From Free Life, Issue 23, August 1995
ISSN: 0260 5112

Given the inclination, and the space, one could spend a lot of time comparing these two books. To mention just three of many contrasts: the first is rather long and detailed, the second short to the point of brusqueness. The first is even-paced and perhaps a shade prosy, the second swift and concise in the extreme. The first ends up on the fence: a general opposition to legalisation, but with a call for "de- escalation" of the drug war and "deeper understanding and tolerance" (235); the second comes out categorically in favour of legalisation of all currently illicit drugs.

The books have different purposes, of course. The Return of the Dangerous Classes is for the specialist, not the general reader. Well-written, thorough, scholarly, and well- documented (the author teaches political science and criminology at New York's City University) its thesis is that there is a "shadow agenda" in US drug prohibition the intention of which is to attack, contain or control those whom the legislators perceive as the "dangerous classes": most particularly young, inner city blacks; but also youth in general, aliens, immigrants, minorities, and even `liberals'.

Professor Gordon was led to discover this phenomenon by her curiosity as to why drug prohibition was "alive and well throughout the land" while at the same time there existed "widespread awareness of its failures" (7). She found that prohibition was indeed partly motivated by revulsion for drugs and desire to protect those at risk, but that there was a great variety of other wants and needs to sustain it. One of the most significant was - you guessed it - political:

"The near universal yearning for personal safety gives governing elites a chance to demonstrate the social control capabilities of the state, manage the `dangerous classes' in American society, feather their own nests politically and materially, and replace the economic and political opportunities of the Cold War with others that require similar activities and expenditures" (17).

There are more astute observations of this kind, and generally Professor Gordon's thesis seems (to an underinformed outsider) both compelling and important.

Probably the most interesting parts of the book are the detailed studies on which Professor Gordon's conclusions are based. These include efforts to get a federal death penalty for drug `kingpins' through Congress; a Michigan law imposing life imprisonment for possession of a pound-and-a-half of illicit drugs; the re-criminalisation of marijuana possession in Alaska; an anti-loitering law in Seattle, aimed at street trafficking in the city's downtown; and an anti-drug sales tax which the "notoriously tight-fisted" inhabitants of Kansas City imposed upon themselves (73). In these and other issues, the extent to which drug prohibition is designed for the benefit of politicians is made abundantly clear. In Professor Gordon's words, it is a vivid example of "distraction politics" (171). But businessmen also benefit. In Seattle, for example, the city's merchants supported the anti-loitering law in order to get `undesirables' off their doorsteps.

Other interesting chapters cover US drug rhetoric, or "Drugspeak" (183-208), and drug legislation and enforcement in Europe. Europeans are seen as gentler and more forgiving, but also the victims of an aggressive US, which has been "cajoling or bullying other countries into drug control... since 1909" (214). The Dangerous Classes also contains disturbing facts on injustice and racial prejudice in the US judicial system. For example, while most illicit drug users in the United States are white - 20 out of 26 million (144) - black users are five times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes (143) and seventeen times more likely to be jailed (144).

Viewed in the light of its cynical "shadow agenda", Professor Gordon maintains that US drug prohibition has not failed, as its critics maintain; rather, it has "triumphed - if mostly with the bitter taste extracted from wormwood" (227). She further implies that the presence of this agenda, and the benefits it brings to politicians, to the business world, and to older generations of Americans, make legalisation a far more complex issue, and far harder to bring about, than some of its more enthusiastic supporters suppose.

Minor flaws in the book include snippets of social science gibberish ("Durkheim reminds us that behaviour is criminal because we don't like it, not that we find it repugnant because it is criminal", 19); the odd irksome misjudgement ("there appears to be no clear relationship between drug use and drug policy", 211); occasional prolixity (stealing is "committing acquisitive crime", 232); and a less-than-forceful conclusion. Otherwise, the book is well worth reading both for general information, and for its perceptive exposure of issues which no doubt also exist in the UK, although perhaps they are better concealed here than they are across the Pond.

The mere existence of Richard Stevenson's essay Winning the War on Drugs has to be good news for libertarians. First, it is an excellent short summary of the pragmatic case for the legalisation of drugs. Clearly written, well-argued, and completely unambiguous, it comes out foursquare for all currently illicit `psychoactive' substances - amphetamines, cannabis, cocaine, heroin, the lot - to become as legal to buy, own, sell and use as tobacco and alcohol. Second, and more significantly, Dr Stevenson's essay is published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, an event which may possibly signal a shift in the winds of prohibition.

I say this last (and I do not mean to belittle past or current work) because it has long seemed to me that the IEA - counter to Tony Fisher's original intentions - has become part of the Establishment. Its teeth have been pulled by peerages and cosy consultancies; its spicey broth has been made bland by an excess of academic cooks; and its tax-exempt, apolitical status seems to have become an excuse for not rocking the boat. If you'll pardon the sudden switch in metaphorical mode of transport; the IEA used to start bandwagons, now it climbs onto them.

Fortunately, that doesn't stop the IEA saying the right thing. Hobart #124 is a case in point. Both police and doctors - who have to clean up the drug mess made by the politicians - have been calling for legalisation for years. They have met no great furore of condemnation, so now the IEA is sticking its head over the parapet too. Well, welcome aboard! Remember the route to Queer Capital? This is the Crack Island Line!

But I must return to praising Dr Stevenson's work. In a brief Introduction, and six compact chapters (barely 56 pages in all), he demonstrates that drug prohibition is "wrong in principle" and "does not work in practice" (52). He begins by showing how the impetus for prohibition has come largely from the United States; which - after the disastrous failure of its prohibition of alcohol, whence sprang `organised crime' - has switched its evangelical attention to other drugs in a blindly perverse repeat performance.

"Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it". The US has spent untold billions of dollars, and has created mayhem all over the globe, only to see gangsters proliferate far more than during their first Prohibition and the consumption of illicit drugs shoot upwards exactly as once did bootleg booze. Santayana's grave must be awash with tears of despair.

The most tragic consequences of the US government's manifest destiny as international busybody-in-chief have occurred, as Dr Stevenson shows, in South-East Asian and Andean countries where age-old customs have suddenly become `crimes' under US pressure; and where consequent waves of addiction, associated health problems, corruption and violent crime have perverted whole societies.

Virtually all aspects of drug probition are covered in Dr Stevenson's mini-monograph: the exaggerated claims of drug dangers made by opponents of drug use; the high prices on illicit markets pushing users into prostitution or crime; the general endangerment of the populace that results; the disease and death resulting from adulterated illicit products; the vast fortunes made by drug barons - bigger that the GNP of most countries ("criminals love probibition" as Dr Stevenson drily observes, 14); and the total failure of prohibition to achieve its goals. (I deliberately refrain from providing details - I would like people to buy the book.)

I do have some objections. Dr Stevenson introduces graphs and algebra to illustrate points about drug prices. Although my mind tends to go blank at the sight of numbers, I did think that his mathematics obscured rather than illuminated his meaning here. Any economic idea worth knowing about can be expressed in simple English. Mathematical economics - as I believe Ludwig von Mises pointed out - more often confuses than persuades.

My second objection is the extent to which Dr Stevenson allows government the right to regulate markets. He does say government may intervene in the market "if, and only if, it can do better" (65). But he so repeatedly proffers regulation as a sweetener for legalisation that one starts to wonder whether this is a pragmatic trade-off to disarm the opposition in advance, or whether the author adheres to the Conservative contradiction of calling for `free markets' while imposing Mussolini-style measures like the Financial Services Act.

Richard Stevenson's fine paper is discussed in two accompanying commentaries. The first is by Professor Julius Merry of St Thomas's Hospital and the University of Surrey. A senior psychiatrist, Merry solidly endorses Dr Stevenson's call for legalisation. For myself, however, the chief interest of his contribution is a summary history of opiates in the UK. This contains such tidbits as 19th century doctors attempting to cure opium addiction with morphine, and morphine addiction with heroin - what Popper might have called fallibilism in the growth of knowledge!

The second commentary - mercifully brief, and presumably included to provide `a balanced view' - is a sarcastic ad hominem argument against Dr Stevenson by three gentlemen who shall be nameless (not to save them embarassment, I simply decline to spend time copying out their names and titles). The following quotation illustrates their sloppy thinking, inaccuracy, and sneering tone: "Stevenson believes that the fact that one-third of young people have used an illegal drug (p.20) points to the unenforceability of drug prohibition; in fact, over one-half of young people [sic] have violated more serious laws, a finding which indeed points to the difficulty of constraining behaviour with criminal prohibitions but does not speak to the desirability of retaining those prohibitions on larceny and assault" (85).

Over half of Britain's young people have committed larceny or assault? Needless to say, no reference is provided.

It is sad that this otherwise splendid little study should conclude with such offensive rubbish, but perhaps the IEA was unobtrusively showing us how paltry the arguments of the opponents of legalisation really are. If so, thank you.

My only real quarrel with Richard Stevenson, as it is with Diana Gordon, is the complete absence in both their books of any discussion of individual rights. This is a particularly egregious lacuna in the latter's work since she should, as an American political scientist, be fully aware that her country's constitution contains no legal basis whatsoever for such an obvious breach of the rights to liberty and property as drug prohibition.

The practical common sense case put forward by Richard Stevenson is perfectly correct. All the evidence shows that drug prohibition is a total failure. Far from arresting drug abuse, it has actually increased it. It has also generated a host of new evils besides. Thus, the only sane method for dealing with this government-spawned monster is to remove that which created it in the first place: the Dangerous Drugs Act, Misuse of Drugs Act, Drug Trafficking Act, etc, etc, etc.

But the high ground in the whole debate has to be the moral case. Government has no right to legislate against drug-taking, or against any other consensual behaviour. Behaviour is an individual responsibility, a matter for self-government. As long as citizens do not contravene anybody else's rights, it is their affair alone how much they whore, gamble or peddle erotica. Nor is it anybody else's business but their own whether they rot their lungs with smoke, their livers with booze, their sinuses with cocaine, their minds with LSD, or their whole silly selves with heroin.

Drs Stevenson and Merry both mention `forbidden fruits'. Their studies would have been greatly enriched if they had determined just how much the patronising, nanny-knows-best attitude of government is the key element provoking rebellious experimentation with what are, when all is said and done, potentially dangerous substances.

The restoration of full individual rights to liberty and property is the only solution to `the drug problem' and the only way to wage `the drug war'. Place responsibility back where it belongs, with each individual human being, and by implication, with parents, and Puff! All the monsters created by drug prohibition will turn out to be no more terrifying than the magic dragons of fairy tales.

Nicholas Dykes