The gang violence this city has witnessed in the last several years has contaminated some of our city’s most vibrant and diverse neighborhoods—good and bad people alike live in fear of the random bullet that may be coming their way. The status and money offered by a life of crime are a powerful lure to the naïve, underprivileged and morally oblivious inner-city youth who see their elders suffering in perpetual poverty while their communities sink into disrepair. Some believe the answer to this dilemma lays in greater law enforcement, but ironically it is the misguided aims of the law that have created such a powerful gang environment, if not the indigence it preys upon.
The lifeblood of the gangs is the drug trade. The war against illicit drugs has never diminished the demand for them to a significant degree, even after nearly a century. What we see today in our city, and even more strikingly in places like Mexico, is that prohibition creates drug militias that cater to the realities our governments refuse to acknowledge. The obscene profits generated by the demand for drugs fuels the aggression and pays for the weapons that protect the territory coveted by the suppliers.
There is no doubt that illicit drugs destroy lives. One can hardly condone the sale of crack cocaine or crystal meth, but at the same time allowing unprincipled street urchins to become the sole purveyors of chemical euphoria creates a situation where bad drugs proliferate. Gangs are entrepreneurial enterprises interested in maximizing profits and highly addictive substances that are cheap to produce are pure gravy for them. They do not care about the destruction they wreak on individual lives or communities, they are selling a quick fix to the problems of our society, and there are a lot of people out there who are buying.
The enforcement of drug prohibition is by necessity scattershot because there can never be enough resources to commit to the problem. Taking down a major cartel is like cutting a head off the Hydra: two more will grow back. In the case of some substances there is such an abundance of supply that even a major bust is merely a drop in the ocean. Ironically, what enforcement does is justify the outrageous amounts consumers are willing to pay for these products, and the ends that cartels are willing to go to to protect their racket.
Unfortunately jail-time is hardly a deterrent to the people who make their living selling drugs. As the example of the United States makes perfectly evident stiffer sentences have little effect on the problem of drug trafficking. What it creates is a culture of incarceration that is extremely expensive to administer while offering little protection to the public.
Laws against drugs are generally a burden on society that provide no benefits, but the case against marijuana prohibition presents a particularly compelling example of their ineffectiveness. Marijuana is an easily grown plant that produces a relatively mild effect depending on the strain and the individuals experience with the drug. The only people who would consider it more dangerous than alcohol are those who have never tried it. It is hugely popular among all age groups in this country and almost always available from somewhere. It is a major source of revenue for some of the biggest, baddest gangs in Canada. Legalizing marijuana tomorrow would divert a major source of gang revenue to our government without causing a significant threat to public safety.
The demand for narcotics has not abated since drug enforcement became the international juggernaut it is today. Whereas the music of the sixties glamourized the use of drugs as mind-expanding, the music today glamourizes not just the drugs but the violence and big payouts that accompany a gangster lifestyle. It used to be that the pusherman was reviled; now he is a hero.
The moral superiority that drives the continued prohibition of certain narcotics while generously prescribing others is hypocritical beyond belief, meanwhile the war on drugs is a costly exercise in futility. The way forward is to legalize the least hazardous illicit narcotics immediately while finding ways to make the deadlier ones less desirable to would-be users.
Allowing people to use illicit substances to the tune of their consciences will not create more of an epidemic in public health than already exists, it will however permit scientists to study drug use more effectively, let help agencies attempt more controversial methods for rehabilitation and give governments access to a fair share of the profits. Perhaps the greatest benefit of all though will be that the lives of countless peace officers, military personnel and civilians will be saved by starving the drug armies out of existence and denying street gangs access to easy money.
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