During a trip to Colombia this spring, I heard a common theme from a number of Colombians with whom I spoke: In order to help Colombia’s drug violence problem, I should, as an American, work to reduce drug demand in the United States. It is our demand for drugs that produces their supply of drugs and the violence that comes with it.
This seemed unfair to me. Asking me to reduce drug demand in the United States is about as realistic as me asking Colombians to ignore the profit on the supply side or to share it equally with everyone. We should do our parts on both sides, of course, but we shouldn’t be under the illusion that people’s desire for drugs and money is going to go away anytime soon.
Besides, our government has been fighting the war on drugs for a long time now, even though they usually like to throw their money at the supply side of the problem. This can take the form of selling large numbers of weapons to governments that promise to crack down on drug lords, or fumigating large swaths of farmland in other countries.
But every now and then, they will make a high profile commercial that targets the demand side. For instance, remember the Super Bowl ad from a few years ago that seemed to blame 9/11 on drug users? (“I fund terrorists. I help kill policeman. I help blow up buildings. It’s just harmless fun.”).
Isn’t it fascinating that people howl with rage when any connection is made between 9/11 and our foreign policy over the last 40 years, but that the government itself is allowed to spend 10 million dollars on a campaign that blames it on teenagers who buy pot?
The problem with these commercials is that, while they are technically true, they are aggressively unhelpful. Buying illegal drugs such as marijuana or cocaine does contribute to a vast network of violence around the world, but drug use didn’t create 9/11. If we are going to blame 9/11 on a commodity, oil would be the obvious choice. It would be more accurate to tell us that every time we fill our tank with gas, we kill NY city firefighters. If you count all the Iraqi dead since our invasion, I’m guessing that violence used to secure oil has caused a lot more death and destruction than violence used to control the drug trade.
Nonetheless, it is true that drug demand does result in violence and instability in many 3rd world countries. This is largely a result of drugs being illegal, something which, unlike human nature, we do have some control over. The illegality of drugs guarantees that vast profits can be made from them. Since they operate outside the law, it is natural that those willing to use the most violence will be the most successful.
But even if drugs were legal, they would be a lot more like crude oil than like homemade jewelry bought from stoners at flea markets. There would still be an obscene amount of profit to be made from them, and bad people always find ways to insert themselves into the middle of a process where the end result is an obscene amount of money. Decisions would still be made that benefit powerful people. Maintaining profit would still take precedence over the public good of reducing drug demand.
Perhaps that’s just the way social policy goes. We can’t change human nature, and laws will never create utopia, but social policy can often produce a slightly less screwed up world. We need to recognize that all solutions come with their flaws and unintended side effects. Our job is to pick the solution that has the problems we are most willing to live with.
In the case of drugs, I will tepidly declare that legalization would reduce violence. Also, I think we’d have more leverage to challenge the bad guys if there were a legal standard by which to hold them accountable.
Or maybe I’m just ready for a different set of drug problems.