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otherwar
by Grant W. Kuhns
One thing about the war in Iraq should be inescapable for most Americans regardless of religion or political partisanship:
It is more justified and successful than the War on Drugs. For one thing, the drug war kills 15 times more Americans each
year than the Iraq war. Ironically, our drug war kills more people than illegal drugs kill people.
Along with death, drug prohibition breeds crime, corruption, disease, injustice and human suffering. This is not hyperbole;
it aptly describes the War on Drugs.
According to pharmaceutical researcher, Dr. Mary Ruwart, author of “Healing our World,” approximately 7000 people
die each year from illegal drug overdose. However, Dr. Ruwart estimates that about 80% of those drug deaths (5,600) are due
to impurities and other factors that would not be present in legal preparations. Furthermore, because needle sales are also
prohibited, shared needles have become the primary mode of AIDS transmission in the U.S. . . . resulting in approximately
3,500 new cases annually.
Turf wars over drug territory result in gang shootings averaging 1,600 deaths per year. Then an additional 750 killings per
year are estimated to result from addicts robbing victims in order to buy drugs at a price that is inflated 100 times due
to prohibition and the resulting black market.
All totaled, Dr. Ruwart’s research indicates that the War on Drugs costs 11,450 lives per year . . . about eight times
higher than the death toll would be if drugs were legal. She concludes that since almost one out of eight people in the U.S.
use illegal drugs regularly, our whole population would have to become addicted in a legal setting for the death toll to
be as high as it is under drug prohibition.
Our drug war has proven itself to be unworkable, cruel and stupid. It is based upon emotion, demagoguery, and the totalitarian
notion that adults have no right to control what they do with their own bodies, and that it is appropriate for our government
to incarcerate citizens for the consumption or mere possession of natural substances.
Drug prohibition ignores sound economic theory. We spend billions of tax dollars to finance armies overseas and to raise
huge bureaucracies at home to ensure that a powder worth ten cents will be worth billions of dollars on our street corners.
Federal, state and local governments have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make America “drug-free,”
while heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana and other illicit drugs are easier to get than ever before. In 35 years
we still have not succeeded to keep illegal drugs out of our prisons, where nearly half a million U.S. citizens are incarcerated
on drug charges.
The drug war fails any “moral values” test. Politicians, soccer-moms, and clergy who support it have no business
lecturing us on morality or Judeo-Christian principles. They, in fact, trample on the core values of mercy, justice and compassion
shared by all major religions. Those who think we can legislate morality, or cure human self-indulgence with law must be delusional.
The Bible (Romans 7:5) says: “sinful passions [are] aroused by the law.” Wisdom that has been proven by the social
disaster created by the 18th Amendment . . . alcohol Prohibition.
Anti-drug laws have become a war on individuals, families, and constitutional rights. Read “Forfeiting our Property Rights”
by Senator Henry Hyde. Drug prohibition law is being used selectively and sporadically, at the convenience of politicians
and law enforcement, particularly against the poor and other members of society that are subjectively deemed “undesirable.”
Why should drug legalization for adults send the wrong message to teenagers, as so many fear? Rather, why should legalization
not enforce the founding fathers’ concept of personal responsibility in a free and constructive society, rather than
a paternalistic and punitive one? Why should drug legalization not be a constructive lesson to parents who think they can
dump their personal responsibility on legislators and law enforcement so they won’t have the bother of teaching their
own children right from wrong?
That most Christians and Jews are silent regarding the hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens taken from their families and
imprisoned on victimless drug charges is a sad witness. One day our society will look back on the War on Drugs, as we now
look back upon slavery, and wonder how our generation could have been so callous and stupid. We treat drug abuse today as
we treated insanity 100 years ago.
Apparently the exit strategy for our misguided War on Drugs will, like emancipation, have to evolve slowly . . . and Christians,
again, should be the ones to start the movement. As philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer observed: “All truth passes through
three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
On-line references links below:
Schaffer Library of Drug Policy
Drug Policy Alliance website
Milton Friedman
Thomas DiLorenzo
William Anderson
Paul Armentano
Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative
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