The ideological failure of prohibitionism, 
a 19th century totalitarianism

Originated in the US thanks to its settlement patterns,prohibitionism is a 19th century totalitarian ideology of coerced societal transformation. It is just as obsolete as the other major totalitarianism, communism and fascism and just like them, it lost track of its original intent.

Prohibitionism was soundly rebuked in its original intent of promotion of virtue and suppression of vice, where vice was alcohol abuse, gambling, pornography, prostitution and homosexuality. Substance abuse was added to the prohibitionist agenda almost by accident but it is the last standing piece of this failed agenda. Drug prohibition survived and thrived essentially as an alibi for discrimination against minorities and thanks to an endless succession of moral panics from its onset and up to this day. It survived and thrived because on its onset, there was no real substance abuse issue in the US other than alcohol abuse and therefore these substances didn't have any real constituency to support them.

Drug prohibition started in the US with the American century, and throughout the century, the US used its growing power to impose its policy to the rest of the world. Not only did the US invent the war on drugs, the US is also the main consumer as well as the overwhelming weapon supplier to the Latin American drug cartels, fueling the evil and violence it is supposed to combat in the first place.

Prohibitionism violates the fundamental law of supply and demand in a market economy and therefore, it led to the emergence of a thriving shadow economy. The war on drugs and drug trafficking grew in symbiosis, feeding on each other. The ever escalating repression lead to increasingly sophisticated trafficking modalities in a cat and mouse race where the drug business quickly adapts to market disruption and enforcement is always one step behind, further plagued by the law of diminishing returns which dictates that ever increased resources need to be allocated for lower and lower results.

Analyzing the war on drugs narrative over its hundred years history, one can only be struck by its ever escalating intensity, its never-ending crescendo. 417 grams of cocaine were seized in 1938. 118,311 kg were seized in 2005! Rothstein's victims could probably be counted on the fingers of both hands in the 1920s. 500 murders were attributed to Lucky Luciano's Murder Inc in the 1930 and 40s. That is barely the death toll in an average month in Mexico alone in 2010. In 1930, Al Capone and his mafia was ruling Chicago. Ruthless cartels are spreading mayhem and gory over the planet from Ciudad Juarez to Bamako. Narco-states are growing like cancer. Drug culture is permeating pop-culture.

After 100 years of ever escalating failures, policy-makers are still proposing more of the same. The stated goal of the war on drug is still complete eradication and total abstinence, which is about as realistic as sexual abstinence as a policy for prevention of STD and teen pregnancy. In fact, the war on drug is terminally addicted to its own policies and inextricably tied to its arch-nemesis, its lifeline and its raison d'etre, narco-trafficking. It would crumble and vanish if narco-traffic were to disappear.

Narco-trafficking is the creation of the war on drugs, its antithesis, its arch-nemesis, its own distorted reflection. The mere idea of legalization poses an existential threat to this highly dysfunctional scheme.

The most baffling though, is that the awareness is there of the dire situation we are facing. In the foreword to the 2010 UNODC World Drug Report, Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, states: "Poor countries have other priorities and fewer resources. They are not in a position to absorb the consequences of increased drug use. ... We will not solve the world drugs problem by shifting consumption from the developed to the developing world. ... We will not solve the world drugs problem if addiction simply shifts from cocaine and heroin to other addictive substances."

All that seems to be missing is the political courage to draw the
obvious conclusions. Voices of dissent are rising louder and louder, including from within the international community itself, challenging the folly of existing policies.

Isn't time to ask the simple but fundamental question: "Can organized society do a better job than organized crime at managing and controlling psychoactive substances?" After all, the vast majority of psychoactive substances, including the two deadliest, are already legal and controlled.

Extracted from 
https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/03/ideological-failure-prohibitionism-19th-century-totalitarianism
Author:
Jeffrey Dhywood
jdhywood@hotmail.com