Libertarian Party states it is Time to end the War on Drugs

A great article calling for an end to the drug war my by Jim Maas of the Wisconsin Libertarian Party.

Our Platform of Beliefs presents the Libertarian position on victimless crimes:

Because only actions that infringe on the rights of others can properly be termed “crimes”, we favor the repeal of federal, state, and local laws restricting our fundamental freedom to govern our own lives.

“Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.” – Abraham Lincoln

Prohibition was the work of the early 20th-century progressives’ grand social engineering agenda. It failed miserably, as have many well intentioned social engineering projects.

The great social critic, H.L. Mencken, wrote of prohibition: “Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favourite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.”

Sound strangely familiar? But there’s one positive thing we can say Alcohol Prohibition: At least it was constitutional. Congress understood that the federal government has no constitutional authority to issue a national ban on anything. So, they temporarily amended the Constitution.

When America repealed Prohibition, it was with a constitutional amendment, recognizing that the power to regulate alcohol is reserved for the states. Contrast that to Drug Prohibition, where Congress made no attempt to comply with the Constitution in passing the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970, which gave us our current Prohibition. When it became clear that Alcohol Prohibition had failed, it was repealed. The Drug War has failed, but our government merely claims more powers to fight it more aggressively.

Drug prohibition has been every bit the failure Alcohol Prohibition was, and then some. Four decades after the CSA passed, 400,000 Americans are in prison for nonviolent drug crimes; domestic police forces resemble an occupying military force; nearly a trillion dollars is spent on enforcement, both here and through aggressive interdiction efforts overseas; and urban areas can resemble war zones. Yet illicit drugs like cocaine and marijuana are as cheap and abundant as they were in 1970.

Drug use violations are the most frequent arrest offenses in the U.S. Consequences are brutal. Half a million Americans are incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails for nonviolent drug law violations, helping our nation become Number One in the world for putting its citizens behind bars. With 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. houses 25% of the prisoners. 502 prisoners per 100,000 population exceeds the incarceration rate of all other countries on the planet. Wisconsin holds 369 prisoners per 100,000. Why?

Prison numbers are largely due to the insane policy of Drug Prohibition, which persecutes people who insist upon using substances which the government has arbitrarily declared “illegal.” The other reason is the lengthy sentences in America, often several times that seen in other Western countries. Recently, Gov. Walker signed a bill eliminating an earned early release program for well behaved non-violent inmates, making the problem, and the budget deficit, worse.

The War on Drugs is America’s longest war. It is long past time to declare victory or call a truce. We have more important issues to deal with and limited resources.