Prohibition Is Still With Us -- After a Fashion (Essay by Bob Racine)

Thus far in the course of running this blog I have avoided making controversial or subversive statements.  I do not normally fancy myself an iconoclast.  What I am about to say in this posting may look at first like just that, but I prefer to think of it as an invitation to debate, the opening up of a new domain for serious exploration.  It would be subversive if I spoke with dogmatic authority; I will speak instead more as a devil’s advocate, but one who is about 90% on the way toward believing what is being proposed.  I am not playing a game; I am not in a gaming mood.  !

                                     

First of all let me lay a foundation!

                                     

What chance would a member of the legislature have today, if that law maker tried to push a bill through Congress bringing back the likeness of the Volstead Act of a century ago?  A law totally abolishing the consumption of alcoholic beverages was in effect in the U.S. for a decade and a half from coast to coast, finally rescinded by the states in 1934.  Even the most occasional imbiber was turned into a criminal if and when the imbibing took place.  Today a repeal of a Constitutional amendment would stand a better chance of passage and ratification than such a bill. 

                                     

And rightly so!  Who wants to try that again? 

                                     

As most of us know, Prohibition did not wipe out booze; it sent the stuff underground.  Much of respectable society was forced to pretend it was dry, even if they were nipping on the side in the privacy of their own homes.  Temperance leaders thought they had purified the country, little knowing that they had given all kinds of sordid elements a power they had never had before.  But now we have another form of Prohibition afflicting our country, one that has been with us for quite some time.  Only now it is not fermented grape juice that has elicited laws of abstinence.  Now a different type of substance user is being targeted.  Our nation is thick from coast to coast with drug laws.  Jail time and prison sentences are imposed upon anyone caught in the possession of the more deadly variety of narcotics.  So let me lay it on the line, and maybe make some readers mad.

                                     

As I see it, the best solution to the drug wars, the best way to put an end to them is to LEGALIZE THE DRUGS.  Legalize all drugs, just as we legalized booze in 1934 after a long and fruitless experiment.

                                     

Now, let me make it clear that I am not proposing that doing this would keep people from getting hooked , but legally forbidding their possession and use is not doing that either.  Read the papers, watch the news, soak up the facts about the pandemic that is now engulfing hundreds and thousands of our youth and probably even more of our middle-aged adults, turned on by more than marijuana and prescription pain killers, but also by heroin and cocaine.  The drug laws are not preventing lives from getting ruined.  Recently on 60 Minutes the audience was informed that heroin is no longer classified in peoples’ minds as a product used only in the slums or the ghetto.  It has penetrated and proliferated even in suburbia, among the affluent.  It was heartbreaking to hear and watch parents of these addicted kids agonizing over what has happened to them. 

                                     

The drug laws are archaic and ineffective.  They are not a deterrent.

                                     

What would we gain by such legalization?  I maintain that while it would not save anyone from shipwreck, it would have two very desirable effects.

                                     

For one thing, it would contribute considerably to thinning out the population in our jails and prisons, something that is much under consideration among law makers and law enforcement officials and heads of government and much of the general public at present.  Thousands of Americans are currently in our prisons who have never committed a crime of violence.  They are only there on so-called “drug charges”.  And nobody has computed the number of such so-called offenders in the local jails of our country, awaiting trial for possession. They have simply used a drug that our government has declared unlawful.  Would someone explain to me (and here’s my challenge) how this differs from Prohibition?   The quantity of alcohol consumed back in the twenties and early thirties did not let up; all we accomplished was turning partakers into criminals.  And that is what we are doing right now, as if our nation has learned nothing from its history.    

                                     

I remember years ago seeing a documentary short film that consisted of nothing more than young people who had been through addiction, how they got started and what it took to get them presumably clean.  One girl I remember said that when she was in her mid teens she “thought that breaking every law on the books was the most glamorous thing in the world.  Now, I see that drug addiction is about as glamorous as cancer.” 

                                     

These misguided youth are not criminals; they are not enemies of society.  They are sick people, and sick people do not belong behind bars; they belong in hospitals and treatment centers.  Addiction is a disease, one that demands treatment, and when we send the addicts to prison, where do they get that treatment?  What are the chances of a cure inside a penal institution?  There they learn what criminality really looks like and stand a sizeable chance of being shaped by it.  Their sickness is compounded.  And let me ask a very pertinent question: how many alcoholics do we send to prison?  How many victims of strong drink are ever prosecuted just for being enslaved to “the devil’s brew”?  Why is one form of addiction criminalized and another one is not?  Statistics tell us tons of truth about how alcohol wrecks families.  Its destructive history equals in every respect that of heroin.

                                     

The second thing to be derived from legalizing drugs is its likely impact upon those who direct the covert traffic.  Under our present legal system those who experiment have to sneak around, have to hide their habit, have to be clever and surreptitious, have to make evil covenants with traffickers.  The cartels and their pushers thrive off the illegality.  They build empires out of supplying those who have to sneak, and they charge exorbitant amounts and become millionaires off the exploited flesh of the weak.  They all would probably be out of business overnight, if drugs were legalized, just as Al Capone and Bugs Moran and Frank Nitti and all the other beer barons were after 1934.  They were bust.  Bust, that is, until they went into the narcotics business and the legal lunacy started all over again in another form!

                                     

Now, I am trying not to be naïve.  If someone under the influence of one drug or the other (and let us not forget that alcohol is a drug) tries driving a car while intoxicated or commits a violent act or damages property and certainly if that person takes the life of another, either accidentally or maliciously, or causes injury to another, that individual should definitely be prosecuted, but prosecuted for that crime of violence or destructiveness or endangerment.  I do not for a moment mean to suggest that drug-induced sickness excuses anyone from the consequences of felonious behavior.  In such a circumstance the law most certainly should be enforced.

In reference again to the parallel between narcotics and alcohol, I must remind us all that we have had, ever since Prohibition, laws regulating the distribution of alcoholic beverages.  It has been against the law (technically) to sell it to minors or to mentally challenged people.  The same should apply to drugs.  Of course, this is where parents come into it.  The way to fight addiction and wanton indulgence is through education and value training, and the parents and the schools must be observant and diligent in this teaching process.  This discipline is not easy; it requires commitment and loving care, sometimes tough loving care.  My suggestion is not a panacea; it would just shift the focus away from law enforcement to health provision. 

                                     

New legislation with bi-partisan support and backing is currently being considered that is supposed to thin out the prison population by the release of those incarcerated for non-violent small crimes.  That sounds like a good start in the direction of making us all more honest about the problem.  But it is my prayer that beyond such a move, the bold step will be taken to decriminalize all drugs completely.

                                     

This one time I not only welcome feedback; I crave it.  Please let me hear from you readers.  Is there something I have overlooked in my reasoning?  Is my notion misguided or does it make sense or what. . .?  I am still working it out!

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.