Legalize Them

I'm watching a History Channel doc about drug use in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

During that period, both cocaine and opiates were readily available and widely consumed in this country. They were prescribed by doctors to cure ailments and taken for recreation by a wide range of Americans, from poor black youths to wealthy, middle age white women. They could be found in pharmacies and obtained through the mail.

Did society fall apart? No. There were coke and opiate addicts, sure, but there are coke and opiate addicts now, too. That's an unchanging problem, one attributable to enduring aspects of our flawed nature.

However, the menace of gang violence was virtually nonexistent, because drugs were mainstream and legal, distributed by companies and medical professionals. If we returned to that model (but with more government oversight), we would cure -- or at least greatly diminish -- a national scourge.

The legalization and regulation of all drugs, from marijuana to LSD to heroin, would reduce crime and minimize fatalities associated with dirty product. It would be a boon for poor minorities, whose cultures are deeply rooted in the drug trade, and who would surely take quickly to its legal manifestation, too.

It's hard to say if addiction rates would increase, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did. However, addiction to certain hard drugs is not as bad as it is often made out to be. It is a misunderstood condition. Opiate addiction, for instance, is much easier managed than alcoholism: A junkie rises early, goes to bed early, and is fairly level and clearheaded -- provided he has his fix. Cocaine users are more erratic, yet they too can typically function on-point so long as they have access to their sweet powder. Legalization would lower prices through open competition and the end of certain risk-costs, and make every fix just around the corner.

Widespread addiction is a troubling prospect, but last time opiates and cocaine were legal, society survived just fine. We should have a little more faith in people, a little less complacency about the state's unnecessary, immoral repression of natural urges and natural flora.