Military man and drug warrior Joseph Califano and former drug czar William Bennett recently teamed up to write a Wall Street Journal editorial entitled “Do We Really Want a ‘Needle Park’ on American Soil?” The editorial is an attack on the recent report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which declares that the US War on Drugs has failed and is ruining civilization around the globe. The commission consists of 19 prominent people with credentials equal to or better than Califano and Bennett’s. It calls for the substitution of legalization and harm-reduction policies for the hopeless war on drugs.
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Prohibition also brings increased violence and property crime. Legalization would bring commercially produced products that are reasonably priced. Consumers would be able to afford the products and could consume them in the privacy of their own homes. Violence and property crime would decline. Sellers would be required to provide sufficient safety information and would be liable if they sold an inherently deadly product.
I have no doubt that if Califano and Bennett were in charge, they would invoke Rockefeller-style laws or even worse (Bennett once suggested that beheading drug dealers was “morally plausible”). The reality is that limited legalization has been shown to work, and that full legalization is the policy we should be working toward.
(Read more from mises.org)