Legalize It Man…All Of It (Part 1: The History of Hypocrisy)
Conservatives in America have developed an unfortunate image lately. The Religious Right’s growing ambition to go beyond protecting Christian’s rights to practice their religion as they please and begin writing their ethical and moral system into America’s laws (a ‘No Gays!’ Constitutional amendment? Really?!) along with a recent unpleasant streak of populism (read: socially conservative fascism) in the Republican party has cultivated this image.
The most prominently hypocritical result of this marriage of conservative religious fervor and Republican populism has manifested itself in the prohibitionist War on Drugs. In this first post on the War on Drugs I will lay out the basic early history of this ultimate hypocrisy.
Drug prohibition in the United States goes back to 1914 with the Harrison Narcotic Act which regulated the production and distribution of opiate containing substances. In the following years various regulations were laid upon various substances, the most famous of which of course was alcohol prohibition which started in 1919 and ended in 1933 with the 21st Amendment. But the War didn’t begin until June 17th, 1971.
On that summer day in 1971 then President Richard Nixon called substance abuse “public enemy number one in the United States” and declared the War on Drugs. This speech had come on the heels of the legislative declaration of War on Drugs, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.
The Controlled Substances Act created a five tier classification system for all drugs, ranging from Schedule V substances which have a low potential for abuse and medical uses to Schedule I substance which have a high potential for abuse and no medical purpose; and everything in between.
The act also empowered the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to enforce the law. In 1973 the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs was merged in the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). This was the birth of the DEA and the government’s prohibition of substances it deems dangerous.
As drug use continued to grow despite the efforts of the DEA, Ronald Reagan was elected by a country enthralled with Cocaine. Reagan took it upon himself to ramp up the War on Drugs while the First Lady flew around the country promoting her famous (or infamous) ‘Just Say No’ campaign encouraging children to say no to drugs, because otherwise they would be saying no to life.
Ever since that speech in 1971 Republicans have almost universally supported the War on Drugs; a war that cost nearly $45.5 billion in 2005 alone; a war that imprisons at least one million Americans a year; a war that has failed to reverse or even slow growing rates of drug use; a war on the individual’s freedom of self determination. Nothing could be more hypocritical. The GOP cannot continue to claim to be the party of small government while also supporting the criminalization of non-crimes committed in the privacy of a citizen’s own home.
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John:
I thought that you might enjoy this series of articles, if you have not already read them.
http://www.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html
“…and begin writing their ethical and moral system into America’s laws…”
As opposed to what? What group of citizens seeks to influence government outside an ethical/moral system? The problem is not that these folks are seeking to have a particular worldview reflected in law, but that you don’t like this particular worldview.
After all, you spend the rest of this post arguing for a distinctly libertarian approach to the “War on Drugs”. How dare you attempt to impose this libertarianism on the rest of us!
“A great many of those who ‘debunk’ traditional…values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.”
- C.S. Lewis (The Abolition of Man – one of my favorite books!)
And I think you’re confusing conservatism with libertarianism. Prohibition is not definitionally “unconservative”. While the argument can be made from a conservative perspective that the federal government has no legitimate role in prohibition, the States clearly have this power under their Police Power (10th Amendment). States have the authority to act in relation to “safety, health, morals and general welfare of the public.” (Lochner v. New York) This gives the States the right to legislate on any number of moral questions – e.g. homosexuality, pornography, drugs, gambling, etc.
You may disagree with a particular State prohibition, but a people’s right to forbid particular “private” practices through its State legislature is constitutionally legitimate.
More troubling than this legitimate democratic process is the forbidding and un-forbidding of particular practices by judges unbound to any constitutional regulations or the legislatively expressed will of the people. (See recent CA Supreme Court decision regarding gay “marriage” as an example.)
I should have been more clear, this is absolutely true. But the War on Drugs has been an almost exclusively federal effort. I think it’s incredibly troubling that when California, as a state, decided it wanted to legalize medical marijuana the DEA raided clinics and subverted the will of the people.
I would argue however that conservatism, at it’s heart, advocates the smallest government possible; whether it be state or federal. Preserving tradition has a place in conservative politics, I simply don’t believe that prohibition is the right way to go about things.
The fact is society grows and changes, the mores of the 19th century now seem outdated to even the most conservative observer. The role of the conservative is to put up opposition to those who would radically and suddenly change our mores. In doing so we ensure that only those changes with the greatest amount of support from the people can be achieved.
Prohibition doesn’t allow for any change; it attempts to freeze society in a particular place and time. This ignores the changes that all societies undergo and denies any possible growth. Yes the conservative must be wary of change for change’s sake, but we also must allow for the changes necessitated by an ever evolving society.
This is troubling as well; I wish the gay community would have some patience and work to further their goals through legislative action and community education rather than using the courts to overturn the will of the people. All this serves to do is further alienate those whom we should be trying to win over. Whether judicial activism or the War on Drugs is more troubling is, I would suppose, a matter of opinion.