A fresh take on the drugs debate

Despite the classical liberal arguments for legalising drugs, moral ‘purists’ will inevitably continue to press for imposing criminal penalties on those who buy and sell illicit substances. The chance for compromise between these two divergent views is limited, but economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Glenn Loury reckon they’ve found one. Keep drugs as illegal, but switch the punishment for consuming and trading drugs to a financial one. Levying a penalty equivalent to the ‘time’ cost associated with being imprisoned should not, in principle, cause drugs to be any more or less prevalent. But it would help reduce the burden on prison systems (particularly in the United States). More encouragingly, it would provide a new stream of revenue to fund treatment and anti-drug education programmes.

The solution is not my cup of tea, but it’s better than the status quo.

Drugs please — I'm smart

Smoking, drinking, doing drugs: these are the sorts of things that are not conventionally regarded as indicators of intelligence. But a new study suggests precisely that. (If so, Mensa’s Amsterdam chapter must meet in one of the city’s famed “coffee shops”.) The assumption is that such risky conduct is ‘novel’ in evolutionary terms — and those with higher IQs are more likely to exhibit such ‘novel’ tendencies.

It is an interesting suggestion. Although if I reflect on most of the people who I recall from high school who I suspect would have been smoking round the back of the proverbial bike shed (I say proverbial — I have no idea where they actually smoked on school premises, apart from the toilet blocks where the tell-tale odour was frequently present) or spending their weekends drunk/high, I wouldn’t have picked them as prospective geniuses. Then again, at university there were always a pack of smokers outside the law building — and the Law Society always had the best beers at their barbecues. And if the ABC’s Rake is any guide (I get all my best information from TV), drinking, smoking and drug-taking aren’t exactly uncommon amongst legal practitioners even after their university education.

Legalise now

Debates over drug policy all too frequently seem to ditch common sense reasoning in favour of shrill, logically flawed arguments. “Drugs are bad: we can’t let people use them!” True - there are health consequences associated with drug use. But even though their production, purchase and consumption is prohibited, people still use all manner of illicit substances. Moreover, as Professor Nick Crofts argues in The Age today, in some cases, legal drugs - like alcohol - are potentially far more dangerous than those that are illegal.

Observing the incentive effects associated with policy responses to combat binge drinking, Crofts notes that many young Australians apparently switched to using ecstasy. In pure principle, ecstasy should be safer than alcohol: for one thing, there is no demonstrable link between popping an E and ending up in a violent brawl. And, perversely, the potential health costs of ecstasy (and other illicit drugs) are likely to be increased by their prohibition - drug makers are not generally regarded as delivering a consistent level of quality, with their product ‘cut’ (diluted) with other substances that are cheaper but introduce their own dangers. Legalisation would in fact be an important step to making drugs considerably safer.

But is that something our politicians are interested in doing? Not a chance.

What are they on?

I was worried I might have been having a bad trip this morning when I read today’s opinion piece by Kenneth Davidson in The Age. Ordinarily, I find the columnist is off his head. But today I’m in high agreement with Davidson. The topic: drug laws, and prohibition’s inability to improve community outcomes. Davidson’s take is that the supply of drugs is made more lucrative by criminalisation, encouraging people into the trade. Hence, while cracking down on one link in the supply chain might capture headlines periodically, traffickers can adapt quickly, with no long-term impact on sales.

For me this is just another illustration of the futility of drug prohibition … and if criminalising drugs hasn’t worked, what you need to do is treat drugs as a health and social phenomenon