twin was far more likely to later use other illicit drugs. While the researchers
concluded that there might have been some gateway effects, they concluded that
the relationship between earlier cannabis use and the later use of other drugs was
mostly due to genetic or environmental influences shared by the twins.
• Van Gundy and Rebellion (2010) analyzed survey data from 1286 young adults
who had attended public schools in Southern Florida during the 1990s. The subjects
were initially surveyed in sixth or seventh grade, and then followed until their late
teens or early twenties. The best predictor of future illegal drug use was race and
ethnicity (with Whites being the most likely to do drugs, Hispanics next most likely,

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and Blacks the least likely). Failure to graduate from high school or find a job was
also stronger predictors of later use than previous pot use. "We were somewhat
surprised to find the gateway effect wasn't that strong during the transition to
adulthood," the researchers said. "It really didn't matter if someone used pot or not
as a teen" (after adjusting for things like employment or educational achievement).
They added that, "while marijuana use may serve as a gateway to other illicit drug
use in adolescence, our results indicate that the effects may be short-lived,
subsiding by age 21...we find that respondents age out of marijuana's gateway
effect, regardless of early teen stress exposure or education, work, or family
statuses." (One critical comment is in order. This study does not control for how
early marijuana smoking might later result in worse educational or employment
outcomes. So, it might underestimate the magnitude of any gateway effects.)

While research results do not rule out the possible existence of real gateway
effects, such effects appear to be fairly weak (if they exist at all). Apparently, most
supposed gateway effects are spurious (i.e. the result of marijuana smoking and
later use of other illegal drugs sharing common causes). In other words, supposed
gateway effects weaken or disappear after controlling for biological or psychological
traits, sociological or environmental factors, etc.

To the degree that gateway effects are real, they don't appear to be specific to
marijuana. It is well established that youngsters who start drinking at earlier ages
are at increased risk for later illicit drug use. Recent research by Korhonen and
associates (2008) suggests that very young kids who start smoking cigarettes are
about 26 times more likely to use illegal drugs by age 17, compared to those who
don't smoke (by age 12). It appears that early use of many different types of drugs
increased risk of later drug abuse. Once again, such effects may be spurious. Or
maybe they are real. Perhaps younger immature users are more inclined to
develop tastes and preferences for intoxicants. Or, perhaps, early drug use may
alter brain development in some ways (such as increasing impulsivity), which
indirectly encourages later drug use. Whatever the case, the old argument that
marijuana (but not other drugs) leads to harder drugs is not supported by the
evidence. Conceivably, legalizing pot might produce more hard drug use...if it

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encouraged lots of kids to start getting high at much younger ages. Any stronger
claims seem implausible.

5) Concluding Comments
…….So Does Prohibition Really Reduce Drug Use? (Some
final Thoughts)

Drug prohibition is openly supported by numerous politicians, law enforcers,

educators, religious leaders, and celebrities. And prohibition supporters are
highly organized, well funded, and possess a vast amount of organizational
power. Add to this that almost no one alive today has any memory of a time
before drug prohibition. And that we’ve all been bombarded with endless
anti-drug public service messages and media images. And that for decades
millions of youths have been put through drug education programs favorable
to the “War on Drugs”. In such an environment, it is all too easy to simply
dismiss drug legalization as a crackpot idea, or to imagine the worst about it
(i.e. the explosive growth in drug abuse, overdoses, junkies, etc).

And too, the basic justification for drug prohibition appears straightforward.
Clearly drug abuse causes all sorts of problems (often for innocent parties,
children, etc). It seems obvious that decreasing the use of dangerous drugs
would be a good thing (preventing needless suffering and saving lives). It
seems obvious that prohibition (perhaps greatly) reduces illegal drug use
(and related problems). After all, prohibition clearly imposes substantial legal
penalties, denies easy access to drugs, confiscates large volumes of illegal
substances, stigmatizes illegal drugs, etc. By the same logic, it seems
equally obvious that legalization would inevitably encourage more drug
abuse and addiction (by eliminating legal penalties, making drugs openly
available, reducing drug prices, etc). All this seems commonsensical and
uncontroversial…

…Or is it?

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The entire case for prohibition rests on a series of claims. First, it is claimed
that drug abuse and addiction is a serious social problem. And it is claimed
that prohibition substantially reduces drug abuse and addiction. And it is
claimed that it reduces a variety of drug-related social problems. And, finally,
it is claimed that these reductions in social harm will more than offset the
costs of prohibition itself. But does this argument really hold up under
critical evaluation?

First, consider the claim that recreational drug use is the source of
widespread social harm. This claim is strongly supported by a wealth of
evidence. While no one is denying that drug abuse and addiction causes all
sorts of problems, one could still make a good argument that such claims are
often exaggerated. And popular claims about drug use progression and
addiction are also exaggerated. If so, the justification for (highly coercive)
policies to repress drug use is somewhat weakened.

Now consider the claim that prohibition substantially reduces drug use.
While it will undoubtedly deter some (potential) users, such deterrence
effects appear to be fairly weak. Likewise, other prohibition efforts (like
reducing access driving up drug prices) are probably far less effective than
most people seem to assume. The same can be said for a variety of other
prohibition methods like drug education, anti drug media campaigns, drug
eradication and interdiction programs, etc., Further, whatever success
prohibition achieves in reducing illegal drug use is at least partially offset by
increases in legal drug use through substitution effects. In sum, there are a
variety of reasons to question how effective prohibition is in deterring (or
otherwise reducing) drug use in the first place.

Notice that the argument for prohibition focuses exclusively on the intended
or desired effects of the policy. This just ignores any possible unintended or
counterintuitive effects. More specifically, it ignores even the possibility that
prohibition might unintentionally encourage some people to use more drugs.

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Prohibition influences the behavior of drug users in complex ways. Of course
some will be deterred. But for those who continue to use illegal drugs,
prohibition will alter their incentives and available choices, reshape the social
meanings and norms associated with drugs, and produce social network
effects as decentralized drug networks evolve to distribute illegal
substances. Treating drugs like “forbidden fruit” tempts some people to do
drugs. Problematic drug-related social definitions thrive. Social pressure to
use drugs will intensify among illegal users. And black markets will tend to
produce stronger, more addictive, and more toxic drugs. New users will be
constantly recruited through their social relationships with other illegal users.
Overtime, these various effects will combine and reinforce each other to
produce an emerging drug culture. The unintended effects of prohibition
itself will produce more drug abuse, worse intoxicated behavior, and more
drug-related social harm among those who do use illegal drugs. Most people
assume that all this occurs despite prohibition when, in fact, it occurs
because of it.

These theoretical agreements are generally supported by a wide range of

empirical evidence (i.e. comparison between legal versus illegal drug
consumption patterns, comparison of drug use patterns under “hard” versus
“soft” prohibition regimes, historical comparison of drug use before and after
drug prohibition, etc).

Now, consider the claim that legalization would increase drug abuse. We
know for a fact that legal drug use and abuse can decline by substantial
amounts over extended periods. Granted, it doesn’t always work this way.
And granted, legal drugs still pose some serious problems even in the best
cases. Nevertheless, the claims that prohibition is necessary to reduce drug
use or that legalization necessarily means accepting permanently high rates
of drug abuse are simply false.

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Clearly, there are some social processes or mechanisms that constrain, limit,
or repress drug abuse other than prohibition. (Even under drug prohibition,
some declines in illegal drug use probably have little or nothing to do with
prohibition efforts per se. After all, many factors other than law enforcement
efforts influence illegal drug use.) The obvious question is what factors might
limit or decrease drug abuse other than prohibition?

One possibility is that the number of people at high risk of chronic abuse or
addiction is only a moderately small fraction of the population. If so, it could
well be the case that a substantial portion of these high-risk individuals are
already abusing legal or illegal drugs (even with prohibition) or have done so
in the past and since quit. A large portion of the population might be at little
risk of drug abuse or addiction even if drugs were legal, openly available and
cheap. People choose not to use drugs (or use them infrequently) for any
number of reasons (i.e. fear of addiction or overdose, religious beliefs, etc.).
Never forget that large numbers of people abstain from legal drugs or use
them in moderation. Likewise, large numbers of people have access to illegal
drugs but choose not to use them despite very little risk of arrest. And the
majority of those who experiment with illegal drugs voluntarily quite without
any arrest, drug therapy, or any serious adverse drug effects like overdoses.
Further, most illegal drug users tend to choose softer drugs over more
addictive drugs (indicating selectivity and risk avoidance on their part). And
many others manage to use powerful prescription drugs for limited medical
purpose without abuse or addiction. Historically, large portions of the
population didn’t use or abuse (now illegal) drugs prior to their prohibition.
Finally, many current recreational drug users have already developed strong
preferences for alcohol or other legal drugs, and wouldn’t easily switch to
newly legalized drugs. These generalizations do not indicate that there is
some vast pool of potential abusers or addicts in the population scared away
from drugs solely by anti-drug laws.

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Undoubtedly there are many other constraints on drug abuse. Consider just
a few possibilities. To the degree that drugs do cause suffering, many people
will learn through experience and be motivated to avoid such drugs or
moderate their usage. Some will learn the same lesson by observing others.
In any case, potentially dangerous drugs will deter many users exactly
because they are dangerous. And informal social controls could play and
important role as various social groups develop and enforce norms to
discourage drug abuse, limit intoxication, etc. And, faced with drug
problems, various groups or organizations might be motivated to develop
deliberate strategies to reduce drug abuse (i.e. drug-testing, drug education,
drug rehab, interventions, etc. ). And so on…

Some of these anti-drug social processes or mechanisms may work well

under prohibition and reinforce its effectiveness. Others may not. It is
conceivable that prohibition might interfere with or weaken some of these
processes. For instance, economic processes influence drug consumption
with or without drug prohibition. But legal drug markets function very
differently than black markets. Legal drugs are distributed in highly
impersonalized/commercialized manners (which tends to lessen social
pressures to use more drugs). Also, legal drugs don’t appear to increase in
potency over time. Legal drug distributors are publicly visible. They are
exposed to the pressures of public criticism/protest and more easily
regulated by the state. Each point shows how legal drug markets tend to
limit drug abuse in ways that black markets do not. If anything, illegal drug
markets encourage more abuse (i.e. more social pressure to use drugs,
stronger drugs, no regulation, etc.).

In the absence of prohibition, most societies tend to slowly adapt to

recreational drugs and at least some adjust very successfully. As they
experiment with drugs, they gain collective experience. Societies learn. And
such lessons pass from generation to generation. If drugs come to be

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associated with social harm, many societies tend to define these drugs as
problematic. Such societies tend to develop informal (and possibly some
formal) social controls to deal with such problems. New social norms or
customs emerge. The important point here is that all this arises from social
experimentation, and the resulting collective experiences with drugs. And
whatever suffering is caused by such drugs is a critical component of this
social process.

But almost by definition, prohibition must interfere with social processes

involving social experimentation, learning, and adaptation. To the degree
that prohibition is really successful, it will reduce both drug use and the
suffering it produces. Yet it is exactly such negative effects that drive (anti-
drug) social adaptation in the first place. Also, prohibition is clearly
inconsistent with any social norms encouraging moderate drug use or more
civilized behavior under the influence of such drugs. And prohibition will
drive (illegal) drugs underground. But removing illegal drug users from public
visibility may insolate them from informal social controls. Also, removing
such users from public view will make it harder for others to learn from their
(bad) example and avoid their mistakes. In short, there are many reasons to
suspect that prohibition tends to weaken or interfere with adaptive social
responses to drugs that likely would have occurred in the absence of drug
prohibition.

To summarize, there are several reasons to question the effectiveness of

prohibition in reducing drug use. Deterrence effects appear to be fairly weak.
And those most likely to be deterred will be moderate or occasional drug
users (who are probably at low risk of chronic abuse or addiction). And the
effectiveness of prohibition will be offset (at least in part) by substitution
effects. For example, reducing (say) marijuana use may just result in more
alcohol consumption. And the effectiveness of prohibition will be further
reduced by network recruiting effects (which increase the number of illegal

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drug users). And even if prohibition succeeds in deterring many (potential)
users, it appears to increase drug use among those who do use illegal drugs.
At the same time, prohibition policies may weaken or interfere with social
mechanisms/processes that would otherwise constrain drug use, abuse, and
addiction. And it unintentionally shifts drug abuse toward younger people
(as opposed to mature adults.) This results in more people forming drug
habits or chronically abusing drugs later in their adult lives.

In light of all these arguments, the most reasonable conclusion seems to be

that drug legalization would not substantially increase drug use, abuse, or
addiction in the long run. It might even result in lower drug consumption.
Indeed, it is quite likely that drug abuse and addiction would decline. While
increasing drug consumption is a real possibility especially in the shorter
term, explosive growth in or permanently high levels of drug use appears
highly unlikely.

Even if legalization did increase drug use somewhat, drug-related social

harm would probably still decline. Social problems associated with drugs are
not a simple function of the numbers of users. Drug legalization would be
expected to produce less polarized patterns of drug use and less chronic
abuse and addiction (which is strongly linked to numerous drug-related
social problems). Any increase in drug users would tend to be mostly among
moderate or infrequent users (who would be far less prone to harm
themselves or others). Second, legalization might be expected to encourage
social norms toward less public intoxication, better behavior under the
influence, etc. (again resulting in less social harm). Third, legalization would
tend to increase the use of soft drugs relative to hard drugs (and weaken the
tendency for softer drugs to become “gateway drugs” to more dangerous or
additive intoxicants). Fourth, legalization would reduce the
frequency/severity of drug epidemics (which are extremely socially
destructive). Fifth, legalization would reduce or eliminate whatever problems

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grow out of prohibition policies per se. And, finally, legalization would allow
more focused or targeted enforcement against problematic drug abusers
(which might be more effective in limiting drug-related social harm caused
disproportionately by this minority of drug users).

But even if drug abuse and related social problems were reduced by
prohibition (which seems very unlikely), it is still far from obvious that such a
policy is justified. It must produce enough benefits to offset all the costs and
negative side effects of prohibition itself. To be blunt, prohibition had better
produce sizable reductions in “the drug problem” in order to justify throwing
masses of people in jail, enduring persistent black market violence, spending
billions of taxpayer’s dollars, etc,, etc,.

The case for prohibition (and against legalization) is based on a series of

claims. If any of these claims proves false, the whole case for prohibition
weakens or collapses. But there are good reasons to doubt each and every
one of these claims. At best, prohibition is probably much less effective in
decreasing drug abuse and related social problems (and has more
destructive unintended consequences) than most people believe. At worst, it
actually (unintentionally) increases drug abuse and associated social harm.
Overall the case in favor of prohibition appears to be extremely weak.

This is not to say that prohibition never works. It can sometimes be very effective
in temporarily repressing drug use. But prohibition tends to become increasingly
inefficient over time. Given enough time, black markets arise, drug-related
attitudes change, youth drug cultures emerge, and so on. The longer the time
frame, the more things can and will go wrong. Just look at the evidence. Over the
past 25 years, a period of escalating prohibition efforts, illegal drug consumption
has changed very little in the U.S. (with current rates of usage well above those
prior to drug prohibition). More inputs (i.e. antidrug spending, drug law enforcers,

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etc) have not resulted in drug-reduction “outputs” (i.e. less consumption, fewer
users, etc). By almost any measure, drug prohibition efficiency is falling over time.
The problem is not just weak deterrence effects. Everything else held constant,
ratcheting up prohibition efforts would be still expected to put downward pressure
on illegal drug use even if deterrence effects were very weak. But not everything
else is constant. Something is putting upward pressure on drug use and negating
the effects of these antidrug efforts. Theoretically, any number of things might
drive up illegal drug use…many of which have nothing to do with our drug policies.
Yet, the available evidence doesn’t suggest that there is some broad upward
pressure on recreational drug use unrelated to prohibition. The most plausible
explanation is that prohibition itself is unintentionally encouraging some people to
get high even as it deters some others from doing so. The critical question is
which of these effects dominate in the long run?

After about a century of escalating worldwide drug prohibition, recreational drug

use remains extremely widespread, and illegal drug use is fairly common. With
each passing generation, more people around the globe use illegal drugs. Looking
forward, there is no reason to believe that prohibition will work any better in the
future. It will never achieve any lasting or sizable reductions in drug abuse or
related problems. In the worst case, it will worsen the very problems that it is
supposed to remedy in which case we will needlessly suffer a combination of more
troubles with drug abuse, high rates of incarceration, and all the other
costs/problems associated with prohibition policies.

Some will still object that legalizing drugs will cause too many troubles in the short
run. They imagine drug use immediately skyrocketing resulting in mayhem. While
these concerns are understandable, such fears appear exaggerated. For example,
common claims that legalization would cause a surge in drug-related traffic
accidents may sound fairly reasonable. But the same thing could be said about
the dire warnings that raising highway speed limits would dramatically increase
traffic wrecks. But this much dreaded wave of wrecks never materialized. Instead,

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traffic accidents and fatalities fell in most areas with increased speed limits.
Sometimes, the things that seem so obvious to use, the things we “know in our
guts” are just plain wrong. Research indicates that most illegal drugs (including
pot) pose much lower accident-related risks than alcohol. Also, legalization would
free up police resources to increase road patrols. We’ve learned a lot about how to
deal with impaired drivers since the days of the repeal of alcohol prohibition (which
did initially result in more traffic wrecks for quite a while). Legalizing drugs might
result in some short term increases in traffic accidents and fatalities. Contrary to
more alarmist claims, however, carnage on the roads is extremely unlikely.

Even if legalization caused some problems, this isn’t necessarily a decisive

argument against it. The repeal of alcohol prohibition initially produced increased
alcohol consumption. Some people died as a result. But the repeal saved lives in
other ways (such as reducing black market violence). Arguably, this tradeoff was
justifiable even in the short term. In the longer run, alcohol consumption would
eventually decline. So, too, would many alcohol-related social problems (including
drunk-driving). The wisdom of such policy decision needs to be judged primarily in
terms of long term consequences. In retrospect, the repeal of prohibition now
seems like a pretty reasonable choice to most people.

Others may still insist antidrug measures like drug therapy, education, and
testing is necessary. Maybe so. But such strategies could easily be
employed if drugs were decriminalized or legalized. The critical question
here is whether such measures would work better with prohibition or without
it.

No one really knows for sure. The central debate is over the effectiveness
and desirability of the core coercive aspects of prohibition (i.e. arrests,
incarcerations, drug seizures, etc.). Drug decriminalization or legalization is
hardly incompatible with other approaches like drug education or therapies.

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Arguments in favor of such approaches do not necessarily offer support for
prohibition.

In the final analysis, I can't offer any guarantee that legalization would work.
Of course, drug legalization involves risks and uncertainties. After all, data is
limited. There are all sorts of methodological problems involved. The
theoretical arguments involved are abstract, complex, and open to debate. It
is always possible that my conclusions about legalization are wrong. Perhaps,
I have vastly understated the problems with legalizing drugs. You will just
have to make up your own mind.

K) Why Does Prohibition Persist, and Where is it Headed?

If drug prohibition really is largely ineffective (or even counter productive) in

reducing recreational drug abuse, this begs an obvious question: why is
prohibition so persistent (and so widely publicly supported)? In this section
we will discuss this issue.
A) Trapped by our own history:
Drug prohibition is well established and institutionalized. Negative
popular attitudes and beliefs about illegal drugs are widely held.
Prohibition has lots of social and political momentum on its side.
B) Exceeding even our lowest expectations:
Drug prohibition is often judged against nightmare scenarios of
legalized drugs, or against levels of illegal drug use in the very recent
past. In the latter case, prohibition appears to be working well
enough unless there is a substantial and well-documented increase in
drug use. Even then a loud public call for stronger and more
aggressive prohibition measures is all too common. In any case, our
standards for the success or failure of prohibition are extremely low

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 and loose. Over time as we’ve come to expect high levels of drug
abuse, we’ve lowered our expectations even further. Prohibitionists
will claim every drug bust as a victory, and every momentary decline
in any illegal drug as a prohibition success story if we let them. And
we do.
C) Attention deficit democracy:
Voters tend to be ill informed about a variety of political issues. Why
should our drug laws be any different?
D) Half-blind foxes are guarding the hen house:
Prohibition is often evaluated by prohibition agencies (or other
government agencies with little incentive to be too critical). To make
matters worse, prohibition efforts are highly decentralized, poorly
coordinated, enforced inconsistently, etc. Those who do evaluate it
typically lack key evidence, work with low quality data, etc. They are
fumbling around in the dark. There is lots of guesswork. We don’t
really know for sure how much we spend on prohibition. We don’t
know how many drug raids there are. Or how many actually find
illegal drugs. And so on. The end result is that prohibition is rarely
formally evaluated in a critical, systematic, or rational manner.
E) Prohibition sells:
Prohibition rhetoric obviously appeals to a broad range of different
groups, organizations, and interests. Whether prohibition works well
is a totally separate issue.
F) Blinded by our own fears:
Alarmist prohibitionist claims are rarely put to the test exactly
because we are too scared to do so. And without policy
experimentation, even the most ineffective, counterproductive, or
dysfunctional policies can appear sensible.
G) Down with dirty stinky hippies:

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 Illegal drugs have often been publically associated with socially
stigmatized groups, controversial lifestyles, etc. Illegal drugs are
cultural markers which mark the boundaries between polite,
conventional society and the social world of criminals, deviants,
political radicals, foreigners, and minority groups. The “war on drugs”
really is a cultural war between “us” and “them”. Public debate is
often driven by unstated assumptions, symbolism, social grievances
and conflicts, and no small amount of emotion. The actual pros and
cons of prohibition are often secondary issues.
H) The “law and order” mentality:
For those who believe that drug use itself is profoundly immoral, the
practical consequences of prohibition policy are (at best) a secondary
consideration. Justice and retribution are the central issues.
According to this view, drug law violators should be thrown in jail
because they deserve it (just like murderers, rapists, and thieves).

I) The “tough love” mentality:

Others will continue to support prohibition (with little attention to its
actual effectiveness) if they believe that drug users are enslaved by
drugs, need help, etc. The good intentions of antidrug policies are
their primary justification, not so much the actual effects of these
policies. Supporting such policies makes some people feel good
about themselves.
J) Illegal drugs are against the law:
Some people appear to support prohibition just because it is the law.
To support antidrug laws is to support the government, the
democratic system, the police, and various authority figures. Some
may not put much more thought into it. Such people are not judging
prohibition by its consequences.
K) Druggies of the world unite:

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 Unlike prohibitionists, illegal drug users and suppliers are politically
unorganized and have failed to mobilize effective political resistance
to drug prohibition. The result is that the prohibition debate is not
really a public debate at all.
L) Nobody really seems to want the stuff:
Most people don’t support drug prohibition because they are
personally worried about becoming drug addicts. Nor do they worry
about themselves endangering other people while under the influence
of drugs. (Of course, they worry about other people!!!) They
probably feel that they have lost little or nothing personally by
supporting laws which prohibit them from doing things they have no
intention to do like using crack or meth. (At the same time, however,
they feel that they personally stand to gain by reducing drug use by
other people!). Paradoxically, widespread support for prohibition is
rooted in the fact that there is so little desire to use illegal drugs by so
many people.
M)A false sense of control:
Prohibition is a way of dealing with public anxiety over a wide range of
vexing social problems ranging from crime to dangers to children over
which many feel powerless. Prohibition means taking action, doing
something, and feeling in control. It can still serve this psychological
function even if it doesn’t really work in reducing illegal drug use or
related problems.
N) Failure is a Feature, Not a Bug:
Prohibition interferes with anything and everything that might
encourage more moderation in the use of illegal drugs. The more we
employ prohibition, the more we need to continue using it (resulting in an
endless “War on Drugs”). Prohibition creates its own demand, and rewards
its own failures.

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 The Future of Prohibition: Where is it all headed?

• Several industrialized countries have shifted towards softer or more

decriminalized versions of prohibition. For instance, Britain, Portugal, Spain,
and Canada have downgraded criminal penalties on marijuana or moved
towards decriminalized marijuana possession. A few industrialized nations
(like Denmark) have moved in the other direction towards stronger anti-drug
laws.
• In poorer and developing countries, some nations continue to use
extreme measures (like stoning, beheading, and public beatings) against
illegal drug users. A few have instituted insanely sensitive drug screening
procedures for all foreign visitors combined with long prison sentences for
even trace amounts of illegal drugs. At the other extreme, some countries
have public considered drug legalization (although none have yet done so).
In Latin America, countries like Mexico and Argentina are moving towards
drug decriminalization.
• In the US, prohibition remains highly criminalized (resulting in vast
numbers of drug arrests) with no end in sight. Marijuana arrests and
convictions continue to rise. And the scope of prohibition laws continues to
grow as with recent restrictions on over the counter cold medications.
Nevertheless, for the 1st time in memory, there is a growing and very active
movement to decriminalize marijuana in many states. Due to budgetary
problems, some state officials have openly discussed legalizing and taxing
pot. And some states (like Massachusetts) have recently recriminalized pot.
Others have passed medical marijuana laws. While majorities of people
appear to oppose legalization in most polls, support for it is rising. In very
recent polls, record numbers are favoring legalizing pot. In some states,
marijuana legalization has achieved a majority or near majority support.
• At the same time, there has a rapid growth in regulations, restrictions,
and sin taxes on tobacco. Across the country, smoking has been prohibited
not only in restaurants but even inside apartments or condos, in “public

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spaces” (i.e. parks, sidewalks, etc.), etc.. And some areas with the highest
cigarette taxes (like New York City) have experienced problems with
smuggling and black market activities. To a much lesser degree there may
be faint signs of creeping alcohol restrictions. More generally, there is a
clear trend toward more coercive or restrictive public health laws for an ever
growing list of items or activities ranging from cell phone or iPod use to fast
foods to prohibiting candy or soda pop in public schools.
• The medical marijuana industry is growing rapidly. Recent estimates
suggest it is already generating as much or more revenue than high profile
drugs like Viagra. If this trend continues, it will create strong vested interest
to promote increasing "medicalization" of marijuana. At the same time,
ongoing budget problems may encourage a movement towards drug
decriminalization (in order to reduce the costs associated with incarcerating
large numbers of drug offenders). In combination, these trends may slowly
undermine aggressive drug criminalization policies.
• In the post-9/11 era, the DEA is increasingly taking a major role in
international intelligence and counter-terrorism activities. The DEA already
has 87 offices in 63 countries. Several factors have driven this worldwide
growth, including links between major terrorist groups and the world drug
trade, corrupt foreign government officials involved with illegal drugs
(sometimes covertly supporting drug production or distribution),
international money laundering cartels who don't respect international
boundaries, etc.

L) Inviting Questions, Comments, and Criticisms

M)Conclusion (Facts and Trends)

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