A Small But Important Victory by James Ostrowski

Attorney James Ostrowski writes:

"[N]o one with the slightest degree of intellectual honesty can deny that the vast bulk of the problems the public associates with the term 'drug problem' are in fact caused by drug prohibition and enforcement.

"Prohibition creates the black market and is thus responsible for all the problems related to the black market like high drug profits to dealers, drug gangs funded by those profits, shoot-outs over turf, addicts who steal to pay for expensive black market drugs, HIV-positive addicts spreading the virus by sharing needles which are illegal and thus expensive, children selling drugs and acting as look-outs because they are subject to lower penalties than their adult comrades, police corruption, clogged courts and prisons, the creation of a criminal subculture in the inner city, the jailing and criminalization of large numbers of young minority males...

"Once it is understood that prohibition not only is ineffective in preventing drug use, but also creates out of thin air a whole new set of virulent social problems, the absurdity of our occasional drug wars becomes clear. If prohibition creates big problems, intensifying prohibition creates bigger problems...

"No one is happy with the status quo. Escalating the drug war is doomed to failure because the drug problem increases in direct proportion to the level of enforcement. That leaves only one way out – de-escalate, move towards legalization...

"[M]ost people still oppose legalization, not because they can muster any cost-benefit data against it, or because they can rebut any of its main arguments, but, because they deeply oppose drug use on fundamental moral and religious grounds. Regardless of where and when it is done, and what the social consequences are, they just don't want to live in a world where anyone is consuming drugs...

"Unfortunately, millions of others have decided that they have no moral qualms about using drugs and they continue to do so despite society's best efforts to stop them. The prohibitionist majority's attempt to impose their values on the drug-using minority by force is the root cause of today's drug problem...

"The only real solution to the drug problem and the only real end of the perpetual drug war will come when we declare freedom of self-medication and ask the drug warriors to hang up their holsters and call it a career..."

A Small But Important Victory by James Ostrowski