Legalize drugs! -The iPINIONS Journal

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox has been making news all year – not only by blaming insatiable demand in the United States for the drug-related violence that has turned Mexico into a veritable war zone, but also for declaring that the legalization of production, transit, and sale of all prohibited drugs is the only way to fight the so-called “war on drugs”, which both countries have been fighting to no avail since 1971.

(According to an October 19, 2010 report in Business & Law, legalizing drugs would save the U.S. government approximately $41.3 billion annually on expenditures related to the enforcement of prohibition and yield tax revenues of $46.7 billion based on tax rates comparable to those currently levied on tobacco and alcohol. Not to mention that it would release hundreds of thousands from prison who are now serving time not for drug violence, but merely for drug possession and use.)

In his latest declaration on the subject, during an interview with the BBC yesterday, Fox cited the obvious precedent Prohibition set; most notably, the crime and other untenable social consequences that led inexorably to legalizing all alcohol. And nobody can deny that the crime and other social consequences prohibition against drugs has wrought are infinitely more untenable.

(According to a June 11, 2011 report in the Los Angeles Times, over 40,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since Fox’s successor, President Felipe Calderon, ordered a military crackdown on the drug cartels in December 2006.)

No doubt public fatigue and disillusionment with this war (on both sides of the border) is why Fox was also keen to cite a Gallup poll – published on Monday – which showed that 50 percent of Americans now favor legalizing marijuana. This is a far cry from legalizing all drugs, but it’s the first time a majority has favored legalization since Gallup began polling on the use of marijuana in 1969.

Of course, the more enlightened among us were on the legalize-drugs bandwagon even before Gallup began polling. But, frankly, ever since Prohibition (1919-1933) all reasonable people should have developed an instructive appreciation of this variation on George Santayana’s famous quote, namely: that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

I learned; which is why I jumped on the bandwagon years ago:

[T]alk of Obama deploying U.S. troops to the Mexican-U.S. border is hysterical nonsense… I regret that Obama’s enlightenment … does not extend to doing the only thing that will guarantee victory in this war: legalize drugs!

(Mexico-U.S. relationship is all about supply and demand … of cheap labor and drugs, The iPINIONS Journal, March 31, 2009)

So I welcome Fox. I just wish he had the balls to come on board when he was president from 2001 to 2006. Because his voice would have carried a great deal more political weight back then.

Meanwhile, I hope it’s not beating my chest too much to note that I have also been in the vanguard of those calling for the legalization of all performance enhancing drugs (steroids) too:

The only way to bring integrity to sports is to repeal the moral prohibition against drug use and allow athletes to do or take whatever they deem is necessary to be successful.

(A plea for Landis, Gatlin, et al: decriminalize drugs … especially in sports, The iPINIONS Journal, August 3, 2006)