On Drug Legalization and Mexico’s Drug War

Proponents of drug decriminalization strongly believe that Mexico’s drug war could come to an end if marijuana were made legal. Drug legalization, they argue, could instantly eliminate crime and violence and reduce the loss of lives. By legalizing it, businesses surrounding drug smuggling would disappear, thereby diminishing the cartels’ immense profits (60 % of which come from marijuana) that are being used for recruitment, arms purchases, and bribes. In addition,

. . . legalizing marijuana would free up both human and financial resources for Mexico to push back against the scourges that are often, if not always correctly, attributed to drug traffickers and that constitute Mexicans' real bane: kidnapping, extortion, vehicle theft, home assaults, highway robbery and gunfights between gangs that leave far too many innocent bystanders dead and wounded. Before Mexico's current war on drugs started, in late 2006, the country's crime rate was low and dropping. Freed from the demands of the war on drugs, Mexico could return its energies to again reducing violent crime.

Of course, those who oppose drug legalization especially from this side of the border question the social costs that come with legalizing drugs inasmuch as legalization will increase drug consumption. Are these drugs inherently addictive? If so, what will be their long-term effects on individual health and social well-being? Will drug consumption lead to other kinds of crimes? Will it lead to lung diseases the way cigarette smoking does? Will drug consumption impact families and cause social problems that will lead to the creation of more welfare programs? James Wilson, professor of political theory and senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College, has brought up these arguments in this old article, “Legalizing Drugs Makes Matters Worse." In a book review published by the Claremont Review of Books, he argued that social taboos against drug consumption work: “more generally, addiction is less common when the values of the culture are hostile to it and more common when those values erode. One of the ways society makes its values clear is by making actions against those values illegal and reserving praise for people who act in accordance with them.”

To be convincing, proponents of drug legalization must offer a thorough cost-benefit analysis of drug decriminalization against drug prohibition, including estimates of future social costs that may possibly come with increased drug consumption. Likewise, those who continue to believe in the wisdom of drug prohibition must look into why the war on drugs seems to be not succeeding at all.

In a way, all this represents the classic tension between individual rights and the common good. Introducing individual responsibility into the equation that would make individual rights compatible with the common good is, of course, a winning combination.