Avoid The Same Mistake

I did not post the New York Times editorial, because it was still too dopey for my liking, but Peter Hitchens writes:

The mighty New York Times admitted last week that it might have been a bit wrong to be so keen on legalising marijuana, that terrible, ruinous drug. It confessed to having mistakenly believed that its ill-effects were ‘relatively minor problems’.

It recalled that legalisers had claimed marijuana was harmless. They even said legalisation might not lead to greater use.

Now it admits ‘many of these predictions were wrong. Legalisation has led to much more use… more people have also ended up in hospitals with marijuana-linked paranoia and chronic psychotic disorders’.

But it is now legal in the US. Can America get this evil-smelling genie back in its bottle? I doubt it. But we can still, just, avoid the same mistake. Will we?

There cannot be a “free” market in general, but not in drugs, or prostitution, or pornography, or unrestricted alcohol, or unrestricted gambling. That is an important part of why there must not be a “free” market in general, which is a political choice, not a law of nature. Enacting and enforcing laws against drugs, prostitution and pornography, and regulating alcohol, tobacco and gambling, are clear examples of State intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction, and that baleful situation, which has been contrived in the past, is being contrived again today.

We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. I no longer believe in prison sentences that included the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. And Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought should be taught in schools.