Luong Planet Drugs Public Health NFL Nov Dec 2010

Minh A. Luong & Company Tutorial PlanetDebate.
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November-December 2010 National Forensic League Lincoln-Douglas topic
Resolved: The abuse of illegal drugs ought to be treated as a matter of public health, not of criminal justice.
PlanetDebate.com / Lincoln-Douglas.com
Minh A. Luong & Company Tutorial:

Resolved: The abuse of illegal drugs ought to be

treated as a matter of public health, not of criminal justice.
Dr. Minh A. Luong

Author/Editor
International Security Studies Department of Political Science

and and
The Brady-Johnson Center in Grand Strategy Taubman Center for Public Policy and
and American Institutions
Yale Graduate School of Management (SOM) and
Yale University Watson Institute for International Affairs
New Haven, Connecticut USA Brown University
<minh.a.luong@yale.edu> Providence, Rhode Island
<Minh_Luong@Brown.EDU>
N.B.: The views expressed in this essay and other open-source work are those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Yale University, Brown University, or the U.S.
Government (with which the author maintains an advisory relationship).
© 2010-11 Minh A. Luong and Harvard Debate, Inc., All Rights Reserved
Minh A. Luong & Company Tutorial PlanetDebate.com 2
Selected Quotations
Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to
jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.
– Ralph Nader
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call
that not a disease but an error of judgment.
– Philip K. Dick
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our
troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
– P.J. O'Rourke
Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use? It's nice to be number one, but we
can fix that. All we need to do is start the war on education. If it's anywhere near as successful as our war on
drugs, in no time we'll all be hooked on phonics.
– Leighann Lord
Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200,
marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the
drug war?
– William A. Turnbo
Drug prohibition has caused gang warfare and other violent crimes by raising the prices of drugs so much that
vicious criminals enter the market to make astronomical profits, and addicts rob and steal to get money to pay the
inflated prices for their drugs.
– Michael Badnarik
Children are often the silent victims of drug abuse.

– Rick Larsen
Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed
camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the
liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
– Milton Friedman
On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release
because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.
– Michael Badnarik
There are criminals who are drug users, but most addicts are criminals only by virtue of prohibition or from
resorting to crime to pay inflated black market prices.
– Danny Sugerman
You can't expect law enforcement to provide the solution to the drug problem.
– Bill McCollum
You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let's just get rid of all the drug laws.
– Ron Paul
Casual drug users should be taken out and shot.

– Darryl Gates
Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department
testifying to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee
2
In This Topic Briefing…
Cover page 1
Selected quotations 2
In This Topic Briefing (aka the Table of Contents) 3
A Note from the Editor 4-5
Topic in Context and Topic Briefing 6
Affirmative Strategy Notes 12
Negative Strategy Notes 18
Definitional Concepts and Definitions 24
Strategies and Arguments
Affirmative 27
Negative 29
Sources 31
Selected Evidence on the Topic 37-66
About the Author/Editor 67
3
A Note from the Editor
The Lincoln-Douglas debate topic for November-December 2010 is Resolved: The abuse of illegal drugs
ought to be treated as a matter of public health, not of criminal justice.
The prohibition on narcotics is a relatively new policy in the United States and in other countries around
the world. In fact, Coca Cola’s original formulation included the now banned narcotic cocaine as its
featured stimulant ingredient and Henry Ford was forced to abandon the use of hemp fiber at Ford Motor
Company when marijuana was banned by the US Federal Government. As more substances were added to
the DEA Schedule I List during the second half of the 20th century, the number of users who continued to
use illegal narcotics grew commensurately. The rise of counter-culture and anti-establishment behavior
during the 1960s and 70s accelerated the popularity and use of illegal drugs and widespread acceptance of
the use of so-called “soft drugs” such as marijuana, inhalants, and hallucinogenic plants such as “magic
mushrooms” starting in the 1980s has resulted in a permissive environment towards such drugs in many
regions of the United States. In fact, in many parts of the country today, medical marijuana licenses are
viewed as a thinly-veiled end-run around current marijuana prohibitions.
For its part, the media has contributed to this permissive environment, glorifying illegal drug use in
television and movies with productions such as “Reefer Madness,” “Scarface” (the very fine remake
starring Al “say hello to my little friend” Pacino), Weeds, and countless others.
Many public policy and legal scholars believe that current drug policy has reached a crossroads not unlike
the prohibition on alcohol in the last century. In an era of fiscal austerity and long-term budget shortfalls,
policy makers and citizens are re-thinking the expenditures and efforts towards enforcing illegal drug
laws. This debate is no longer viewed as a liberal vs. conservative debate. Libertarians have joined
stalwart establishment conservatives in calling for legalization of some “soft drugs” such as marijuana
and taxing the sale of legal marijuana to ensure purity and to fund medical addiction clinics to help users
stop using narcotics. The November-December 2010 NFL Lincoln-Douglas resolution addresses this very
debate.
Every PlanetDebate Lincoln-Douglas debate topic briefing is the collective product of a number of
scholars, topic-engaged professionals, researchers, and individuals from typical judge demographic pools
who evaluate potential arguments and their effectiveness. Even though my name appears at the top of
each briefing packet, it takes the combined contributions of between 25 to 40 people to produce each
topic tutorial; hence the “& Company” part of the series name. In fact, one of the most difficult tasks in
producing each topic briefing packet is to edit the material down to our target of 40 pages!
Due to the difficulty in finding high quality research material on the internet pertaining to this topic, my
colleagues and I have focused on presenting material that is generally not available to high school
debaters. We have focused on public policy, political science, legal, and other academic sources as well as
presenting evidence from authoritative practitioner and government sources. Because of the complexity of
this topic, we have also chosen to integrate extensive quotations directly into the topic analysis with the
intent of providing direct illustrations to promote better understanding of the topic. We have also
integrated the topic in context material into the topic briefing for a clearer explanation of the intricacies of
this topic. This topic tutorial is longer than usual (our target is 40 pages total) due to the complexity of the
topic and our desire to best prepare you for this topic
I am particularly indebted to my colleague, Nick Coburn-Palo, a former collegiate national debate

champion and coach of national champions and most recently a doctoral candidate in the political science
department at Brown University for his significant contributions to this tutorial. As an emerging scholar
on American political development and political theory, his knowledge on this topic along with cutting
4
edge insights has added a unique dimension that we hope will give you and your squad a significant
competitive advantage when debating this topic. Rick Brundage, nationally recognized coach and Yale
Ivy Scholars Program senior instructor, continues to play a key role on our research and analytic team
here at PlanetDebate.com.
This topic briefing would not be possible were it not for the conversations with and contributions from a
wide range of scholars and policymakers. My professorial colleagues here at International Security
Studies at Yale University and the Yale Law School as well as the Taubman Center for Public Policy and
American Institutions at Brown University provided important insights and contributions. I am also
indebted to two peer reviewers – a senior counter-narcotics official and a veteran drug reform advocate –
for their valuable feedback and suggestions. And finally, many thanks to our focus group panelists for
their feedback and suggestions on prospective argument strategies.
My colleagues and I thank you for being a PlanetDebate.com/Lincoln-Douglas.com subscriber and we

hope that our unique blend of academic and policy practitioner approaches will give you a distinct
advantage in your debate rounds. As always, we invite your comments and feedback, and greatly value
your confidence in our project by using our materials to help your program prepare for each National
Forensic League Lincoln-Douglas debate topic. If you have any suggestions, questions or concerns,
please feel free to contact me. My email address is minh.a.luong@yale.edu.
With best wishes for success as we end the fall debate season,
Minh A. Luong
Author/Editor
5
TOPIC IN CONTEXT and TOPIC BRIEFING
The November/December NFL Lincoln-Douglas topic is unusual in where it focuses the locus of
debate. Relative to past topics, it is difficult to think of this resolution as addressing an explicitly
value-oriented question. The value criteria term/phrase, “ought to be treated as,” as well as the
subject matter of the topic, point to this as being primarily a question of public policy. This, of
course, does not mean that values are irrelevant to this topic – far from it. However, there is
nothing in the phrasing of the resolution which would suggest that philosophy based value
arguments ought to necessarily trump claims about the effectiveness of the respective public
policy options isolated in the resolution, “public health” vs. “criminal justice.” This section will
attempt to provide the reader with a brief introduction to the major elements of the resolution:
What is meant by the illegal use of drugs and how significant is the problem under consideration,
what is meant by a “criminal justice” approach to drug policy, and what is meant by a “public
health” approach to drug policy, and what implications might that have for argumentative ground
as regards the forthcoming resolution.
Examining Abuse of Illegal Drugs
What is meant by drug abuse is multifaceted and has changed over time, as research on abuse
psychology and physiology has advanced. The contemporary iteration is articulated by Barry
University Professor Andrew Cherry…
“Drug addiction, or drug abuse, is a chronic or habitual use of any chemical substance to alter
states of the mind for any purpose other than a medically warranted one. Traditional definitions
of addiction, with their criteria of physical dependence and withdrawal (and often an underlying
tenor of depravity and sin), have been modified with increased understanding; with the
introduction of new drugs, such as cocaine, which are psychologically or neuropsychologically
addicting; and with the realization that its stereotypical application to opiate-drug users was
invalid because many opiate users remain occasional users with no physical dependence. Today
addiction is more often defined by the continuing, compulsive nature of the drug use despite
physical and psychological harms to the user and society, and includes both licit and illicit drugs.
The term ‘substance abuse’ is now frequently used because of the broad range of substances
(including alcohol and inhalants) which fit the addictive profile.” (p. ix-x)
[Cherry, Andrew (ed.). 2002. Substance Abuse: A Global View. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press]
With an initial understanding of what is meant by drug abuse, we can advance our analysis to
consider how drug abuse has played out across (modern) time. Initially, we should consider the
case of the United States. A strong historical perspective is provided by University of North
Carolina Professor Arthur Benavie…
“There were no federal laws restricting the use or sale of narcotics, cocaine, or cannabis until the
twentieth century. Toward the end of the 1800s a few states attempted to ban opium and cocaine,
but these restrictions were unsuccessful, since the drugs could easily be smuggled from one state
to another and the states lacked resources for effective enforcement. From the colonial period
until World War I, Americans were legally able to buy and sell any drugs they wanted. They
could purchase opiates, cocaine, and marijuana from pharmacists, physicians, drug stores, street
vendors, and mail-order catalogs.” (p. 22-23)
6
[Benavie, Arthur. 2009. Drugs: America’s Holy War. New York: Routledge]
The debate about national drug policy stretches back to the turn of the previous century. The
debate has often been politically stage-managed. For example, congress famously initially
criminalized marijuana only after the American Medical Association (AMA) was erroneously
quoted, during a floor debate on the legislation, as favoring such a measure. However, if one
legislative act, and resulting judicial decisions, can be considered fundamental to this Lincoln-
Douglas debate topic, it is probably the Harrison Act of 1914. It codified a criminal, as opposed
to public health, approach to drug policy in the United States. Gene Heyman explained the
measure as follows:
“The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 limited the use of opiates and other addictive drugs to
medical purposes only. Nothing was said about addiction, and medical purpose was not defined
but identified as ‘professional practice.’ Some physicians continued to prescribe opiates to long-
term opiate users on the grounds that this was a proper medical treatment for addiction. Their
patients, the physicians claimed, had a disease. Justice Department officials took the physicians
to court. At first judges and juries in the United States sided with the physicians. But in time, the
courts determined that treating addiction did not fall within the realm of ‘professional practice.’
Although the Harrison Act did not explicitly address recreational drug use or addiction, it was
enforced as if its intent was to suppress drug use and addiction. The legislative branch of
government rejected the views of the Society for the Study and Cure of Inebriety. As a result,
American drug use patterns were transformed.” (p. 8-9)
[Heyman, Gene. 2009. Addiction: A Disorder of Choice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press]
Irrespective of how drug policy was adopted in the United States, the problems it is attempts to
address – drug abuse – undeniably exacts a tremendous toll upon society. Professor Cherry
points out that…
“Drug abuse affects society in many ways. In the United States, it is costly in terms of its effects
in the workplace, including lost work time and inefficiency. Drug users are more likely than
nonusers to have occupational accidents, endangering themselves and those around them.
Around 40 percent of the highway deaths in the United States involve alcohol. Drug-related
crime can disrupt neighborhoods with violence among the drug dealers themselves, threats to
residents, and the crimes committed by the addicts.” (p. xi-xii)
Press]
Of course, nowhere in the resolution is the United States identified as the focus of debate. This
necessitates expanding our analysis of the drug problem into the international realm. Professor
Cherry, once again, offered an assessment of the global costs of drug abuse…
“These reports reveal that the illegal drug business accounts for $400 billion of world trade, and
is second only to the worldwide arms market (ODCCP, 2000). It is larger than the global iron
and steel industries. The 2000 World Drug Report noted that there were at least 180 million drug
abusers globally, including 9 million heroin addicts, 29 million amphetamine users, and 14
million cocaine users.” (p. xvi)
Press]
7
A more specific and recent explanation of the nature of the international drug problems was
provided in an insightful 2009 journal article by Peter Reuter…
“In most of the world, drug use has changed only modestly in the last 10 years. Heroin use has
stabilized throughout the rich world at least since 2000 and has actually declined markedly in
Australia, a medium-sized country (population 20 million) which had a large heroin problem in
the late 1990s. China’s heroin problems seem to be fairly stable, confined to some large western
provinces but not yet showing up in the rich eastern cities, where stimulants are emerging,
perhaps as a sign of modernity. The big heroin event of this decade was the conclusion of a major
epidemic in Russia and Central Asia. Like most heroin epidemics, it did not last many years but
has left those countries with major problems of heroin addiction and human immunodeficiency
virus (HIV), although probably little additional crime. Cocaine use is spreading in Europe,
particularly in the United Kingdom and Spain, but does not seem likely to reach US prevalence
levels, which are also now declining. Cannabis, although its prevalence is declining in most
western nations, remains by far the most widely used drug throughout the Western world; it is
fairly rare in many Asian nations.” (p. 511)
[Reuter, Peter. 2009. “Ten Years after the United Nations General Assembly Special Session
(UNGASS): assessing drug problems, policies and reform proposals.” Addiction. 104]
Examining Criminal Justice and Drug Policy
“Criminal Justice” isn’t really a term of art in the context of the drug policy debate. Its basic
meaning can be gleaned from a quick glance at common on-line dictionary sites. Legal-
explanations.com, for example, defines criminal justice as being “a term used for the series of
steps involved in proving any criminal activity like gathering evidences, arresting the accused,
conducting trials, making defense, pronouncing judgment after the crime is proved, carrying out
punishment.” Similarly, thefreedictionary.com defines it as “a generic term for the procedure by
which criminal conduct is investigated, arrests made, evidence gathered, charges brought,
defenses raised, trials conducted, sentences rendered, and punishment carried out.”
In the context of the public health field and our resolution, a criminal justice based approach to
drug policy can be understood as attempting to deter use of illegal drugs by adopting a
retributivist approach to violation of a restriction on, or prohibition of, the use of the substance.
Many countries have adopted such an approach, which lies at the heart of the United States “War
on Drugs” strategy. This approach has been dominant in certain counties in Asia and the Middle
East, but not as frequently in western nations. Peter Reuter explained that…
“The United States is increasingly an outlier among western nations on drug policy. The number
of people incarcerated for drug offenses has risen relentlessly: from less than 50 000 in 1980
(including those in local jails) to approximately 500 000 in 2005. This has occurred even as the
scale of the US problem gradually declined, mainly through the natural processes of an epidemic.
The US government has taken an aggressive stance against harm reduction (most prominently
needle exchange) in international gatherings, continuing its historically dominant role in pushing
for tough prohibition.” (p. 512)
[Reuter, Peter. 2009. “Ten Years After The United Nations General Assembly Special Session
(UNGASS): assessing drug problems, policies and reform proposals.” Addiction. 104]
8
While the United States is often identified as having a harsh approach to drug policy, it should be
remembered that their approach is far from the harshest. Several nations in Asia (Singapore,
China, and Thailand), the Middle East (Saudi Arabia), and even Europe (Turkey) are noted for
having far sterner punishments, including – in some cases – the death penalty. A distinctly
different approach to drug policy, harm reduction, is suggested in the above passage from Peter
Reuter. It will be at the core of our discussion of the final aspect of the resolution.
Examining Public Health and Drug Policy
Public Health was a very challenging term for the framers of the resolution to embrace as they
constructed this topic. It is an issue because the meaning of public health is the subject of a hotly
contested debate within the field itself.
The literature makes a distinction between conceptions of public health as “Old” and “New,”
although often without the normative baggage such a binary might normally imply. “Old” public
health is oriented around a long-standing tradition of restricting its application to communicable
diseases. Such an approach is judged necessary to avoid justifying dangerous and often
counterproductive state intervention. Another way of thinking of this is conceptualize “Old”
public health as an attempt to resolve a problem which cannot adequately be addressed by the
marketplace or similar mechanisms. Public health should only be invoked if confronting a health
issue which is inflicted upon others without their consent and which can’t be confronted by
individual choices. It is an approach consistent with a minimalist approach to government,
speaking to a tradition of Lockean liberalism and libertarianism.
“New” public health includes “Old” public health, but extends its reach much further in terms of
policy activity. “New” public health goes beyond such traditional measures such as quarantines
and vaccinations, to include such activities as limits on tobacco consumption, dietary restrictions
and regulations to confront obesity, and prohibiting the use of certain drugs. Virtually all of the
post-2000 academic literature on drug abuse is written from the perspective of “New” public
health. The following passage, from St. Johns University Professor Jefferson Fish, speaks to the
intellectual choice made by many recent public health scholars regarding drug policy…
“There are two main approaches to rethinking drug policy, which reflect differing American
values, and they are both represented in this book. One is public health, or harm-reduction, or
cost-benefit approach, which implements the American value of pragmatism. It looks at the
social science and biomedical evidence regarding the effects of each drug, attempts to weigh the
positive and negative consequences of various courses of action, and proposes policies with the
best overall mix of outcomes. Public health approaches to drug policy emphasize harm reduction
(e.g. preventing the spread of disease, maintaining the health of drug users, and guaranteeing drug
purity) and controlling in various ways the quantities available for individual purchase, dosage
levels, and other aspects of drugs and their use, as well as drug advertising. Public health
strategies often involve taxing currently illicit substances (as well as alcohol and tobacco) –
possibly in rough relation to their harmfulness – and usually dedicate tax revenues to the
treatment and prevention of drug-related problems. Such strategies aim to minimize the negative
effects of psychoactive substances while holding regulation to a level that will keep the black
market use as small as possible.
The other – libertarian or rights-based – approach to legalizing drugs can be seen to implement
the American value of individualism. It views the private behavior of adults as none of the
9
government’s business and aims to maximize individual freedom. Whether the issue is
consensual heterosexual or homosexual activity, masturbation, contraception, abortion, suicide, or
using psychoactive substances, the position of libertarians is the same – people should be free to
do in private whatever they want to with their own bodies, as long as they do not injure others in
some quite direct way.” (p. 1-2)
[Fish, Jefferson (ed.). 2006. Drugs and Society: U.S. Public Policy. Oxford, UK: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers]
Interestingly, what is identified by Professor Fish as the “other” approach – libertarian or rights-
based in orientation – seems consistent with an approach to public health advanced by the
advocates of “Old” public health based policy actions. As a result, if a debater can win that the
“Old” public health orientation is intellectually superior to the “New” public health
interpretation, argumentative ground in the debate can be radically altered, with profound
strategic implications. If a debater wanted to find one source where they could rapidly produce a
defense of “Old” public health, they would be well advised to turn to the 2003 issue(s) of a
journal called Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, which contains a symposium on the debate
between “Old” and “New” approaches to public health. Of particular importance are the essays
by University of Chicago Law Professor Richard Epstein and Wake Forest University Professor
Mark Hall.
A vision of what an argument for an “Old” public health approach to drug policy might manifest
itself is offered by former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson…
“We need to protect individual freedom and keep the government out of people’s private lives.
Even when people make bad choices, they should be left alone, as long as they do not harm
others. When given good information, most people will make wise choices. This is why truthful
drug education – as opposed to scare tactics which backfire when people find out they have been
misled – is so important. We need to think more about promoting healthy behavior instead of
punishing unhealthy behavior. I believe that taking on challenges – both personal and physical –
makes us stronger. That is why I think a public health approach to drug policy makes more sense
than a criminal justice approach.” (p. x-xi)
[ in the foreward of Fish, Jefferson (ed.). 2006. Drugs and Society: U.S. Public Policy. Oxford,
UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.]
Assuming, however, that the literature ends up driving most of the debates on this topic, you’ll
spend most debates operating from a “New” public health approach to drug policy. Such a
policy is known within the field as “Harm Reduction,” and is described by one of the foremost
advocates for a public health based approach, Princeton University Political Scientist and
Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, Ethan Nadelmann, as follows…
“With respect to legal drugs, such as alcohol and cigarettes, harm reduction means promoting
responsible drinking and designated drivers, or persuading people to switch to nicotine patches,
chewing gums, and smokeless tobacco. With respect to illegal drugs, it means reducing the
transmission of infectious disease through syringe-exchange programs, reducing overdose
fatalities by making antidotes readily available, and allowing people addicted to heroin and other
illegal opiates to obtain methadone from doctors and even pharmaceutical heroin from clinics.
Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have already embraced this last
option.” (p. 25)
[Nadelmann, Ethan. 2007. “Think Again: Drugs.” Foreign Policy. Sept-Oct]
10
As Nadelmann suggests, apart from the United States, western governments seem to be moving
toward a policy of harm reduction (aka public health). Peter Reuter concludes this section by
explaining that…
Although arrests have generally increased, the West has moved consistently towards harm
reduction. Even countries with a rhetorical hard line (notably France and Sweden) are now
supporting the basic harm reduction innovations, such as methadone maintenance and needle
exchange; the French shift to substitution treatment for opiate addiction has been particularly
dramatic. Portugal has joined Italy and Spain in removing criminal penalties for possession of any
drug for personal use. Heroin maintenance experiments are under way in half a dozen countries
and Germany is in the process of following the Netherlands and Switzerland in introducing
heroin-assisted therapy as simply another treatment option. The European Union is now mainly a
single voice at international meetings, with a strong and explicit harm reduction tone, even
though there are signs of modest retreat from some of the boundaries of harm reduction, such as
the Dutch government cutting of the number of coffee shops licensed to sell cannabis. (p. 512)
(UNGASS): assessing drug problems, policies and reform proposals.” Addiction. 104:510-517]
11
Our “Strategy Notes” section focuses on arguments that come from the academic and policy
communities and are ideally suited for national circuit debaters or at tournaments where the
judging pool is well-informed on the debate topic area and highly-educated.
Affirmative Strategy Notes
1. Frame the Debate in Terms of a Strategically Advantageous Binary
The Affirmative would be well advised to take advantage of their first speech to advance and
defend a comparative binary for the debate. As mentioned in the previous section, the resolution
does not include any kind of specific reference to the United States. This means that the
potential set of cases to consider are truly global in scope. How the comparison is framed would
seem of tremendous strategic importance. Consider, for example, the following framework for
comparison proposed by Professor Cherry…
“Two major policy and programming approaches are used to deal with these three primary
concerns about drug use: the criminal justice model, which is used to stop or control drug use;
and the public health model, based on harm reduction, which is used to reduce the health
problems among drug users that are caused by the drugs they use. The best example of the
prohibition model is China, and the best example of the harm reduction model is the Netherlands,
although all countries use some combination of these drug-control strategies.” (p. ix)
Press]
As an Affirmative, such a framework for comparison would appear to offer a great strategic
advantage. The Dutch experience with a (new) public health policy is likely to be a frequently
used example, or point of comparison, in debates on this topic. Interestingly, as is true of many
cases (examples) relevant to the drug policy debate, opposing sides often cite the same example
to support their cause. Professor Cherry offers one perspective on the Dutch experience…
“The scientist and treatment professionals who helped shape the Dutch model and the Dutch drug
policies in the mid-1970s made what has turned out to be a good decision for the Dutch people in
respect to using a health model to control the spread of addiction and to deal with the upsurges in
drug use which have occurred over the last twenty-five years. It has also been a policy that has
helped maintain one of the smallest percentages of HIV/AIDS cases among intravenous drug
users in the world. As it turns out, the Dutch have achieved many of the goals that they hoped to
accomplish twenty-five years ago with their drug policy legislation. There is a separation of the
soft- and hard-drug markets. Cannabis has been easy to buy in coffee shops for twenty-five years
without any unacceptable increase in problems or in the use of cannabis in Holland or in
neighboring countries. Extremely important is the drug policy’s influence on hard-drug addicts.”
(p. 168-69)
Press]
However, Affirmatives beware. The pro-criminal justice voices often insist that the Amsterdam
example proves their point. For example, Colin Drummond argued in the British Medical
Journal that the Dutch example actually proves that decriminalization increases black market
access to marijuana…
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“The pro-legalisation lobby claims potential benefits of legalisation in terms of curtailing the
black market But even in Holland, where cannabis has been quasi decriminalised, some two
thirds of the supply of cannabis takes place outside the regulated ‘coffee shop market’” (p. 107)
[Wodak, Alex and Colin Drummond. 2002. “For and Against Cannabis Control: Costs
Outweigh the Benefits.” BMJ: British Medical Journal. 324:7329(105-108)]
2. Put Prohibition On Trial As A Policy
Even a cursory search of the academic literature base on drug policy makes it clear that it is
difficult to find evidence or examples of where criminal justice based approaches to illegal drugs
have been demonstrated to be effective, especially in western nations. The most common
criminal justice based approach to drug policy, one seemingly especially relevant to this topic
given the framers use of the phrase “illegal drugs,” is prohibition. St. Johns University Professor
Jefferson Fish succinctly explains the devastation many argue has been wrought by drug
prohibition…
“Drug prohibition has caused many deaths from drug overdoses and drug impurities, from turf
battles and other drug-related crime, and by spreading AIDS. It has ruined the lives or harmed
the careers of numerous people, whose only crime was the crime of pleasure, or curiosity, or
yielding to peer pressure. It has ravaged the communities of our inner cities and of Third World
countries, undermined our democratic institutions, wreaked havoc with our foreign policy, and
uncorked a gusher of funding for terrorism.” (p. 4)
Littlefield Publishers.]
At an economic level, many argue that the policy of drug prohibition is economically wasteful,
trading off with potentially more effective public health approaches. Princeton University
Political Scientist Ethan Nadelman argued that…
“No one knows how much governments spend collectively on failing drug war policies, but it’s
probably at least $100 billion a year, with federal, state, and local governments in the United
States accounting for almost half the total. Add to that the tens of billions of dollars to be gained
annually in tax revenues from the sale of legalized drugs. Now imagine if just a third of that total
were committed to reducing drug-related disease and addiction. Virtually everyone, except those
who profit or gain politically from the current system, would benefit.” (p. 28)
Despite this apparent reality, Nadelmann, who is also Director of the Drug Policy Alliance,
laments that…
“And yet, despite this dismal record, the United States has succeeded in constructing an
international drug prohibition regime modeled after its own highly punitive and moralistic
approach. It has dominated the drug control agencies of the United Nations and other
international organizations, and its federal drug enforcement agency was the first national police
organization to go global. Rarely has one nation so successfully promoted its own failed policies
to the rest of the world.” (p. 26)
13
As the United States has advanced its policy of drug prohibition internationally, it has become
complicit with some of the most repressive regimes in the world, providing cover for repression
of dissidents and widespread violation of human rights. University of Kent Lecturer Axel Klein
explains that…
“What has accentuated the problem with drug control is that as part of an international control
system it has been exported to countries with very different systems of governance, such as Saudi
Arabia, Nigeria, or Uzbekistan. In these countries with a tradition of authoritarianism and
chronic institutional corruption, drug laws are employed to silence dissidents or to collect bribes.
At best there appears a randomized draconianism, where individuals caught in possession, or who
show up positive drug tests, are subjected to severe punishments, but the majority escape
detection. It is particularly unfortunate that countries like the US and agencies like the UN,
which normally champion civil liberties and the cause of freedom, simply turn a blind eye to
these abuses. They actually encourage countries in taking a hard line and will often provide
technical assistance and hardware.” (p. 194)
[Klein, Axel. 2008. Drugs and the World. London: Reaktion Books.]
An example of the ripple effects of our policy of criminalizing use of recreational drugs can be
found close to home, in Latin America. Ethan Nadelmann continues his rhetorical assault on the
drug war, in noting that…
“The futility of the war on drugs has long been obvious, but the evidence of failure grows starker
each year. Attacking the supply side has yielded nothing: Drugs are cheaper, purer, and more
plentiful than ever. Despite crop-eradication programs, there is substantially more opium poppy
and coca cultivated today than there was two decades ago. Attempting to stamp out the supply of
drugs is like pushing on a balloon-cut off production in one country and another quickly fills the
void. Colombia, for instance, produced no heroin 15 years ago. Now the country is the leading
supplier to the United States, having replaced Mexico, Turkey, Southeast Asia, and Southwest
Asia, each of which was a major source of heroin at one time or another. Far from improving the
health of nations, the war on drugs has cut a swath of misery and corruption throughout Latin
America. Just as they have done in Medellin and other Colombian cities, drug gangs are turning
the streets of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo into free-fire zones. Across the region, tens of
thousands of farmers have seen both their livelihoods and land destroyed. (The pesticides and
herbicides that are used to stamp out illicit crops frequently cause lasting environmental damage.)
The enormous economic dislocation and intensifying waves of social unrest in Latin America are
the results of failed prohibitionist policies, not drugs per se. In all of human history, no society
has ever been drug free, nor will any be so in the future. Drugs are not going to disappear; the
challenge is to mitigate the harm they cause.” (p. 94)
[Nadelmann, Ethan. 2003. “Addicted to Failure.” Foreign Policy. July-August]
Whether the Affirmative is able to functionally place the War on Drugs on trial in the debate, or
even if they confine their criticism to drug war at home, the academic evidence, frankly
speaking, is overwhelming that a law enforcement driven approach is not proving to be
successful, at least in the conventional sense of the term. On the other hand, virtually no one,
save for the libertarians, seems to want to argue that a (new) public health approach is an outright
bad idea. Even most advocates of criminalization still tend to support at least limited public
health measures to augment the work of law enforcement.
14
3. Make Race Matter as an Issue in Drug Policy
The criminalization of drugs has had an impact felt most strongly in poor communities,
especially those of people of color. Critical Race Theory, a legal doctrine advocating a color
conscious as opposed to color blind approach to confronting social problems, would be a likely
source of strong Affirmative evidence on this point.
A different, yet still fertile, approach to making race matter in the discussion of drug policy is to
speak to the moral impulse behind the call to adopt criminal justice based approaches to drug
policy. St. Johns University Professor Jefferson Fish offers such an argument in Drugs and
Society, noting that…
“Drug prohibition has encouraged the expression of repugnant forms of social scapegoating by
cloaking base deeds in the garments of moral outrage. The temperance movement, which led to
alcohol prohibition, provided a handy way for Protestants to attack immigrant Catholic groups
(the Irish and whiskey, Italians and wine). And drug prohibition has repeatedly legitimized racist
attacks on minority groups by demonizing them – from Chinese opium smokers to African
American crack users. At an individual level, drug hysteria has made it seem normal, even
praiseworthy, to jail recreational drug users, confiscate their property, and destroy their lives.
Meanwhile, the similarly popular destruction of problem drug users amounts to a state-enforced
policy of kicking people when they are down.” (p. 4-5)
Littlefield Publishers.]
Brown University Political Science Professor James Morone, in his Pulitzer Prize nominated
work, Hellfire Nation, makes an argument very similar to that of Professor Fish, in noting that…
“Tough policies push people toward the margins of power. Two million people pile up behind
bars. An extraordinary 7 percent of American black men are behind bars today. The racial bias
in jail time goes far beyond anything that might be justified by crime rates. What we developing
looks vaguely like the old segregationist establishment. In fact, ten states (five in deep Dixie) bar
more than 20 percent of their black men from voting because of criminal convictions. Why no
backlash? The answer lies in the endless jeremiad about American moral decline. Genuine
difficulties – crime, drug addiction – grow into something more than policy problems; they
become markers of national depravity. Fears of rampant immorality obscure concern about
common sense or fairness. Once again, moral alarms organize institutions that crack down on the
least powerful. Every new sermon about bad behavior carries this melancholy dark side. There is
an alternative, of course. We have traced long swings in American morals across the past 150
years. By now – more than two decades after the Reagan administration recast American
political morality – it is difficult to even remember the other side. It begins with a radical
thought: the fear of decline is an old myth. Just look at the crime data. We face problems, nor
moral meltdown. In that contrast, we bear obligations to one another – and especially the poorest
and least powerful. The pendulum has swung completely away from those old calls to
community and mutual aid.” (p. 463-64)
[Morone, James. 2003. Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press]
Stanford University Law Professor R. Richard Banks argues that not only does drug
criminalization expose innocent people to intrusion upon their rights and the risk of unjust
15
incarceration, but – even if only the guilty were incarcerated – the racially skewed devastation
experienced by the neighborhoods in which the drug war constitutes an often ignored, yet vitally
important, factor in understanding the true cost of the policy. He writes that…
“Analyses should instead consider the race-related outcomes of the drug war, particularly the high
level of incarceration of racial minorities. I highlight the social harms of incarceration rather than
its potential benefits because those harms may be underappreciated in a debate centered on the
wrongful investigation of the innocent. The racial concentration of incarceration may (1)
undermine neighborhoods' stability, (2) impede effective law enforcement by bolstering
minorities' distrust of the criminal justice system, and (3) intertwine race and crime in a way that
fortifies the racial divide. These outcomes not only pose issues of distributional fairness, they
may also increase aggregate social costs.”
[Banks, R. Richard. 2003. “Beyond Profiling: Race, Policing, and the War on Drugs.” Stanford
Law Review. 56:3 (571-603)]
Ultimately, it should not be difficult for an Affirmative debater to make a strong argument about
the racist character of our current drug policy in the U.S. That assumes, of course, that the
debate ends up being limited to a single case study, the United States.
4. Utilize Philosophy By Making Justice Based Arguments
Rutgers University Law Professor, Professor Douglas Husak, who is one of the foremost writers
on drug policy in the world of American legal philosophy, offers an excellent example of how a
justice-based argument against drug criminalization might be constructed. His argument for a
Desert theory based criticism of drug policy might be summarized in the following four
passages.
Husak begins by explaining what he means by Desert theory as justice, articulating how it might
function within a criminal context, placing proportionality at the center of an analysis of just
punishment…
“Desert theory, as explicated here, addresses both whether punishment is justified and how much
punishment is justified. These two questions are intimately related because penal sanctions are
stigmatizing and impose blame. Punishment both expresses (as a matter of fact) and ought to
express (as a normative matter) censure and disapprobation. If punishments convey blame, the
quantum of punishment imposed should bear a reasonable relation to the degree to which conduct
is blameworthy. Thus the cornerstone of desert theory is the principle of proportionality. The
severity of punishment should be a function of the seriousness of the crime. The principle of
proportionality is an almost inviolable requirement of justice that should not be overridden in the
absence of a powerful rationale.” (p. 194-95)
[from essay entitled “Do Marijuana Offenders Deserve Punishment?” in Earleywine, Mitch (ed.).
2007. Pot Politics: Marijuana and the Costs of Prohibition. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.]
According to Husak, even if one does not normatively like Desert theory, it is still the coin of the
realm; it functionally is justice. The notion of just deserts in punishment is firmly ensconced in
American legal thought and practice. As such, it demands our intellectual attention, as Husak
explains…
16
“Contrary to the beliefs and expectations of many scholars who do not specialize in punishment
and sentencing theory, retributivism – or what is better called just deserts theory – is firmly
ensconced as the rationale of whether and to what extent persons should be punished for what
they do. The centrality of desert theory is not confined to academic philosophers. The new
Sentencing Project Report of the American Law Institute properly enshrines desert as the
dominant rationale for punishment and sentencing.” (p. 194)
Press.]
Not surprisingly, Professor Husak feels that application of this core principle of justice to the
drug policy debate poses a significant challenge to a policy of drug criminalization, especially as
regards marijuana…
“Drug offenses pose a unique challenge to desert theory. Marijuana offenses are so ubiquitous
that they might be said to be driving the entire criminal justice system. Hence any problems in
applying desert theory to drug offenses cannot simply be dismissed as an insignificant anomaly.
If these problems turn out to be sufficiently great, unbiased commentators should be urged to
rethink the justifiability of drug offenses – or the viability of desert theory itself.” (p. 194)
Press.]
Finally, by arguing that individuals should not be held morally culpable for being a single factor
in a multitude of actions causing harm, Husak argues that criminalization of marijuana cannot
pass a test of justice based proportionality between the wrongful act and the enforced
consequence.
“Moreover, although the aggregate harm caused by millions of marijuana users committing
billions of acts of marijuana consumption may be substantial, the harm that may be attributed to
any particular user per incidence of consumption is so miniscule that one wonders why it does not
fall under the legal principle of de minimis (too trivial to prosecute).” (p. 200)
Press.]
Of course, Husak is far from the only author who makes justice based arguments against a
criminal justice based drug policy. However, he offers a helpful example of such an argument,
which might serve as a starting point for further analysis.
17
Negative Strategy Notes
1. Reject the Binary Between the Policies and Advocate Both
Most Affirmatives will probably try to frame the debate as between, for example, a progressive
Amsterdam and a puritanical Unites States. However, it seems possible to negate without having
to say that a public health approach is bad, based on the syntax of the resolution. The phrasing
of the resolution is that drug abuse “ought to be treated as a matter of public health, not of
criminal justice.” If a debater proves that both tools should be utilized, that would appear – on
face – to be a rejection of the statement. Such an interpretation would appear very advantageous
to a Negative debater. While the Affirmative is obligated to prove that a criminal justice
approach is better than a public health approach, the negative only need prove that a criminal
justice approach should be used in conjunction with the Affirmative solution of public health
policymaking. The benefits of legal sanctions are explained by the former Director of the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy, John Walters, who argues that…
“The value of legal control is that it enables judicial discretion over offenders, diverting minor
offenders who need it into treatment while retaining the authority to guard against the violent and
incorrigible. Further, where the sanction and supervision of the court are present, the likelihood of
recovery is greatly increased. Removing legal sanction endangers the public and fails to help the
offender.” (p. 143)
[essay by John Walters in anthology by Carroll, Jamuna. 2006. Marijuana: Opposing
Viewpoints. Farmington Hill, MI: Greenhaven Press)
Interestingly, it seem that if the above interpretation of the resolution is legitimate, then it should
be negative ground to claim that the combination of public health and even a less-than-present
level of criminal enforcement – even a very minimal one – would constitute a reason to negate.
Evidence in favor of such a “compromise” permutation of the policies is not difficult to find.
Peter Reuter provides an example of just such a piece of evidence…
“The message, then, is that the protection of society against a flood of drug use does not require a
great deal in terms of drug enforcement. Just a little use of criminal justice system may gain most
of whatever benefits there are to prohibition. More than that, stringent enforcement is both
expensive and inhumane without any of the intended gains. The fact that drug prices in high
enforcement settings are no higher than those in low enforcement settings, although intellectually
troubling, provides a reasonable basis for this claim.” (p. 515)
(UNGASS): assessing drug problems, policies and reform proposals.” Addiction. 104:510-517]
2. Force the Affirmative to Abandon Rights Based Arguments
As the “Analysis of the Resolution” section of this article suggested earlier, most Affirmative
evidence will assume a “New” conception of public health, one grounded in pragmatism an
harm-management, as opposed to an “Old” conception of public health, one based on minimal
government, focused on guarding against expansive governmental control measures. If the
Affirmative advocates making drug policy based on a “New” conception of public health, the
pragmatic impulse would potentially undervalue the importance of protecting individual rights so
prominent in the “Old” conception of public health, making those claims functionally and
18
analytically incompatible. Evidence on this point is provided by Rutgers University Law

Professor Douglas Husak…
“The shape of an ideal drug policy that improves on our criminal justice approach cannot be
described in any detail without deciding which of the two foregoing rationales for reform should
be accepted. A policy that implements a harm-reduction perspective and seeks to maximize the
ratio of benefits to costs will differ substantially from a policy that is geared to respect moral
rights.” (p. 113)
[in essay entitled “Competing Rationales for Drug Policy Reform” in Fish, Jefferson (ed.). 2006.
Drugs and Society: U.S. Public Policy. Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.]
3. Attempt to Focus the Debate on the Harms of Drugs
Especially when debating in front of parent judges, it is to your advantage to keep the harms of
drugs, especially to children, at the forefront of your analysis. This is also where the negative
evidence is the strongest. Somewhat surprisingly, some authors not only romanticize drug use,
but make seemingly outrageous claims about the benefits of such substances. An example is
provided by Frank Owen in his book on public policy, regarding methamphetamine use…
“But it’s quite possible that ten, fifteen years from now, we’ll look back, as we do with crack
cocaine in the 1980s, and wonder whether all the hype and hysteria was worth it. ‘Why we
demonize drugs is because we are in denial about their utility,’ says Andrew Golub. Without
minimizing the dangers of abuse, he points out that ‘methamphetamine is a very useful drug. It
makes you alert, it allows you to work hard, it stops you from falling sleep, and it helps you to
lose weight.’” (p. 230-231)
[Owen, Frank. 2007. No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth. New York: St. Martin’s
Press]
However, few serious academics make such claims. Much more common are the findings
presented in the journal Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology…
“Drug addiction does make a person more likely to die. One study in Italy showed an 18-fold
increase in mortality risk among dependent drug users (Goedert et al. 1995).” (p.12)
[Foddy, Bennett and Julian Savulescu. 2010. “A Liberal Account of Addiction.” Philosophy,
Psychiatry, and Psychology. 17:1]
Even when considering the illegal substance which probably has the least dangerous effects,
marijuana, the harms are serious, and – unfortunately – often underestimated. In the British
Medical Journal, Colin Drummond explained the health risks associated with Marijuana use:
“The pro-cannabis lobby conveniently overlooks the serious health effects of cannabis, pointing
to its safety record in comparison with other illicit and legal drugs, such as tobacco and alcohol.
The lobby would have us believe that cannabis never killed anyone. It is true that cannabis is
relatively safe in overdose compared with heroin, but it is far from harmless in the longer term,
particularly for heavy or regular users. The World Health Organization has concluded that
cannabis, when smoked, is twice as carcinogenic as tobacco. It causes carcinoma of the lungs,
larynx, mouth, and oesophagus as well as other chronic pulmonary diseases, with evidence of a
dose-response relation. These carcinomas appear earlier than cancers that are purely the result of
tobacco smoking. Cannabis increases the risk of death in people with heart disease. Furthermore,
19
cannabis is now 10 times as pure as it was 20 years ago, which points to potentially greater health
risks than earlier research has identified. In vulnerable individuals, cannabis precipitates
schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders and worsens their course. It is worth remembering
that about 15% of schizophrenic patients commit suicide. This is not to mention other clear
adverse psychological effects of cannabis, including depression, anxiety, and violent behaviour.
Cannabis has up to 60 psychoactive ingredients, so it is hardly surprising that it is bad for the
mental health of many vulnerable people. Apart from death, cannabis also causes dependence in
about 10% of users and in 50-90% of regular users.” (p. 107)
Another misconception among many people is that the level of use of marijuana is not especially
significant among young people. The Former Director of the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy, John Walters, explains that…
“Remarkably, over 40 percent of youths who are current marijuana smokers meet the criteria for
abuse or dependency. In several states, marijuana smoking exceeds tobacco smoking among
young people, while marijuana has become more important than alcohol as a factor in treatment
for teenagers.” (p. 143)
[essay by John Walters in anthology by Carroll, Jamuna. 2006. Marijuana: Opposing
Even if the Negative manages to mitigate some of the risk-harm based claims of the Affirmative,
the risk created by an environment of decriminalization, arguably, simply isn’t worth the risk.
Colin Drummond would likely ask a critic of criminalization to consider the following
scenario…
“Perhaps only a minority would be killed or injured by the legalisation of cannabis. But this
would be of no comfort to you if your son or daughter was killed by a drug driver or sectioned
into psychiatric hospital with a drug induced psychosis.” (p. 108)
4. Force the Affirmative to Defend the Workability of their Policy
Many Affirmatives will want to attack the status quo criminal justice based drug policy as having
failed. Obviously, Negatives will want to contest what should be meant by success and failure as
regards a drug policy. However, more than that, the Negative should push the Affirmative to
defend public health policies which reduce drug use compared to criminalization in an
environment where there are no criminal penalties on drug policy to serve as a backstop to
public health policies, the importance of which was explained earlier.
As regards the second part of the burden, all the likely negative examples – Holland, Spain, and
Portugal – maintain criminal penalties for the abusive practice of drug trafficking, which is often
defined by amount possessed, not literal intent to sell. This makes them reasons why the
argument explained in first Negative approach in this briefing can be so potentially powerful;
because those examples prove the desirability of a hybrid approach, which can be considered
Negative ground in terms of the resolution.
20
As to the first part of the burden, that public health policies should be able to reduce drug use
more effectively than criminal based approaches in order to justify change, McGill University
Political Scientist Christopher Manfredi explains why we shouldn’t have much faith in the
ultimate superiority of a decriminalized approach to drug policy…
“The key issue, of course, is whether decriminalization will lower these costs. It would certainly
reduce enforcement costs, but such costs would not disappear entirely. Decriminalization without
regulation—probably strict regulation— is inconceivable, and there would be regulatory
enforcement costs just as there are with the legal production, distribution and consumption of
alcohol and tobacco. Moreover, the legal market in tobacco and alcohol has not eliminated the
black market in those substances, and so there would still be costs associated with illegal activity
on the periphery of the legal market. The impact of decriminalization on welfare and moral costs
depends on its effect on drug use. About eight per cent of the Canadian population over the age of
15 admits to using any of five illegal drugs (cannabis, cocaine, LSD, speed and heroin). It is
difficult to believe that this proportion would not increase with decriminalization. Everyone
agrees that, even with heavy taxation, the free-market price of drugs would fall drastically with
decriminalization. Indeed, one of the arguments for decriminalization is precisely that this price
fall will reduce the criminal activity often generated by the need to pay high black-market prices.
Moreover, the non-monetary costs of acquisition—essentially the cost of engaging in an illegal
activity—should also decline. Wilson and Dilulio argue persuasively that the combined effect of
lower market and transaction costs on the consumption of widely desired, pleasure- inducing
substances would likely be dramatic. Consequently, even if enforcement costs were to decline
under decriminalization, the other costs of drug consumption could be expected to rise. Drug
abusers will not become more employable, healthier or better parents simply because their
activity has become legal. It may arguably be easier to direct them into programs to ameliorate
the negative consequences of drug use once the stigma of criminalization is removed, but these
programs are costly as well. It is difficult to determine whether, on balance, the legal or illegal
scenario is more expensive, but it is clear that decriminalization is not a panacea for whatever
problems exist with current policy.” (p. 15-16)
[Manfredi, Christopher. 2001. “Liberal Morality and the Myths of Drug Criminalization.” Policy
Options. October.]
James McDonough, the former Director of Strategic Planning at the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, made an appeal to historical empiricism in criticizing decriminalization…
“However, a review of American history reveals that when drugs and alcohol were legal,
substance abuse increased. The highest use of heroin and cocaine in this country took place at the
turn of the century before addictive drugs became illegal. In the 1970s, we experimented with de
facto drug decriminalization. The result was drug use by both adults and children at twice the
current rate. We have seen this phenomenon before. Addictive drugs were criminalized because
they are harmful; they are not harmful because they were criminalized.” (p.99-100)
[McDonough, James. 1999. “Response on Drug Policy.” Public Health Reports. 114:2]
5. Utilize Philosophy by Making Morality Based Arguments
Moral philosopher such as Immanuel Kant, who argue that people have a moral duty to improve
themselves, in part as a corollary to having been imparted with gifts such as rationality, are likely
critics of drug use, finding is condemnable. Kant’s argument about one’s duty to maximize
21
one’s gifts is explained in Frank Magill’s outstanding collection of essays, Masterpieces of

World Philosophy:
“Moreover, the categorical imperative is synthetic a priori – a priori in that the action prescribed
is necessary, synthetic in that the content of this action is not derived analytically from a
presupposed volition. The categorical imperative is simply the demand that the subjective
principle of my action, my maxim, should conform to the objective law valid for all rational
beings. Therefore, Kant contends, there is only one categorical imperative: ‘Act only according
to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’
Here are some Kant’s examples: 1) Suicide. Maxim: Out of self-love I want to shorten my life.
But a system of nature in which this maxim was a law would be contradictory: the feeling
impelling to improvement of life would destroy life. Therefore the maxim could not be a law of
nature, and the action is contrary to duty. 2) False Promises: A universal law of nature that
people in trouble escape by making false promises is incoherent, as they would never be believed.
3) Is it all right to amuse myself at the expense of failing to develop my talents? While this could
be a law of nature that all people would do this, a rational being could not will it to be a law of
nature, for rationality entails willing that faculties be developed.” (p. 338)
[Magill, Frank. 1990. Masterpieces of World Philosophy. New York: Harper-Collins
Publishing]
The connection to a criticism of drug use is explained by Philosophy Professor Matt Stolick…
“Of these drugs and the moral problems with their effects, Kant explains that ‘The temptation to
use these lies it the fact they produce, for a time, a state of fancied happiness, a freedom from
care, and even illusory strength; but dejection and weakness follow and, worst of all, a need to
repeat the narcotics and in so doing to increase them is established.’ Kant demonstrates his
understanding of drug use here, focusing on what clinicians would refer to as a felt need to use
again, need to use more, and overall a temporary but illusory escape from care, followed by
weakness. For those cannabis users who are motivated to escape, who meet criteria of cannabis
abuse and/or dependence, Kant here condemns them as violating their duty to themselves.”
[Stolick, Matt. 2009. Otherwise Law-Abiding Citizens: A Scientific and Moral Assessment of
Cannabis Use. Plymouth (UK): Lexington Books.]
Of course, Kant is writing about individual conduct, which does not necessarily justify
intervention by a state. Christopher Manfredi provides the theoretical connection, invoking
Rawls in explaining the importance, in terms of morality, of the norm building function
performed uniquely by criminal sanctions, which potentially send a message against drug abuse
in a manner which public health approaches cannot effectively duplicate…
“Liberal democracy requires the development of civic virtue in order to prevent self-government
from degenerating into selfish, or self-centered, government. More precisely, liberal self-
government functions properly only if the selves who govern exercise moderation in their private
conduct and public demands. The criminal law plays a role in this process, not only by serving
utilitarian, crime reduction purposes like deterrence, incapacitation and rehabilitation, but also by
performing a crucial moral norm-setting function. To be sure, the criminal law identifies harmful
conduct, but it also serves to define and promote the character necessary to sustain a free and
democratic society. This relationship among governing, character formation and the law has its
origins in Aristotle’s ancient teaching that “moral virtue comes about as a result of habit,” and
that “legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them.” Virtue, he argues, is a “state
22
of character concerned with choice,” and one purpose of law is to distinguish between virtuous
and nonvirtuous choices.” But what is the character that liberal democratic regimes must cultivate
in order to ensure their preservation? In general terms, these regimes need their citizens to be
other-regarding and future-oriented, which means that liberal democracies must cultivate both
empathy and self-control among their citizens. (Empathy Wilson defines as a “willingness to take
importantly into account the rights, needs, and feelings of others. Self-control refers to a
willingness to take importantly into account the more distant consequences of present actions.”
See his On Character, 1991.) These traits are important, Rawls argues, for two reasons. First,
participation in self-governing societies requires that citizens weigh interests other than their own
when deliberating on public issues. Second, citizens must be guided in those deliberations by
conceptions of justice and the common good rather than by immediate self-interest. Apart from
conduct that directly violates one or both of these principles (such as crimes against persons or
property, which clearly demonstrate a lack of concern with others), the decision to criminalize
other behaviour depends on the degree to which it affects citizens’ capacity to be other-regarding
and self-controlling. Obviously, this is to a large degree an empirical judgment, but it is one that
is within the legitimate normative boundaries of a liberal regime. The criminal prohibition against
certain drugs is therefore consistent with liberal principles, and the decision of precisely what to
prohibit is largely a prudential question that has, and will, vary from generation to generation. As
many have pointed out, criminal prohibitions against many drugs are of relatively recent origin,
but policy evolution of this sort is hardly unique.” (p. 16)
[Manfredi, Christopher. 2001. “Liberal Morality and the Myths of Drug Criminalization.” Policy
Options. October.]
The capacity for robust and meaningful civil engagement and moral development is stunted by
failing to criminalize drug abuse. Lee Brown, the former Director of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, is explicit in explaining how rationality is compromised by drug use…
“Legalization advocates just do not get it. Many drugs are illegal because they are addictive.
They are mind-altering and cause catastrophic outcomes. People who are addicted to them
cannot moderate or control their use. Therefore, the notion that legalization will remove profits
is specious. Because these substances are addictive, when legalized government drug stores
close for the night, a money-making underground market for drug abusers will open up to
serve clients in need of a fix. And, you can be dead sure they will sell drugs that are not
legalized - as well as the new ones that are created by enterprising drug cartels.” (p. A19)
[Brown, Lee. 1994. “The Dangerous Illusions of Drug Legalization.” Washington Times. May
24]
Of course, some writers go even further with their arguments for the moral need to maintain a
criminal justice based drug policy. Former Drug Czar and Secretary of Education William
Bennett concludes this section by making just such an argument…
“We should not capitulate in our war on drugs any more than we should surrender in our war on
terrorism. Indeed, our ability to meet the long-term demands of the war on terrorism depends in
part on our vigilance in combating drug trafficking and drug use among youth. The post 9-11
world demands clear thinking and moral resolve among adults and a commitment to teach that
moral clarity to our children. Back pedaling on drug laws would be one of the worst examples
we could give our children at this crucial moment in American history.” (p. 81)
[essay by William Bennett in anthology by Carroll, Jamuna. 2006. Marijuana: Opposing
23
DEFINITIONS
Resolved: The abuse of illegal drugs ought to be treated as a matter of public health, not of
criminal justice.
Dictionary Definitions:
Abuse: “to use wrongly; misuse”

[Webster’s New World Dictionary, Third Collegiate Edition, 1988, New York: Simon and
Schuster]
Illegal: “prohibited by law; against the law”

Schuster]
Drugs: “a narcotic, hallucinogen, etc., esp. one that is habit forming”

Schuster]
Contextual Definition:
“Drug addiction, or drug abuse, is a chronic or habitual use of any chemical substance to alter
states of the mind for any purpose other than a medically warranted one. Traditional definitions
of addiction, with their criteria of physical dependence and withdrawal (and often an underlying
tenor of depravity and sin), have been modified with increased understanding; with the
introduction of new drugs, such as cocaine, which are psychologically or neuropsychologically
addicting; and with the realization that its stereotypical application to opiate-drug users was
invalid because many opiate users remain occasional users with no physical dependence. Today
addiction is more often defined by the continuing, compulsive nature of the drug use despite
physical and psychological harms to the user and society, and includes both licit and illicit drugs.
The term ‘substance abuse’ is now frequently used because of the broad range of substances
(including alcohol and inhalants) which fit the addictive profile.” (p. ix-x)
[Cherry, Prof. Andrew (ed.). 2002. Substance Abuse: A Global View. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press]
Ought: “to be compelled by obligation or duty”

Schuster]
Treated: “to have a specified attitude toward and deal with accordingly”
Schuster]
24
Public Health:
Public: “as regards community, rather than private, affairs”

Schuster]
Health: “physical and mental well-being”

Schuster]
Contextual Definitions:
“There are two main approaches to rethinking drug policy, which reflect differing American
values, and they are both represented in this book. One is public health, or harm-reduction, or
cost-benefit approach, which implements the American value of pragmatism. It looks at the
social science and biomedical evidence regarding the effects of each drug, attempts to weigh the
positive and negative consequences of various courses of action, and proposes policies with the
best overall mix of outcomes. Public health approaches to drug policy emphasize harm
reduction (e.g. preventing the spread of disease, maintaining the health of drug users, and
guaranteeing drug purity) and controlling in various ways the quantities available for individual
purchase, dosage levels, and other aspects of drugs and their use, as well as drug advertising.
Public health strategies often involve taxing currently illicit substances (as well as alcohol and
tobacco) – possibly in rough relation to their harmfulness – and usually dedicate tax revenues to
the treatment and prevention of drug-related problems.” (p. 1)
[Fish, Prof. Jefferson (ed.). 2006. Drugs and Society: U.S. Public Policy. Oxford, UK:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers]
“We need to protect individual freedom and keep the government out of people’s private lives.
Even when people make bad choices, they should be left alone, as long as they do not harm
others. When given good information, most people will make wise choices. This is why truthful
drug education – as opposed to scare tactics which backfire when people find out they have been
misled – is so important. We need to think more about promoting healthy behavior instead of
punishing unhealthy behavior. I believe that taking on challenges – both personal and physical –
makes us stronger. That is why I think a public health approach to drug policy makes more
sense than a criminal justice approach.” (p. x-xi)
[former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson in the foreward of Fish, Jefferson (ed.). 2006.
Drugs and Society: U.S. Public Policy. Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.]
“Two major policy and programming approaches are used to deal with these three primary
concerns about drug use: the criminal justice model, which is used to stop or control drug use;
and the public health model, based on harm reduction, which is used to reduce the health
problems among drug users that are caused by the drugs they use. The best example of the
prohibition model is China, and the best example of the harm reduction model is the
25
Netherlands, although all countries use some combination of these drug-control strategies.” (p.
ix)
[Cherry, Prof. Andrew (ed.). 2002. Substance Abuse: A Global View. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press]
Criminal Justice: “a term used for the series of steps involved in proving any criminal activity
like gathering evidences, arresting the accused, conducting trials, making defense, pronouncing
judgment after the crime is proved, carrying out punishment.”
[legal-explanations.com]
Criminal Justice: “a generic term for the procedure by which criminal conduct is investigated,
arrests made, evidence gathered, charges brought, defenses raised, trials conducted, sentences
rendered, and punishment carried out.”
[thefreedictionary.com]
26
AFFIRMATIVE POSITIONS
Based on our focus group testing of potential arguments on this topic, our staff have found that
these four affirmative positions have significant potential and resonate with judges ranging from
lay judges to non-expert but educated professionals.
1. Drug abuse is primarily a public health concern.
When deciding which policy approach to take in response to drug abuse, it is important to
consider the nature of the problem of drug abuse itself. If drug abuse is primarily a medical
problem, then it would make more sense to employ a public health approach to solving the
problem than looking to a criminal justice model. Addiction is widely recognized by the medical
community to be a disease, which means that a health-oriented approach is the most logical way
to deal with the problem.
A criminal justice approach is not appropriate to deal with addiction. A retributive theory of
criminal justice assumes that people deserve punishment because they rationally chose to be evil.
However, since drugs inhibit rational decision-making, it does not make sense to fully punish
addicts the same as other criminals. Similarly, the diminished rationality that comes from drug
addiction would also make criminal deterrence weak. If the goal of criminal justice is to prevent
future criminal activity, then it would also make more sense to treat drug abuse as a medical
problem to offer the best treatment to prevent drug-related crime.
2. Public health approaches have been effective in treating drug abuse.
Several countries have taken steps to decriminalize the abuse of illegal drugs. These countries
have not seen rates of drug abuse skyrocket, but they have been able to take steps to help those
abusing drugs. Public health approaches can still compel people to receive treatment, which
means that addicts are forced to deal with their drug abuse. Criminalizing drug abuse
discourages people from seeking treatment because they know that they could be held
accountable for their past drug use. Moreover, public health programs can deal with the
problems that come with drug abuse. For example, needle exchanges have been empirically
effective in reducing HIV rates among drug users.
3. A criminal justice approach to drug abuse has been counter-productive.
For a policy to be a legitimate use of government resources, at a minimum, it should generally be

effective at achieving the goals it is designed to accomplish, and it should certainly not
undermine the goals it is attempting to achieve. The main reason to take a criminal justice
approach to drug abuse is to prevent harms that come from drug abuse. Therefore, if a criminal
justice approach to drug abuse increases harm, then it should be rejected in favor of an
alternative policy approach.
A criminal justice approach to drug abuse causes harm for several reasons. First, outlawing
drugs forces them to be controlled by people engaged in illegal behavior. These unscrupulous
actors, such as gangs and organized crime, often bring violence to the communities where they
27
produce and deal drugs. Since their only motive is profit, they are also likely to produce more
unsafe drugs, which only exacerbates harms stemming from drug abuse. If a criminal justice
approach were not employed, governments would instead be able to regulate controlled
substances and prevent black market related violence.
4. A criminal justice approach to drug abuse promotes discrimination.
Criminal justice approaches have had a widely disparate impact on minority communities.
Under a criminal justice approach, police officers would have wide discretion to stop individuals
under the suspicion of drug abuse, which opens the door to racial profiling. Additionally, some
drugs used by ethnic and religious minorities are punished more harshly than illicit substances
used primarily by white people, which means that minorities are disproportionately harmed by
criminal enforcement of drug laws. This unequal enforcement is also problematic because felon
disenfranchisement statutes applied to these drug cases means that minority groups lose their
ability to influence the political process.
28
NEGATIVE POSITIONS
Based on our focus group testing of potential arguments on this topic, our staff have found that
these four negative positions have significant potential and resonate with judges ranging from lay
judges to non-expert but educated professionals.
1. Societies can legitimately outlaw the abuse of drugs.
One of the tenets of democratic societies is that the people may decide to prohibit certain
behaviors. In order to show disapproval, democratic societies pass laws that reflect their values.
Since drug abuse serves no useful social function and serves only as a detriment to personal
growth, societies may legitimately outlaw the abuse of drugs. Moreover, polling data suggests
that many societies would like to keep the abuse of illicit substances illegal.
2. Legalizing or decriminalizing drug use would increase drug abuse.
Nearly all countries outlaw at least some use of illicit drugs. While there are still individuals that
chose to abuse drugs, most people refrain from regularly abusing drugs. Showing that a small
minority of people within a country abuse drugs does not mean that governments should abandon
a policy that has been largely successful.
It is also likely that abandoning prohibition would increase the abuse of illegal drugs. By
making drugs illegal, dealers of illicit drugs are forced to raise prices to reflect the risk they take
by engaging in criminal activity. Since price influences economic choice, keeping the price of
drugs high logically would keep drug use relatively low. Similarly, decriminalizing the abuse of
drugs would allow drugs to be more widely available, which would drive down price, and thus
increase the number of people that abuse drugs.
3. Abandoning a criminal justice approach would be dangerous.
If decriminalizing drug abuse increased the number of people abusing illicit drugs, then it is
likely that many of the negative side effects that come from drug use would also increase. Drug
abuse has many negative consequences. In addition to negative impacts on an abuser’s health,
some studies show that people turn to crime in order to pay for their drug habits. Some drugs
may also increase violent tendencies in some people, which may lead to more crime. Other
studies show that drug abuse is also highly correlated with objectionable behavior like child
abuse.
Additionally, criminal networks would also take advantage of systems where drugs were legal.
Under a system of legalization, taxation, and regulation, drug syndicates would still attempt to
sell untaxed drugs the same way they attempt to sell untaxed cigarettes. Also, any criminal
enterprise that may be eliminated from the drug market may turn to engaging in more destructive
behavior, such as human trafficking.
29
3. A criminal justice approach is necessary to disrupt drug networks.
Public health approaches to drug abuse attempt to prevent drug use by eliminating the individual
demand for drugs. However, as long as there is a supply for drugs, people will be tempted to
abuse them. Thus, drug control strategies must do something to eliminate the supply of illegal
drugs.
A criminal justice approach is necessary to disrupt the supply of illegal drugs. Since drug
networks are underground and difficult for authorities to penetrate, they often rely on
information and testimony from drug users to bring down entire drug networks. By eliminating
the government’s ability to leverage the threat of prosecution against drug abusers, the
authorities lose a valuable tool in disrupting criminal networks from supplying drugs in the first
place.
4. Countries that enforce the death penalty for drug trafficking and distribution have
the lowest abuse rates
While not the most democratic of societies, Saudi Arabia and Singapore have taken a hard line
on illegal drugs and their active enforcement of the death penalty in drug trafficking cases has
resulted in some of the lowest drug use rates in the world. Both countries also pursue extensive
public education campaigns on the dangers of using illegal drugs but to maintain social order, the
expansion of capital punishment to include lesser crimes such as narcotics trafficking has
achieved an important societal goal of near zero narcotics use and neither country is seriously
considering changing this policy.
If anything, a number of commentators and politicians in countries that execute drug traffickers
have called for expanding capital punishment to drug users who are in positions of
responsibility, authority, or who are societal role models such as religious leaders, movie and
television stars, village elders, etc. These commentators and politicians have called drug users “a
cancer that is killing society” that needs to be “eradicated”. Note: Other commentary in these
countries that the research team found and translated cannot be reproduced here for the sake of
decorum.
30
SELECTED RESOURCES
Must read:
Babor, Thomas (et al). 2010. Drug Policy and the Public Good. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Although we are reluctant to call any particular resource on a topic which contains such a
robust literature base as drug policy essential, this book comes pretty close. This anthology,
researched in affiliation with the World Health Organization, offers a clearly written, expertly
evaluated, series of essays at the heart of this LD debate topic. It also has a 50+ page
bibliography on the topic, updated through 2009.
Benavie, Arthur. 2009. Drugs: America’s Holy War. New York: Routledge.
This short work, by an award-winning University North Carolina economics professor, as the
title suggests, is full of great evidence in favor of ending drug prohibition.
Carroll, Jamuna. 2006. Marijuana: Opposing Viewpoints. Farmington Hill, MI: Greenhaven
Press.
This “Opposing Viewpoints Series” publication does a good job of remaining even handed on
the prohibition debate, featuring essays from major figures in the field on both side of the issues.
This book represents a great short cut to find evidence from various sides of the marijuana
debate in one place.
Cherry, Andrew (ed.). 2002. Substance Abuse: A Global View. Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press.
For those few debaters who will look past the robust US specific debate on drug policy, this very
useful work offers a comparative analysis between the US and a dozen other nations on policy
approaches to drug use, including a detailed analysis of the toll taken by drugs in each of those
countries.
Fish, Jefferson (ed.). 2006. Drugs and Society: U.S. Public Policy. Oxford, UK: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers.
This short collection of provocative academic essays from nearly a dozen different authors offers
multiple levels of analysis on the criminal justice approach to drug policy, although virtually all
of it supports a public health based alternative approach. Really great Affirmative debate
evidence literally jumps off the pages in this book – one member of the research team called this
book “a [freakin’] gold mine”. Editor’s note: the term in the [brackets] was changed to maintain
the dignified decorum of this tutorial.
Husak, Douglas. 2000. “Liberal Neutrality, Autonomy, and Drug Prohibitions.” Philosophy
and Public Affairs. 29:1(43-80).
This outstanding essay details the various arguments surrounding drug policy and the
implications for autonomy, laying out a strong value criteria structure for an Affirmative case.
Professor Husak is also one of the most prolific writers on drug policy in the world of political
philosophy.
31
Klein, Axel. 2008. Drugs and the World. London: Reaktion Books.
This work, written by a noted University of Kent medical anthropologist, offers a trenchant
critique of the effect of the U.S. war on drugs on international development and human rights
policies. Strong Kritik-type evidence can be found here.
Manfredi, Christopher. 2001. “Liberal Morality and the Myths of Drug Criminalization.” Policy
Options. October. p. 14-17.
This concisely written article lays out some strong arguments against decriminalization in the
context of a robust debate about the future of Canadian drug policy.
Nadelmann, Ethan. 2007. “Think Again: Drugs.” Foreign Policy. September-October. p. 24-
30.
This is a myth-busting an article by one of the foremost spokespeople for the public health/harms
reduction model of drug policy. If you were to seek out one Affirmative source on this topic,
Ethan Nadelmann – Princeton University Political Scientist and Executive Director of the Drug
Policy Alliance – would be the one we recommend.
Reuter, Peter. 2009. “Ten Years After The United Nations General Assembly Special Session
(UNGASS): assessing drug problems, policies and reform proposals.” Addiction. 104:510-517.
This essay offers an excellent assessment of the current state of policy toward drug addiction at a
global level. The article is also quite strong on the theory of harm reduction.
Stolick, Matt. 2009. Otherwise Law-Abiding Citizens: A Scientific and Moral Assessment of
Cannabis Use. Plymouth (UK): Lexington Books.
This solid work on the arguments surrounding marijuana prohibition is distinguished by an
outstanding section on moral philosophy and drug use. Stolick, a Professor of Philosophy, offers
a strong analysis of drug policy, expressed in terms of specific philosophers- including Aristotle,
Kant, and Mill.
32
Publications:
Bancroft, Angus. 2009. Drugs, Intoxication, & Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
This outstanding work by a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh offers a genealogical analysis
of drug prohibition argument and measures. For those who like their post-modern Kritiks, this
is a strong source of ideas, examples, and evidence.
Banks, R. Richard. 2003. “Beyond Profiling: Race, Policing, and the War on Drugs.” Stanford
Law Review. 56:3 (571-603).
This interesting law review article articulates an argument that, although race is important, it is
a bad rhetorical strategy to emphasize race, as opposed generic irrationality, in contesting the
war on drugs
Earleywine, Mitch (ed.). 2007. Pot Politics: Marijuana and the Costs of Prohibition. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
This strong anthology offers more than a dozen academically oriented essays on one specific
strand of the drug policy debate – marijuana prohibition.
Heyman, Gene. 2009. Addiction: A Disorder of Choice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
This book offers a strong historical analysis of how addiction has been treated by both
government and disorder specialists throughout American history. The focus of the work is on
drugs; in particular, opiates.
Hunt, Neil. 2005. “Rejoinder: Public Health or Human Rights?” International Journal of Drug
Policy. 16(5-7).
Although this short piece is kind of interesting, this citation is here to prompt you to do a full
sweep of the last ten years of this outstanding academic journal, seemingly focused directly upon
the topic.
Naim, Moises. 2009. “Wasted: The American Prohibition On Thinking Smart In The War On
Drugs.” Foreign Policy. May-June. p. 166-67.
Strong introductory essay for young debaters, with an Affirmative orientation, to look at when
initially confronting the War on Drugs debate.
Owen, Frank. 2007. No Speed Limit: The Highs and Lows of Meth. New York: St. Martin’s
Press.
This relatively well written book is sharply critical of the tendency to wrap concerns about drug
use and abuse in the fabric of medicalization and crisis rhetoric. It is one of the few place you
can find impact takeouts and turns to methamphetamine addiction. 
Schrag, Peter. 2002. “A Quagmire For Our Times: The War On Drugs.” Journal of Public
Health Policy. 23:3(286-298).
This very well written piece is chock full of good Affirmative evidence for a case which focuses
on the War on Drugs. Schrag also focuses heavily on the medicinal marijuana debate.
33
Single, Eric (et al). 2000. “The Impact of Cannabis Decriminalisation in Australia and the
United States.” Journal of Public Health Policy. 21:2(157-186.)
This article does a comprehensive literature review on decriminalization measures in Australia
and the United States, offering tentative conclusions that decriminalization of marijuana do not
increase use of the substance.
Steinberg, Michael (ed.). 2004. Dangerous Harvest: Drug Plants and the Transformation of
Indigenous Landscapes. New York: Oxford University Press.
Don’t break yourself to get this book, but if you can find it in a university library it is worth
grabbing for either 1) a strong chapter by McCoy entitled “A Critical History of the Global
Narcotics Trade,” which focuses on the 1970s through 1990s, or 2) links/link turns on
indigenous culture based Kritiks.
Wodak, Alex and Colin Drummond. 2002. “For and Against Cannabis Control: Costs Outweigh
the Benefits.” BMJ: British Medical Journal. 324:7329(105-108).
This Pro/Con debate over cannabis criminalization in a prestigious British medical journal,
provides – frankly speaking – a rare argument, in the academic world, against
decriminalization.
34
Websites:
There are thousands of websites that are relevant to this L-D debate topic. The sources
listed below were carefully selected and indicate an “editor’s pick” for best selection.
Read this report first:

Tools for debate: U.S. federal government data on cannabis prohibition, October 2010.
URL: http://www.icsdp.org/research/publications.aspx
ACLU – The American Civil Liberties Union offers some fine Affirmative evidence…for
example…
URL: http://www.aclu.org/drug-law-reform/against-drug-prohibition
Article Archive – This is an excellent directory of links to popular drug policy articles. The only
downside is that it is only updated through 2004, although the links appear to still be active.
URL: http://www.drugtext.org/library
The Baker Institute – James Baker’s think tank at Rice University has some very, very good
Affirmative evidence in its position papers on drug policy. For example…
URL: http://www.bakerinstitute.org/publications/wp_dp_gray.pdf
Cato Institute – This libertarian oriented think tank offers strong defenses of policy decisions
including decriminalization and even outright legalization. For example…
URL: http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-55.html
Common Sense for Drug Policy – This non-profit organization is a good source for Affirmative
evidence.
URL: www.csdp.org
Drug Czar – The website of the Drug Czar at the Office of National Drug Control Policy
provides strong negative evidence 
URL: http://www.ondcp.gov/
Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) – A fairly obvious source of negative evidence

URL: www.dea.gov
Drug Policy Alliance – This organization, headed by Ethan Nadelmann, is a strong source of
affirmative evidence.
URL: www.drugpolicyalliance.com
Family Research Council – This conservative organization is source of strong negative evidence
URL: www.frc.org
35
The Heritage Foundation – This conservative think tank is the source of some good pro-
criminalization evidence. For example…
URL: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/09/legalizing-marijuana-why-citizens-
should-just-say-no
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) – website of a nonprofit

organization which does a good job of providing evidence of the harmful effects of drugs
URL: www.casacolumbia.org
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) – this research institute is a good source of evidence,
generally tending toward the Negative.
URL: www.nida.nih.gov
Open Society Initiative – Billionaire George Soro’s foundation features links to an impressive
number of Affirmative oriented position papers on drug policy. For example…
URL:
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/health/focus/ihrd/articles_publications/publications/briefing-
notes-20100306
Stop The Drug War – Yep, the position of this organization is exactly what you think it is 
URL: http://stopthedrugwar.org/
36
SELECTED QUOTATIONS ON THE TOPIC
AFFIRMATIVE QUOTATIONS
Addiction is a disease that needs to be treated.
Redonna K. Chandler, Bennet W. Fletcher, and Nora D. Volkow, “Treating Drug Abuse and
Addiction in the Criminal Justice System”, JAMA, Volume 301, Number 2, 2009.
Addiction is a chronic brain disease for which genetic factors are believed to contribute 40% to
60% of the vulnerability. Repeated drug exposure in individuals who are vulnerable (because of
genetics, or developmental or environmental factors) trigger neuroadaptations in the brain that
result in the compulsive drug use and loss of control over drug-related behaviors that
characterizes addiction. Molecular and neuroimaging studies have helped illuminate how genes
may affect vulnerability to addiction and how repeated use of addictive drugs causes long-lasting
disruptions to the structure and function of the brain. Among the genes identified to contribute to
the vulnerability for addiction are those that participate in the neuroplastic changes associated
with learning. Imaging studies have identified multiple brain circuits that are disrupted in
addicted persons; these include circuits involved in reward and motivation, learning and memory,
cognitive control, mood, and interoception (awareness of physiological body signals). Disruption
of these circuits impairs the addicted person's ability to inhibit intentional actions or to control
strong emotions and desires and also increases the likelihood that the individual will have
difficulties making adaptive decisions.
A criminal justice approach has empirically failed.
Kurt Schmoke, Mayor of Baltimore, MD, “A Symposium on Drug Decriminalization: An

Argument in Favor of Decriminalization”, Hofstra Law Review, Volume 18, 1990
The results of prohibition have been predictable. The criminalization of narcotics, cocaine and
marijuana, has not solved the problem of their use. Millions of Americans regularly use illegal
drugs for reasons which vary as do the races, income levels and degrees of dependence of the
individual users. Further, prohibition has not effectively limited the availability of drugs. Rather,
by eliminating access to legitimate sources for drugs, prohibition has virtually ensured the
continued profitability of the illicit drug trade and an ample supply of illicit drugs for the addicts.
What prohibition has accomplished has been to ignore the addicts' need for medical treatment
while making the illicit drug trade a multi-billion dollar business. This situation, in turn, has led
to a vast increase in drug-related crime and spawned an evil worse than addition: the
disintegration and demoralization of our cities.
Criminal justice can never solve drug abuse.
Punishment alone is a futile and ineffective response to drug abuse, failing as a public safety
intervention for offenders whose criminal behavior is directly related to drug use. Addiction is a
37
chronic brain disease with a strong genetic component that in most instances requires treatment.
The increase in the number of drug-abusing offenders highlights the urgency to institute
treatments for populations involved in the criminal justice system. It also provides a unique
opportunity to intervene for individuals who would otherwise not seek treatment.
The foundational assumptions of a criminal justice approach are wrong.

The Harrison Narcotic Act specifically allowed doctors to prescribe and dispense narcotics "in
the course of [their] professional practice." Since the medical establishment took the position,
and still does, that addiction is a disease, this would have allowed the prescription of narcotics to
treat addiction. The Treasury Department, however, saw it differently. The Supreme Court
settled the matter in Webb v. United States and held that it was illegal for a doctor to prescribe
narcotics for the sole purpose of keeping addicts comfortable. This decision was astounding
since it went against commonly accepted medical norms and the apparent intent of Congress. As
a result of Webb, "it was absolutely forbidden under pain of criminal prosecution for a doctor to
provide any narcotic to an addict except for a brief period to aid detoxification," and methadone
maintenance; long term management of addiction by physicians, was illegal until 1974. Hence,
addicts lost access to the legal market for narcotics, and were left with only the black market as a
source for their drug purchases.
Criminal justice can never prevent drug markets from forming.
John T. Schuler and Arthur McBride, “A SYMPOSIUM ON DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION:

NOTES FROM THE FRONT: A DISSIDENT LAW-ENFORCEMENT PERSPECTIVE ON
DRUG PROHIBITION”, Hofstra Law Review, Volume 18, 1990
Any individual trafficker or organization, once identified, can be arrested and prosecuted given
the time and commitment by the government. The problem is that no individual or group is
indispensable. Once a major trafficker is arrested, market forces appear to fill the vacuum created
almost immediately, often with no discernible changes in drug availability or price. While it is
true that once identified, any given trafficker or group can be successfully prosecuted, it is not a
corollary that all trafficking groups can be prosecuted.
Legal prohibition furthers black markets.

As predicted in American Medicine, since our current drug policy has closed legitimate sources
of drugs to addicts, they have turned to the black market for their supply. Similar to the lessons
learned during alcohol prohibition, when the government bans a substance that millions of
people are determined to use -- either out of foolishness, addiction or both -- violent criminal
syndicates will conspire to manufacture and sell that substance for the enormous black market
38
profits to be attained. The legal prohibition of narcotics, cocaine and marijuana demonstrably
increased the price of those drugs in the black market. This increase in price produces the kind of
profits that attract major criminal enterprises willing to take any risk to keep their product
coming to the American market. As a result, the United States in the last ten years has become
absolutely inundated in illicit drugs. Tougher laws, greater efforts at interdiction and stronger
rhetoric at all levels of government and from both political parties have not, and will not, be able
to stop it. Punishment will not deter the illicit drug trade and neither will internecine conflicts
(including murder) among the traffickers. Such conflicts are just a way of reducing the
competition. As a result, the unprecedented violence and corruption that began in South America
has now been brought to the cities and streets of the United States.
Increased criminal enforcement is profitable for drug dealers.

This suggests that there are no innovations in law-enforcement techniques which are immune to
counter-innovation by defendants. It also means that any innovation or increase in the level of
enforcement will predominantly affect the least intelligent, resourceful, and committed
traffickers. More experienced and skillful traffickers may, in fact, profit from heightened law-
enforcement activity.
The current criminal justice approach fails to give people the treatment they require.

If the drug laws of the United States simply did not achieve their purpose, perhaps there would
be insufficient reason to get rid of them. However, our drug laws are doing more than not
working -- they violate Hippocrate's famous admonition: first do no harm. While law
enforcement efforts have not eradicated the supply of illicit drugs, they have substantially
increased the price of such drugs. This creates a financial problem for the substantial number of
addicts who are poor. Further, eighty-five percent of the addicts who seek free treatment are
turned away. This, in turn, leads many addicts to commit crimes to support their habit, and the
non-drug-using population is frequently the silent victim of these crimes.
Empirically, criminal justice approaches have not shut down drug markets.

A central characteristic of enforcement is that any innovation by traffickers yield a response by

law enforcement. This in turn is met by another innovation by traffickers, thus creating an
endless cycle. Likewise, any enforcement innovation made by police officers yields an adaptive
39
response by traffickers. The least skilled and the least informed members of the trafficking
community are not able to respond to those innovations quickly, if at all, and thus are more likely
to be arrested. This hypothesis is not provable because it assumes a substantial number of
traffickers have not come to the attention of law-enforcement agencies. The sheer volume of
available drugs, however, supports this reasoning.
Children are harmed by prohibition.

Perhaps the most far-reaching damage resulting from our drug laws has been the victimization of
our children. Some have been killed as innocent bystanders in gun battles among drug
traffickers. Many others, especially those living in the inner city, are frequently barraged with the
message that selling drugs is an easy road to riches -- far easier than hard work and good grades.
Drug pushers, with their wads of money, become envied role models for young people seduced
into joining the illegal trade. In many cities, small children act as lookouts and runners for drug
pushers, just as they did for bootleggers during Prohibition.
Mandatory public health approaches may be necessary for treatment.
Addiction also decreases sensitivity in the reward and the motivational circuits, which modulate
response to positive as well as negative reinforcers. Practically, this suggests that an addicted
individual may experience less motivation to pursue activities likely to result in beneficial
outcomes and to avoid those that could result in punishment. One can also predict that
dysfunction in this neurocircuitry would reduce an addicted person's motivation to abstain from
drug use because alternative reinforcers (natural stimuli) are comparatively weaker and negative
consequences (e.g., incarceration) are less salient.
Criminal justice approaches make AIDS worse.

The 1980's have brought another major public health problem made worse because of our drug
laws: AIDS. n85 Eleven states ban non-prescription distribution, or possession, of syringes. n86 As
a result, contaminated intravenous-drug needles are now the principal means of transmission for
HIV infection. n87 The users of drug needles infect [*517] not only those with whom they share
needles, but also their sex partners n88 and their unborn children. n89 In a political climate where
all illicit drug use is condemned, n90 and where possession of a syringe can be a criminal offense,
n91
few jurisdictions have been willing to initiate a needle exchange program. n92 Along with our
failure to give illegal drugs to cancer patients with intractable pain, n93 this is a graphic example
of our blind pursuit of an irrational policy.
40
Public health best deals with the irrationality of drug use.
Second, neuroscience establishes a biological framework for understanding aspects of addictive

behavior that otherwise seem to defy rational explanation. In the absence of known biological
determinants, these behaviors often have been attributed to "moral weakness."74 Identifying the
neurologic factors underlying addictive behavior can place these moral arguments into a more
reasoned context. Addiction does not absolve one of responsibility for use of illicit drugs or for
criminal behavior, but understanding how addictive drugs affect behavior through brain
mechanisms can inform decisions to provide treatment to addicted individuals. For example,
mandated treatment may be useful for drug-involved offenders who would otherwise not engage
in the treatment process or make progress toward recovery. The persistence of neurologic deficits
provides support for the recognition of addiction as a chronic disease and highlights the need for
the same continuity of care so important in treatment of other chronic diseases (eg, asthma,
hypertension).72 It also suggests that agonist medications such as methadone are important
treatments for addiction, even for individuals who have been under enforced abstinence during
incarceration.
Criminal justice approaches prevent regulation.

Lastly, our drug laws have hurt Americans in still another more subtle way. Our fear and dislike
of drug use has become so pervasive that all humanitarian considerations toward the health and
well being of the addict are ignored. n98 While we mandate disclosure of the percentage of
alcohol in liquor, n99 and we regulate the concentration of aspirin and all other over-the-counter
drugs, n100 we allow adulterated illicit drugs to be sold to adults and children.
Half of all prisoners need treatment for drugs.
The past 20 years have seen significant increases in the numbers of individuals incarcerated or
under other forms of criminal justice supervision in the United States. These numbers are
staggering—approximately 7.1 million adults in the United States are under some form of
criminal justice supervision.1 The large increase in the criminal justice population reflects in part
tougher laws and penalties for drug offenses.2 An estimated one-half of all prisoners (including
some sentenced for other than drug offenses) meet the criteria for diagnosis of drug abuse or
dependence
Decriminalization would eliminate black markets.
41

While the decriminalization of drugs will not eradicate the evil of drug abuse, it will alleviate
many of the problems that prohibition has created. First and foremost, decriminalization will
eliminate the profits of the illegal drug trade by giving addicts access to legitimate sources of
drugs. Elimination of black market profits will effectively [*519] eliminate the market itself,
and all of its attendant evils.
The criminal justice system does not understand the neurobiology of addiction.
During the past 20 years, fundamental advances in the neurobiology of addiction have been
made. Molecular and imaging studies have revealed addiction as a brain disorder with a strong
genetic component, and this has galvanized research on new pharmacological treatments.
However, a large disconnect remains between addiction research and the treatment of addiction
in general, particularly within the criminal justice system. This is evidenced in that most
prisoners (80%-85%) who could benefit from drug abuse treatment do not receive it. In addition,
drug-using offenders are at high risk for infectious diseases such as human immunodeficiency
virus (HIV) and hepatitis C and frequently have comorbid psychiatric disorders, which further
highlights the dire treatment needs of this population.
Not using a criminal justice approach could fund public health approaches to addiction.

Comprehensive new drug treatment programs, funded with tax-dollars saved from dismantling
the massive drug-law enforcement bureaucracy, would, however, provide a humane response to
any increase in the drug-using population. The question then becomes not whether
decriminalization leads to any increase in the drug-using population, but whether the benefits of
decriminalization, both in economic and social terms, outweigh any consequent rise in drug use
and abuse, in view of the proposed comprehensive drug-treatment programs.
Criminal justice alone will not make the public safer or prevent drug abuse.
The inadequacy of incarceration by itself in addressing drug abuse or addiction is evident in the
statistics. A review of recidivism in 15 states found that one-quarter of individuals released
returned to prison within 3 years for technical violations that included, among other things,
42
testing positive for drug use. Illicit drugs are used in jails and prisons despite their highly
structured, controlled environments, but even enforced abstinence can mislead criminal justice
professionals as well as addicted persons to underestimate the vulnerability to relapse post-
incarceration. On release from prison or jail, addicted persons will experience challenges to their
sobriety through multiple stressors that increase their risk of relapsing to drug use. These include
the stigma associated with being labeled an ex-offender, the need for housing and legitimate
employment, stresses in reunifying with family, and multiple requirements for criminal justice
supervision.
The change to a public health approach must be done properly.

The second lesson has to do with the way in which drugs should be made a public health
responsibility. Unlike alcohol, where the United States went from Prohibition to encouragement
of alcohol consumption -- leaving the public health system to deal with the consequences -- any
form of decriminalization must be accompanied by a reallocation of resources to education,
treatment, and prevention programs designed to keep non-users away from drugs and current
users off drugs.
Criminal prohibition of drugs promotes violence.

The violence related to illegal drug trafficking is an inescapable consequence of prohibition.

Decriminalization will not eliminate all the violence in inner-city neighborhoods where brutality
has been a central element for generations, manifesting itself in child abuse, domestic violence,
and other brutal forms. What decriminalization can do is stop financing and feeding trafficking-
related violence. It will prevent drug traffickers from being the primary successful role models in
neighborhoods where poverty and unemployment make affluent and unafraid drug traffickers
people to emulate.
Drug abuse should be treated by medical professionals.

Decriminalization is a means to a much desired end -- getting the criminal justice system out of
the business of trying to control the health problem of drug abuse and putting that responsibility
where it belongs -- in the hands of our public health system. The goal in the war on drugs should
not be less supply, more jails or even the death penalty. It should be less profit for black
marketeers and less demand. This goal will only be achieved through increased efforts at
treatment and prevention. The drug traffickers can be beaten and the public health of the United
43
States can be improved if we are willing to substitute common sense for rhetoric, myth and blind
persistence.
Legal prohibition increases drug-related violence.

Violence intended to hinder law-enforcement efforts takes a number of forms, in categories

which overlap: (1) assassinations, force, or threats intended to intimidate or eliminate public
officials, (2) avoiding apprehension during an arrest; (3) intimidating or eliminating prospective,
past or potential witnesses and (4) intimidating citizens, often neighborhood activists or public
figures, who speak out against drug dealers. Intramural violence has variations. Such violence is
also intended to hinder law enforcement efforts: one trafficker kills or threatens an associate or
former associate because of the victim's perceived cooperation with the authorities. This can
either be anticipatory, or retaliatory in order to set an example and deter others from cooperating.
Public health approaches are useful for criticizing the justice system.
Lisa D. Moore and Amy Elkavich, “Who’s Using and Who’s Doing Time: Incarceration, the
War on Drugs, and Public Health”, American Journal of Public Health, Volume 98, Number 5,
2008.
There are discrepancies surrounding rates of drug use among the general public and the
population serving prison time for nonviolent, drug-related offenses. In addition, social and
health policy issues are created by these differences left undetected or unaddressed by those who
have created them: the criminal justice system and the current political agenda. Public health as a
discipline is now in a prime position to call attention to these discrepancies, design programs to
assist both the incarcerated individuals and their families, and create the social environment
necessary to change the political climate and social policy surrounding who’s using and who’s
doing time.
Legal prohibition promotes violence between drug dealers.

Other drug-related violence among criminals involves wars over markets, usually over a
geographical area, often as small as one block on a city street. A portion of intramural violence
involves the avoidance of paying debts. Some violence involves one individual, group, or
trafficker, robbing or kidnapping drug traffickers or their families. These last two actions are
often interrelated: one group kills the members of another group, and at the same time steals
money and drugs. This serves several goals at once: it eliminates a competitor, serves as a
warning to other potential competitors, and also provides the spoils of conquest. Some violence
44
is merely retaliation for past injury, such as selling "beat" drugs, larceny, past attacks, or is meant
to serve as a show of force.
A focus on crime is based on media hype.
2008.
A broad moral panic about crime fueled by media headlines and political expediency created the
need to escalate the war on drugs. The outcome has increased incarceration produced by tougher
laws and prosecution, less judicial discretion, and greater policing. Because these laws are not
enforced equally, most often the poor and people of color who are financially or socially unable
to remove themselves from environments that are labeled "drug areas" are persecuted. They
inadvertently place themselves directly in the midst of our nation’s war on drugs.
Promoting public health also promotes public safety.
Not treating a drug-abusing offender is a missed opportunity to simultaneously improve both

public health and safety. Integrating treatment into the criminal justice system would provide
treatment to individuals who otherwise would not receive it, improving their medical outcomes
and decreasing their rates of reincarceration.
Criminal justice makes problems that stem from addiction worse.
2008.
The challenges that lead a person to prison—drug addition, alcoholism, untreated mental
illnesses, lack of employment opportunities—are not abated by incarceration; they are often
worsened. Former inmates may have lost family and social ties. They are certainly less
employable than before, because many employers do not hire convicted felons. Zero tolerance
laws prohibit people with drug-related felonies from using government assistance such as public
housing and federal financial aid to attend college. However, violent felons are not excluded from
these programs. The trend away from rehabilitation in the past 20 years means that fewer people
are able to get college degrees or transferable job skills while in prison. Three quarters of state
prison inmates lack a high school diploma, and less-educated inmates are more likely than their
educated peers to be recidivists. Policymakers discuss the need for increasing the technological
skills of the country’s workforce by offering education for meaningful employment, yet we have
a massive and growing population of formerly incarcerated persons that may never be able to
participate in the legitimate job market aside from unskilled, minimum-wage labor.
45
Treatment instead of incarceration can have positive outcomes.
Research over the last 2 decades has consistently reported the beneficial effects of treatment for
the drug abuser in the criminal justice system. These interventions include therapeutic
alternatives to incarceration, treatment merged with judicial oversight in drug courts, prison- and
jail-based treatments, and reentry programs intended to help offenders transition from
incarceration back into the community. Through monitoring, supervision, and threat of legal
sanctions, the justice system can provide leverage to encourage drug abusers to enter and remain
in treatment.
Public health approaches to drug abuse are needed to prevent discrimination.
2008.
Communities of color face an escalating public health problem created by our society’s solution
to imprison those arrested for nonviolent drug offenses. Challenges that plague inner cities—
from poverty and hopelessness to substance use and increased morbidity and mortality—are
exacerbated by high incarceration rates; suburban communities are not "harmed" when
nonviolent drug offenders are given treatment and second chances. Public health practitioners
and policymakers should work in collaboration to treat this as a public health problem, one that
deserves prevention and treatment rather than punishment. Primary prevention includes the
creation of strong, viable communities in which members have employment and other options
besides drugs. Substance use treatment can be more effective only in places where the conditions
of primary prevention are established.
Legal prohibitions can undermine civil liberties.

The large volume means that cases are handled as fungible. The need to dispose of cases may
outweigh the goal of just dispositions of cases. Careful examination of each case in order to
avoid convicting the innocent is sacrificed. These practices can only promote disrespect for the
legal system, not only by the rare outside observer, but also by police officers, practitioners,
judges, and defendants as well. This is ironic; for it is among criminal defendants that we most
hope to instill respect for the legal system.
Public health approaches prevent drug abuse.
46
Research has consistently shown that community-based drug abuse treatment can reduce drug
use and drug-related criminal behavior. A meta-analysis of 78 comparison-group community-
based drug treatment studies found treatment to be up to 1.8 times better in reducing drug use
than the usual alternatives. In a meta-analysis of 66 incarceration-based treatment evaluations,
therapeutic community and counseling approaches were respectively 1.4 and 1.5 times more
likely to reduce reoffending. Drug courts combine judicial supervision with drug treatment as an
alternative to incarceration; their graduates have rearrest rates about half those of matched
comparison samples and much lower than those of drug court dropouts. Individuals who
participated in prison-based treatment followed by a community-based program postincarceration
were 7 times more likely to be drug free and 3 times less likely to be arrested for criminal
behavior than those not receiving treatment.
Legal prohibition undermines the effectiveness of police.

Among police officers, there is profound cynicism about prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys,
elected officials, and their own ranking officers. This cynicism is the result of a sense that the
public has asked them to do an impossible job: to stop violent traffickers from catering to a
lucrative drug market. This cynicism is far from unjustified. It is police officers, after all, who
take the greatest risks for the fewest rewards of all those in the criminal justice system. Police
officers bear the highest personal burden of those within the legal community and in the
enforcement of narcotics laws. The burden is paid in mortality, injuries, and stress.
Public health approaches are needed to prevent long-term discrimination.
2008.
Public health professionals should advocate for the families of incarcerated people. Family
separation is a likely cause of recidivism and can contribute to the risk of children joining their
parents in the system. Everyone should be able to access quality health care and education inside
and out of prison. We should support ex-felons after their prison terms in their attempts to find
meaningful employment, housing, and education. Discriminating against those who have served
prison sentences does nothing but propagate the perception that persons in poor communities are
limited to illegal and high-risk employment and ensures their individual futures as unemployable,
unsafe, and unwanted by society.
Criminal justice approaches to drug use violate civil liberties.
Eric Jensen, Jurg Gerber, and Clayton Mosher, “Social Consequences of the War on Drugs: The
47
Legacy of Failed Policy”, Criminal Justice Policy Review, Volume 15, 2004.
The drug war has also spread over into the civil arena. This pandemic spillover of state intrusion
into the civil arena in the name of controlling crime represents a rapid and drastic slide down the
slippery slope of reducing what heretofore were considered the due process rights of Americans.
The most pervasive example of crime control absent due process is the civil forfeiture of assets
in drug-related cases (Blumenson & Nilsen, 1998; Jensen, 2000). Law enforcement agencies
seized nearly $7 billion in allegedly drug-related assets from fiscal year 1985 through 1999
(Jensen, 2000; Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2001). When law enforcement is
partially self-financed, it becomes less accountable to the public.
Public health approaches have helped prevent heroin use.
The benefits of medications for drug treatment were shown in a recent randomized trial in which
heroin-dependent inmates began methadone treatment in prison prior to release and continued in
the community postrelease. At 1-, 3-, and 6-month follow-up, patients who received methadone
plus counseling were significantly less likely to use heroin or engage in criminal activity than
those who received only counseling. The potential exists for immediate adoption of methadone
maintenance for incarcerated persons with opioid addictions, but most prison systems have not
been receptive to this approach.
Drug-related crime does not justify a criminal justice approach.

If we are not punishing people to "save them from themselves," it follows that the justification
must be that drug use is in fact other-regarding conduct. This reasoning is at best tenuous, and
can be likened to punishing possessors of pornography in the name of preventing and punishing
rape. A causal nexus is alleged, on the evidence of a correlation. Some drug users do bad things.
Many people are arrested for a variety of crimes, and are then given urine tests which show
indications of recent illicit drug use. Therefore, drugs have "caused" the behavior which led to
the arrest. This, of course, doesn't take into account the unknown number of people who have
used drugs and committed no other crime than their drug crime. If punishment is needed for
robbery, larceny, and child abuse, which we firmly believe that it is, let's not waste our time with
drug buyers. Regardless of whether or not America decides to decriminalize, resources devoted
to drug possession cases are wasted and will be wasted, unless we first make serious inroads on
violent, white collar and street-level crime.
Criminal justice approaches to drug policy justifies the prison-industrial complex.
48
During the mid-1990s, an average of three 500-bed prison facilities have opened each week in
the United States (Schlosser, 1998). Christie (2000), in his provocatively titled book Crime
Control as Industry, refers to low-level offenders as the “raw material” for prison expansion. He
suggests that the prison industry needs inmates just as the paper industry needs trees—the key
difference, however, is that trees may well turn out to be a finite resource.
Public health approaches to drug abuse are cost-effective.
Economic analyses highlight the cost-effectiveness of treating drug-involved offenders. On

average, incarceration in the United States costs approximately $22 000 per month, and there is
little evidence that this strategy reduces drug use or drug-related reincarceration rates for
nonviolent drug offenders. By contrast, the average cost of methadone is $4000 per month, and
treatment with methadone has demonstrated effectiveness in reducing drug use and criminal
activity following release. Alternatives to incarceration can also defray job productivity losses
and the separation from family and social support systems.
Criminal justice approaches undermine long-term economic stability.
There is of course a very cruel irony in all these developments. As state governments take funds
from education and social programs to expand their prison systems, citizens are less able to
compete in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Skills will be low, employment
opportunities limited, and more people will live in poverty. Such conditions are criminogenic,
but instead of investing in programs to prevent criminal activity, “the government spends dollars
on the final result of the poverty circle” (McDonald, 1997).
Drug education is not enough – more public health measures need to be taken.
Drug education—not drug treatment—is the most common service provided to prisoners with
drug abuse or addiction problems. More than one-quarter of state inmates and 1 in 5 federal
inmates meeting abuse/dependence criteria participate in self-help groups such as Alcoholics
Anonymous while in prison. However, though treatment during and after incarceration has been
shown to significantly reduce drug use and drug-related crime, less than 20% of inmates with
drug abuse or dependence receive formal treatment
Prisons are becoming overcrowded from the number of drug offenses.
49
A growing proportion of prison inmates has been convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. In 1979,
6% of state prison inmates were convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, whereas in 1998 the
proportion had increased to nearly21%, nearly a fourfold increase (Bureau of Justice Statistics,
n.d.b;Western & Beckett, 1999). In 1985, before the declaration of a new war on drugs and the
passage of harsh federal antidrug legislation, 34% of federal prisoners were incarcerated for drug
offenses. By 1998, 58% of federal prisoners had been sentenced for drug offenses (Bureau of
Justice Statistics, 2000a).
The criminal justice system does not provide enough treatment options.
In a recent survey of correctional programs and organizations across the United States, most
correctional agencies reported providing some type of drug abuse treatment services; however,
the median percentage of offenders who had access to those services at any given time was low,
usually less than 10%. Even if a correctional institution does provide treatment, the continuity of
treatment postincarceration, which is essential to recovery, is often lacking when the drug-
involved offender transitions from incarceration to community supervision. Failure to receive
treatment on release increases the risk not only of relapse but also of mortality from drug
overdose and other causes.
The criminal justice system ignores critical public health issues surrounding addiction.
There are many barriers to treatment for the drug-involved offender, including lack of the
resources, infrastructure, and treatment staff (including physicians knowledgeable about
addiction medicine) required to meet the drug treatment needs of individuals under their
supervision. Addiction remains a stigmatized disease not often regarded by the criminal justice
system as a medical condition; as a consequence, treatment is not constitutionally guaranteed as
is the treatment of other medical conditions.
50
Negative Quotations
Legalizing drugs would further addiction.
John C. Lawn, former administrator of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, “A
Symposium on Drug Decriminalization: The Issue of Legalizaing Illicit Drugs”, Hofstra Law
Review, Volume 18, 1990.
As stated previously, the legalization of drugs would expand the drug problem. Medical research
with monkeys, for example, demonstrates that given unlimited access, monkeys will continue
using cocaine until they die. In more human terms, we can look at the countless stories of lives
destroyed by the existing cocaine and crack epidemic. Drug law enforcement deters drug use. If
these reinforcing drugs were freely available, we could reasonably expect that the current crisis
we now face -- particularly in our large cities -- would increase substantially. A former director
of the National Institute on Drug Abuse made a shocking prediction about cocaine addiction by
basing his prediction on what is known about alcohol addiction, given its unrestricted access. He
estimated that if there was no drug enforcement system to limit access to cocaine in the United
States, there would be about eighty million regular cocaine users in the United States rather than
the roughly six million now regularly using cocaine
Abuse of illegal drugs causes harm.
Drug Free Australia, Drug Free Australia’s Arguments Against Drug Legalization, 2009.
http://www.drugfree.org.au/fileadmin/Media/Global/Taskforce_Arguments_for_Prohibition.pdf.
The contention that the damage of illicit drugs are exaggerated, or that scientific studies showing
their manifest harms are ‘junk science’ fails to recognize the weight and plausibility of that
scientific and social evidence. Psychological damage and illness, genetic damage, damage to
immune and reproductive systems, personality changes, damage to internal organs are all effects
of the drugs themselves. Suicide, illness and accidents are the effect of the drug, not of their
prohibition.
Legality increases death rates from substance abuse.
Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
World Drug Report 2009. New York: United Nations Publications. 2009.
The practice of banning certain addictive substances while permitting and taxing others is indeed
difficult to defend based on the relative harmfulness of the substances themselves. Legal
addictive substances kill far more people every year than illegal ones – an estimated 500 million
people alive today will die due to tobacco. But this greater death toll is not a result of the licit
substances being pharmacologically more hazardous than the illicit ones. This greater death toll
is a direct result of their being legal, and consequently more available. Use rates of illicit drugs
are a fraction as high as for legal addictive drugs, including among those who access the legal
drugs illegally (i.e. young people). If currently illegal substances were made legal, their
popularity would surely increase, perhaps reaching the levels of licit addictive substances,
51
increasing the related morbidity and mortality.
Legalization would increase drug use.
It is contended that prohibition causes greater drug use by making drugs so expensive that users
must become dealers and continually recruit new users to support their habit. This contention is
deficient on two grounds a. higher prices levied by governments on alcohol and tobacco
inevitably reduce demand, and so it is with illicit drugs, and b. taking the 1,000,000 young
people in the US per year who start smoking tobacco, prohibiting tobacco would not conceivably
swell their numbers, only decrease them. Of course, legalizing drugs will make drugs cheaper
and thus increase use as with the experience of cheaper crack cocaine in the US.
Illegality keeps the price of drugs high.
R. Gil Kerlikowske, Director of National Drug Control Policy, Why Marijuana Legalization
Would Compromise Public Health and Public Safety, March 4, 2010.
Controls and prohibitions help to keep prices higher, and higher prices help keep use rates
relatively low, since drug use, especially among young people, is known to be sensitive to price.
The relationship between pricing and rates of youth substance use is well-established with
respect to alcohol and cigarette taxes. There is literature showing that increases in the price of
cigarettes triggers declines in use.
Legalization would increase the abuse of drugs by children.
The idea that criminals will be put out of business by legalization fails to recognize that the most
productive recruiting pool to illicit drug use has always been amongst secondary school-aged
young people, an age group that would still be prohibited from buying drugs even in a regulated
framework, as with alcohol or tobacco. Consequently, criminal effort will be more concentrated
on this vulnerable age group even moreso than currently. Further, a large number of studies have
shown that criminal careers are embarked on before the onset of drug use, while drug use
intensifies this criminal behaviour.
Legalization and use as medicine increases drug abuse.
Eva Brännmark, Detective Superintendent in Stockholm, Sweden, Law Enforcement – The

Swedish Model, April 27, 2007
Trials involving legal prescriptions for drug abusers were carried out in Stockholm between
April 1965 and April 1967. I was then working at the Solna Police Authority, which is now a
52
part of the Stockholm County Police Authority. We had three (!) known abusers in our area who
lived in one- room apartments. They knew us, we knew them and we used to visit them in their
homes. The situation changed dramatically soon after the trials started. There were sometimes
10-20 people, all under the influence of drugs, and plenty of legally prescribed drugs in these
apartments, and there was nothing we could do about it. A few months later there were hundreds
of abusers in the area and the police had totally lost control of them and the extent of drug abuse
in the district. After a couple of deaths involving legally prescribed drugs the trials were
suspended.
Public opinion supports keeping drugs criminal.
Currently there is still significantly greater public support for the continued prohibiting of illicit
drug use than there is for legalizing and regulating the use of these substances. In the United
States 82% of those polled by the Family Research Association in 1998 were opposed to the
legalization of heroin and cocaine in the same manner as alcohol is legal. In October 2009 a
Gallup poll found that 54% of those polled were against the legalization of cannabis. In
Australia, which has had the highest levels of illicit drug use in OECD countries for more than a
decade, 95% of Australians oppose the legalization of heroin, cocaine and amphetamines, and
79% oppose the legalization of cannabis. In Australia, this opposition to the legalization of illicit
drugs is driven by even higher rates of disapproval of illicit drugs, as measured by its triennial
national Household Surveys, with 97% disapproving the regular use of heroin, cocaine and
amphetamines, 2% undecided and only 1% approving. Only 7% approve of the regular use of
cannabis.
Democracies must respect citizens’ wishes to keep drugs illegal.
In a democracy political representatives must have regard for the kind of society the majority
wish to have. This is the meaning of democracy. Taking as an example the Australian
Household surveys mentioned above, if 95% of Australians are against the legalization of heroin,
cocaine and amphetamines then a politician’s support for the continued prohibition of these
drugs transcends any kind of cynical political calculation and is clearly a responsible and
responsive enactment of democratic representation. In any democracy where ‘the will of the
people’ is respected by its political representatives, the prohibition of these substance might well
be expected to remain intact.
Regulation through legalization does not prevent abuse.
53
Our current experience with legal, regulated prescription drugs like Oxycontin shows that
legalizing drugs is not a panacea. In fact, its legalization widens its availability and misuse, no
matter what controls are in place. In 2006, drug-induced deaths reached a high of over 38,000,
according to the Centers for Disease Control – an increase driven primarily by the non-medical
use of pharmaceutical drugs.
Legalization promotes child abuse.
The notion that illicit drug use is a victimless crime and that everyone should be free to do what
they want with their body disregards the web of social interactions that constitute human
existence. Affected by an individual’s illicit drug use are children, parents, grandparents,
friends, colleagues, work, victims of drugged drivers, crime victims, elder abuse, sexual victims,
patients made sicker by medical marijuana etc. Illicit drug use is no less victimless than
alcoholism. Taking as an example the effect of illicit drug use on children, in 2007 one in every
nine children under the age of 18 in the United States lived with at least one drug dependent or
drug abusing parent. 2.1 million children in the United States live with at least one parent who
was dependent on or abused illicit drugs. "Parental substance dependence and abuse can have
profound effects on children, including child abuse and neglect, injuries and deaths related to
motor vehicle accidents, and increased odds that the children will become substance dependent
or abusers themselves. Up-to-date estimates of the number of children living with substance-
dependent or substance-abusing parents are needed for planning both adult treatment and
prevention efforts and programs that support and protect affected children." The idea that one
should always have the freedom to do whatever one wants without regard to the common good is
belied by the plethora of social agreements which make a society cohesive. Notably, democracy
limits the freedom of individuals, particularly the freedom of individuals who are not in accord
with the majority beliefs as to what promotes the common good.
Drug abuse causes criminal behavior.
In addition, crimes which are committed by individuals under the influence of drugs, such as
child abuse and assaults, would not decrease if drugs were legalized. For example, state child
welfare records have indicated that "substance abuse is a factor in as low as 20% to as high as
80-90%" of all reported cases of child abuse. One researcher has found that "drug use [is]
actually the cause of sociopathic and 'criminal' behavior." Drug users commit crimes totally
unrelated to the cost of purchasing drugs. It stands to reason that the increased drug use caused
by legalization would result in a surge in incidents of random violence and higher crime rates.
Legalization would increase crime.
54
Criminal behaviour can importantly be the direct result of drug use which can cause
emotional/brain damage, mental illness and anti-social behaviour. Psychoactive drugs can have a
powerful impact on behavior which may influence some people to commit crimes that have
nothing to do with supporting the cost of their drug use. The use of drugs changes behavior and
causes criminal activity because people will do things they wouldn’t do if they were rational and
free of the drug’s influence. Cocaine-related paranoia is an example. If drug use increases with
legalization, so will such forms of related violent crime as assaults, drugged driving, child abuse,
and domestic violence.
Decriminalization increases crime.

During the trial period the number of drug offences dropped to almost zero, simply because
personal use and possession for personal use were not reported. However, there was a rise in
nearly all other types of crime. The police were basically unable to take action against street-
level drug offences. At the beginning of the 1970s, the proportion of students in grade 9 (15/16-
year-olds) and army recruits (17-18-year-olds) who had ever tried drugs was about 15-16 %.
Massive information campaigns and other drug prevention efforts by voluntary organisations and
government authorities resulted in a drop to 3-4 % among students and 5 % among army recruits
in the second half of the 1980s. The Chief National Prosecutor also made it clear that drug abuse
was to be combated, which made it possible for the police to take action against street-level drug
pushers.
Concerns about black markets do not justify legalization.
The view that prohibition makes a prohibited item lucrative for criminals is indeed correct, after
all this is an inherent dynamic that drives criminality. But capitulating to illicit drug use on these
grounds makes no more sense than capitulating to those who continue to traffic in human lives, a
more expensive business because of its illegality and therefore more lucrative for the criminal,
but necessary for the rights of vulnerable citizens.
Drug abuse harms society.
Mike Hough, “Drug User Treatment Within A Criminal Justice Context”, Substance Use &
Misuse, Volume 37, Numbers 8-10, 2002.
The paper’s starting point is that problem drug users are a small proportion of all illicit drug
users in developed countries. Whilst a large number of people engage in illicit drug use in
55
industrialized Western countries, most do so in a relatively controlled way. Their use is restricted
largely to cannabis.[1–4] A minority engages in potentially problematic patterns of use.
Problematic use focuses on—but is not exclusive to—drugs of dependency such as heroin,
cocaine (especially when smoked as crack), and amphetamine. The hazards run by problem users
include overdosing, contracting viral infections such as HIV and hepatitis (especially from
nonsterile injecting but also via other routes), and other health risks. Their drug dependency
often causes psychiatric and social problems with spouses, partners, parents, friends, and
employers. Their weekly expenditure is often well above the national average weekly earnings,
and their legitimate income generally well below this; as a result they frequently raise money for
drugs through acquisitive crime and other illicit means, and thus are frequently embroiled with
the criminal justice system.
Prison overcrowding does not justify legalization.
Drug legalization advocates spuriously claim that US prisons are overflowing with people
convicted for only simple possession of marijuana. This claim is aggressively pushed by groups
seeking to relax or abolish marijuana laws. A more accurate view is that the vast majority of
inmates in prison for marijuana have been found guilty of more than simple possession. They
were convicted for drug trafficking, or for marijuana possession along with other offences. Many
of those in prison for marijuana entered a guilty plea to a marijuana charge to avoid a more
serious charge. In the US, just 1.6 percent of the state inmate population were held for offences
involving only marijuana, and less than one percent of all state prisoners (0.7 percent) were
incarcerated with marijuana possession as the only charge. An even smaller fraction of state
prisoners were first time offenders (0.3 percent). The numbers on the US federal prisons are
similar. In 2001, the overwhelming majority of offenders sentenced for marijuana crimes were
convicted for trafficking and only 63 served time for simple possession.
Drug abuse harms economic productivity.
Drug abuse also causes increased costs to businesses. It is estimated that each year drug abuse
costs businesses more than $ 7,000 per drug-abusing employee. All told, illicit drugs cost the
United States more than $ 60 billion a year in lost employment, prison and other criminal justice
costs and treatment programs. It is also important to recognize that the legalization of drugs
would jeopardize the safety of our society. Drugs, particularly cocaine, diminish an individual's
ability to think and react quickly. Studies have estimated that drug users are three to four times
more likely to be involved in on-the-job accidents than non-users. Furthermore, drugs and any
form of transportation do not mix. The result has too often been deadly. How many more people
have to die as a result of a train engineer who smoked marijuana or as result of a pilot high on
drugs?
56
Legalization for tax generation is unethical.
The economic argument for drug legalization says: legalize drugs, and generate tax income. This
argument is gaining favour, as national administrations seek new sources of revenue during the
current economic crisis. This legalize and tax argument is un-ethical and uneconomical. It
proposes a perverse tax, generation upon generation, on marginalized cohorts (lost to addiction)
to stimulate economic recovery. Are the partisans of this cause also in favour of legalizing and
taxing other seemingly intractable crimes like human trafficking? Modern-day slaves (and there
are millions of them) would surely generate good tax revenue to rescue failed banks. The
economic argument is also based on poor fiscal logic: any reduction in the cost of drug control
(due to lower law enforcement expenditure) will be offset by much higher expenditure on public
health (due to the surge of drug consumption). The moral of the story: don’t make wicked
transactions legal just because they are hard to control.
Black market violence does not justify legalization.
As a result, some have argued that the costs of controlling illicit drugs outweigh the benefits – in
effect, that the side effects are so severe that the treatment is worse than the disease. But this is a
false dilemma. It is incumbent on the international community to achieve both objectives: to
control illicit drugs and to limit the costs associated with this control. More creative thinking is
needed on ways of reducing the violence and corruption associated with containing the drug
trade. Progress must be made toward simultaneously achieving the twin goals of drug control
and crime prevention.
Arguments about cigarettes and alcohol do not justify decriminalization.
That illicit drugs are inherently harmful substances is attested by the very nomenclature of the
‘harm reduction’ movement. Taking as an example the disproportionate harms of heroin,
European mortality ranges from 1 to 4 deaths for every 100 opiate users per annum. but
worldwide is most usually around 2% per annum. In Australia, 83% of Australians aged 14 and
over drink alcohol, and for the 10% estimated to be problem drinkers the 3,500 deaths per year
from alcohol would represent just 0.22 lives per hundred, even before recognising that alcohol
deaths are not all self-inflicted. In 2005, there were 14,900 tobacco deaths per year
predominantly afflicting the age-group which had 43% of Australia’s 11,388,000 population
smoking tobacco in 1965, yielding 0.3 lives per hundred mortality per year. The protest that
alcohol is harmful yet legal, therefore illegal drugs should similarly be legal (and harmful)
57
ignores the fact that the legal drugs already cause more than enough harm to want to add a new
battery of even more harmful but now legal drugs.
Increased taxation of drugs would not eliminate black markets.
Recent testimony from a RAND researcher concluded that “There is a tremendous profit motive
for the existing black market providers to stay in the market, as they can still cover their costs of
production and make a nice profit.” Canada’s experience with taxing cigarettes showed that a $2
tax differential per pack versus the United States created such a huge black market smuggling
problem that Canada repealed its tax increases. Legalizing marijuana would also saddle
government with the dual burden of regulating a new legal market while continuing to pay for
the negative side effects associated with an underground market whose providers have little
economic incentive to disappear.
Decreasing the price of drugs would harm developing nations.
For example, cocaine use in the countries where cocaine is actually produced is less than half as
high as in many European countries or the United States. This could easily change. Bolivia is a
poor country where 42% of the population lives on less than US$2 per day8 and which produces
about 10% of the global cocaine supply. According to reported figures, cocaine in Bolivia was
US$9 per gram in 2005, about 10% of the price in the United States. But GDP per capita was 42
times higher in the US than in Bolivia, so the price was effectively four times higher in Bolivia.
In contrast, 27% of the adult population of Bolivia smokes cigarettes daily. A pack of cigarettes
was priced at just US$0.62 at official exchange rates in 2006, so even the poor find an imported
addictive substance more affordable than the locally-produced one. Bolivia is not unique in this
respect: in many poor countries, more than 10% of household expenditure is for tobacco. Indeed,
the spread of tobacco to the developing world gives a hint of what could happen if other
addictive substances were made legal. Many transition countries have much higher tobacco use
prevalence than the richer ones, and Africa’s tobacco market is presently growing by 3.5% per
year, the fastest rate in the world. By 2030, more than 80% of the world’s tobacco deaths will
occur in developing countries. These countries can ill-afford this burden of disease. They are
even less capable of giving up a share of their productive work force to more immediately
debilitating forms of addiction.
Legalization would not save money.
58
It is important to recognize that when a control or restriction (such as age, drug type or potency)
is imposed, it is necessary to establish a regulatory system. Once a regulatory system is achieved,
a void would be created which would undoubtedly be filled by a black market. If the United
States decides to establish a system which provides for the universal availability of drugs, the
black market of drugs would disappear, but a "black plague" of drug addiction, overdose deaths
and crime would take its place. Many legalization proponents speak to the issue of how
legalization would save the government money. For example, the money that is now allocated to
drug enforcement could be used in other areas. If drugs were legalized, however, regulatory costs
would increase substantially. In addition, if other crimes, especially violent crimes, were to
escalate due to freer drug availability, law enforcement and criminal justice system costs would
increase as well. Legalization would undoubtedly increase those costs.
Vice taxes would create underground markets that fund global conflict.
“Vice taxes” are also used to control the spread of legal addictive drugs, making them more
expensive and thus reducing demand. But again, capacity to enforce these taxes is less in
developing countries, and high taxes generate large shadow markets, as illustrated by tobacco
markets today. Recent estimates suggest 10% or more of global tobacco consumption is untaxed,
and that the illicit share of the market is particularly pronounced in Africa (15%) and Latin
America (20%). An estimated 600 billion cigarettes are smuggled each year. If these were priced
at just a dollar a pack, this would represent a global market worth US$30 billion, comparable to
the US$65 billion market for illicit opiates and US$71 billion market for cocaine. As with illicit
drugs, illicit tobacco has been used to fund violence in places as diverse as the Balkans and West
Africa.
Arguments about drug purity do not justify decriminalization.
Arguments that the health harms of illicit drugs are caused by lack of government regulation of
their purity and strength are not supported by the evidence. In Australia, which has had the
highest per capita opioid mortality (59 per million population in 1999) in the OECD, higher than
the US (<57 per million population in 1999 – CDC drug related deaths include more than
overdoses), Canada (31 per million population in 2002) and Europe (2 to 46 per million in 1999)
studies found that “overdose fatality is not a simple function of heroin dose or purity. There is no
evidence of toxicity from contaminants of street heroin in Australia.” Other causes of death such
as suicide, murder and accidents are an effect of the drug themselves, not of their purity or
otherwise.
Coerced treatment through the criminal justice system is justified.
59
There is an obvious philosophical flaw in the argument that motivation is a precondition for
effective treatment. This is that it denies the possibility of ambivalence. Obviously those who
really want to stop their drug use will do very much better in treatment than those who really
want to continue. If problem users fell only into these two categories, then coerced treatment
would fail. However a large proportion—probably the vast majority—of dependent users will
see both costs and benefits in their drug use. Most will enter into treatment with a degree of
ambivalence. Legal coercion seems likely to offer a means to hold problem drug users within a
treatment program for a sufficiently long time to allow drug user treatment staff to exploit this
ambivalence. It does not appear to be qualitatively different from the other forms of coercion—
from partners, family, friends, or even employers—to which apparently voluntary clients are
exposed.
The criminal justice system can enforce public health at several points.
These findings in aggregate point to a policy for reducing both acquisitive crime and dependent
drug use which uses the criminal justice system as a conduit to treatment. The referral process
can be done at several points of the criminal process: during the arrest process; during pre-trial
procedures such as the preparation of court reports; at remand and committal proceedings; at the
point of sentence; during sentence, whether in prison or under probation supervision.
Coerced treatment is effective.
Leaving aside these philosophical points, it is an empirical issue whether coerced treatment
provides better outcomes than absence of treatment, and whether it provides worse outcomes
than treatment entered into ‘‘voluntarily.’’ The results of the—almost exclusively U.S.—
research are not totally consistent. However the ‘‘majority verdict,’’ including the results of the
best designed studies, is that coerced treatment has better outcomes than no treatment at all, and
outcomes which are no worse than those associated with voluntary treatment. The consensus is
that coercion provides a viable mechanism for retention in treatment.
Drug policy must send the message that abuse is unacceptable.

The overall aim of Swedish drug policy is a drug-free society. This is to be seen as a vision
reflecting society’s attitude to narcotic drugs. The aim conveys the message that drugs will never
60
be permitted to become an integral part of our society and that drug abuse must remain an
unacceptable behaviour. This is a vision that gives clear signals to children, parents and society
as a whole that we all need to work together to minimise drug abuse and drug-related crime. This
strategy is in line with the UN conventions on drugs and the political declaration approved of by
UN Member States at the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs held in New York in
June 1998.
Legalization would only create new criminal markets.
Others have argued that, following legalization, a health threat (in the form of a drug epidemic)
could be avoided by state regulation of the drug market. Again, this is naive and myopic. First,
the tighter the controls (on anything), the bigger and the faster a parallel (criminal) market will
emerge – thus invalidating the concept. Second, only a few (rich) countries could afford such
elaborate controls. What about the rest (the majority) of humanity? Why unleash a drug epidemic
in the developing world for the sake of libertarian arguments made by a pro-drug lobby that has
the luxury of access to drug treatment? Drugs are not harmful because they are controlled – they
are controlled because they are harmful; and they do harm whether the addict is rich and
beautiful, or poor and marginalized.
Legalization anywhere creates drug havens.
For example, the phenomenon of “displacement” is often used to criticise drug control efforts.
Crackdowns in one country or region cause cultivators and traffickers to move operations to
another. This ability of enforcement to displace production and trafficking from one area of the
world to another is a valuable tool if wielded with some foresight. In particular, it is important
not to displace trafficking into areas where the social impact is likely to be particularly
devastating.
Sending mixed messages about drugs is dangerous.

It is essential that we avoid sending mixed signals about drugs, especially to children and young
people. An example of such mixed signals is when, on the one hand, we declare that drugs are
illegal and will not be accepted in society and, on the other, give drugs abusers advice on how to
use drugs. In Sweden we have chosen not to disseminate such mixed messages, and I believe that
the number of drug addicts in our country proves that we have been successful in our restrictive
drug policy. Sweden has about nine million inhabitants. In a nation-wide study of the prevalence
of severe drug abuse in 1998, it was estimated that 26 000 people were severe drug abusers (used
61
drugs every day, almost every day or injected – cannabis is included).
Legalizing drugs would harm developing countries.
Unfortunately, most of this thinking has indeed been restricted to the developed world, where
both treatment and capacity to collect taxes are relatively plentiful. It ignores the role that global
drug control plays in protecting developing countries from addictive drugs. Without consistent
global policy banning these substances, developing countries would likely be afflicted by street
drugs the way they are currently afflicted by growing tobacco and alcohol problems.
A global stance against drugs is necessary to prevent global addiction.
Today, a number of substances are prohibited in the domestic legislation of almost every
country. As discussed below, this unanimity has created a bulwark shielding millions from the
effects of drug abuse and addiction. In the past, many of these substances were legally produced
and, in some cases, aggressively marketed, to devastating effect. The collective nations of the
world have agreed that this state of affairs was unacceptable, and have created an international
control system that allows crops such as opium poppy to be produced for medical use, with very
little diversion to the illicit market.
Not treating drug abuse as criminal violates international obligations.
As with the United States' earlier experiences with alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and legal
distribution systems, it is important to learn from Great Britain's experience. The past is a great
teacher. History has shown that when addictive drugs are socially accepted and easily available,
their use is associated with a high incidence of individual and social damage. With this
perspective in mind, it is necessary to consider how drug legalization will affect this country's
future. Legalization of drugs would send the wrong message to the rest of the world. If the
United States created a legal market in cocaine, heroin, marijuana, or other dangerous drugs, it
would also violate international treaties to which the United States is a signatory. These include
the Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs of 1961 and the Convention on Psychotropic
Substances of 1971. Under these treaties, the United States is obligated to establish and maintain
effective controls on those substances covered by the treaties. A violation of these treaties by the
United States would destroy our credibility with drug source and drug transit countries that are
now working with the United States in the global war on drugs.
62
International agreements mandate the prohibition of illegal drugs.
Of course, the member states of the United Nations created the drug conventions, and they can
modify or annul them at will. But the Conventions would have to be undone the way they were
done: by global consensus. And to date, they are very few international issues on which there has
been so much positive consensus as drug control. Drug control was the subject of broad-based
international agreements in 1912, 1925, 1931, 1936, 1946, 1948, and 1953, before the creation of
the standing United Nations Conventions in 1961, 1971, and 1988. Nearly every nation in the
world has signed on to these Conventions.
Criminal justice approaches can collapse drug markets.
But even when it comes to notorious and dangerous dealers, there may be alternatives to
incarceration. One technique has been piloted in a number of locations in the United States.
Investigators compiled detailed dossiers on all known dealers in their jurisdiction, with enough
evidence to ensure a likely conviction. These dossiers were simultaneously presented to all the
suspects with a warning: desist or face prosecution. Support services and networks were
mobilised to make the option of desisting feasible. The idea is to get a large share of the
participants to withdraw at the same time, causing the market to collapse. When confronted in
this way, it appears that many opt out of drug markets. The threat of drug arrest has also been
used to deter violent offenders. While these interventions are labour intensive, they are less
costly than processing a similar number of offenders through the criminal justice system.
Criminal justice can change the way people think about drugs.
In crime prevention theory, a false dichotomy is often presented between solutions involving law
enforcement, which are viewed as short-term correctives, and so-called “social crime
prevention”, which is usually portrayed as a long term project. In the world of short political time
horizons, the latter often gets neglected in favour of the former. But there is a third way:
interventions aimed at changing social conditions quickly, to impact the conditions under which
drug markets thrive. This sort of thinking is found in the practices of situational crime
prevention.
Prohibition has been largely successful.
63
Prohibition has a successful track record suppressing illicit drug use since it was introduced 100
years ago in that licit drugs have current (last 12 months) user rates as high as 80-90% in
populations over 14 years of age, and tobacco has historically had current use rates up to 60% of
adult populations, the percentages currently using illicit drugs in OECD countries are generally
below 1% of the population excepting cannabis where most are between 3% and 10%, with six
countries between 11% and 17%
Law enforcement is necessary to change the behavior of addicts.
While law enforcement personnel are not typically adept at manipulating social circumstances,
they can also play a key role. With training, they can work with addicts in a way that helps them
move beyond their destructive behaviour without necessarily using the sanction of arrest. The
techniques of problem oriented policing can also help them to recognise and disable the
mechanics of drug markets. For example, drug dealers pay a price for remaining underground.
They cannot advertise without exposing themselves to law enforcement. Users generally find
vendors in one of two ways. One is an open drug market, a specific geographic area or location
where anyone can show up and buy drugs. The second is through a network of social or
information connections. Both are vulnerable to disruption.
Dealing with drug users is necessary to disrupt drug networks.
In addition to open markets, drugs are dealt through personal networks. These markets rely on
trust – new participants are only introduced through the endorsement of existing members. This
slows their growth and leaves them fragile. An inherent weakness of black markets is that most
of the participants are untrustworthy. Removal of key links, the use of informants, and sting
operations (or the rumour of sting operations) can cause extended networks to collapse, and
reconstitution may be difficult. Similar principles apply further up the trafficking chain, at the
wholesale level. People who broker drug deals have only their connections to sell, and therefore
take great pains to ensure their suppliers never meet their customers. If the brokers are removed,
they are not always easily replaced. This weakness was recently exploited to disrupt the heroin
markets in Australia, with very positive consequences.
People do not use drugs because they are illegal.
Their argument that “Prohibition promotes drug use” sharply conflicts with a 2001 Australian
study of 18-29 year olds by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research which shows that
64
Prohibition does indeed deter illicit drug use. 29% of those who had never used cannabis cited
the illegality of the substance as their reason for never using the drug, while 19% of those who
had ceased use of cannabis cited its illegality as their reason. 91% of those currently using
cannabis weekly said they would use more cannabis if it were made legal, while 14% of the total
sample of 579 interviewees said they ‘definitely’ or ‘probably’ would use the substance more
frequently.
Law enforcement has empirically been effective in reducing drug supply.
The causes of the “heroin drought” have been debated, and it is highly likely that a number of
factors played a role, but the balance of the evidence suggests that law enforcement action was
important. Australian authorities had determined that heroin trafficking was proceeding in very
large shipment through a limited number of nodal points (“brokers”) who had connections to
both Southeast Asian suppliers and a vast network of street retailers. Evidence suggests that
coordinated, international-level law enforcement operations over a number of years may have
progressively removed some of these key brokers, disrupting large-scale shipment to the country,
reducing the quantity and quality of heroin available to street-level dealers. In the interim, many
addicts went into withdrawal, and some appear not to have resumed heroin use; the market
remains smaller to this day. By the time connections were resurrected, the market was not nearly
as large. The smaller market attracted fewer new users. Violence, drug-related crime, overdoses,
and overall use declined dramatically.
Even if drug enforcement isn’t perfect, governments must still try.
The criticism that the ‘war on drugs’ can never be won (and therefore is of no value) is no more
true than the argument that police ‘blitzes’ on highway speeding should be curtailed because they
fail to eradicate speeding. While blitzes on speeding very successfully reduce and contain the
behaviour, policing of illicit drug use does exactly the same. Removing policing of speeding
drivers will have precisely the same effect as removing policing of illicit drugs. No one would
suggest legalizing stealing because it has never been eradicated.
Expanding beyond criminal justice would help solve drug abuse.
Further, these resources and the programmes they fund should not be limited to those
departments who have traditionally dominated anti-drug efforts. Criminal justice agencies lack
the tools to take on all aspects of the drug trade, and many do not make full use of the tools they
have. Police and prosecutors must continue their work, keeping drugs illegal, but more dramatic
65
change requires a mandate and a skills set not generally found among criminal justice actors. It
may be that drug markets are deeply tied to issues in housing, or foreign affairs, or land use, or
transportation, or immigration, or urban development. Until the full range of governmental
powers is available to the drug control effort, it is likely that the same agencies will continue to
do the same work in very much the same way.
66
About the author/editor:
Dr. Minh A. Luong is Assistant Director of International Security Studies at Yale University and Faculty Fellow in the Yale
Graduate School of Management. He also serves as Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Center in Grand Strategy at Yale.
Dr. Luong taught under the auspices of the Forrest Mars Sr. Visiting Professorship in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, an
endowed fund that promoted teaching by leaders in the business and policy communities, from 2000-2006 and served a two-year
term as International Affairs Council Fellow at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. Dr. Luong also holds
academic appointments at Brown University as Adjunct Lecturer of Public Policy at the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public
Policy and American Institutions, Adjunct Lecturer in Political Science, and Visiting Fellow in International Security at the
Watson Institute for International Affairs. Dr. Luong teaches courses on national and global security, public policy, espionage
and intelligence, privacy and civil liberties, crisis management, ethics and negotiations, Grand Strategy, leadership, and
international relations.
He has appeared on major television and radio news networks, has been quoted in newspapers internationally, and lectures
around the world on international security as well as intelligence issues at U.S. Government agencies and in partner countries at
the invitation of the U.S. Government.
The views expressed in this topic briefing and other open-source work are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
official policy or position of Yale University, Brown University, the U.S. Government and its agencies such as the U.S.
Department of Defense and U.S. Intelligence Community, governments of U.S. partner nations, or the United Nations, with
which the author maintains advising relationships.
For nearly a decade, Dr. Luong served as a corporate consultant and senior advisor to a number of Fortune 500 companies and
worked on critical projects for industry-leading organizations such as: AT&T, BankOne, Boston Financial, EquiServe, E*Trade,
ExxonMobil, General Motors, MediaOne (later AT&T Broadband, now Comcast), Monitor Group, and New England
Financial/Metropolitan Life.
His previous appointments include director of public speaking and debate at the University of California at Berkeley, director of
debate at San Francisco State University, and department chair and instructor of communication studies at the Pinewood School
(CA).
Dr. Luong served as the founding curriculum director at the Lincoln-Douglas debate institutes at Stanford University, University
of California at Berkeley, NFC-Austin, and the National Debate Forum. He founded and directs the Ivy Scholars Program for
High School Student Leaders at Yale University (www.yale.edu/ivyscholars) and is the volunteer director of the National Debate
Education Project, a public service organization that conducts weekend debate seminars around the country. Minh A. Luong can
be reached at <minh.a.luong@yale.edu>.
Nick Coburn-Palo, MA, doctoral candidate in political science at Brown University, provided argument and topic analysis
assistance in preparing this topic briefing.
Rick Brundage, MPA, provided argument and research assistance in preparing the strategy and quotation sections of this topic
briefing.
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Minh A. Luong & Company Tutorial:

Resolved: The abuse of illegal drugs ought to be

Dr. Minh A. Luong

International Security Studies Department of Political Science

Children are often the silent victims of drug abuse.

Casual drug users should be taken out and shot.

In This Topic Briefing…

A Note from the Editor

I am particularly indebted to my colleague, Nick Coburn-Palo, a former collegiate national debate

My colleagues and I thank you for being a PlanetDebate.com/Lincoln-Douglas.com subscriber and we

TOPIC IN CONTEXT and TOPIC BRIEFING

Examining Abuse of Illegal Drugs

Examining Criminal Justice and Drug Policy

Examining Public Health and Drug Policy

Affirmative Strategy Notes

1. Frame the Debate in Terms of a Strategically Advantageous Binary

2. Put Prohibition On Trial As A Policy

3. Make Race Matter as an Issue in Drug Policy

4. Utilize Philosophy By Making Justice Based Arguments

Negative Strategy Notes

1. Reject the Binary Between the Policies and Advocate Both

2. Force the Affirmative to Abandon Rights Based Arguments

analytically incompatible. Evidence on this point is provided by Rutgers University Law

3. Attempt to Focus the Debate on the Harms of Drugs

4. Force the Affirmative to Defend the Workability of their Policy

5. Utilize Philosophy by Making Morality Based Arguments

one’s gifts is explained in Frank Magill’s outstanding collection of essays, Masterpieces of

Abuse: “to use wrongly; misuse”

Illegal: “prohibited by law; against the law”

Drugs: “a narcotic, hallucinogen, etc., esp. one that is habit forming”

Ought: “to be compelled by obligation or duty”

Public: “as regards community, rather than private, affairs”

Health: “physical and mental well-being”

1. Drug abuse is primarily a public health concern.

2. Public health approaches have been effective in treating drug abuse.

3. A criminal justice approach to drug abuse has been counter-productive.

For a policy to be a legitimate use of government resources, at a minimum, it should generally be

4. A criminal justice approach to drug abuse promotes discrimination.

1. Societies can legitimately outlaw the abuse of drugs.

2. Legalizing or decriminalizing drug use would increase drug abuse.

3. Abandoning a criminal justice approach would be dangerous.

3. A criminal justice approach is necessary to disrupt drug networks.

Read this report first:

Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) – A fairly obvious source of negative evidence

National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) – website of a nonprofit

SELECTED QUOTATIONS ON THE TOPIC

Addiction is a disease that needs to be treated.

A criminal justice approach has empirically failed.

Kurt Schmoke, Mayor of Baltimore, MD, “A Symposium on Drug Decriminalization: An

Criminal justice can never solve drug abuse.

The foundational assumptions of a criminal justice approach are wrong.

Kurt Schmoke, Mayor of Baltimore, MD, “A Symposium on Drug Decriminalization: An

Criminal justice can never prevent drug markets from forming.

John T. Schuler and Arthur McBride, “A SYMPOSIUM ON DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION:

Legal prohibition furthers black markets.

Kurt Schmoke, Mayor of Baltimore, MD, “A Symposium on Drug Decriminalization: An

Increased criminal enforcement is profitable for drug dealers.

John T. Schuler and Arthur McBride, “A SYMPOSIUM ON DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION:

Kurt Schmoke, Mayor of Baltimore, MD, “A Symposium on Drug Decriminalization: An

John T. Schuler and Arthur McBride, “A SYMPOSIUM ON DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION:

A central characteristic of enforcement is that any innovation by traffickers yield a response by

Children are harmed by prohibition.