In response to Keisha O’Hagan’s letter to the editor of the Langley Times: “Legalization won’t solve drug problems”

Here’s the fact of the matter: Nobody knows what would happen if all drugs were legalized.

We can however, make some hypotheses based on the last time a major drug was legalized – alcohol. In the US during the 30′s, a group of Christian women, confronted with the problems of alcoholism and abusive husbands, successfully got alcohol banned in a legal process known as prohibition.

Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, prohibition made the situation much worse. The fact was, and remains, just because a substance is illegal does not mean that the market demand disappears. And where there’s a market, there will be entrepreneurs looking to make some money. Because the market was pushed underground, these entrepreneurs tiptoed around the law, creating a dangerous situation for producers, sellers, and consumers.

Prohibition of alcohol led to widespread violence, as gangsters fought to control the market (ever heard of Al Capone?). Not to mention, the product could be very hazardous, as there was no quality control, and purchasing alcohol was a simple, though potentially dangerous, process. The key here though is that the market for alcohol remained despite it being illegal, and prohibition simply pushed that market underground.

When prohibition was repealed and alcohol made legal was again, the data shows that consumption levels rose for a few years, then settled back down to a steady plateau. Gang violence disappeared overnight, and the taxes charged on alcohol were now spent to help educate citizens about the dangers of the drug and treat addiction.

Prohibitionist policies don’t work. They ignore the reality of the situation. Our current drug laws are not only hypocritical – because tobacco and alcohol, two of the worst drugs around, are actually legal – but are in fact making the whole drug problem much worse than it needs to be. We’ve instituted the same prohibitionist public policies towards drugs for over half a century.

As Einstein once said, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

We all want to reduce drug consumption. But if the current strategy isn’t working, isn’t it time we experiment with other solutions such as the Four Pillars harm reduction model, decriminalization, and perhaps even legalization.

If the outcomes are worse than today, then we can always reverse our public policies.

The status quo isn’t good enough. We ought to at least try something different.