Claremont Independent

The Students for Sensible Drug Policy hosted a debate on March 31st at Pitzer College. Judge James Gray, a Superior Court judge from Orange County, and Dr. Kevin Sabet, the speechwriter and senior advisor for former Drug Czars Barry McCaffrey and John P. Walters, discussed legalization of illicit drugs and the War on Drugs in general. On the surface, this looked like a debate that would set two opposing experts on drug policy against each other. But instead, it was a disagreement between pragmatism and idealism that focused on how the government should create a user-friendly drug policy, not the proper way the American people should decide whether or not to legalize drugs. Both speakers failed to fully come to terms with where sovereignty on this issue lies.

Judge Gray, a strong libertarian, initially stated, "the government doesn't have any right over what I put in my body." That got me really fired up, a libertarian activist under our "new socialism" administration telling us that government has no right to rule our lives?

Unfortunately, my excitement was soon to fade. Warning lights began to flash when Judge Gray mentioned that he believed American drug policy should emulate the Dutch model. Gray did not sound like a libertarian anymore. He sounded like a man who compromised ideals of personal liberty for government intervention. I approached him after the debate to clarify how he felt about some specifics he had not touched on. I asked Gray how he felt a legalized, regulated drug economy should be structured in the United States. Should the government extend agricultural subsidies to drug cultivators? The answer was yes.

Gray believes in low-bid contracts to license and encourage drug manufacturing. What would happen, I asked, if the money it costs to run rehabilitation programs and regulatory agencies outweighs the tax revenue from drug sales? Gray replied that he would be okay with such a scenario, however unlikely the possibility was. This is not a position any conservative can or should get behind.

Gray did not offer a libertarian argument. He offered a "progressive" one that, while promoting liberty, also promoted spending, subsidization and heavy government involvement. As a conservative, I was left scratching my head. There is no question that our current model for fighting illicit drug use would require a massive investment of additional resources to succeed, and that the current trends in the political climate of this country will soon end the "War on Drugs" as we know it in the coming decades. This is an issue conservatives need to strike on early and decisively. We will need an answer in the coming years for the faults of current drug enforcement policy.

The government has a Constitutional right to regulate and ban the use and sale of drugs. This fact has been reinforced by multiple Supreme Court decisions dating back to the formation of the FDA in 1906. Our current drug policy is dictated by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The act ranks drugs on a scheduling list of I to V with I being drugs with no medicinal benefit (completely illegal under any circumstances), and II through V being legal by prescription (a higher number means less danger of abuse).

No doctor would prescribe any of the drugs on the DEA's Schedule I list because those drugs oftentimes put the safety and general welfare of innocent bystanders at risk when they are consumed. Making them illegal is sensible, with one noticeable exception. Marijuana, despite its Schedule I status, deserves a category of its own. Unlike drugs such as tobacco and alcohol (whose usage has been sanctioned by many societies for hundreds of years), marijuana is not commonly condoned.

No religious, political or philosophical authority ever spoke to guide us on how to treat mind-altering drugs like those we have today because they were not widely available in the West until recently. This lack of guidance is evident in the endemic abuse and addiction that crack cocaine has caused over the last 40 years.

Many conservatives agree that it is a personal choice to take drugs, hence approval of alcohol and tobacco, except when it puts others at an unacceptable risk,. Marijuana legalization has not altered crime rates in most Westernized nations, and the amount of people killed or hurt by those under the influence of marijuana is infinitesimal when compared to the damage that alcohol has caused. Ignoring health claims regarding marijuana, which are dubious at best, a legitimate argument can be made that this drug will not cause harm if legalized and regulated in a reasonable way like alcohol and tobacco are.

The burdens of such actions, however, should not be shouldered by the taxpayer. We must not let drug rehabilitation programs degenerate into European-style programs. Holland has no such policy. The government is content to provide needles, prescribe heroin to addicts if they cannot rehabilitate after two attempts, and is even considering paying to relocate them to areas where they can do no harm to others. This is not liberty, this is taxpayer-funded addiction. Hard drugs pose a legitimate danger to the public health. The rise of street gangs over the last 30 years (most often funded by the drug trade) and the terrible things done by people addicted to or using hard drugs makes this point horrifyingly clear. Even if the government could make drugs available cheaply, addicts are dangers to society and must be rehabilitated, not supplied with free syringes. Perhaps this is why it so hard to swallow what Gray proposes about slowly legalizing all illicit drugs. Self-governed people have the right to draw a line and put certain drugs on either side of the law.

The time is nearing when Washington will legalize marijuana in one form or another; there is no need to force the issue to the table. We must not balk, however, and accept overregulation or the legalization of harder drugs. An interesting caveat for us conservatives, especially during the Obama Administration, is to make certain that marijuana is legalized in a fashion that encourages its presence in the marketplace and not in a government-issue bong.

Michael Koenig PO '12 is a staff writer for the Claremont Independent.