[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 23, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S327-S329]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           DRUG LEGALIZATION

 Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, yesterday the New York Times ran 
a piece noting that the lead story in the next issue of the National 
Review is going to call for the legalization of drugs. The rationale 
for this argument is that the war on drugs has failed and that the only 
solution is to declare defeat and turn the asylum over to the inmates.
  I am not sure just what information the folks at the National Review 
are using, but the facts are flawed and the argument is dumb and 
irresponsible.
  Mr. Buckley, the author of the piece, is safe in making such 
arguments because he personally does not plan to use drugs. No one of 
his immediate acquaintance is likely to start using dangerous drugs. 
And I doubt that he will encourage any teenage members of his family to 
use drugs. So the consequences of his advocacy will not be felt 
personally. Instead, the burden of his ideas will be borne by countless 
families whose kids--the most at-risk population--will fall victim to 
the consequences of drug abuse. The costs will also be borne by the 
public purse, as we have to treat the walking wounded.
  Although there is no public support for the idea of legalization, and 
none in the Congress, some of our culture elite--left and right--keep 
raising the idea as if it had some intellectual merit. Nothing could be 
farther from the truth. I am therefore submitting for the Record a 
longer statement on the common mistakes made in the legalization 
argument that I hope will help in closing this latest chapter in 
foolishness.
  The statement follows:

          Statement by Charles E. Grassley: Drug Legalization

       I have been increasingly concerned about the tendency in 
     some quarters to promote the legalization of drugs in this 
     country. If there is any idea that is essentially without 
     merit and without public support, it is that this country 
     should entertain seriously the notion that dangerous drugs 
     should be legalized and made widely available. Drug 
     legalization is truly an invitation to the Mad Hatter's Tea 
     Party.
       Unfortunately, many in the media and in our cultural elite, 
     who have a disproportionate access to public communication 
     and opinion outlets, have once again started to advocate some 
     form of legalization. While this advocacy is not likely to 
     lead to a major change in public policy, it can and does have 
     an adverse influence on thinking about the dangers of drug. 
     It sends a mixed message about the dangers of use that is 
     particularly harmful when it touches our young people.
       As Bill Bennett and Joe Califano noted recently, drugs are 
     illegal because they are dangerous, they are not dangerous 
     because they are illegal. Legalization advocates, however, 
     deploy a variety of arguments on behalf of their position 
     that ignore this essential fact. They all too often resort to 
     scare tactics, misrepresent reality, or skip over 
     inconvenient facts. I think that it is important to set the 
     record straight.
       There are a number of misconceptions about our efforts to 
     deal with the drug problem. It is important to understand 
     these and the common arguments used to promote them in order 
     to arrive at a reasoned and reasonable understanding of what 
     the drug problem is about. One of the first points to note is 
     that our last drug epidemic--during the 1960s, 1970s, and 
     early 1980s--was the result of arguments made by some that 
     drugs were really not a problem and that everyone would feel 
     better, live better, and prosper from the self-administration 
     of dangerous drugs.
       The claim, made with considerable fervor, was that drugs 
     were liberating and that only a repressive society would 
     prevent people from achieving their true potential. By the 
     late 1980s, we finally came to realize just what a cruel 
     hoax, a big lie, these claims were. We are still trying to 
     cope with an addict population from that ear, a period that 
     has left us with a legacy of lives blasted by drug use, a 
     cost that is borne by families and the public purse. We 
     cannot afford to ignore this lesson, to repeat a disaster 
     based on the enthusiasms of a few.
     Mistake #1: Prohibition doesn't can't work. Efforts to keep 
         people from using drugs, like alcohol prohibition, only 
         encourages the idea of forbidden fruit, increases crime, 
         and will always fail.
       The argument that prohibition doesn't work relies on a 
     collective amnesia about 

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     this country's experience with alcohol prohibition between 1920 and 
     1934. In the first place, Prohibition did not make the use of 
     alcohol illegal, only its manufacture and sale over a certain 
     strength. It was, in effect, a control regime legalizing 
     personal use. This effort came at the end of a very long 
     history in this country of trying to reduce the consumption 
     of alcohol from dangerous heights. The modern parallel is 
     with the efforts to reduce tobacco use.
       Second, Prohibition did not lead to a major increase in 
     violent crime, as is often claimed. The major increase, 
     particularly in violent crime in this country, came between 
     1900 and 1910, well before the prohibition movement. Violent 
     crime remained fairly stable or declined during Prohibition. 
     While it is true that crime rates decreased after Prohibition 
     this was not the result of ending Prohibition. Nor did 
     Prohibition create organized crime. Major organized crime 
     groups existed well before alcohol prohibition and they 
     prospered after it ended.
       Third, major health problems, such as cirrhosis of the 
     liver and alcohol-related psychoses, declined sharply during 
     Prohibition. Alcohol consumption, even though it was not 
     illegal, also declined sharply. It increased in the years 
     following the repeal of Prohibition, as did the associated 
     health problems.
       Fourth, it is important to remember also that alcohol, 
     unlike dangerous drugs, had wide social acceptance and a long 
     history of use. Alcohol can also be used by most people 
     without creating impairment, either temporary or long term. 
     Marijuana, cocaine, and heroin have no such long history of 
     popular public use or acceptance, and their use is solely for 
     the purpose of intoxication. In fact, the public has opposed 
     these substances once they learned how dangerous and 
     destructive they were. This is also true historically in this 
     country and internationally. No society today has a 
     legalization regime for dangerous drugs.
       In addition, it is clear that control efforts, when 
     reinforced by serious law enforcement, prevention, and 
     education programs do deter use, especially among young 
     people. Our own recent experience illustrates how effective 
     we can be. After decades of increasing use in this country, 
     we reversed the trend of drug use when, beginning in the mid-
     1980s, we decided to just say no and to get serious about 
     doing something. Overall drug use, apart from addicts, 
     declined by more than 50 percent; cocaine use by 70 percent. 
     Unfortunately, more recently, as we have moved away from 
     these serious programs we have seen a return to use in the 
     most at-risk population--teenagers.
     Mistake #2: Legalization will mean less crime because the 
         profit motive is removed and we will lock fewer people up 
         when we make our drug laws more humane
       First, most prisoners in state and Federal prisons are not 
     there for drug offenses as their first or major offense. Most 
     offenders are in jail for violent or repeat offenses. Of 
     these, despite the wildy exaggerated numbers often cited, 
     only 10 percent of Federal prisoners and 17 percent of state 
     inmates committed their crimes to obtain drugs. Indeed, 
     research shows that most career criminals came to drug use 
     after starting their criminal activities, not before. 
     Legalization will not greatly reduce the crime rate, 
     especially for violent crimes. Indeed, in so far as the 
     pharmacological effects of drugs, particularly cocaine and 
     other stimulants, exacerbate violent tendencies, legalization 
     will produce far greater violent crime rates as the number of 
     ``legal'' addicts soars.
       Second, the vast majority of prisoners serving time from 
     drug offenses are not there for use but for trafficking--
     individuals whose actions destroy lives and menace 
     neighborhoods.
       Third, legalization will not end black markets for drugs, 
     unless we are prepared to legalize drug use for all ages down 
     to the age of 6 or 7. Only the most radical legalization 
     advocates want to see kids using drugs. But to leave any 
     population out of a legalization regime means leaving a black 
     market. Crime will not simply disappear nor will the 
     organizations that are currently trafficking in illegal 
     drugs.
     Mistake #3: Legalization will mean a healthier climate in 
         which controlled drug use will provide quality control 
         and monitored use
       This argument misses or misrepresents the issue. The issue 
     is not whether we make drugs, which are inherently dangerous 
     to use, more pure, but whether we permit their use at all. 
     Britain led the way in trying to treat dangerous drug use as 
     a therapeutic problem, regulating addicts through doctors' 
     care. This was not an open drug policy for anyone to use 
     drugs but a policy just for addicts. The result was a 
     disaster. It did not prevent the spread of drug abuse. It 
     only made doctors complicit in the act of promoting an 
     addiction for which they had no cure. In effect, it reversed 
     the normal doctor-patient relationship, putting doctors in 
     the position of making their patients worse off. As a result, 
     in Britain, addiction soared, addicts got worse not better, 
     and the black market flourished. Similar experiences have 
     visited similar efforts in other countries. Now, it seems 
     that Switzerland is experimenting with a variation of this 
     approach. The results are likely to be a similar disaster, 
     making the government and the medical community complicit in 
     spreading addiction.
       It is also important to keep in mind, that dangerous drugs 
     are not synonymous with other controlled pharmaceuticals. The 
     latter are controlled but they also have a therapeutic 
     purpose. Dangerous drugs have no medical purpose. They are 
     addictive and destructive. To argue that these drugs should 
     be self-administered with the only control being over their 
     quality is to argue for a massive increase in the addict 
     population, adding an even greater burden to an over-taxed 
     health-care system. In effect, the legalization argument 
     requires society to endorse a self-destructive behavior and 
     then requires society to provide perpetual care to the 
     victims at public expense.
     Mistake #4: Deterrence does not work
       When you talk to former addicts or those who have given up 
     use, one of the most important reasons they give for their 
     decision to quit or seek treatment was the threat of criminal 
     prosecution, the difficulty of acquiring drugs, and the cost. 
     When drugs are perceived as expensive, dangerous and wrongful 
     to use, difficult to get, and involve a risk of criminal 
     prosecution, potential users forego use, and many current 
     users quit. This remains true even though most enforcement 
     efforts focus not on users but on violent offenders and drug 
     traffickers.
       No program to prohibit drug use can be universally 
     effective. Although we have long-standing laws against child 
     abuse or murder or theft, these have not prevented any of 
     these acts completely. No one doubts their importance, 
     however, or the role they play in discouraging yet more of 
     these actions than if they were not prohibited.
     Mistake #5: Legalizing drugs will remove the ``Forbidden 
         Fruit'' appeal of drugs, which leads most new users, 
         especially the young, into use
       If this is a valid argument, then anything that society 
     prohibits for the general good would succumb to the same 
     argument. Forbidding child abuse encourages child abuse. 
     Prohibiting murder encourages it. This is the logic of the 
     argument. In fact, the reverse in the case. We educate 
     people's understanding of what is rightful or wrongful to do 
     by the laws that we declare and enforce. Even during 
     Prohibition, when use was legal, the simple message sent by 
     society that use was bad caused significant drops in use. 
     Whenever we have enforced our drug laws and backed these up 
     with education and prevention programs endorsed by our civic 
     and cultural leaders, we have seen use decline and young 
     people forego use. When we ignore this simple reality we see 
     kids returning to drug use.
       Unless one contemplates making cocaine and heroin routinely 
     available to 12-18 year olds, something even few legalizers 
     argue, then legalization will not remove the so-called 
     ``Forbidden Fruit'' appeal. It will only add the idea that 
     society condones use while continuing to prohibit access to 
     the most at-risk population. Just the absence of a clear 
     message on drug use in the last few years has seen teens 
     returning to use in disturbing numbers. A legalization 
     message would have devastating results.
     Mistake #6: Drug use is a purely personal choice. It is a 
         victimless crime. The state has no right to keep people 
         from using drugs
       The idea that an individual who uses drugs does so in some 
     vacuum that affects no one else is another one of those 
     fictions that obscures the facts. In the first place, drug 
     users don't stay home. They go to work and play with the rest 
     of us. They use the highways, they drive the school buses and 
     trains, they fly the planes. They also encourage others to 
     use, thus spreading the problem.
       People under the influence of dangerous drugs are more 
     prone to workplace accidents, are more likely to have highway 
     accidents, are more prone to use violence in public and 
     family disputes, and are at greater risk for health care than 
     are non-users. Addicts are far more likely to lose control 
     over their own lives, and are more in need of public 
     intervention. A considerable percentage, perhaps as many as 
     60 percent, of the homeless are drug and alcohol addicts. 
     Some 2 percent of live births in this country--over 100,000 
     babies--are born addicted with life-long disabilities because 
     their mothers used. Conservative estimates of the yearly 
     social costs of drug addiction at current levels run around 
     $70 billion. These costs are borne by families and the public 
     purse. The number of users and consequently the number of 
     addicts would soar under a legalization regime, compounding 
     all the problems we currently have. There is no such thing as 
     a purely private use of drugs without consequences. There is 
     no known cure for addiction. A choice for legalization would 
     be a self-inflicted disaster.
     Mistake #7: Since alcohol and tobacco are legal, and cause 
         far more harm than dangerous drugs, we should make 
         heroin, cocaine, etc., legal to be consistent. Doing so 
         would not increase the number of users significantly
       Here is the legalization argument at its most outrageous. 
     What people are asked to accept is the idea that because we 
     have substances generally available that already cause major 
     harm--tobacco and alcohol--we should add dangerous drugs to 
     the occasions for woe for the sake of consistency. What the 
     argument says is that since we have one major problem we 
     should make it worse by adding another. Who are we kidding?
       In order to rescue this logic from being completely 
     ludicrous, people are asked to believe a further assertion: 
     that under a legal regime there won't be an increase in 
     users. Really? Let's look at what we are being asked to 
     believe. We are going to make drugs cheaper and freely 
     available. We are going to 

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     see them aggressively marketed by the producers. We are going to have 
     society condone the use of addictive substances. But, we are 
     not going to see a significant increase in use. Such is our 
     understanding of human nature?
       We saw what happened with drug use in this country in the 
     1960s and 1970s when we allowed the de facto legalization of 
     drugs, condoning personal use and not enforcing our laws. 
     That partial legal environment caused a dramatic increase in 
     use. Can anyone doubt the effects if we condoned use 
     outright? We cannot afford this kind of logic.
       These are by no means the only myths. Others hold that drug 
     laws are racist--which is another big lie, but even if true 
     it is hardly an argument for making drugs legal; that the 
     health consequences of personal use are exaggerated; or that 
     drug laws lead to locking up lot of innocent people. None of 
     these arguments can sustain serious attention or thought. Nor 
     is there any major public support for drug legalization. The 
     argument is pressed by only a few, some liberal, some 
     conservative. To make the argument requires, however, 
     suspension of judgment, a willingness to accept assertions 
     over facts, and a professional absence of mind that ignores 
     experience.
       Unfortunately, while the argument for legalization has 
     little public support, it is a major agenda item of many of 
     our cultural elites. They have a disproportionate influence 
     on our public discourse, on our radios and television, in the 
     movies, in music and the arts. This means they have a 
     disproportionate influence on the most at-risk population for 
     drug users--our young people. By helping to obscure the 
     message of the dangers of drug use, by encouraging it as part 
     of a ``liberated'' life style, they contribute directly to 
     use. When our political leaders remain silent they aid and 
     abet this. The result in the 1960s made the point. Our recent 
     experience confirms it: When you replace ``Just Say No'' with 
     ``Just Say Nothing'' or ``I didn't inhale,'' you are opening 
     the door to trouble.

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