Lots of people think the War on Drugs is useless, claiming that it's unjust and doesn't do much to reduce drug use. It may very well be unjust, but Victor Morton has some information on the effectiveness of Prohibition in the 1920s and how it reduced alcohol consumption, and I think there's a strong parallel. I asked him for hard evidence, and here's his response (which he kindly allowed me to post here):
Well, a lot of guesswork is involved for any number of reasons. First of all, figures for any illegal activity are necessarily unreliable. There were also great gaps in the availability of alcohol between urban areas, especially in the Midwest and Northeast (where the evidence is good that Prohibition did fail to restrain alcohol consumption), and more rural areas, especially in the South and West (where Prohibition was obviously effective and remained in place in some ways after 1933). Anyway, these figures are for U.S. per-capita consumption of alcohol in gallons (http://www.drugtext.org/library/articles/craig102.htm)
1860 2.1
1870 1.9
1880 1.9
1890 2.1
1900 2.1
1905 2.3
1910 2.6
1915 2.4
1920 --
1925 1.4
1930 1.5
1935 1.5
1940 1.6
1945 2.0
1950 2.0
1955 1.9
1960 2.0
1965 2.2
1970 2.5
1975 2.7
As I say, these figures are obviously imperfect at precisely the point they're most needed. So, it's a bit more reliable to measure alcohol consumption through proxy figures, such as the death rate from cirrhosis and mental-home commitments for alcoholism. They tend to suggest Prohibition was at least somewhat successful.
For example, the average death rate from cirrhosis of the liver was 7.3 per 100,000 in the years 1920-1933; the average rate for the rest of the 20th century was 11.5. According to a Mark Moore New York Times op-ed column "Actually, Prohibition Was a Success," in 1989, cirrhosis death rates for men went from 29.5 per 100,000 in 1911, to 10.7 per 100,000 in 1929. Admissions to state mental hospitals for alcohol psychosis also fell from 10.1 per 100,000 in 1919 to 4.7 per 100,000 in 1928. There are problems with figures this crude, but they tend to cut both ways -- i.e. the time lag that often happens between alcohol consumption and cirrhosis on the one hand, but the effects of the Temperance movement that resulted in Prohibition in the years prior to Constitutional prohibition and the lingering effect of formed habitual behavior in the years after (more on that anon).
There's two other issues to consider after all these numbers. The first is a weakness of all social science, in that, mimicking natural science and mathematics, it seeks to isolate variables. The problem is that laws and human conduct simply never occur in a vacuum or a scientist's germ-free lab. To cite a point relevant to this case and to which I've already alluded above, the people who argue against Prohibition's effect on alcohol consumption point out that the cirrhosis death rate dropped faster during the 1910s, before Prohibition, than in the 1920s. And that the repeal of Prohibition didn't noticeably increase cirrhosis rates in the late 1930s. The numbers plainly support that (if you read Moore carefully with that in mind, you can see the residue). So the social scientist is satisfied. The problem is that in the real world, the country that passed Prohibition had to first become a country that *would* pass Prohibition (and that also meant passing mini-prohibitions in states and counties). Or to use the pro-life movement's formulation, we seek a culture where every unborn child is welcomed into life *and* protected in law. Changes in culture and the habits of the heart are logically distinct from the law, but not practically. We express our notions of good through the law, and the law reinforces those notions of good. Or to use Aristotle's formulation, we becomes virtuous by doing the virtuous things and vicious by doing the vicious things.
Secondly, and this might sound a little a priori and anti-intellectual, there's a certain level at which I simply refuse to listen to something so counterintuitive as "Prohibition didn't reduce alcohol consumption" (as opposed to "Prohibition had excessive countervailing costs"). I mean if making something illegal doesn't raise its cost (in the broadest possible sense), if raising the cost of something doesn't decrease its sales, and if being less a part of unthinking visible routine doesn't make a thing less popular -- if these things aren't true, ceteris paribus (and keep in mind what a stiff demand that is of history and the social "sciences"), then every thing we think about man is false and we've learned nothing about him in the history of civilization.
The problematic parts of your exposition are as follows:
1. "ceteris paribus." But all other things were not equal when Prohibition was passed. Millions of people were outraged at the infringement on their liberties. We cannot know how many decided to patronize speakeasies, or start their own moonshining operations, in reaction to the law, because...
2. Collecting data on an illegal practice is inherently uncertain. One can estimate from police arrests and convictions, but the estimate is guaranteed to be low for obvious reasons. One can survey, but will 100% of the persons surveyed tell the truth if it involves confessing a felony to a stranger? And how would one insure that one's survey sample was truly representative?
This is not to say that consumption of liquor did not decrease due to Prohibition, only that strong statements in either direction are essentially rash, being founded more or less on supposition.
More than that, it's blatantly unconstitutional. I have no use for any arguments about the necessity of the War on (Some) Drugs which do not attempt to justify a Constutional amendment authorizing it, or which, at the very least, attempt to explain why Prohibition required the 18th A. but the Wo(S)D is covered under the current Constitution. All the rationalizations about protecting people from themselves, or protecting "good" neighborhoods from the dreadful drug pushers, or it's for the chiiiiildren fall on deaf ears: I'm not listening anymore.
The Wo(S)D is also unjust in attempting to tell people what they may do with their own bodies. That's a more philosophical point though, and their may be honest disagreement from people with an irresistable urge to meddle in the affairs of others.
Francis:
The limits of "ceteris paribus" and of data collection on illegal activity were two things I stipulated. In response to the points where we differ:
1. I've no doubt that many people opposed Prohibition. And I have no doubt that people responded to the law by trying to find ways around it. But to affect the overall consumption figures positively they would have to fit into one of two groups -- teetotalers who took up drinking or social drinkers who increased their use -- in both cases BECAUSE of anger over Prohibition. I would submit, from our knowledge of human psychology and our experience with currently-illegal drugs, that those groups are pretty damn small (the first would be pretty damn close to zero, I'd surmise). And even if people succeeded in getting around the law, the costs and inconveniences imposed thereby should almost certainly limit the actual resulting consumption (though not their memory of it, which would be heightened).
2. The two proxies that I cited were cirrhosis deaths and alcoholism commitments (the body doesn't lie; at least at these levels of damage). I'm not very familiar with the figures for arrests, but why do you surmise that they would understate matters? (I agree that blind surveys probably would.) It seems to me that under a Prohibitionary regime, especially one that engages in "the infringement on their liberties" and whatnot, the figures would be higher given the same amount of alcohol consumption because -- a) there would be no need for police to test for levels of intoxication or find some other related crime like public disturbance (any consumption implies some sort of crime); and b) there would also be no exercise of police discretion ("it's just Ned the neighborhood wino, let him sleep it off in the gutter") or at least much less.
SteveF: Many states have anti-drug laws also, which are clearly not unconstitutional. Even if states legalized drugs, however, the feds would certainly have the power to regulate commerce of drugs between the states (an actual legitimate use of the Commerce Clause!) What is unconstitutional however is the federal government essentially forcing states to keep drugs illegal.
Anyway, there are degrees of injustice, and you have to pick the time and place of your battles if you expect to win them. Ending the war on drugs is low on my list of priorities for reforming the government.
I would say that reforming the War on Drugs should be a little higher on your list of priorities than you seem to make out.
Putting aside the internals of morality, the WoD is a horrible precedent setting abuse of individual rights. It creates a great deal of stress on our prison system and ties up a lot of resources that would otherwise be available to do other things.
The key is to reduce the smuggler's impulse to push more and more concentrated drugs, bring commercial narcotics disputes out of the streets and into the courts to eliminate the drive by shootings, and eliminate the walls against legitimate scientific research and medical use of schedule I drugs.
If you would do all that without generalized legalization, you would have made things much better in society. Clearly legalization of research and medicinal use is possible, even politically feasible. Eliminating the smuggler's incentive is going to be much harder without generalized legalization. I'd put pulling drug disputes off the streets somewhere between the two.
We're talking about a criminal justice system that is incredibly expensive and does not deliver what it promises, sober people and safe streets with doctors healing the sick with every legitimate tool at their disposal. I think that's important.
TML: I think it's important too, but when combined with the political feasibility (in my opinion, incredibly low) of ending the War on Drugs, I think there are other battles to be fought first. So in that sense it's not a "high priority" because I don't think it's one of the first steps to take.
At this point, I think repealing the 17th Amendment would be more politically possible, and more beneficial (although it still wouldn't be easy, any maybe not even one of my first steps). Maybe this should be a post of its own!
I'm going to have to agree to disagree. I'm starting a series on my blog to examine what are the possible practical measures of making things better from a Libertarian perspective.
Like sausage making, practical policymaking takes a strong stomach to watch it crafted. An incrementalist approach is likely to make a bunch of absolutist libertarians pretty mad.
Oh boo hoo.
TML:
I back the war on drugs (because at the philosophical core about as far from a Libertarian as you can get), but I agree that there's no reason *in principle* why scientific research should not be conducted. And if smoked marijuana is thereby found to have medicinal value for certain ailments, I see no reason why it could not be a doctor-prescribable medicine under the same regulatory regime as opium, the medical forms of which a doctor can prescribe (morphine, codeine), but which is still illegal in its street form (heroin).
The problem is that it's pretty clear from the rhetoric and behavior of the pro-medical-marijuana side that it's really a Trojan horse for total decriminalization. So legislators are understandably leery about the seriousness of much of the medical marijuana push. For me at least, Hanna Rosin closed the argument with a 1997 color piece for the New Republic (available here: http://www.tnr.com/archive/1997/0297/021797/rosin021797.html) about a San Francisco cannabis club from the weeks after Prop 215. It shows what medical-marijuana-pushers say in their own company and do when they think the law is on their side. I agree there are intellectual problems with this (essentially ad hominem) stance, but lawmaking is not a public-policy seminar and appearances and rhetoric matter. Only if the availability of marijuana for research and, potentially, prescription is decoupled from general calls for open season from Libertarians and hippy potheads will it be taken seriously outside the circles of Libertarians and hippy potheads. Or should it.
The alcohol consumption rate and the death rate from cirrosis are interesting, but the more important figure is the homicide rate, which dropped significantly in 1933 when Prohibition was repealed.
Surely we should not accept an increase in the number of people murdered in exchange for a decrease in the number of people who hurt or kill themselves.