Spice!

Unintended Consequences of the War on Drugs

This week in my local newspaper, Florida’s Lieutenant Governor Jeff Kottkamp wrote an op-ed reporting that a drug known as “Spice” is becoming “… a nightmare for law enforcement, because it is sold and used openly as a so-called legal alternative to marijuana. Currently, there is no way to test for the use of Spice — making it that much more attractive to would-be users.”

Kottkamp reports, “Spice is, in fact, more potent and more dangerous than marijuana.”

The issue here is not about Spice; it is about alternatives to marijuana. Making Spice illegal would simply open the door for drug entrepreneurs to develop other recreational drugs that are “more potent and more dangerous than marijuana.”

We’ve been fighting a war on drugs for 30 years, and the drugs are winning. There is ample evidence that the harm from illegal drugs comes more from the fact that they are illegal than that they are drugs.

I am no advocate of recreational drug use. Following Nancy Reagan, if someone offers you some, my advice would be to “Just Say No!” But there are two strong arguments in favor of legalization. One is that this used to be a free country, and freedom has to mean the freedom to make what people in the government think are bad choices. Another more utilitarian argument is that the harm from their illegality is greater than the harm from the drug use itself.