Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing both of Utah’s Republican Senate candidates: Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater. Both men are smart and appear to be capable candidates. Both men also claim to be philosophical conservatives. But in this day and age, thinking like a conservative sometimes gets mixed up with acting like a libertarian – and any discussion about the war on drugs seems to bring out this point.
Early in our interview, I told each candidate that I would now try to separate their inner conservative from their inner libertarian and asked both of them if they would push to end the war on drugs. Both candidates said they would not. Both men said they would not push to make illicit drugs legal.
While we didn’t have time to delve deeper into the subject or even their deeper opinions on the subject, I was pleased to hear them reject the idea that America ought to legalize drugs.
Now, even as I say that, I realize that lots and lots of very hard drugs are legal today. We call them “prescription drugs” and Utahns seem to be up to their gills in pill-popping opportunities to manage personal pain, real or imagined. I also realize that some illegal drugs, such as marijuana, are pretty docile compared to other legal drugs and even liquor, which is widely available and regulated (and taxed) by the state. The issue of our drug laws isn’t without its ironies and contradictions – but those exist mostly because human beings aren’t without their own personal ironies and contradictions.
This world – this mortality we live in – is all about money and it would seem that the United States of America and its free market economy would be well-equipped to be the leader in transacting a fair and regulated drug market, if we were to legalize drugs. Money is what makes the illegal drug business so enticing and making certain drugs illegal is what drives up the cost of these drugs making them more and more lucrative of a market for anyone to enter. Evidently, the money is so good in the illegal drug trade that the reward is worth the risk for lots and lots of people.
For decades, the United States has been at war against the illegal drug trade. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to stop the flow of narcotics into this country and, by and large, we’ve failed. It just isn’t that difficult for a young person to get their hands on all sorts of illegal drugs – even in pastoral settings such as Logan, Utah.
So why continue with this charade? Well, I’ll tell you why.
These drugs are bad for you – not in that long-term, even second-hand, way bad-for-you, but they’re immediately bad for you. You are detrimentally impaired the very moment you ingest currently illegal narcotics. It’s hard to see, it’s hard to think, it’s hard to communicate, it’s hard to take a test, it’s hard to drive, it’s hard to even do the basic things of life such as make it to the bathroom before you soil your pants.
To legalize these drugs is to affirm and approve of these human results – and that’s simply irrational decision-making for a policy maker. “Let’s see, I have a choice to either help my neighbors to make sober, rational choices in life, or I can encourage them to make delusional and irrational choices by permissioning them to use hard drugs? Let’s see, which policy makes Utah a better place to live, work, and raise a family?”
The ironies and inconsistencies of current drug laws aren’t reasonable excuses to abandon all reason and legalize, but heavily regulate, being stupid. Neither are the admittedly extravagant costs associated with the war on drugs.
The war on drugs is a smart public policy decision. It should be a war against both supply and demand. It should be a war engaged by both government and civilians. It should be a decision as simple as what a loving parent would do – protect their children from evil and conspiring men who want to infect them and addict them to any substance that would keep them from being who they really are, from seeing what is real, and from reaching their fullest potential.
Reasonable people can argue over liquor laws. The public debate over legalizing hard narcotics isn’t even in the same league.
I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.
