Subject: DRUGS LEGALIZATION
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Following is an article on the attitude of Joycelyn Elders, US Surgeon
General, about drugs legalization. We'll send as soon as possible on
transnat the memo cited in the last part of the article.
"Legalising drugs - Another look"
in "The Economist", January 22nd, 1994
Elders has done her homework
AN OFFTHECUFF remark last month landed Joycelyn Elders, the surgeon
general, in conspicuous trouble. In response to a question about drug
legalisation and its possible effectiveness in reducing violent crime, she
said the issue ought to be studied. Bill Clinton thought otherwise. It was
quickly made clear that the president was firmly against legalising drugs
and "is not inclined in this case even to study the issue." Officials and
pundits poured scorn on the idea, and on Dr Elders for suggesting it. If
that was not embarrassing enough, her 28yearold son was then arrested and
charged with selling cocaine.
Yet instead of shutting up, Dr Elders last week chose to amplify her
message. On January 14th she told an audience in New York that she had been
doing her homework and that after reading many studies "I realised I
probably made a more honest, aboveboard statement than I knew I had made."
If the government refused to do solid research on drug legalisation, she
would probably try to persuade big foundations or universities to do it
instead.
Dr Elders did not become the first black surgeongeneral by being afraid to
speak her mind. She has the toughness that comes from having fought her way
from sharecropper origins in rural Arkansas (with a fivemile walk to the
bus to her segregated school) up through medical school (with its
segregated canteen) and on to head the Arkansas health department (where
her support for abortion and condomdistribution in schools earned her
labels such as "condom queen" and "director of the Arkansas holocaust").
Stirring controversy, as she is nowdoing in Washington, is nothing new.
If she does succeed, despite the weight of opposition, in provoking a
serious debate on drug legalisation, she will be putting her largely
exhortatory job to good use. Prohibition has failed before in America, and
many believe that the war on drugs is failing now. Champions of
legalisation, including this newspaper, argue that if it is done properly
governments could take the world's largest untaxed industry out of the
hands of criminals and start to exercise workable controls.
Whether Dr Elders's original remark on legalisation was as tentative as she
now claims is open to doubt. A couple of months earlier the president of
the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, Eric Sterling, had written her a
memo on the publichealth aspects of the drug problem. It catalogued the
costs of prohibition: violence between drug traffickers; crime caused by
addicts having to pay prohibitioninflated prices for their habit;
overdoses and poisoning from contaminated illegal drugs; the spread of HIV
and other infections through contaminated needles; overcrowded jails.
The memo concluded that "many thoughtful observers" had argued for
legalisation as the only alternative to prohibition, though detailed
proposals were lacking. Dr Elders, it seems, would like to know what a
detailed proposal might look like. Will Mr Clinton inhale that curiosity?
