All right y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and I'm joined on the phone by my friend Anthony Gregory.
He's a research fellow, I think it's called, at the Independent Institute.
That's independent.org.
You can check him out on the blog, The Beacon, at independent.org as well.
He writes for LewRockwell.com and the Future Freedom Foundation and a lot of other places like that.
If you're in Southern California, he'll be at the Libertopia thing coming up in just a couple of days, I think it is.
Welcome back to the show, Anthony.
Hey Scott, it's great to be with you.
Hey, what's the Libertopia thing, when is it?
It starts Thursday evening and it goes through Sunday in San Diego.
It should be a good time.
Yeah, right on.
Well, I'm sorry I can't be there, but it sounds like a lot of fun.
All right, well now, so here's the thing.
I want to talk about the drug war, but I don't want to just preach to the choir here.
The thing is, as you well know, it's a very delicate issue for a lot of people.
There's no doubt that drug abuse leads to a lot of terrible consequences for people and that kind of thing.
For a very long time, it's just been completely beyond the pale to say that we need to legalize drugs in polite society, certainly in political society in America.
There was a poll the other day that said that 50% of the American people, particularly the younger, support legalizing at least pot and so it brings up the idea that, obviously the fact is millions of people smoke pot, probably some millions of people use cocaine in this country.
They're not all criminals.
We have a very broken system in very many ways, but I wonder how you think is the best way to approach one of these people who said no way to that poll.
You know, say some golfing retired conservative Republican voter types who just can't imagine the insanity of such a thing as saying it's just okay to use drugs and legalize and allow this libertine self-destructive plague in our society, etc. like that.
You know where they're coming from.
How do you address their concerns?
How do you make your legalized drugs argument acceptable to even hear?
Well, I think, you know, I certainly don't consider myself a conservative, but I think even a conservative should oppose prohibitions on marijuana.
It is news that now half of Americans support legalizing it, which Radley Balco points out is higher than the percentage of Americans who approve of Obama as president.
So he says someone at the press conference should ask him what he thinks.
The fact that pot would beat him in a presidential election.
But, you know, it's news, but it's sad that it's taken this long and it's sad that so many people still think it should be illegal.
There are many angles if you're interested in public safety, as I think pretty much everyone is.
You can point out that the drug war makes violent crime go up.
It creates organized crime because the black market that emerged to fill the need of the demand for drugs is invariably outside of the scope of the normal legal channels.
And so we have the same situation we had with alcohol prohibition all over again, but it's worse now because the drug war has completely it's caused all this violence in Mexico this time around.
We have tens of thousands have died because of the drug war and these cartels and drug gangs are not a result of them being drugs.
It's the result of the drugs being illegal.
The drug most associated with violence just in itself is alcohol, yet the alcohol market isn't violent.
Jack Daniels isn't shooting people and kidnapping people because they can sell their product on the open market.
And that's one of the most dangerous drugs there is, but it's legal and it's better that it's legal because when it was illegal things were even worse.
There's also, of course, the point about liberty.
Conservatives and those who oppose legalizing drugs still might think that there's something to the idea of individual liberty and the drug war has compromised individual liberty and not just with respect to drugs.
It decimated the fourth amendment.
If it weren't for the drug war, it's hard to imagine them being able to push through the Patriot Act and so many other things in response to 9-11 because Americans used to be jealous of their right to privacy and to be secure in their persons and papers and effects.
There's civil access forfeiture, people getting their stuff confiscated by the government without due process.
We're all treated as suspects because of the drug war and of course none of this, it costs a whole bunch of money.
Anyone who thinks that we need to turn around the fiscal insolvency of the government has to support some common sense in this area because many billions are spent fighting the drug war and of course it doesn't work in stopping drug abuse or even reducing it by any substantial amount.
In prison people can get drugs and in prison the government has total control.
It's the total state in prison which means you can turn America into a prison and there will still be drug sales and so the choice isn't between a drug-free America with totalitarian controls on our behavior or a country with freedom and drugs, though to be honest even if that was a choice I'd choose the latter because I believe in freedom, but that's not even the choice.
The choice is drugs and freedom or drugs and statism and crime and corruption.
So the whole law enforcement community has been, it's been thoroughly corrupted by the drug war and the money that's involved in the drug market.
To be honest the arguments for legalizing drugs are so numerous and compelling to me that I'm stuck with wondering what is it that's keeping people from seeing this other than the symbolism of having the government, which we all know is the most corrupt, incompetent, dishonest entity in the country.
Conservatives say they believe this in particular.
Why is having that entity being nominally against some drug worth all of these horrible costs to our social fabric and our freedom?
Well you know I think a lot of it does come down to if it's legal that means it's the government saying that it's okay and you know there's that quote from the Supreme Court justice saying government is the moral teacher and all that kind of thing and a lot of people you know raise their kids to understand the law and morality as sort of this two-way street you know where one causes the other and it's not altogether clear which way it goes and so you know there's a lot of concerned moms not to just insult them but there's a lot of concerned moms Anthony who would just say but you're saying it's okay if it's legal then it's okay to go ahead and shoot heroin into your scalp until it kills you.
Well is it okay to drink alcohol until it kills you?
Is it okay to smoke cigarettes you know until it kills you?
These drugs of course are the ones that kill by far the most Americans and then prescription drugs are behind that but illicit drugs the honest truth is they tend not to kill as many people not just because they're illegal but because they're not as lethal but they do cause immense harm and suffering but how does a free responsible society deal with these problems?
Does it deal with it with a federal police state?
With militarized enforcement?
By bribing murderous regimes abroad?
By giving money to the Taliban to suppress opium?
By playing both sides of the Mexican drug war?
By shutting down medical marijuana dispensaries while grandmas with glaucoma and cancer suffer because they can't use one of the most harmless chemical substances in the history of humankind?
Is this what we do to deal with drug abuse or do we deal with it at the family and community and church level?
I think the latter is far more humane and civilized.
All right hold it right there it's anthonygregoryindependent.org and anthonygregory.com All right y'all welcome back to the show it's anti-war radio Scott Horton I'm talking with Anthony Gregory from the Independent Institute about the war on drugs in America and now Anthony I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you think America would look like if drugs were legal and I guess you could take this one of two ways the kind of I dream of genie all drug laws and drug police you know vanish kind of overnight sort of situation or whether maybe if the federal government just got out of it sort of the way they ended prohibition by outsourcing it to the states that regulate the hell out alcohol but still allow people to drink it you know pick choose say whatever you want I don't care well I think that the latter is more likely I think if the feds got out of it the states would continue to prosecute drugs to some degree but I think they would liberalize their laws because it would be very difficult to keep as draconian a drug war without federal support I think some states would start legalizing marijuana and it wouldn't take very long in my opinion for that to become legal very all over the country or much of the country and then other drugs they would they would kind of they'd start to decriminalize some of them try to deal with them in a less brutal way than they do of course I do support having the free market be the the regulatory mechanism by which society deals with drugs that and and social norms and morals and so I don't support any government laws against drugs of any kind and I think that would be much better if we had that I think what you would see is that it wouldn't be the nightmare that people would would envision because there was a time in this country when you could buy heroin at the pharmacy you could buy cocaine you could buy it for you know children could buy these drugs even they would go to the pharmacist and they'd buy them in measured doses and there there weren't any more drug problems than there are now in fact much of the potency of drugs in in the cases of meth and crack these are consequences of the drug war because as the as the law comes down on transporting and distributing drugs it becomes more and more efficient for for illicit drug dealers to to carry increasingly potent versions of the drug this happened with alcohol prohibition too which made liquor more popular and then after alcohol prohibition was lifted people began shifting somewhat to wine and beer because and and that would happen I think with illegal drugs too I don't think they'd be quite as potent but people would be able to buy them and in pharmacies or or wherever but there would be uh there would be of course social rules private property owners would set rules I think that you know at the workplace they wouldn't want you uh mainlining or during the lunch hour uh and and families would set rules for their kids as they do with with other with other matters and and uh I don't think the world would fall apart at all there would still be addicts as there are now and there would still be recreational users who do so with varying degrees of responsibility as there are now but they wouldn't be in fear for of their liberty constantly they wouldn't have to fear the government at all times and and worry about being prosecuted people who needed help would be able to seek it without any fear of being jailed and brutalized by the horrendous American criminal justice system our liberties would would be restored to a degree that I don't think we've seen in our lifetime it would be one of the greatest triumphs of freedom in America to have the drug war end um and many other freedoms that have been under attack it would be harder for them to be under attack one thing I say to conservatives is the right to bear arms only became so uh so under attack because of prohibition first alcohol prohibition which created the the alcohol gangs and Al Capone and the shootouts and the and the tommy gun and all this stuff is what led to the first federal gun laws and then again with the drug war created all this gang violence which has been used as a rationale to restrict guns um so there are all sorts of people's all sorts of freedoms associated with the drug war that have been eroded because of these laws that we would start to reclaim some of these laws the governments at all levels would be a little less brutal in some cases significantly so the police would be less militarized there'd be far less gang violence and uh the the trouble with the with Mexico you know in my honest opinion would end all of this this mass violence the 40,000 deaths or so there this this would end all this the business with the corrupt uh financing of the or arming of the drug cartels of course would end American foreign policy would of course continue to be very problematic because it's not just drugs that's involved there but the drug war certainly doesn't help American foreign policy be logical or humane with the U.S. having sponsored brutal regimes and poisoned Latin Americans crops and all of this there's a lot of great things that would come about if we just looked at it logically and started with a principle that you don't put someone in a cage because what they choose to put in their body and when you don't understand that principle and you try to go against people's right to control their bodies to this intimate degree what follows is tyranny corruption uh mass violence and the disintegration of the social fabric you should really have your own radio show Anthony that's some great stuff man thanks that's far better than I could have done but now so here's the thing uh it seems like when people talk about decriminalization and sort of kind of a half-hearted thing I think comes back to kind of the political message of saying it's okay or not kind of thing but it seems like the real core of this is not um the possession charge on the side of the users it's the drug trade that needs to be legalized needs to be turned over to uh you know the free market where instead of having criminal gangs as you say you just have regular businesses are the ones you buy your drugs at Walgreens or whatever well sure I mean if people have a right to control what goes in their body then others have a right to sell them substances as a capitalist I don't think that the I don't believe in demonizing the drug suppliers now if they're being violent if they're criminals separate from the the drug trade or if they use violence to protect their their turf then they then they're menaces and they're not acting in a in a civilized manner and and they are in fact um bad guys but I don't believe that that that we should demonize uh and and criminalize the the production and distribution and sale of drugs any more than we do with cigarettes and alcohol and I know that this you know this comes up over and over when drug reformers make this comparison but it's so perfectly valid I was looking at a chart the other day in The Economist where they estimated harm caused to users and harm caused to others around the users by all the different drugs and of course the number one was alcohol um in terms of harming others because of people getting in accidents the many homicides that are associated with alcohol and and the overdoses with alcohol and it's a different kind of problem but in the very long term a tobacco is very can be very bad for people now that doesn't mean people don't have a right to do these things and many of the people who are very bad on the drug war question recognize this when it comes to cigarettes they think restrictions on whether you should be allowed to smoke in bars are paternalistic they they think cigarette taxes are targeting people based on their personal choices and they're right but with the drug war the problem is so much greater because people actually being dragged by the many thousands into in the cages where they're being housed with violent people the prison uh the prisons in America are are gruesome where there's brutality uh it's there it's basically slavery where where people end up the total you know in control by their cellmates and and these gangs their violence the prison guards don't help and there's there's rape it's a very common problem which people don't like to talk about in this country but it's a horrendous problem and when you put people in prison for distributing or using substances what are you what are you trying you're trying to protect them from themselves you're trying to stop them from ruining their lives by subjecting them to that it's the it's the most insane thing that's a good 20 minutes worth thanks very much anthony i really appreciate it thank you all right everybody that's my buddy anthonygregoryindependent.org anthonygregory.com lourockwell.com fff.org for his wisdom
