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Drug Policy

7 min read

Part of Crime, police and punishment.

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Every episode (12)

Who argued it

Jeffrey Singer · Brian D. Kelly · Austin Petersen · Jeffrey Miron · Anthony L. Fisher · Rick Doblin · David Boaz · Lucy Steigerwald · Alice Goffman · Jim Gray · Veronique de Rugy · John Lovell

Criminal Justice Reform · Libertarianism · Public Choice Theory · Federalism · FDA · Individual Rights · Welfare State · Civil Asset Forfeiture

Background: Drug Prohibition

The libertarian case

Bob Zadek opened a 2009 episode by calling drug legalization “a libertarian issue,” arguing that it crosses party lines and rests on three principles: that people are smart, that politicians crave power, and that individuals matter. He framed the show as an attack on what he called “the intoxicating drug of power” rather than on the drugs people put in their bodies, and pointed to California’s potential to lead the nation in reversing prohibition Legalize drugs. (2009).

David Boaz, in a 2015 episode, stated the moral case directly: people have a right to live as they choose so long as they do not interfere with the equal rights of others, and it should not be government’s role to tell adults what they can smoke, snort or shoot up. He compared drug prohibition to alcohol prohibition, which he said did not work well, and argued that while drug use and abuse cause problems, prohibition causes more. He added that it is wrong to jail people for what they smoke David Boaz on The Libertarian Mind (2015).

Zadek pressed the same point in that episode, describing government as the only societal organization permitted to use force and coercion, and contrasting it with a business like Walmart, which he said has no power over you. The core libertarian issue, he said, is that people are allowed to make decisions, even wrong ones, and cannot be coerced into making right ones David Boaz on The Libertarian Mind (2015).

Social and economic costs

Boaz described the drug war’s social effects: it puts a large number of young black men into the criminal justice system, costs a great deal of money, leaves prisoners more associated with criminals than before, corrupts law enforcement officers and judges who take bribes from drug gangs, and destroys inner-city communities. He attributed high crime rates in those communities largely to the drug war and turf warfare between drug gangs, explaining that a drug dealer whose corner is encroached upon cannot go to the police or the courts and so shoots instead David Boaz on The Libertarian Mind (2015).

Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard, gave figures in a 2017 episode. He said only about 10% of the total US prison population is federal, that roughly 20 to 22% of state and local prisoners are on drug-related charges, and that at the federal level the share has been about 50 or 60% for several decades. Locking someone up for a year costs $30,000 to $50,000 per prisoner, with close to 2 million prisoners in the United States. He argued that many more prisoners are there on charges that would not have happened without the drug war, including violence, theft, robbery and assault fostered by driving the market underground Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).

Miron estimated the explicit expenditures for police, judges, prosecutors and prisons at about $50 billion a year, with foregone tax revenue of about $40 to $50 billion a year — a change of $100 billion in the deficit situation. He said legalization would improve the welfare of people who use drugs and reduce crime and corruption Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).

Zadek characterized federal prisons as “drug prisons,” saying half could be closed if drug use and sale were decriminalized and made legitimate, and objected to the word “trafficking,” which he said describes nothing more than buying and selling a commodity Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).

Harm reduction and international evidence

Miron argued that a huge fraction of the harms of drug use come from prohibition rather than the substance. Because prohibition raises prices, users have an incentive to inject for a bigger effect, and laws in most states make it hard to buy clean disposable syringes, encouraging needle-sharing and the spread of HIV and hepatitis C. He said the first step in reducing harm is to stop creating harm through illegality Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).

On a caller’s question about other countries, Miron said few countries have moved from prohibition to legalization, partly because of US pressure and UN treaties the US supports. He cited Portugal, the Netherlands and several US states that legalized marijuana. The evidence, he said, is consistent: none of the horror stories about booms in drug use or crime have come true, and where changes appeared they were almost always beneficial, with use rates staying the same or falling and crime and HIV infection rates declining Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).

Miron was skeptical of coercive harm reduction such as sin taxes, saying it requires information beyond any imaginable analysis, though he could accept non-coercive measures like public service messages and health education Miron vs. Sessions on the Drug War (2017).

History and the overdose crisis

In a 2016 episode, Zadek said that for most of the country’s history narcotic, psychedelic, cocaine, opium and heroin were basically legal, and that the federal government understood it lacked the enumerated power to regulate drugs. He said the first regulation came through an expansion of the Commerce Clause, and that marijuana and cocaine were thereafter regulated under taxing statutes rather than health statutes, until President Nixon declared a War on Drugs. He called the history racist, uninformed and ugly Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016).

Zadek introduced Dr. Rick Doblin, who he said holds a PhD from the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government and heads the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, known as MAPS. Zadek said Doblin has spent most of his grown-up life encouraging a more enlightened drug policy, and the episode covered FDA clinical trials for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD Dr. Rick Doblin on MAPS and the War on Drugs (2016).

A 2022 episode featured Dr. Jeffrey Singer, identified as a general surgeon and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, on the root causes of the overdose crisis. The excerpt describes the discussion as debunking the myth that doctor prescriptions are the primary driver of addiction, exploring the history of drug prohibition and the distinction between physical dependence and addiction, and arguing that government interference in the doctor-patient relationship pushed users toward more potent illicit substances like fentanyl Fresh Approaches to the Overdose Crisis (2022).

Across episodes

The episodes show the same question argued across 2009, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2022, with no development in the underlying argument: Zadek supplies the libertarian framing throughout, Boaz states the moral case, Miron supplies the economics and international evidence, Doblin the history and psychedelic research, and Singer the overdose crisis and medical freedom. What changes is emphasis — from legalization as a partisan-transcending cause, to incarceration and cost figures, to the overdose crisis and the doctor-patient relationship — not the position.

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