Crime and Drugs

Opponents of California’s landmark Proposition 19 fear the worst. Surely, they say, decriminalizing the use, production and sale of marijuana is an invitation for trouble and neither an estimated $1.4 billion in new tax revenue for strained state coffers nor millions saved in incarceration costs justifies its passage in November’s elections. Among their top concerns: It will create more crime.

The “decriminalization breeds crime” argument is not new to the drug policy debate. Back in 1999, U.S. drug czar General Barry McCaffrey stated that liberalized drug policies in the Netherlands were behind a murder rate twice as large as that in the United States. That the statistic McCaffrey cited included both murders and attempted murders in the Netherlands proved a convenient gloss over the fact that the United States had a murder rate four times higher.

Gil Kerlikowske, the current drug czar, used a similar argument this month in reaction to high-level talks of legalization within Mexico, where drug violence has killed more than 28,000 people in the last three and a half years. In an interview with Bloomberg News, Kerlikowske warned that the cartels would continue to engage in illicit activities such as extortion and kidnapping. “They’re not going to suddenly turn around and apply to IBM or Microsoft because they lost one part of their criminal enterprise,” he said.

If history is any indication, though, Kerlikowske is only half right. Daniel Okrent, author of “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,” said in an interview that while some of the bootleggers who made their fortunes selling illegal alcohol went into other forms of organized crime once Prohibition ended, many tried to legitimize themselves through legal businesses, primarily in the gambling industry in Las Vegas.
After Prohibition, Okrent said, the crime rate “went way down.”

Nations from Portugal and Germany to Australia and Brazil are experimenting with the liberalization of marijuana consumption. When a once criminal behavior no longer warrants prosecution or prison time, an easing of consumption related crimes is to be expected in these nations.

But decriminalizing use is no panacea against crime. Crime continues to thrive in other facets of the drug trade and may even grow in some unexpected ways.

The Netherlands, perhaps the most famous proving ground for decriminalization efforts, has actually generated opportunities for those involved in the supply, production and distribution of drugs.

“The reality is," Martin Jelsma, international drug policies expert at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, said in an interview "that there is significant crime in the cannabis market in the Netherlands because only sales in small quantities is allowed. Everything else is criminalized as everywhere else." In other words, the supply is handled by criminals.

The intrinsic contradiction of free consumption and illegal supply complicated the job of law enforcement and led to an initial laxity among authorities toward those involved in the drug trade. As a result, “criminal groups grew stronger in the Netherlands” and even began to export their wares. Police forces now must make daily raids to “suppress production to the level that is supported by domestic consumption,” he added.

This juggling act has many politicians in Holland, Switzerland and other countries considering the next logical step -- legalizing the entire cannabis market. The big deterrent, beside some internal resistance, is that such a move would violate United Nations drug treaties.

To alter those treaties would require the type of global consensus that has long proved elusive when it comes to illegal drugs. Many leaders believe that legalization amounts to capitulation. “Since I can’t defeat them, I give up,” Peruvian President Alan Garcia said in a recent interview, parodying what he considers a defeatist approach.

That attitude has been challenged unsuccessfully for years. Colombia's newly inaugurated President Juan Manuel Santos has shown support for reconsidering these treaties. In a letter to the UN Secretary General in 1998, he and others warned that “too often those who call for open debate, rigorous analysis of current policies, and serious consideration of alternatives are accused of ‘surrendering.’ The true surrender is when fear and inertia combine to shut off debate, suppress critical analysis, and dismiss all alternatives to current policies."

Twelve years later, drug crime and violence has only increased its purview and turned ever more vicious. For anyone who has seen the violent effects of illegal drugs -- decapitated bodies, drive-by shootings, car bombs -- a thorough and honest exploration of alternatives is long overdue.