A Better Strategy To Combat The Illegal Drug Use Epidemic: Legalization – The Right Way

Over the last quarter century, annual drug overdose deaths have risen from about 20,000 to over 100,000. Illegal drug use accounts for most of these deaths.

Apart from harming users, illegal drug use inflicts heavy costs on society. Illegal drug purchases enrich gangs and organized crime that kill, steal, carjack, destroy families and entire neighborhoods, and undermine incentives to pursue education and honest work. The roughly 25 percent of the homeless who abuse drugs harass residents and interfere with businesses and their customers.

Compounding this harm, the decades-long war on drugs “is a colossal failure because it’s aimed at interdicting supply even as demand remains robust,” as The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote in May 2024, and this interdiction of supply “makes the illegal narcotics business more profitable. Cartels corrupt law enforcement, hire mules and purchase weapons, small planes, disposable submarines and high-tech equipment. Poor democracies with frail institutions are no match for well-funded organized crime.”

This danger is very close to home. In October 2024, the Council on Foreign Relations reported that “criminal and drug trafficking organizations threaten to undermine the strength and legitimacy of the Mexican government” and that “cartels controlled about one-third of Mexico’s territory, according to one estimate from the U.S. military.” Law enforcement actions that cut illegal drug imports, moreover, fail to significantly reduce the harm. They constrain the supply of imports, but this initially raises prices that stimulate domestic producers to supply less expensive substitutes to fill the gap.

The best way to reduce the harm instead is legalization—but only if it is done right.

Just as the 1933 repeal of prohibition generally eliminated bootleggers and organized crime from the alcohol business, legalization would effectively cut gangs, organized crime and cartels out of the drug business. It would allow users to purchase drugs without dealing with dangerous criminals and, by sharply lowering drug prices and profits, would defund them and reduce both their drug businesses and their related violent crime and corruption of law enforcement.

Opponents of legalization contend that it will mean more users and societal harm.

Not if legalization is done right.

Doing it right requires that American society send a strong, broad, consistent and continuing message that highlights harm that recreational drug use causes and rejects it as socially unacceptable.

The U.S. surgeon general should issue a report that graphically details harm caused by recreational drug use. Civic groups, religious institutions, universities, business groups and employers should reiterate and amplify this message. And—critically—entertainers, athletes and other influencers should deglamorize recreational drug use and reject it as repulsive.

This approach sharply reduced cigarette smoking. An American Lung Association chart shows that in 1965, 42.4 percent of adults smoked cigarettes. By 2022, only 11.6 percent smoked. In 1997, 36.4 percent of youth smoked cigarettes. By 2021, only 3.8 percent smoked. Sadly, a CDC report nevertheless shows that cigarette smoking still “kills more than 480,000 Americans each year,” over four times the number that die from drug overdoses.

Doing it right also requires that legalization laws limit recreational drug use to private property, prohibit it on public sidewalks, streets, parks and other public property, and require violators to undergo drug treatment.

This will minimize the impact of recreational drug use on others, reinforce the message that society rejects it, and both stop ongoing violations and reduce the likelihood of reoccurrences.

Those who contend that only voluntary treatment succeeds are mistaken. Studies comparing mandatory drug treatment, such as through drug court programs, with voluntary treatment “show that people who are mandated to undergo addiction treatment fare at least as well as those who volunteer,” The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2024. Mandatory treatment, the same article notes, also allows earlier intervention that may result in “greater lifetime benefits” and “can ensure that people remain in treatment … which is consistently shown to be one of the best predictors of a successful outcome.”

Legalization laws also must authorize enforcement of employment contract provisions that ban recreational drug use, and permit related drug testing, so that employers may ensure their operations are safe and not otherwise compromised by employees under the influence.

Recreational drug use is a dangerous and growing killer that inflicts widespread societal harm. Instead of continuing the failed war on drugs, legalization—done right—is the right answer.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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