Thursday 25 September 2014

Debating Drug Prohibition at the Oxford Union

Guest post here from the Mises Institute, interviewing Mark Thornton, Mises Institute Senior Fellow, who recently took part in Oxford University’s Oxford Union Debates.

Mises Institute: Why were you invited to debate at Oxford?

Mark Thornton: The Oxford Union can pretty much get whoever they want to debate, including presidents, prime ministers, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, and even Julian Assange, so I was honoured that they invited me. I met several students in the Oxford Union and at Oxford University who were familiar with my work on the drug war and at the Mises Institute.
     Each side of the debate generally consists of a student presenter and three experts. The debate is similar in structure to the House of Commons and has been that way since 1823.

MI: What was your basic line of argumentation and how was it received? How did the other side justify the drug war?

MT: My opening joke, which came at the expense of the American public, was very well received and my arguments were also very well received.
    My argument was that the war on drugs has no benefits, just costs, and negative unintended consequences. These include drug-addict crime, drug-dealer violence, bribery and corruption, and the increase in drug potency to deadly levels. I gave them the theory of how to connect those dots and some history of how the dots connected.
    I then described ten benefits of legalising drugs that fit into the three categories of making us safer, making us healthier, and improving human welfare.
    I ended my presentation with four examples of what happens when drug laws are liberalised. One example was an experiment where heroin addicts were provided with doses of pharmaceutical-grade heroin. The result was a dramatic drop in their criminality, a large increase in their employment, and an increase of those seeking treatment. Another example was the needle-exchange policy. Countries with liberal needle-exchange policies (free needles on demand) have very low HIV/AIDS and other needle-borne disease transmission rates and countries with very strict needle policies (only available by prescription) have very high transmission rates.
    I received a very enthusiastic response from the audience.

The three experts on the pro-drug-war side made the following arguments.
    The first expert said that there was no war on drugs and that prohibition had never really been tried.
    The second expert’s argument was that drugs were bad — that’s it! She was a drug addict herself and revealed that she wanted a marijuana leaf tattooed on the back of her hand when she was young, but the tattoo artist refused because she was not 18 years old at the time. What makes her think that businesses will sell cocaine to 14 year olds if it was legalised?
    The final expert argued that if we legalise drugs then eventually almost everyone will be hard-core drug addicts.
    As you can see the other side’s arguments were mostly misinformation and fear tactics.

MI: We know that in the US, drug legalisation efforts have progressed significantly in many states, especially in Colorado and Washington. What was the view of these developments in the United Kingdom?

MT: Everyone I talked to about drug policy was aware of developments in Colorado and Washington, and several people questioned me about them. My general impression was that people were hopeful that the US had broken its hard-core attitude against drugs.
    More generally, public opinion in the UK and Europe also seems to be moving toward more liberalised drug policy. This does not necessarily entail full drug legalisation, but rather a policy where hard drugs are addressed as a medical problem, not a law enforcement problem, and where cannabis is regulated in a similar manner to alcohol and tobacco.

MI: Through the news media and popular culture, we all have a certain image of what the drug war looks like here in America, with gangs and smugglers and drug runners. Has the drug war manifested itself differently in Europe or are things more or less the same there?

MT: Like the United States, Europe is a large, illegal drug-consuming region, rather than producing region, with similar laws against drugs. South America also produces much of the drugs that are smuggled into Europe. So naturally the problems are very similar.
    Part of that similarity is also driven by international treaties that forces countries to conform to certain legal norms with respect to illegal drugs. So yes, they have smugglers, gangs that sell drugs at the retail level, organized crime, bribery, and corruption, etc. There are some obvious exceptions such as cannabis coffee shops in the Netherlands.
    There are some noteworthy experiments as well, such as the decriminalisation of all drugs in Portugal. It would not be incorrect to say that Portugal’s reform was an act of desperation, but one should remember that the US was equally desperate when we repealed alcohol prohibition in the depths of the Great Depression.

MI: Has the fight against the drug war become a worldwide movement, or are successful efforts cropping up in only a few countries?

MT: Both.
    Successful efforts are cropping up in only a few countries; however, I think there has been a worldwide ideological movement in favour of more liberal drugs laws. The balance in favour of more liberal drug laws in both Europe and the Western Hemisphere is starting to become apparent.
    Medical marijuana and decriminalized recreational marijuana are very acceptable throughout much of the developed world.
    The people of Mexico, Central America, and the drug-producing countries of South America have been devastated by the war on drugs and are desperate for a solution.
    It may seem as if the victories are sporadic and isolated, but I believe when history looks back on our recent past and near-term future that it will label the period the “End of the War on Drugs,” in much the same way we have the “End of the Cold War” and the “End of Communism.” At least that is my hope.

MI: When we think of illegal drugs, we generally mean cocaine, opium, and marijuana. But there is increasing attention being paid to prescription drugs in this country. Is this a growing issue in other countries as well?

MT: This problem was predictable as I showed in my book, The Economics of Prohibition. As the war on drugs has progressed with more enforcement capabilities and greater penalties, the black market has responded with higher potency and more potent and dangerous drug types.
    When I was writing back in the 1980s, the progression was increasingly higher potency cannabis, to cocaine, crack, and heroin. Since that time crystal meth, ecstasy, and prescription opiates have been added to the mix.
    More recently, new chemical drugs have been invented that are technically legal. I wonder if today’s drug warriors had a button to push that could dial us back in time, prior to government intervention in drugs, and have a situation where people smoked low-potency pot and opium on the fringes of society and drank Coca-Cola (which contained cocaine rather than caffeine), would they push that button?

OxyContin (oxycondone) and Vicodin are opiate painkillers that are killing thousands of people in the US each year. Both are often wrongly viewed by addicts as safer alternatives to heroin. The use of the drug has already spread to Europe and elsewhere, and so have the deaths.


Mark Thornton is a senior resident fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and is the book review editor for the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. He is the author of The Economics of Prohibition, coauthor of Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War, and the editor of The Quotable Mises,The Bastiat Collection, and An Essay on Economic Theory.
This post first appeared at the Mises Daily.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mark Thornton inaccurately dismisses the debaters who opposed his view at the Oxford debate - they won the case. How much else of what he claims is equally inaccurate?

Anonymous said...

Mark Thornton is a sore loser disparaging his opponents arguments which held the day and parading his own flawless thinking which somehow failed to convince the student body assembled of the merits of ending the drug war. Mark thats the trouble with open debate you put your arguments and the voters decide what they think- you obviously dont like the way they voted so next time make a better case rather than grumbling at the outcome of that debate.

Jamie said...

This young returned serviceman dreams of the day he won't be classed a second-class citizen in his own lands.
Until then
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEJzoaYZk

Peter Cresswell said...

@Anonymite: The score was 60-59 against. Can't see the sour grapes myself.

Jamie said...

Here they come to snuff the rooster
Yeah here come the rooster, yeah [2x]
You know he ain't gonna die
No, no, no, ya know he ain't gonna die
CHORUS

Ain't found a way to kill me yet
Eyes burn with stinging sweat
Seems every path leads me to nowhere
Wife and kids household pet
Army green was no safe bet
The bullets scream to me from somewhere

CHORUS

Walkin' tall machine gun man
They spit on me in my home land
Gloria sent me pictures of my boy
Got my pills 'gainst mosquito death
My buddy's breathin' his dyin' breath
Oh god please won't you help me make it through

CHORUS

Alice In Chains Rooster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAE6Il6OTcs

Jamie said...

Come on come on
I see no changes. Wake up in the morning and I ask myself,
"Is life worth living? Should I blast myself?"
I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black.
My stomach hurts, so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch.
Cops give a damn about a negro? Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero.
Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares? One less hungry mouth on the welfare.
First ship 'em dope and let 'em deal to brothers.
Give 'em guns, step back, and watch 'em kill each other.
"It's time to fight back", that's what Huey said.
2 shots in the dark now Huey's dead.
I got love for my brother, but we can never go nowhere
unless we share with each other. We gotta start makin' changes.
Learn to see me as a brother 'stead of 2 distant strangers.
And that's how it's supposed to be.
How can the Devil take a brother if he's close to me?
I'd love to go back to when we played as kids
but things changed, and that's the way it is

[Bridge w/ changing ad libs]

Come on come on
That's just the way it is
Things'll never be the same
That's just the way it is
aww yeah
[Repeat]

I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.
Misplaced hate makes disgrace to races we under.
I wonder what it takes to make this one better place...
let's erase the wasted.
Take the evil out the people, they'll be acting right.
'Cause both black and white are smokin' crack tonight.
And only time we chill is when we kill each other.
It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other.
And although it seems heaven sent,
we ain't ready to see a black President, uhh.
It ain't a secret don't conceal the fact...
the penitentiary's packed, and it's filled with blacks.
But some things will never change.
Try to show another way, but they stayin' in the dope game.
Now tell me what's a mother to do?
Bein' real don't appeal to the brother in you.
You gotta operate the easy way.
"I made a G today" But you made it in a sleazy way.
Sellin' crack to the kids. "I gotta get paid,"
Well hey, well that's the way it is.

[Bridge]

[Talking:]
We gotta make a change...
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes.
Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive.

And still I see no changes. Can't a brother get a little peace?
There's war on the streets and the war in the Middle East.
Instead of war on poverty,
they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.
And I ain't never did a crime I ain't have to do.
But now I'm back with the facts givin' 'em back to you.
Don't let 'em jack you up, back you up, crack you up and pimp smack you up.
You gotta learn to hold ya own.
They get jealous when they see ya with ya mobile phone.
But tell the cops they can't touch this.
I don't trust this, when they try to rush I bust this.
That's the sound of my tool. You say it ain't cool, but mama didn't raise no fool.
And as long as I stay black, I gotta stay strapped and I never get to lay back.
'Cause I always got to worry 'bout the payback.
Some buck that I roughed up way back... comin' back after all these years.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. That's the way it is. uhh

[Bridge 'til fade:]
Some things will never change

Tupac-Changes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nay31hvEvrY

Mr Lineberry said...

Is Jamie pissed?

Jamie said...

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I take a look at my life and realize there's nothin' left
Cause I've been blasting and laughing so long,
That even my mama thinks that my mind is gone
But I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it
Me be treated like a punk you know that's unheard of
You better watch how you're talking and where you're walking
Or you and your homies might be lined in chalk
I really hate to trip but I gotta loc
As they croak, I see myself in the pistol smoke, fool
I'm the kinda G the little homies wanna be like
On my knees in the night saying prayers in the streetlight
Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise

Look at the situation they got me facin'
I can't live a normal life, I was raised by the streets
So I gotta be down with the hood team
Too much television watching got me chasing dreams
I'm an educated fool with money on my mind
Got my 10 in my hand and a gleam in my eye
I'm a loc'd out gangsta set trippin' banger
And my homies is down so don't arouse my anger, fool
Death ain't nothing but a heartbeat away,
I'm living life, do or die, what can I say
I'm 23 now, but will I live to see 24
The way things are going I don't know
Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the ones we hurt are you and me

Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise

Power and the money, money and the power
Minute after minute, hour after hour
Everybody's running, but half of them ain't looking
What's going on in the kitchen, but I don't know what's cookin'
They say I gotta learn, but nobody's here to teach me
If they can't understand it, how can they reach me
I guess they can't, I guess they won't
I guess they front, that's why I know my life is out of luck, fool

Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Been spending most their lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise
Keep spending most our lives, living in the gangsta's paradise

Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the one's we hurt are you and me
Tell me why are we so blind to see
That the one's we hurt are you and me
[Fade out]

Coolio Gangster's Paradise

Peter Cresswell said...

@Jamie: Enough with the faux poetry! Short, pithy and on-topic comments are good. Off-topic meanderings like this however are beginning to look like spam. No more, please.

Jamie said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.