Symposium: Swapping the Drug War for Local Moralism

One reason to end the War on Drugs is to stop Harry Reid from making despicable accusations about the GOP being “addicted to Koch” on the Senate floor.

But in all seriousness, conservatives are right to be revisiting U.S. drug policy. However, I fear that defenses of drug use like Matthew Feeney’s are simply too libertine to gain popular support. Mr. Feeney is absolutely right that U.S. politicians are more draconian about the War on Drugs than many of their constituents. But I suspect that most of those constituents are growing wary of the Drug War because they’ve witnessed its unintended consequences. They’ve seen the effects of ever-larger government, the unfairness of mandatory minimum sentences, and the racial divide between who walks and who winds up incarcerated. But it’s wrongheaded to say that Americans are reevaluating the War on Drugs because they believe LSD is just another Jeffersonian way to pursue “Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

By defending drug use for its “stimulation, relaxation, or a psychedelic state,” Feeney suggests that we should halt the policing of drugs because drug use is a reasonable hobby. This is the kind of cultural promiscuity that so often divides libertarians from conservatives. I wholeheartedly agree that policy-makers should phase-out the War on Drugs, but I’d seek to couple drug decriminalization with a heavy dose of moralizing. Private citizens should make it unequivocally clear that drug use is expensive, dangerous, and detrimental to communities and families. Just because the cops aren’t after your meth lab doesn’t mean your neighbors shouldn’t be.

This is a message that has, unfortunately, been overshadowed by the political way we discuss drugs, as if they’re use was only a question for the Feds, and not our communities.

As a straight-laced public schooler, I was terrified by the notion that anyone would use drugs. I took every D.A.R.E. lesson as Gospel and was flabbergasted to learn that some of my classmates occasionally lit up anyway.

But even as someone who grew up firmly in the anti-drug camp, my principle objection was that drugs were illegal, not that they were morally wrong or disruptive to a productive life. I was fearful of drugs because I pictured cops and handcuffs, not because I stopped to consider the harmful effects they would have on myself and others.

So I agree with Feeney that our “[c]urrent American drug policy is inhumane, expensive, unworkable, scientifically illiterate, racist, an excuse to grow government, and a violation of our rights,” but rather than emphasizing anything-goes bodily autonomy, I’d revive some good old fashioned community pressure.