By Robert B. Charles

Theme: Any one with energy to devote to drug policy, should be dedicating it to helping educate kids not to get into the nightmare of drug use and addiction – full stop. To advocate for legalizing dangerous and addictive substances, whether they are more addictive or less addictive, damage the brain in one hit or two or five uses, is not just irresponsible. It is a betrayal of responsible parenting, teaching and community leadership – it is letting down the kids we love and who depend on us for the wisdom to make healthy choices, not unhealthy ones. These twelve facts offer all the proof needed that legalization for any purpose is a dead end street, and really a trick of those who seek to indulge their own dabbling in addiction. The sad fact is that – you cannot dabble in addiction – addiction ends free choice and controls your life.

Forgotten Fact 1: Economics of legalization are internally contradictory

• Black Market — Until we give away 100% pure drugs in unlimited quantities, there will always be a black market. Legalization only traps more kids and sets them on the course for addiction. Like it or not, until we educate people to avoid drugs – including all the disincentives that come with making use and distribution illegal — there will always be crime and drug dealers.
• Price Elasticity Fluctuates — Addictive substances do not behave in the market the way non-addictive substances do. For example, the price elasticity of demand for a highly addictive drug fluctuates – that is, it goes from a perceived luxury with first time use to an inescapable necessity a few uses later. Legalization advocate Gary Johnson himself admits that addictive substances, like cocaine carry a powerful magnetic pull. Sadly, people without his will – and especially kids – often find that pull deadly and inescapable.

Forgotten Fact 2: Health Care Costs Would Soar

• Health Care Costs Would Soar — More availability means more casual users. More casual users mean more addiction nationwide – and addiction is far more costly than prevention and deterrence. That is not only morally wrong, it is prohibitively costly. The costs are measured in treatment required, medical care required for addicts not willing to receive treatment, more chronic diseases, lower immunity, more organ damage, more traffic accidents, more workplace accidents, more violence associated with drugs like meth and crack cocaine, more AIDs and HIV contraction both through increased sexual promiscuity with lower inhibitions and needle sharing, more crack baby costs, more absenteeism, and more long term care.
• Costs Generally — If less addictive drugs like alcohol and cigarettes teach us anything, it is that more addictive drugs will cost the society incalculable sums … in lost worker productivity, accidents, health care, lost opportunities and early and avoidable death.

Forgotten Fact 3: Crime Would Rise, Not Fall.

• Most crime in America is state level crime, and roughly 80 percent of state crime nationwide is based on three categories – crime committed by those on drugs, by those with insatiable appetites who want more drugs than they can afford, and those who distribute large quantities of highly pure drugs. Note that only a fraction of a percentage point are imprisoned for possession – and these are almost all in prison because they accepted a plea bargain of possession to avoid longer terms for distribution. Legalization would only increase the number of Americans on drugs and crimes committed by those who are on drugs, and could never stem the insatiable appetite for addictive substances or black market distributors. Note also that in sates which have decriminalized marijuana on so-called compassionate grounds, crime and drug use are actually up. Who is there showing compassion now to – and taking blame – these new victims of drug-induced, drug-legalization-triggered crimes? Note that, recently, even the college-aged Midwestern pipe-bomber was a habitual marijuana user. Use common sense – drug availability spurs increased use and increased use spurs increases in the number of crimes committed by those whose brains are being affected by the drugs.

Forgotten Fact 4: Crime of Any Kind Goes Down When the Damage Done is Legalized – that is no solution.

• Of course, as a society, we could make any crime legal – and that is where the logic of legalization ends in a smoking train wreck. If we know these drugs hurt the individual and the families around that individual – and hurt them far more than use of other legal substances – we are advocating for something we know damages young lives. That is unconscionable and is like setting a trap for those we most love – that is not what America is about and it never has been. Would legalizing rape or child pornography give us less rape and less child abuse – of course not. Legalizing drugs that destroy both the lives of users and their families will only bring added heartache to addicted users and their families.

Forgotten Fact 5: Freedom requires a free will – and drugs steal away free will.

• Free will is required for freedom — and be clear of one thing, if nothing else, addictive drugs steal free will. The idea that drugs – ranging from the new high levels of THC and PCP laced joints to meth and cocaine, from heroin to ecstasy – are a free choice for long is utterly false. They are a trap for the uneducated, and the mis-educated. Too often, they catch those who underestimate their power to inflict damage unaware – and they inflict incalculable harm on the user and all those around him.

Forgotten Fact 6: Drug abuse and domestic abuse are closely linked – and always will be.

• According to the Department of Justice numbers, 80 percent of domestic abuse is based on substance abuse – is that what we want to encourage? More child abuse and more abuse of women close on the heels of more drug abuse? One need only read any of the hundreds of books that detail the impact of drug use on the family – it is devastating and leaves scars that last for generations. Who in their right mind would advocate for increased addictive substance use? Answer: Only someone who is patently anti-child, anti-woman and anti-family.

Forgotten Fact 7: Failing to warn kids about the dangers of drug abuse and to prevent it where ever possible is utterly irresponsible – even criminal.

• Leaders (adults) in a civil society that cares about the generations that will follow … are expected to teach better life choices, not life choices that push the nation’s youth into regret, lost opportunities, diminished hope, and lost ambition, or worse – emergency damage to heart, lungs, brain or death. Where are the adults who are willing to serve as examples? That is the aim of the culture – to pass on the best choices and to ward off and warn our loved ones on how to avoid the worst choices – to do the reverse is heartlessly irresponsible. In some cases, as in a case I know too well recently … it can even be criminal (cite any number of cases of criminal negligence at raves, drug-related violence and preventable accidents).
• Parents and teens that do not look out for the younger among them do not understand their roles as parents and friends, and the process begins young. LSD, for example, is marketed with the Lion King on it these days – do you think the traffickers are marketing that to 16 year olds? No – they are targeting your kids and kid sister or brother – and beginning at about 8 years old.
• Parents are the guardians of the truth, of their children’s health and of healthy choices for generations to come – if they walk away from that responsibility, or teach irresponsible and unhealthy choices, they are betraying the trust that their children place in them and inviting danger into the life of innocents. That is unconscionable, as a moral matter.

Forgotten Fact 8: Pot speeds death for the terminally ill – it doe s not help them live anything like a better or more fulfilled set of final days.

• The studies are clear now. THC use through marijuana smoking actually doubles the speed of death among AIDs patients – so there is nothing compassionate about it. It further damages the immune system in control studies and thus accelerates death. It hardly prolongs or makes easier the life that is already suffering. Studies collect by reputable medical authorities are now making it clear that pot smoking accelerates HIV into AIDS and speeds death for AIDS patients using it by further weakening their immune system.

Forgotten Fact 9: The whole false medical argument for pot is a known fiction – a one of the most cynical acts in modern politics, and a bold attempt to take Americans for fools.

• One of the most cynical acts in modern politics is the foil that legalizers use the old and tired,, the terminally ill and the suffering to wage a battle for nothing more indulgent and self-serving that the chance to get high on pot. If you are a pot head, say so – if you are a caring person, help the suffering through legal, moral and honest means – but don’t take Americans for fools. One position is darkly cynical, the other noble and self-less – and never the two should meet. The big lie is that there is anything compassionate about using another’s suffering for your indulgence – and that of course discounts the suffering that your indulgence will likely one day cost others.

Forgotten Fact 10: There is nothing all-American or healthy about putting destructive chemicals in your body.

• Those who claim that this is as old as the hills, or that there is something harmless in using today’s highly pure and highly dangerous narcotics are deceiving you and themselves – and I can tell you, because I have seen the purity numbers. Heroin was 4 percent pure a few years ago; now it is between 70 and 9-0 percent pure. Pot is also up to 25 times as pure as it once was, and is often laced with PCP. Emergency room incidents are at record highs and cocaine and methamphetamine, oxycontin, GHB and ecstasy are killing kids fast and quietly – only the parents and peers who have lost friends without the slightest real warning know how pure these drugs are. Only the stupid would try something they have no idea the potency of – it is like Russian roulette – purely stupid. Testing the drugs would never do more than offer a more predictable route to organ and brain damage – and one that is even more morally corrupt than not arresting all those who prey on the unwitting.

Forgotten Fact 11: Brain damage, organ damage, reproductive system damage and death are final.

• There is no replacing a friend, sister, brother or cousin that you knew was using drugs and did not stop. If drugs take them out – and they take out the strongest as fast as the weak – look at John Balushi and River Phoenix, the road is at a dead end. Only tears can follow and that is the kind of regret that lasts a lifetime.

Forgotten Fact 12: Overdoes are deadly and painful.

• A drug may trick your mind or body into a brief surge of suspended reality, but an overdose is sudden and without predictability – no matter what the drug. The picture is sobering – and graphic. A heroin overdose will cause bleeding from every orifice of the body – it is painful and ugly, no field of poppies or falling asleep – as in The Wizard of Oz. It is agonizing and revolting and usually your friends are so high they will let you die, or not notice until you are dead.

Forgotten Fact 13: Sweden experimented with legalization from 1966 to 1968 and recounted in horror after two years. Switzerland is today killing its whole culture through legalization, and it youth with it.

• Switzerland is a place that is trying legalization – and you can see the posters – if death occurs while injecting, try to resuscitate until no longer possible — and you can see the baby carriages around the injection projects. It is social policy out of control – it is a scene out of George Orwell’s 1984. The government is killing its own people and the effect is 14,000 in methadone clinics and a steady increase in heroin addicts with a record of virtually none who ever get off the drug. They began with giving away free needles – all for good purposes. They are headed for a nation of sick and addicted youth.

In the end – choose a path with me that celebrates self-respect, healthy life choices, families that care about each other, and common sense. If you live by common sense, love of family and self –respect – you will not go wrong –and will not use illegal drugs.

Robert B. Charles served as Chief Counsel and Staff Director (1995-1999) to the U.S. House National Security, International Affairs and Criminal Justice Subcommittee, chief staffer to the U.S. House Speaker’s Task Force on a Drug Free America (1997-1999), was a U.S. Court of Appeals clerk, Ninth Circuit (1987-88), served on the Domestic Policy Staffs or Presidents Reagan and Bush (1980-83 and 1991-92, respectively), taught government and alw at Harvard University Extension School (1997-2001), and holds an AB from Dartmouth College, JD from Colombia Law School and MA in economics from Oxford University. He is presently president of a consulting company in Maryland called Direct Impact.