Posted on 12/17/2002 9:39:06 AM PST by Joe Bonforte
In a little noticed hearing of the House Government Reform Commnittee last week, Indiana Congressman (my homeotwn's Congressman actually) and longtime drug warrior Dan Burton made some stunning comments. In a hearing entitled "America's Heroin Crisis, Colombian Heroin and How We Can Improve Plan Colombia," Burton stopped just a hair short of advocating the decriminalization of drugs. Watch the video here (cut forward to 1 hour, 18 minutes into the hearing). Here's the transcript:
Dan Burton: I want to tell you something. I have been in probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty hearings like this at various times in my political career,. And the story is always the same. This goes back to the sixties. You know, thirty or thirty five years ago. And every time I have a hearing, I hear that people who get hooked on heroin and cocaine become addicted and they very rarely get off of it. And the scourge expands and expands and expands. And we have very fine law enforcement officers like you go out and fight the fight. And you see it growing and growing, and you see these horrible tragedies occur. But there is no end to it.
And I see young guys driving around in tough areas of Indianapolis in cars that I know they can’t afford and I know where they are getting their money. I mean that there is no question. A kid can’t be driving a brand-new Corvette when he lives in the inner city of Indianapolis in a ghetto. You know that he has gotta be making that money in someway that is probably not legal and probably involves drugs.
Over seventy percent of all crime is drug-related. And you alluded to that today. We saw on television recently Pablo Escobar gunned down and everybody applauded and said “that’s the end of the Medellín cartel. But it wasn’t the end. There is still a cartel down there. They are still all over the place. When you kill one, there’s ten or twenty or fifty waiting to take his place. You know why? Its because of what you just said a minute ago, Mr. Carr, Mr. Marcocci (sp). And that is that there is so much money to be made in it there is always going to be another person in line to make that money.
And we go into drug eradication and we go into rehabilitation and we go into education, and we do all of these things... And the drug problem continues to increase. And it continues to cost us not billions, but trillions of dollars. Trillions! And we continue to build more and more prisons, and we put more and more people in jail, and we know that the crimes most of the time are related to drugs.
So I have one question I would like to ask all of you, and I think this is a question that needs to be asked. I hate drugs. I hate people who succumb to drug addiction, and I hate what it does to our society. It has hit every one of us in our families or friends of ours. But I have one question that nobody ever asks, and that is this question: What would happen if there was no profit in drugs? If there was no profit in drugs, what would happen. If they couldn’t make any money out of selling drugs, what would happen?
Carr: I would like to comment. If we made illegal... what you are arguing then is complete legalization?
Dan Burton: No I am not arguing anything. I am asking the question. Because we have been fighting this fight for thirty to forty years and the problem never goes way...
....Well I don’t think that the people in Colombia would be planting coca if they couldn’t make any money, and I don’t think they would be refining coca and heroin in Colombia if they couldn’t make any money. And I don’t think that Al Capone would have been the menace to society that he was if he couldn’t sell alcohol on the black market and he did and we had a horrible, horrible crime problem. Now the people who are producing drugs in Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia and Colombia and everyplace else. They don’t do it because they like to do it. They don’t fill those rooms full of money because they like to fill them full of money. They do it because they are making money.
At some point we to have to look at the overall picture and the overall picture and I am not saying that there are not going to be people who are addicted they are going to have to be education and rehabilitation and all of those things that you are talking about - but one of the parts of the equation that has never been talked about because politicians are afraid to talk about it this is my last committee hearing as Chairman. Last time! And I thought about this and thought about this, and thought about this. And one of the things that ought to be asked is “what part of the equation are we leaving out?” And “is it an important part of the equation?” And that is the profit in drugs. Don’t just talk about education. Don’t just talk about eradication. Don’t just talk about killing people like Escobar, who is going to be replaced by somebody else. Let’s talk about what would happen if we started addressing how to get the profit out of drugs.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if, twenty years from now, we could look back at law-and-order Dan Burton's conversion as the "Nixon goes to China" turning point of the drug war?
To examine the proposition by Libertarians, and now Mr. Burton we must look at the entire picture, and the end result.
You are correct to assume that, in accordance with the nature of supply and demand, by reducing the supply, you increase the demand and by increasing the demand you raise the value of said product or service.
So, yes, by reducing the ability of hard drugs to find their way to the US, you increase the market value of those drugs. By doing that, you raise the motivation of dealers and producers to produce and send more drugs to the US. In contrast, by legalizing, you will indeed cut the legs out from under the cartels and dealers.
However we must also weight the effects of said action to the consumers of these narcotics. While the mean ol' cartels would likely go out of business, the consumers of the legalized substances would have more motivation to use. The product would be more readily available, for a cheaper price, and with a virtually nill likelyhood of getting a bad product.
So, while you may have remedied the supply side, killing off the cartels and giving the job of production over to corporations, you INCREASE the motivation of users and non users to use MORE.
I don't see that as a good thing.
People might get the idea that they have a right to control their own body. They might think that they have a right to buy medical drugs without a perscription.
Then where will the Doctors and insurance companies be? Broke, that's where.
What will happen to all those lawyers. The prosecutors and defenders?
Oh, no. We can't let that happen. We must continue to destroy people's lives so we can have high paying jobs.
They do have that right. Just not in a community where irresponsible use of a drug results in harm of others in the community. This would apply to narcotics that when used irresponsibly, result in citizens that are a risk to others, or to antibiotics, that when used irresponsibly can result in creating immune bacteria that cannot be cured by simple antibiotics anymore, ect, ect.
There was no drug war until about 90 years ago. But there were plenty of drugs readily available even right in the Sears and Roebuck cataloge (cocaine). Yet we had a smaller problem with drug use than now.
I submit that if people want to use drugs, they will. No matter if its legal or not. So I don't believe your premise that you INCREASE the motivation of users. Yes, the price is lower. But availability (if retail sales of drugs is still illegal) may be less than today because there's no big money to be made. So I believe that if done correctly, drug legalization can actually help the drug USE problem
I understand your concern, though I don't share it because I don't believe making drugs legal would lead to the dire consequences you predict. But let's assume those consequences did come true. Do you believe that situation is worse than what we have now?
Remember the hundreds of thousands in prison for non-violent offenses, ripping up families and leaving kids without parents. Remember the hundreds or thousands killed each year in the drug war violence, many of them innocent bystanders. Remember the erosion of Constitutional rights as the 4th Amendment becomes practically meaningless.
I'm not trying to bait you. I just want to know if you really think all those things are preferable to increased drug usage - hypothetical increased usage at that.
I don't see that as a good thing.
Just like ending Prohibition reduced the disincentives of alcohol users. Was that a good thing? If not, should Prohibition have been continued?
And why should I, a non-drug-user, have to pay---in tax dollars, a justice system corupted by drug money, and increased threat from drug-turf wars---to "protect" others from their own weaknesses?
Alcohol fits that description better than many illegal drugs. Do you support banning alcohol?
After all, they kill people routinely already, so it shouldn't be much of a surprize if Pfizer's Vice President for Recreational Drugs goes up in a ball of flame in the company parking lot: or Ma and Pa Smith get wasted in their convenience store the day after they start carrying marijuana.
I don't have a solution, but we ought to recognize that the cartels have an interest in maintaining an artificial shortage, and the means to do so.
Does legal booze keep people out of the bars? Last time I went, they were quite packed. Also, have you checked out any college campuses lately? Wanna know the most prevalent drug? The LEGAL one, Alcohol. Easy access, cheap, and fun for the whole frat.
You think that giving Phillips & Morris the job of supplying Cocaine or Heroin that they won't make BIG money? What are you smoking?
So, while you may have remedied the supply side, killing off the cartels and giving the job of production over to corporations, you INCREASE the motivation of users and non users to use MORE.
Your analogy only works in terms of a general commodity market, where cost is the only downside. Drugs have their own inherent cost, and people recognize that. If cost was the primary deterrent to people doing drugs, I'd think you would see a substantial increase in drug use as you move up the economic scale, but you don't. Removing the profit from drugs stands to have a much greater affect on the associated crime rate than the rate of usage because there are much different motivating factors involved, respectively. - IMHO
I'd put it this way. I like the state I live in, but if it decided to legalize all drugs, I would be out of here faster than you can say epidemic.
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