ABSTRACT
CONTENTS 14.1 Introduction................................................................................. 283 14.2 Words Are Important: Say ‘‘Intoxicants,’’ Not ‘‘Drugs’’ ............... 284 14.3 Using Intoxicants: How Much Is ‘‘Too Much’’? .......................... 286 14.4 The Costs of Prohibition.............................................................. 296 14.5 Alternatives to Prohibition ........................................................... 298 Further Reading ...................................................................................... 303 References ............................................................................................... 304
14.1 Introduction This chapter is rather different from most of the others in this book. Many of the abstracts give the impression that their authors hope and expect that some of the ideas discussed might be put into practice in the next decade or so, or are actually reporting the preliminary results of their implementation. In contrast, I have
little hope that any of the suggestions discussed below will be put into practice for several decades, if at all. This is not because there is no support for them from important individuals and institutions but because although Prohibition has proved itself repeatedly to be ineffective and harmful, it has engendered enormous national and international industries and bureaucracies that naturally do not want their employees to become redundant or their shareholders to lose money. It also suits the drug cartels just fine. How else would the illicit coca industry generate annual revenues of over 65 billion dollars [1]? And that’s only cocaine. Estimates of revenues for the whole illicit drug trade are naturally several times that amount and up to 750 billion dollars, amounts ‘‘infinitely greater than the budgets of all the enforcement agencies [which] not only give the drug barons enormous economic and political power but also finance a horrifying amount of crime all over the world’’ [2]. Consequently, those of us who question Prohibition in the 21st century, like those who questioned the existence of God in the 17th century, know what we are up against and do not expect rapid changes in public and institutional behavior. We count ourselves lucky that the burning of dissidents has largely died out in the West and that an increasing number of people accept, at the very least, a pluralist approach to the problems that Prohibition was supposed to prevent or eliminate.
