A Conservative's Case for Legalization

Submitted by Jake Bolinger on January 25, 2011 - 5:13pm
PrintPrintEmailEmail

The emergence of a new think tank, Right on Crime, is the visible product of a discontent that has been growing within the American right for a considerable time. Its message: The cost of feeding our national Prison-Industrial complex has become unbearable. And some eminently recognizable names-- Bill Bennett and Asa Hutchinson, among them—are attached to this project, which aims to change how Conservatives view incarceration in this country, specifically regarding substance abuse.

 

Right on Crime’s website opines on drug-related prisoners: “Many of these offenders were incarcerated for non-violent crimes. They were not immediate threats to public safety, but it was in society’s best interest to ensure that they stopped abusing drugs. Taxpayers are entitled to ask whether incarceration is accomplishing that goal”.

 

This view is a refreshing turn for those of us on the right who question the hypocrisy of a party aiming to advance personal freedom, while simultaneously lauding widespread arrests and incarcerations of drug offenders. In 2009 nearly 1.7 million people were arrested for drug abuse violations, according to the U.S Department of Justice. In federal prisons alone, more than 52% of the population, in 2008, were drug offenders.

 

It has taken a recession to make the staggering costs of the drug war an unavoidable subject, while in reality the moral costs should have incensed us much earlier. Various studies have shown that while consumption rates for marijuana are even among young whites and minorities, the percentage of arrests and prosecutions is greatly unbalanced. Simply put, if the ratio of drug abuse to arrest seen in the black community was normalized across the whole population, the damage to the nation’s economical fabric would be harrowing. The damage to the national psyche already is.

 

The danger of appealing to the state as a moral authority should be evident to even casual students of 20th century history. Imbuing government with prohibitive powers in matters of personal choice has never amounted to a victory more than Pyrrhic for moral crusaders. And at a time when trust in our political leadership is at a rightly deserved low, there could be no worse mouthpiece for a social movement than the federal government. It is self defeating to the Conservative movement as a whole to use government as a conduit for morality, If people are to be convinced to change substance habits, let it not be through the institution that once established as the font of moral absolutes has shown the greatest tendency to abuse them.

 

As an institution, Right on Crime has stopped short of the logical conclusion – repealing drug prohibition. However there are a growing number of us on the right who would also agree with our constant North Star, Mr. William F. Buckley Jr., who desired an end to the drug war, and wisely opined that, as a Conservative who believes morality comes from outside the state, making something possible was not akin to making it advisable. 

 

(Photo: Cocaine bricks seized during Project Coronado; Drug Enforcement Agency)