Oh Leighton, thank you for AGAIN being willing to speak the hard truth that few are willing or able to state publicly. The rhetoric around addiction has gotten so tangled and weird. We need an organized societal response other than letting people die, often in the streets, at the mercy of their physical dependency. I think a middle path has to be the answer, with treatment, forced when necessary, along with criminalizing the activities of those vile people who profit from the addiction of their customers.
I can hear the chorus now of how societal factors FORCE people to enter the trade cause they have NO CHOICE. Well, lots of us grew up poor as shit in abusive homes with addicted parents and found alternative methods to support ourselves that do not require destroying the lives of others.
Moreover, I think what is the unspoken factor here is the actual cost in dollars it will take to provide treatment, housing, medical care, food, etc., for those hopelessly addicted because it will all have to be built from the ground up. How can we provide addiction treatment when there are not enough professionals or lay people trained to do this? And nowhere to house people, particularly in psychiatric or treatment beds? These obstacles are insurmountable without massive public investment. Those downtown flophouses were better than nothing! And now we can long for the good old days when NORML was radical stuff.
The heretic position with the uphill climb here is the drug law reform position, not the defense of the criminalization status quo.
The main reason you read so few defenses of the status quo is that it already has the weight of institutional power on its side, so few Drug War supporters can be bothered to defend it by engaging in debate. (I challenge any opponent of overhauling the drug prohibition statutes to engage with me in this comment thread, or on my Substack page. I doubt I'll get a response; the Drug War position is still sufficiently entrenched that its supporters feel that they can comfortably ignore challenges to the status quo regime.)
Another reason is that--as in Leighton's case--they're ill-equipped to offer arguments that withstand the critical scrutiny of a well-prepared opposition. Most of the supporters of continuing the policies of politicized "Drug Scheduling" and User Criminalization have an intuitive sense that they don't have much of a knowledge base to argue from. Leighton "I was around in the '90s!" Woodhouse is under the illusion that he has sufficient erudition and acquaintance with the underlying issues to argue for continuing Drug Prohibition, and maybe even for undoing the cannabis liberalization and legalization measures that have been passed in some of the States.
(The policies of the legalization States exist due to a Federal of non-interference that could easily be rolled back on a whim; at the Federal level, cannabis is still a Schedule 1 prohibited substance. As a result, the profiteers of the illicit market are also benefiting from the loopholes opened up by the 180 degree disparity between the policies. Loopholes wide enough to drive a truck through, without encountering the risks of an international border inspection. Although for some reason the DEA has done very little to suppress unauthorized and unregulated commercial growing operations in states with legalized markets, while designating the Rocky Mountain region as a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking" area. Thus leading to intensified scrutiny of American travelers on the interstate highways.)
Woodhouse offers some arguments that are legitimate enough to confound or prevail over a simplistic Legalize Everything position on drug policy. (Libertarian ideologues haven't addressed their own superficiality on the question, either.) Legalize Everything isn't the position I support. But I do find the drug criminalization statutes to be in serious need of an overhaul, and as far as contending with a more nuanced approach to liberalizing those laws, Woodhouse hasn't made a single point that isn't a strawman argument or a hyperbole-laden speculation.
Preach it, sister! I love how we are supposed to believe letting people expire in the street is virtuous because it preserves their personal autonomy and civil freedom. Uhhhhhh.... I agree there is money that we could redirect to the social end of aiding the addicted. But this goal will require the creation of massive behavioral and substance abuse treatments and social supports. This is unavoidable. Can’t get a guy off the street if there ain’t no place for him to go!
You're definitely one of THE best substack writers I've discovered this year. Thank you for writing on issues that matter and for defending your argument so eloquently.
Agree with you completely. There are no quick fixes for anything. It’s just a bandaid on a severe wound that cannot heal without additional help. Unfortunately, just as with hackers with technology, illegal drug pushers, gun runners, etc. seem to always find a way to beat the system. I don’t know the answer. We used to think family, faith, education but those 3 things are in the midst of being lost. We as a country seem to be on the defense more than the offense. We need to start somewhere and if that fails try something different. We will never win this battle against drug addiction if we play defense. We have to get out front and lead with a great offense. If the offensive strategy doesn’t work, tweak it until we find one that does work.
Alcohol is the first drug for many of us. We have alcoholics. We have drug abusers. We have a society that causes much stress & anxiety. The pace of life gets faster and faster. There is a reason why people try to escape thru alcohol and/or drugs. I don’t believe life is suppose to be this difficult. How did it get this way without anyone paying attention???
Drugs like other inanimate objects or substances, are neither good nor evil. The freedom to choose is at the heart of the American experience. The resources freed up by decriminalization could be used to help those in need, and incarcerate those committing real crimes against others.
That covers a lot, though. "...[T]hings which are detrimental to the vast majority of people."
The obvious questions are "What about alcohol? What about tobacco" But I don't want to stick to the obvious, so...
What about fattening foods and drinks, giving how much obesity contributes to poor health? Was Michael Bloomberg right to ban Big Gulps and so on?
What about any and every drug used for date rape? Including Benadryl; I remember that at least one of Bill Cosby's accusers said that he gave her Benadryl to knock her out so that he could assault her, so how often do other rapists use Benadryl for that purpose, and is it detrimental to enough people because of that to justify it being criminalized?
And who will judge what's so detrimental that is has to be criminalized, and what isn't? If the government is making those calls, obviously that's no good since they can't even make good calls about which information is true or false.
You correctly claim, legalizing weed drove many of the illicit suppliers out of business. That is exactly what legalization does, every time - alcohol prohibition is another example. To then make an argument legalizing other (presently illegal) drugs will have manufacturers increasing production to stay afloat, seems disingenuous. Increased Demand spurs increased production, not the other way around - the only exception to this is a market with a collapsing price - which is not possible in any tightly regulated government controlled market…..The fact the illegal drug industry is a network of small producers has nothing to do with market forces, but everything to do with the big cartels having law enforcement breathing down their neck. Make the drugs legal, and BOTH the cartels & small producers will disappear, just like with weed & alcohol….. To state the obvious, the War on Drugs has been an unparalleled disaster in terms of both cost AND lives. Yet, the legalization and regulation of alcohol & weed has been rather seamless. With facts like those, legalization seems like a no-brainer.
Nobody's calling for a return to the War on Drugs.
You're starting from your premise (legalization works) and then rejecting any real world evidence that contradicts it. With addictive drugs, increased production can absolutely spur demand, in the same way that flooding schools with soft drinks and candy bars can get kids hooked on those products and create a market that wasn't there before.
The demand for soda & candy was always there, it was tempered by regulation .... Not sure I see any real world evidence legalization would fail, the alcohol & weed markets would suggest real world evidence supports legalization.....Unfortunately, keeping the drugs illegal, means the war on drugs is unavoidable - you can't have illegal without enforcement....BTW might not sound like it, but I appreciate all the effort you put into your stack, Thanks!
No worries at all — I'm happy to be challenged in the comments, that's what discourse is for!
My point is that the alcohol and weed precedents don't hold for the current addiction crisis, being that a) fentanyl is already a legal substance that's highly regulated, and b) the industry isn't controlled by big incumbent actors you can drive out of business; it's more like a cottage industry.
But on the first point: what exactly does legalizing fentanyl even mean, given that it's already legal? Does it mean deregulating it? Does it mean legalizing all the stuff that's made in clandestine Mexican labs?
Legalization is not binary. Can an opioid-dependent person get a take-home prescription for fentanyl to manage their withdrawal symptoms? Imagine if the only way to drink alcohol, other than get it from Al Capone, was to have a doctor pour it into your mouth at a hospital. Would you still claim that alcohol was legal, in a meaningful sense?
Yeah I'm puzzled by everyone responding to me by saying the War on Drugs has been a disaster, as if the War on Drugs is the status quo. In SF you can just openly sell meth and fentanyl on the street, openly buy it and openly smoke it. You can do it all in front of cops. De facto legalization is the status quo here, not the "War on Drugs."
The demand definitely increased as availability increased. No one would have dreamed of consuming as much candy as Americans regularly do before the advent of industrialized food processing.
What's the distinction you're drawing here? If you flood the streets with cheap addictive drugs, you'll get more people doing them and doing them more frequently. You can call that an increase in demand or an increase in consumption, doesn't really matter to me. That's what happens.
My apologies, the economist in me is very particular about how the word demand is used.... The third grade demand for cookies is there, the consumption is not - thanks to regulation. That is the distinction. Here is another: Demand is never a function of production. Consumption can be a function of production in a free market (controlled markets are different) if and only if, prices are dropping.
As for the idea cheap & addictive increases usage, I would suggest cigarettes are plenty addictive, yet there are far fewer smokers year after year. Cocaine is both cheap and addictive today, yet it was a far bigger problem in the 1980's when it was very expensive. Simply put, your premise of cheap & addictive equating to increased usage, is far from guaranteed..... What is guaranteed though, is as long as its illegal, the black market will step in to provide the drugs, and the drug war will continue unabated; in other words, more of what is not working. The cigarette, alcohol & weed markets are working - why not go that route, instead of continuing to fail?
Well-said. And the utterly specious argument that legalization of cannabis somehow made the hard drug addiction problem worse because some of the rancheros switched to making meth instead also rings hollow. The meth market was already saturated by then, many of the "cartels" that formerly sold weed also sold the other stuff all along, and adding a few new entrants to compete for market share in a mature market ends up doing exactly that, competing for market share. Thus, it cut both ways, but the NET effect of cannabis legalization was largely null on hard drugs overall, and beneficial on balance.
How did the Prohibition against Alcohol work out? How about marijuana?
Prohibition has been proven wrong and wrong again and is proving wrong in this case as well. If addicts could buy cheap, pharmaceutical quality drugs, overdoses would decline to almost zero, as they did in Amsterdam when legal heroin was given to addicts.
The vast public resources spent on arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning drug users should be instead focused on building rehab, supportive housing, mental health treatment and other services dedicated to treating those who are addicted.
You provide evidence for the statement that since fentanyl distribution is decentralized, it is less likely to be broken up by legal distribution networks. I will accept your claim but I still believe that if relatively cheap, high quality drugs were available at Walgreens, almost all users would prefer that. Would there be an increase in drug use? No doubt, but the slight to moderate increase in use would be less bad for society than the current conditions, with 100,000 overdose deaths a year, hundreds of thousands incarcerated and with permanent criminal records, and all the property crime associated with the funding of addicts habits, most of whom are not employed and steal to support their habits.
I quote extensively here from The Economist article "Joe Biden is too timid. It is time to legalize cocaine"
" The real answer is full legalisation, allowing non-criminals to supply a strictly regulated, highly taxed product, just as whisky- and cigarette-makers do. (Advertising it should be banned.)"
"Legal cocaine would be less dangerous, since legitimate producers would not adulterate it with other white powders and dosage would be clearly labelled, as it is on whisky bottles. Cocaine-related deaths have risen fivefold in America since 2010, mostly because gangs are cutting it with fentanyl, a cheaper and more lethal drug."
"In private, many officials understand that prohibition is not working any better than it did in Al Capone’s day. Just now full legalisation seems politically impossible: few politicians want to be called “soft on drugs”. But proponents must keep pressing their case. The benefits—safer cocaine, safer streets and greater political stability in the Americas—far outweigh the costs."
Most of these arguments apply to fentanyl as well. But we already legalized marijuana, let's do cocaine next and see how that goes. Some cities are already legalizing psychedelics, which have very little addiction potential. Maybe someday we will have learned enough to make the next obvious step and legalize opiods. It is impossible politically today, but as people have seen the foolishness of marijuana prohibition, which ruined millions of lives due to their incarceration, they are willing to consider more sane criminal justice policies around drug use in general.
I don't see anything about the 2 main issues of the war on drugs:
1- a lot of deaths and ruined lives are in the distribution side of drugs, not the user side. Legalization kills or significantly hampers drug cartels, diminishes intra-dealers violence and collateral damage, and gives a chance to rehab low-level employees.
2- not criminalizing use gives us a chance to help users instead of sending them to jail and its death spiral.
I agree the issue is fraught with ethical issues. How did it go in countries that tried it ?
Also, why drugs but not tobacco, alcohol, and firearms ?
Maybe my judgment here is affected by me being a user of legal weed since it became legal here, but: I've never wanted to try meth, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, if ever.
So I'm not sure how the same people who used to grow weed in Mexico switching to meth because weed is becoming legal in more and more places actually creates more meth addicts; people are either interested in your product, or they aren't, and it doesn't matter how plentiful it is, right?
Lots of people look at meth and, like me, they say "Nope, not interested, I'd like all my teeth to stay in my mouth, thank you very much." And they go with weed or something else less risky. If there were some kind of big marketing campaign designed to make meth look like a good thing, then maybe some of us would have our minds changed since advertisers are good at making people want things they don't need and/or aren't good for them. But with meth still being illegal, there is of course no such campaign.
Now, would legalizing literally everything, including meth, and making the drug acceptable enough to be advertised that way create more addicts? My guess is that it would, meaning that the main point you're making--that we should *not* legalize literally everything--could very well be true. But I'm not disagreeing with you on that. I'm disagreeing that there's any case to be made re. legal cannabis worsening the addiction crisis.
You seem to assume here that the only reason to argue for the legalization of drugs is in order to somehow "solve" the addiction crisis. In fact, however, there are a number of reasons to advocate legalization (and the loosening of regulations on the recreational use of prescription drugs) even if it has no effect on addiction numbers or even increase them:
1. Eliminating the illicit drug trade with its concomitant violence. That violence is not limited to the US. In Mexico alone, it has been estimated that 350,000–400,000 have been killed due to organized crime-related violence between 2006–2021.
2. Improving the safety and purity of drugs and reducing contaminants and overdoses. Street drugs are often highly contaminated with dangerous substances; people cooking meth in their houses aren't too worried about the health of their clients. Think about alcohol prohibition--people used to go blind from drinking unregulated, dangerous moonshine. You don't see too many blind drinkers anymore, and the reason is because the drug is now legalized and regulated. The lack of regulation also contributes to overdoses, because a street user can never be sure of whether the dose they're taking is as strong as what they're used to taking. If the dose they have is stronger than their usual, this can lead to inadvertant overdose. Drugs' illegality also contributes to overdoses by preventing dissemination of instructions as to how to use the drug properly for recreational purposes. Even legal but highly regulated drugs that are used illicitly don't have instructions as to proper and safe recreational doses, leaving people to go it alone and, all too often, to overdose.
3. Incarceration. While you down play this aspect of the drug war, huge numbers of people are currently incarcerated for drug related crimes. I don't see how this would change in a world where you kept drugs illegal. Even if street users were given lenient sentences, sellers rarely are, and as you mention, drug selling has become more of a "small business," meaning more people could be incarcerated for distribution.
4. Cost. The drug war is extremely expensive, and on top of that, we miss out on the revenue from taxing illegal drugs. Keeping drugs illegal also raises their price on the black market, forcing addicts to spend more to get their fix, which leads to property crime and destroyed lives. If drugs were cheaper as a result of legalization, more people could have a normal life while being addicted to drugs.
5. Prohibition hasn't worked to reduce use. As you yourself indicate, addiction is a huge problem right now *despite* drugs being illegal or highly regulated. Why do you think things will change by doing more of the same? If drug legalization has zero effect on addiction, or even increases it slightly, the other benefits which I've laid out here more than make up for it.
6. Personal freedom and bodily autonomy. Finally, why should the government be able to tell someone what they can cannot put into their own body (assuming informed consent about the risks of consumption)? Fundamentally, this is a choice it should be up to an individual to make. Yes, some people do become addicts, and that is a shame. Your position is fundamentally patronizing and doesn't respect people's personal autonomy to make choices about their lives. People also become alcoholics, but we nonetheless give people the right to choose whether to put alcohol into their bodies. Alcohol is an addictive substance which claims thousands every year to addiction. Do you want to bring back alcohol prohibition? If not, how can you justify keeping alcohol legal but other recreational drugs illegal? Or what about cigarettes, which kill tens of thousands of people a year? Yes, addiction is a problem, and we should make every effort to help those addicts who want help. But there is a fundamental element of personal choice here which needs to be respected.
Your first four points all entirely depend on the premise that legalizing drugs will eliminate the illicit drug production/distribution industry. My entire post argues that this won't happen, but you don't address any of those points. What does "legalizing" fentanyl even mean, given that it's already a legal, regulated drug? Do you want to legalize all the clandestine Mexican fentanyl? Well then all your arguments about how that would allow for careful regulation goes out the window. As for safe supply, fentanyl is *inherently* toxic and lethal. In minuscule doses, it restricts breathing and kills you. No matter how "clean" it is, you still end up with overdose deaths just based on the amount people take because they're addicted. There's no such thing as a long-term fentanyl user. They all eventually die.
Your personal freedom and autonomy argument makes sense for weed or alcohol or even cocaine. But sorry, it's absolutely preposterous for fentanyl or meth. You think the woman Mike Shellenberger and I just interviewed the other day who's 8 months pregnant on her third child, living in a tent smoking fentanyl is doing so by choice? You think the guy we talked to in LA who thinks aliens are talking to him through a transmitter in his ear, who wants to go back to his old life so bad he started crying in front of us, is smoking meth by choice? You're operating from an outdated view on recreational drugs. The stuff enslaving people to their addictions today is orders of magnitude more addictive than the worst shit on the streets 15 years ago.
As I tried to make clear, I would also be in favor of deregulating drugs that are currently heavily regulated through the prescription system. That would indeed destroy the illegal market.
Why not make alcohol illegal, given how many alcohol addicts there are on the streets? Every argument you make about opiate addiction applies to alcohol addicts.
That's not necessary. A major benefit of careful legalization would be the possibility to direct consumption to safer alternatives for each type of substance, and also reach the users to offer information and treatment. This wouldn't necessarily even mean offering less interesting drugs to addicts. Take fentanyl: it's nobody's favourite opioid, really, but due to its potency it just happens to be cheap and easy enough to manufacture and smuggle for the current illicit market, partly for the exact same reason it's so dangerous.
A responsible "registered addicts" style regime for hard drugs could remove all the dangers and financial deprivation from an addict's life, even making some of them employable etc. probably without making such drugs much more popular. The users of such drugs would hardly seem "cool" but rather just people with health issues.
Yes, or at least at a government store, with proper warnings, etc.
I notice you still haven't answered my question: Why not ban alcohol? According to this source, https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/resources/homeless-alcoholism/, 38% of homeless people are alcohol dependent. Seems like at least as big a problem as homeless people addicted to opiates.
So you think fentanyl and meth should be sold over-the-counter at Walgreen's, basically?
Why would I ban alcohol? Alcohol isn't killing two people a day in SF, causing people to leave their homes and families and live in tents on the streets. There aren't open air alcohol markets supplied by international drug cartels causing waves of property crime throughout the region.
Yes, I think fentanyl and meth should be be legal to purchase for personal use, with the government taxing it and regulating the purity and dose.
There's no open air alcohol markets *because* alcohol is legal, and so there is no black market for alcohol. Alcohol does however "caus[e] people to leave their homes and families and live in tents on the streets", because as I indicated, a high percentage of homeless people are alcoholics. Meanwhile, about 95,000 people die a year from alcohol related deaths. That's more than the roughly 68,630 overdose deaths that happen a year according to the NIH. So, again, if death, addiction, and homelessness are your criteria for making a substance illegal, alcohol should be just as illegal as fentanyl or meth.
This is a remarkably superficial take. but that's typical of strawperson arguments that use sloppy analysis of a history that's been reduced to a handful of selected pop culture data points.
Feel free to come on over to my page and argue the relevant questions any time, Leighton.
The clear, immediate action required is to decriminalize drug possession.
I agree that legalization is a very complicated solution that comes with it's own evils versus full legalization. So I don't understand why we do not simply decriminalize possession. This stops the war on drugs negative effects in terms of American incarceration rates, unfair drug sentences, and puts a plug on the homelessness/prison recidivism pipeline for drug offences. This immediately frees up law enforcement funding to focus on illegal drug manufacturing and distribution which is what we should be focusing on anyways. Sure, there will still be cartel and drug crime, but at least we will immediately stop perpetuating a clearly broken system without taking too early of a jump on legalization.
I see no reason why decriminalization would be a bad alternative. It would allow us time to lift the ban on studying the affects of drugs in academia (one of the worst outcomes of the war on drugs) and would not upset the status quo to the point that legalization would. It is a concrete action that would generate a lot of positive gain and would allow us time to develop a thoughtful drug policy approach based off scientific studies and rehabilitation best practices to develop.
There are big differences between marijuana (although that term is now considered "racist) and "hard drugs."
Don't over-buy the blame laid at the Sacklers' feet for simply having marketed the same drug that had been prescribed for 40 years in America (Oxycodone). The doses were MUCH higher with Oxycontin (as high as 160 mg. vs. the usual 5 mg dose), but the reality is that the vast majority of legitimate pain patients, who follow doctors instructions, DO NOT become addicted. If you look at drug overdose numbers over the 25 years since Oxycontin's introduction, they peaked in 2011 for pharmaceuticals, and have been dropping steadily ever since.
At the same time illegally produced fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine are skyrocketing.
But many reporters conflate overall opioid deaths and prescription opioid deaths.
Writing from Oregon, where I was one of very few public opponents of Ballot Measure 110, which in 2020 virtually legalized all drugs. Technically it created a new "self category" of infraction, like a parking ticket, but even less with the courts' (I was a judge for about a year after 35 years as a prosecutor) instruction to max the fines at $25 (even on repeat offenses).
So now there is absolutely NO disincentive to use the most destructive drugs. Overdose rates, OD deaths, and unmet treatment is getting much worse, mostly in the dark,
So, YES, Leighton is right, "Legalizing Drugs is a Terrible Idea."
Okay, about disincentives: you know why I started using any drugs in the first place, going back to when I drank my first shot of liquor?
It's because life was painful enough that I felt like I needed an anesthetic, if you will. That's why.
Now, I know how I'd feel if I were using something illegal and I either got hit with a stiff fine (at a time when most people are struggling financially and when I personally am just barely in the black) or actual incarceration. I'd be in more pain, and I'd want to spend more time high. Especially if I had PTSD from that prison sentence.
I'm ambivalent on this subject of drug legalization. I just know the situation feels like it's gone beyond what we can rectify, though we need to try, rather than letting politicians use it as a talking point and fundraising gimmick. But I always find you to be very thoughtful and you make some good points, such as legalizing marijuana actually making the addiction crisis surrounding other drugs worse. I haven't actually heard anyone else suggest that, but it makes a certain amount of tragic sense.
In my state, Illinois, marijuana legalization has nothing to do with safety or anything else other than a way for the state to attempt to raise more money via taxes and fees (and, of course, a bloated regulatory system) that it can waste on its corrupt government.
Oh Leighton, thank you for AGAIN being willing to speak the hard truth that few are willing or able to state publicly. The rhetoric around addiction has gotten so tangled and weird. We need an organized societal response other than letting people die, often in the streets, at the mercy of their physical dependency. I think a middle path has to be the answer, with treatment, forced when necessary, along with criminalizing the activities of those vile people who profit from the addiction of their customers.
I can hear the chorus now of how societal factors FORCE people to enter the trade cause they have NO CHOICE. Well, lots of us grew up poor as shit in abusive homes with addicted parents and found alternative methods to support ourselves that do not require destroying the lives of others.
Moreover, I think what is the unspoken factor here is the actual cost in dollars it will take to provide treatment, housing, medical care, food, etc., for those hopelessly addicted because it will all have to be built from the ground up. How can we provide addiction treatment when there are not enough professionals or lay people trained to do this? And nowhere to house people, particularly in psychiatric or treatment beds? These obstacles are insurmountable without massive public investment. Those downtown flophouses were better than nothing! And now we can long for the good old days when NORML was radical stuff.
The heretic position with the uphill climb here is the drug law reform position, not the defense of the criminalization status quo.
The main reason you read so few defenses of the status quo is that it already has the weight of institutional power on its side, so few Drug War supporters can be bothered to defend it by engaging in debate. (I challenge any opponent of overhauling the drug prohibition statutes to engage with me in this comment thread, or on my Substack page. I doubt I'll get a response; the Drug War position is still sufficiently entrenched that its supporters feel that they can comfortably ignore challenges to the status quo regime.)
Another reason is that--as in Leighton's case--they're ill-equipped to offer arguments that withstand the critical scrutiny of a well-prepared opposition. Most of the supporters of continuing the policies of politicized "Drug Scheduling" and User Criminalization have an intuitive sense that they don't have much of a knowledge base to argue from. Leighton "I was around in the '90s!" Woodhouse is under the illusion that he has sufficient erudition and acquaintance with the underlying issues to argue for continuing Drug Prohibition, and maybe even for undoing the cannabis liberalization and legalization measures that have been passed in some of the States.
(The policies of the legalization States exist due to a Federal of non-interference that could easily be rolled back on a whim; at the Federal level, cannabis is still a Schedule 1 prohibited substance. As a result, the profiteers of the illicit market are also benefiting from the loopholes opened up by the 180 degree disparity between the policies. Loopholes wide enough to drive a truck through, without encountering the risks of an international border inspection. Although for some reason the DEA has done very little to suppress unauthorized and unregulated commercial growing operations in states with legalized markets, while designating the Rocky Mountain region as a "High Intensity Drug Trafficking" area. Thus leading to intensified scrutiny of American travelers on the interstate highways.)
Woodhouse offers some arguments that are legitimate enough to confound or prevail over a simplistic Legalize Everything position on drug policy. (Libertarian ideologues haven't addressed their own superficiality on the question, either.) Legalize Everything isn't the position I support. But I do find the drug criminalization statutes to be in serious need of an overhaul, and as far as contending with a more nuanced approach to liberalizing those laws, Woodhouse hasn't made a single point that isn't a strawman argument or a hyperbole-laden speculation.
Preach it, sister! I love how we are supposed to believe letting people expire in the street is virtuous because it preserves their personal autonomy and civil freedom. Uhhhhhh.... I agree there is money that we could redirect to the social end of aiding the addicted. But this goal will require the creation of massive behavioral and substance abuse treatments and social supports. This is unavoidable. Can’t get a guy off the street if there ain’t no place for him to go!
You're definitely one of THE best substack writers I've discovered this year. Thank you for writing on issues that matter and for defending your argument so eloquently.
Thank you!
Agree with you completely. There are no quick fixes for anything. It’s just a bandaid on a severe wound that cannot heal without additional help. Unfortunately, just as with hackers with technology, illegal drug pushers, gun runners, etc. seem to always find a way to beat the system. I don’t know the answer. We used to think family, faith, education but those 3 things are in the midst of being lost. We as a country seem to be on the defense more than the offense. We need to start somewhere and if that fails try something different. We will never win this battle against drug addiction if we play defense. We have to get out front and lead with a great offense. If the offensive strategy doesn’t work, tweak it until we find one that does work.
Alcohol is the first drug for many of us. We have alcoholics. We have drug abusers. We have a society that causes much stress & anxiety. The pace of life gets faster and faster. There is a reason why people try to escape thru alcohol and/or drugs. I don’t believe life is suppose to be this difficult. How did it get this way without anyone paying attention???
Drugs like other inanimate objects or substances, are neither good nor evil. The freedom to choose is at the heart of the American experience. The resources freed up by decriminalization could be used to help those in need, and incarcerate those committing real crimes against others.
This argument has proven to be wrong again and again. It is good to criminalize things which are detrimental to the vast majority of people.
That covers a lot, though. "...[T]hings which are detrimental to the vast majority of people."
The obvious questions are "What about alcohol? What about tobacco" But I don't want to stick to the obvious, so...
What about fattening foods and drinks, giving how much obesity contributes to poor health? Was Michael Bloomberg right to ban Big Gulps and so on?
What about any and every drug used for date rape? Including Benadryl; I remember that at least one of Bill Cosby's accusers said that he gave her Benadryl to knock her out so that he could assault her, so how often do other rapists use Benadryl for that purpose, and is it detrimental to enough people because of that to justify it being criminalized?
And who will judge what's so detrimental that is has to be criminalized, and what isn't? If the government is making those calls, obviously that's no good since they can't even make good calls about which information is true or false.
You correctly claim, legalizing weed drove many of the illicit suppliers out of business. That is exactly what legalization does, every time - alcohol prohibition is another example. To then make an argument legalizing other (presently illegal) drugs will have manufacturers increasing production to stay afloat, seems disingenuous. Increased Demand spurs increased production, not the other way around - the only exception to this is a market with a collapsing price - which is not possible in any tightly regulated government controlled market…..The fact the illegal drug industry is a network of small producers has nothing to do with market forces, but everything to do with the big cartels having law enforcement breathing down their neck. Make the drugs legal, and BOTH the cartels & small producers will disappear, just like with weed & alcohol….. To state the obvious, the War on Drugs has been an unparalleled disaster in terms of both cost AND lives. Yet, the legalization and regulation of alcohol & weed has been rather seamless. With facts like those, legalization seems like a no-brainer.
Nobody's calling for a return to the War on Drugs.
You're starting from your premise (legalization works) and then rejecting any real world evidence that contradicts it. With addictive drugs, increased production can absolutely spur demand, in the same way that flooding schools with soft drinks and candy bars can get kids hooked on those products and create a market that wasn't there before.
The demand for soda & candy was always there, it was tempered by regulation .... Not sure I see any real world evidence legalization would fail, the alcohol & weed markets would suggest real world evidence supports legalization.....Unfortunately, keeping the drugs illegal, means the war on drugs is unavoidable - you can't have illegal without enforcement....BTW might not sound like it, but I appreciate all the effort you put into your stack, Thanks!
No worries at all — I'm happy to be challenged in the comments, that's what discourse is for!
My point is that the alcohol and weed precedents don't hold for the current addiction crisis, being that a) fentanyl is already a legal substance that's highly regulated, and b) the industry isn't controlled by big incumbent actors you can drive out of business; it's more like a cottage industry.
But on the first point: what exactly does legalizing fentanyl even mean, given that it's already legal? Does it mean deregulating it? Does it mean legalizing all the stuff that's made in clandestine Mexican labs?
Legalization is not binary. Can an opioid-dependent person get a take-home prescription for fentanyl to manage their withdrawal symptoms? Imagine if the only way to drink alcohol, other than get it from Al Capone, was to have a doctor pour it into your mouth at a hospital. Would you still claim that alcohol was legal, in a meaningful sense?
Writing take-home prescriptions for fentanyl would be an absolutely disastrous idea. This is exactly my point.
Weed/booze do NOT equal fentanyl and meth.
I was in law enforcement for 40 years and the last time I heard anyone speak of the "War on Drugs" with a straight face was in the 90s.
Yeah I'm puzzled by everyone responding to me by saying the War on Drugs has been a disaster, as if the War on Drugs is the status quo. In SF you can just openly sell meth and fentanyl on the street, openly buy it and openly smoke it. You can do it all in front of cops. De facto legalization is the status quo here, not the "War on Drugs."
Indeed, the War on (people who use a few particular) Drugs has always been a misnomer at best.
The demand definitely increased as availability increased. No one would have dreamed of consuming as much candy as Americans regularly do before the advent of industrialized food processing.
Consumption increased, not demand - there is an important distinction
What's the distinction you're drawing here? If you flood the streets with cheap addictive drugs, you'll get more people doing them and doing them more frequently. You can call that an increase in demand or an increase in consumption, doesn't really matter to me. That's what happens.
My apologies, the economist in me is very particular about how the word demand is used.... The third grade demand for cookies is there, the consumption is not - thanks to regulation. That is the distinction. Here is another: Demand is never a function of production. Consumption can be a function of production in a free market (controlled markets are different) if and only if, prices are dropping.
As for the idea cheap & addictive increases usage, I would suggest cigarettes are plenty addictive, yet there are far fewer smokers year after year. Cocaine is both cheap and addictive today, yet it was a far bigger problem in the 1980's when it was very expensive. Simply put, your premise of cheap & addictive equating to increased usage, is far from guaranteed..... What is guaranteed though, is as long as its illegal, the black market will step in to provide the drugs, and the drug war will continue unabated; in other words, more of what is not working. The cigarette, alcohol & weed markets are working - why not go that route, instead of continuing to fail?
Well-said. And the utterly specious argument that legalization of cannabis somehow made the hard drug addiction problem worse because some of the rancheros switched to making meth instead also rings hollow. The meth market was already saturated by then, many of the "cartels" that formerly sold weed also sold the other stuff all along, and adding a few new entrants to compete for market share in a mature market ends up doing exactly that, competing for market share. Thus, it cut both ways, but the NET effect of cannabis legalization was largely null on hard drugs overall, and beneficial on balance.
Right. Let’s give loaded handguns to people that are depressed while we’re at it.
Loaded handguns already are readily available
How did the Prohibition against Alcohol work out? How about marijuana?
Prohibition has been proven wrong and wrong again and is proving wrong in this case as well. If addicts could buy cheap, pharmaceutical quality drugs, overdoses would decline to almost zero, as they did in Amsterdam when legal heroin was given to addicts.
The vast public resources spent on arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning drug users should be instead focused on building rehab, supportive housing, mental health treatment and other services dedicated to treating those who are addicted.
You provide evidence for the statement that since fentanyl distribution is decentralized, it is less likely to be broken up by legal distribution networks. I will accept your claim but I still believe that if relatively cheap, high quality drugs were available at Walgreens, almost all users would prefer that. Would there be an increase in drug use? No doubt, but the slight to moderate increase in use would be less bad for society than the current conditions, with 100,000 overdose deaths a year, hundreds of thousands incarcerated and with permanent criminal records, and all the property crime associated with the funding of addicts habits, most of whom are not employed and steal to support their habits.
I quote extensively here from The Economist article "Joe Biden is too timid. It is time to legalize cocaine"
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/10/12/joe-biden-is-too-timid-it-is-time-to-legalise-cocaine
" The real answer is full legalisation, allowing non-criminals to supply a strictly regulated, highly taxed product, just as whisky- and cigarette-makers do. (Advertising it should be banned.)"
"Legal cocaine would be less dangerous, since legitimate producers would not adulterate it with other white powders and dosage would be clearly labelled, as it is on whisky bottles. Cocaine-related deaths have risen fivefold in America since 2010, mostly because gangs are cutting it with fentanyl, a cheaper and more lethal drug."
"In private, many officials understand that prohibition is not working any better than it did in Al Capone’s day. Just now full legalisation seems politically impossible: few politicians want to be called “soft on drugs”. But proponents must keep pressing their case. The benefits—safer cocaine, safer streets and greater political stability in the Americas—far outweigh the costs."
Most of these arguments apply to fentanyl as well. But we already legalized marijuana, let's do cocaine next and see how that goes. Some cities are already legalizing psychedelics, which have very little addiction potential. Maybe someday we will have learned enough to make the next obvious step and legalize opiods. It is impossible politically today, but as people have seen the foolishness of marijuana prohibition, which ruined millions of lives due to their incarceration, they are willing to consider more sane criminal justice policies around drug use in general.
The late, great Peter McWilliams would surely agree.
I don't see anything about the 2 main issues of the war on drugs:
1- a lot of deaths and ruined lives are in the distribution side of drugs, not the user side. Legalization kills or significantly hampers drug cartels, diminishes intra-dealers violence and collateral damage, and gives a chance to rehab low-level employees.
2- not criminalizing use gives us a chance to help users instead of sending them to jail and its death spiral.
I agree the issue is fraught with ethical issues. How did it go in countries that tried it ?
Also, why drugs but not tobacco, alcohol, and firearms ?
BINGO
"The most important part of any solution, in my opinion, is treatment and recovery"
But where do you find the money to really do so ? By legalizing.
BINGO
Maybe my judgment here is affected by me being a user of legal weed since it became legal here, but: I've never wanted to try meth, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, if ever.
So I'm not sure how the same people who used to grow weed in Mexico switching to meth because weed is becoming legal in more and more places actually creates more meth addicts; people are either interested in your product, or they aren't, and it doesn't matter how plentiful it is, right?
Lots of people look at meth and, like me, they say "Nope, not interested, I'd like all my teeth to stay in my mouth, thank you very much." And they go with weed or something else less risky. If there were some kind of big marketing campaign designed to make meth look like a good thing, then maybe some of us would have our minds changed since advertisers are good at making people want things they don't need and/or aren't good for them. But with meth still being illegal, there is of course no such campaign.
Now, would legalizing literally everything, including meth, and making the drug acceptable enough to be advertised that way create more addicts? My guess is that it would, meaning that the main point you're making--that we should *not* legalize literally everything--could very well be true. But I'm not disagreeing with you on that. I'm disagreeing that there's any case to be made re. legal cannabis worsening the addiction crisis.
Well-said
You seem to assume here that the only reason to argue for the legalization of drugs is in order to somehow "solve" the addiction crisis. In fact, however, there are a number of reasons to advocate legalization (and the loosening of regulations on the recreational use of prescription drugs) even if it has no effect on addiction numbers or even increase them:
1. Eliminating the illicit drug trade with its concomitant violence. That violence is not limited to the US. In Mexico alone, it has been estimated that 350,000–400,000 have been killed due to organized crime-related violence between 2006–2021.
2. Improving the safety and purity of drugs and reducing contaminants and overdoses. Street drugs are often highly contaminated with dangerous substances; people cooking meth in their houses aren't too worried about the health of their clients. Think about alcohol prohibition--people used to go blind from drinking unregulated, dangerous moonshine. You don't see too many blind drinkers anymore, and the reason is because the drug is now legalized and regulated. The lack of regulation also contributes to overdoses, because a street user can never be sure of whether the dose they're taking is as strong as what they're used to taking. If the dose they have is stronger than their usual, this can lead to inadvertant overdose. Drugs' illegality also contributes to overdoses by preventing dissemination of instructions as to how to use the drug properly for recreational purposes. Even legal but highly regulated drugs that are used illicitly don't have instructions as to proper and safe recreational doses, leaving people to go it alone and, all too often, to overdose.
3. Incarceration. While you down play this aspect of the drug war, huge numbers of people are currently incarcerated for drug related crimes. I don't see how this would change in a world where you kept drugs illegal. Even if street users were given lenient sentences, sellers rarely are, and as you mention, drug selling has become more of a "small business," meaning more people could be incarcerated for distribution.
4. Cost. The drug war is extremely expensive, and on top of that, we miss out on the revenue from taxing illegal drugs. Keeping drugs illegal also raises their price on the black market, forcing addicts to spend more to get their fix, which leads to property crime and destroyed lives. If drugs were cheaper as a result of legalization, more people could have a normal life while being addicted to drugs.
5. Prohibition hasn't worked to reduce use. As you yourself indicate, addiction is a huge problem right now *despite* drugs being illegal or highly regulated. Why do you think things will change by doing more of the same? If drug legalization has zero effect on addiction, or even increases it slightly, the other benefits which I've laid out here more than make up for it.
6. Personal freedom and bodily autonomy. Finally, why should the government be able to tell someone what they can cannot put into their own body (assuming informed consent about the risks of consumption)? Fundamentally, this is a choice it should be up to an individual to make. Yes, some people do become addicts, and that is a shame. Your position is fundamentally patronizing and doesn't respect people's personal autonomy to make choices about their lives. People also become alcoholics, but we nonetheless give people the right to choose whether to put alcohol into their bodies. Alcohol is an addictive substance which claims thousands every year to addiction. Do you want to bring back alcohol prohibition? If not, how can you justify keeping alcohol legal but other recreational drugs illegal? Or what about cigarettes, which kill tens of thousands of people a year? Yes, addiction is a problem, and we should make every effort to help those addicts who want help. But there is a fundamental element of personal choice here which needs to be respected.
Your first four points all entirely depend on the premise that legalizing drugs will eliminate the illicit drug production/distribution industry. My entire post argues that this won't happen, but you don't address any of those points. What does "legalizing" fentanyl even mean, given that it's already a legal, regulated drug? Do you want to legalize all the clandestine Mexican fentanyl? Well then all your arguments about how that would allow for careful regulation goes out the window. As for safe supply, fentanyl is *inherently* toxic and lethal. In minuscule doses, it restricts breathing and kills you. No matter how "clean" it is, you still end up with overdose deaths just based on the amount people take because they're addicted. There's no such thing as a long-term fentanyl user. They all eventually die.
Your personal freedom and autonomy argument makes sense for weed or alcohol or even cocaine. But sorry, it's absolutely preposterous for fentanyl or meth. You think the woman Mike Shellenberger and I just interviewed the other day who's 8 months pregnant on her third child, living in a tent smoking fentanyl is doing so by choice? You think the guy we talked to in LA who thinks aliens are talking to him through a transmitter in his ear, who wants to go back to his old life so bad he started crying in front of us, is smoking meth by choice? You're operating from an outdated view on recreational drugs. The stuff enslaving people to their addictions today is orders of magnitude more addictive than the worst shit on the streets 15 years ago.
As I tried to make clear, I would also be in favor of deregulating drugs that are currently heavily regulated through the prescription system. That would indeed destroy the illegal market.
Why not make alcohol illegal, given how many alcohol addicts there are on the streets? Every argument you make about opiate addiction applies to alcohol addicts.
So you're suggesting that we should sell fentanyl over-the-counter at Walgreens?
That's not necessary. A major benefit of careful legalization would be the possibility to direct consumption to safer alternatives for each type of substance, and also reach the users to offer information and treatment. This wouldn't necessarily even mean offering less interesting drugs to addicts. Take fentanyl: it's nobody's favourite opioid, really, but due to its potency it just happens to be cheap and easy enough to manufacture and smuggle for the current illicit market, partly for the exact same reason it's so dangerous.
A responsible "registered addicts" style regime for hard drugs could remove all the dangers and financial deprivation from an addict's life, even making some of them employable etc. probably without making such drugs much more popular. The users of such drugs would hardly seem "cool" but rather just people with health issues.
Yes, or at least at a government store, with proper warnings, etc.
I notice you still haven't answered my question: Why not ban alcohol? According to this source, https://www.alcoholrehabguide.org/resources/homeless-alcoholism/, 38% of homeless people are alcohol dependent. Seems like at least as big a problem as homeless people addicted to opiates.
So you think fentanyl and meth should be sold over-the-counter at Walgreen's, basically?
Why would I ban alcohol? Alcohol isn't killing two people a day in SF, causing people to leave their homes and families and live in tents on the streets. There aren't open air alcohol markets supplied by international drug cartels causing waves of property crime throughout the region.
Yes, I think fentanyl and meth should be be legal to purchase for personal use, with the government taxing it and regulating the purity and dose.
There's no open air alcohol markets *because* alcohol is legal, and so there is no black market for alcohol. Alcohol does however "caus[e] people to leave their homes and families and live in tents on the streets", because as I indicated, a high percentage of homeless people are alcoholics. Meanwhile, about 95,000 people die a year from alcohol related deaths. That's more than the roughly 68,630 overdose deaths that happen a year according to the NIH. So, again, if death, addiction, and homelessness are your criteria for making a substance illegal, alcohol should be just as illegal as fentanyl or meth.
Under what possible method can someone "responsibly" and "recreationally" use fentanyl?
BINGO
This is a remarkably superficial take. but that's typical of strawperson arguments that use sloppy analysis of a history that's been reduced to a handful of selected pop culture data points.
Feel free to come on over to my page and argue the relevant questions any time, Leighton.
The clear, immediate action required is to decriminalize drug possession.
I agree that legalization is a very complicated solution that comes with it's own evils versus full legalization. So I don't understand why we do not simply decriminalize possession. This stops the war on drugs negative effects in terms of American incarceration rates, unfair drug sentences, and puts a plug on the homelessness/prison recidivism pipeline for drug offences. This immediately frees up law enforcement funding to focus on illegal drug manufacturing and distribution which is what we should be focusing on anyways. Sure, there will still be cartel and drug crime, but at least we will immediately stop perpetuating a clearly broken system without taking too early of a jump on legalization.
I see no reason why decriminalization would be a bad alternative. It would allow us time to lift the ban on studying the affects of drugs in academia (one of the worst outcomes of the war on drugs) and would not upset the status quo to the point that legalization would. It is a concrete action that would generate a lot of positive gain and would allow us time to develop a thoughtful drug policy approach based off scientific studies and rehabilitation best practices to develop.
"The most important part of any solution, in my opinion, is treatment and recovery"
But where do you find the money to really do so ? By legalizing.
BINGO
There are big differences between marijuana (although that term is now considered "racist) and "hard drugs."
Don't over-buy the blame laid at the Sacklers' feet for simply having marketed the same drug that had been prescribed for 40 years in America (Oxycodone). The doses were MUCH higher with Oxycontin (as high as 160 mg. vs. the usual 5 mg dose), but the reality is that the vast majority of legitimate pain patients, who follow doctors instructions, DO NOT become addicted. If you look at drug overdose numbers over the 25 years since Oxycontin's introduction, they peaked in 2011 for pharmaceuticals, and have been dropping steadily ever since.
At the same time illegally produced fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine are skyrocketing.
But many reporters conflate overall opioid deaths and prescription opioid deaths.
Writing from Oregon, where I was one of very few public opponents of Ballot Measure 110, which in 2020 virtually legalized all drugs. Technically it created a new "self category" of infraction, like a parking ticket, but even less with the courts' (I was a judge for about a year after 35 years as a prosecutor) instruction to max the fines at $25 (even on repeat offenses).
So now there is absolutely NO disincentive to use the most destructive drugs. Overdose rates, OD deaths, and unmet treatment is getting much worse, mostly in the dark,
So, YES, Leighton is right, "Legalizing Drugs is a Terrible Idea."
Okay, about disincentives: you know why I started using any drugs in the first place, going back to when I drank my first shot of liquor?
It's because life was painful enough that I felt like I needed an anesthetic, if you will. That's why.
Now, I know how I'd feel if I were using something illegal and I either got hit with a stiff fine (at a time when most people are struggling financially and when I personally am just barely in the black) or actual incarceration. I'd be in more pain, and I'd want to spend more time high. Especially if I had PTSD from that prison sentence.
I'm ambivalent on this subject of drug legalization. I just know the situation feels like it's gone beyond what we can rectify, though we need to try, rather than letting politicians use it as a talking point and fundraising gimmick. But I always find you to be very thoughtful and you make some good points, such as legalizing marijuana actually making the addiction crisis surrounding other drugs worse. I haven't actually heard anyone else suggest that, but it makes a certain amount of tragic sense.
In my state, Illinois, marijuana legalization has nothing to do with safety or anything else other than a way for the state to attempt to raise more money via taxes and fees (and, of course, a bloated regulatory system) that it can waste on its corrupt government.