Abstract
The principal weakness with Alex Wodak's response to my original article is that the points he makes, whether accepted or not, have little bearing on the arguments I put. He is right to point out that there are substantial human and financial costs associated with drug prohibition. I acknowledged these costs at some length in my original paper. The fundamental question for policy makers, however, is not whether drug prohibition carries significant human and financial costs. Most criminal prohibitions carry substantial human and financial costs. We maintain them because we believe they also produce benefits and that (for at least some outcomes) the benefits outweigh the costs. Wodak ignores or downplays the benefits associated with drug prohibition. His arguments betray a misunderstanding of the mechanisms through which prohibition operates and of the kind of evidence required to determine whether a particular drug policy is a success or failure. I conclude with Caulkins and Lee (2012) that, given current knowledge, legalisation of any addictive or dangerous drug would be a ‘leap into uncharted and potentially dangerous waters'.
Introduction
My aim The Pros and Cons of Prohibiting Drugs was not to defend prohibition as a policy but simply to highlight the fact, overlooked by Douglas and McDonald (2012), that it has benefits as well as costs. Rather than respond to this point, Wodak (2014) seems to prefer boxing with shadows. I did not at any stage (a) claim that the unintended consequences of prohibition have been modest or (b) that prohibition is cost-effective (Wodak, 2014, p. 191). The key point on which we disagree is on the question of whether prohibition reduces drug consumption and drug-related harm.
Does prohibition reduce drug-related harm?
In my original article I described two ways in which this might occur. Firstly, seizures of illicit drugs might reduce supply relative to demand. Call this the
Most of Wodak’s (2014) arguments are directed at the
So what does the evidence tell us about the
What about the
Subsidiary issues
On shortages and drug law enforcement
Wodak (2014) maintains that “the small number of heroin shortages world wide is an unimpressive record of achievement in supply control'' (p. 196). This comment assumes that supply control measures only work if they create a shortage. As we have already seen, supply control measures do not need to create a literal ‘shortage’ to produce a benefit. They simply need to make prohibited drugs much more expensive than they would otherwise be.
Wodak (2014) is right when he says that the Australian heroin shortage cannot be confidently attributed solely or largely, to improved domestic drug law enforcement (p. 196). Lack of evidence that a proposition is true, however, is not the same as evidence that it is false. Knowledgeable observers have given cogent reasons for thinking that drug law enforcement did play a role (Degenhardt et al., 2006). Wodak’s preferred explanation—that the Asian crime syndicates who used to produce and sell heroin suddenly decided around Christmas 2000 to switch to selling methamphetamines (Wodak, 2008) has problems of its own. Why, one might ask, would they do this at the peak of the heroin epidemic when they were making so much money selling heroin?
Drug use remains widespread
As further evidence that supply control policy is a failure Wodak (2014) points out that “despite substantial government expenditure on drug supply control, illicit drugs remain relatively easy to obtain” (p. 192). This is an unusual argument to hear from a public health advocate. One might as well argue that the prohibition against speeding has failed because thousands of people each year continue to drive above the speed limit, or that the prohibition against drink driving has failed because thousands of people continue to drink and drive. What matters in all these cases is the counterfactual. If prohibition in question had been abandoned would the outcomes have been the same or better? Dismissing this question as “the best that supporters of conventional drug policy can now argue” (Wodak, 2014, p. 193) is just a way of avoiding the issue.
Cost-effectiveness
Wodak (2014) says I did not show that prohibition is accompanied by acceptable unintended negative consequences or that it is cost-effective (p. 191). Correct. I did not make either claim. But what if I had? No-one has shown that decriminalisation of cannabis, heroin or cocaine use leads to acceptable negative consequences or is more cost-effective than prohibition. Of course, many believe this to be the case. All we have to go on for evidence, though, are pre-post studies of the effects of decriminalisation, studies of small-scale heroin prescription trials and policy simulation studies, such as those conducted by RAND (Rydell & Everingham, 1994). I dealt with all of this evidence at length in Pros and Cons of Prohibiting Drugs.
Economic theory
Towards the end of his article, Wodak (2014) identifies what he calls the “Achilles heel” of prohibition: “The more successful supply control becomes in forcing up prices,” he says, “the more lucrative the profits of drug trafficking: but the more lucrative the profits of drug trafficking, the greater the number of new recruits to drug trafficking.” (p. 198). Neither Wodak nor I are economists but this sounds to me like dubious economic theory. Importers and producers only make more money from a rise in the price of a commodity if the increased mark up does not produce a corresponding drop in sales. A more precise way of putting this is to say that price rises benefit suppliers only if demand for the commodity is price-inelastic. But there is now abundant evidence that demand for illicit drugs is not price-inelastic (Gallet, 2013).
A final remark
According to Wodak (2014), the most fundamental question in drug policy is whether it is fair and just for the majority of a community to punish those with a minority taste in drugs (if they do not harm others by their drug use) (p. 198). This way of putting the issue is tendentious. It would not be fair or just to punish those with a minority taste in drugs if they do not harm others by their drug use but, given our experience with alcohol and tobacco, there is ample reason to doubt that unfettered or regulated access to other drugs would be cost-free as far as the community as a whole is concerned.
So the fundamental question confronting policy makers is really this: we have reason to believe that a regime of prohibition, coupled with treatment and measures to prevent overdose and the spread of disease, helps constrain many of the harms associated with illegal drugs. We know that such a regime involves substantial (human and financial) costs. What we do not know is whether some other legal regime, involving either no prohibition or something less than complete prohibition would produce the same benefits at lower (human and financial) cost.
Unlike Wodak (2014) I don’t think the answer to this question is at all obvious or clear. The answer, so far as cannabis is concerned, may become much clearer once Colarado’s experiment with cannabis legalisation has been evaluated. In the meantime, legalisation of any drug, but particularly those which are highly addictive (e.g. heroin) or dangerous (e.g. methamphetamine) must be regarded as a “leap into uncharted and potentially dangerous waters” (Caulkins & Lee, 2012, p. 36). Notwithstanding the obvious depth of their convictions, neither Wodak nor Douglas and McDonald (2012) give us much reason to take that leap.