NCJ Number
172372
Date Published
1998
Length
9 pages
Annotation
A review of the history of narcotic, alcohol, and tobacco use and regulation suggests that the legalization of currently illicit drugs would stimulate an unacceptably high level of drug abuse.
Abstract
Drug legalization would involve a colossal gamble, i.e., whether society should risk an unknown increase in drug abuse and addiction to eliminate the harms of drug prohibition, most of which stem from illicit trafficking. A review of the larger history of narcotic, alcohol, and tobacco use and regulation indicates that this debate should be recast. It would be more accurate to ask whether society should risk an unknown but possibly substantial increase in drug abuse and addiction in order to achieve an unknown reduction in illicit trafficking and other costs of drug prohibition. Controlled legalization would take some, but by no means all, of the crime out of it. Just how much and what sort of crime would be eliminated would depend on which groups were to be denied which drugs, the overall level of taxation, and differences in State tax and legalization policies. If the excluded groups were few and all States legalized all drugs, and all governments taxed at uniformly low levels, then the black market would be largely eliminated. These, however, are precisely the conditions that would be most likely to produce an unacceptably high level of drug abuse. The same variables that would determine how successful the controlled-legalization policy would be in eliminating the black market would also largely determine how unsuccessful it would be in containing drug addiction.