Prohibition causes drug abuse

The main reason that people support prohibition is because they support public health. People believe that prohibition prevents drug abuse. In the real world, though, prohibition enables drug abuse.

Consider the forbidden-fruit élan. Under prohibition, drug consumption becomes a badge of independence. Substance abusers are not just drawn to drugs; they are drawn to illegal drugs. Prohibition also creates incentives to overindulge. Efforts to avoid detection drive production toward more concentrated drugs and forces consumption into smaller time slots. Consumption is necessarily done on the sly with more dangerous substances. Nothing about prohibition fosters moderation. Even Marxists, who were never loath to remove rights and freedoms, understood this basic concept. Writing in the British socialist magazine in 1908, labor leader Harry Quelch noted that “experience has proved that any form of prohibition has but stimulated that worst form of the drunkard’s vice, secret drinking.”[i]

Prohibition also comes with expectations that lead to irresponsible consumption. These laws are based on the notion that drugs are dangerous and can take over the human will to resist them. Expectations like the “fried brain” and “loss of control” all contribute to the likelihood of self-fulfilling prophesies. The power of expectations was demonstrated years ago in research[ii] where drinkers were given unlimited access to alcohol in a “tasting” test. They were served drinks that contained vodka but were told that they contained only tonic water, or they were served drinks that contained only tonic water but were told that they contained vodka. The results showed that for both alcoholics and social drinkers, subjects who expected to drink vodka (but received none) drank almost twice as much and acted more inebriated than those who expected to receive only tonic water (but actually received vodka).

Another problem is that prohibition professionalizes control of consumption: law enforcement professionals strive to stop people from selling drugs, and treatment professionals attempt to keep people from wanting drugs. This ensures that drug use occurs outside cultural norms and sends those with unruly habits to “addiction experts” who coddle and enable them.

In my upcoming book, Blowing Smoke: Rethinking the War on Drugs without Prohibition and Rehab (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), I argue that the only effective way to control substance abuse is to de-professionalize its control. Let’s remove the forbidden fruit, change the expectations, and get the medical profession out of the rehab business. Let’s then subject substance abusers to common-sense embedded cultural controls.

Laypeople have the power to control drug habits because they own—or should own—the most valuable social assets of any society. It is the hardworking, taxpaying, and child-rearing among us who control the homes, the warm beds, the meals, and the social contacts that connect people to jobs and opportunities. Responsible people are found at every level of society. They control the goods. When this group bestows these goods on those who act responsibly and withholds them from those who do not, it wields tremendous leverage over society’s general level of civility. Responsible people can and should expect others around them to act similarly, just as they have had to do to get where they are. When faced with irresponsible behavior, responsible people naturally cut off the goods. In this way, they create incentives for everyone to do the right thing.

The medical profession is not capable of moderating this kind of tension. It is not within its nature to administer sanctions, and it tends to pathologize irresponsible behavior. The lay culture, on the other hand, deals with these tensions on a daily basis. From the time that children are taught to pick up their toys, laypeople have been shaping responsible habits. They know how to do it by instinct. Laypeople also understand that the consumption of anything (food or alcohol, for instance) is best enjoyed when linked to cultural or religious traditions, which tends to frame acceptable levels of consumption.

Prohibition laws perpetuate the temperance mindset of the 19th century: the masses are ignorant and need smart people to tell them how to live. While appeals to health are now used instead of appeals to morality, the outcome is the same: violence, lawlessness, irresponsible consumption….and the decay of public health.

[i]. Harry Quelch, “Socialism and Temperance Reform” Social Democrat 12, no. 1 (January 15, 1908): 1–8.

[ii]. Alan G. Marlatt, Barbara Demming, and John B. Reid, “An Experimental Analogue,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 81, no. 3 (June 1973): 233–41.