JOHN BUSHNELL

Most of my neighbors think narcotics destroy society. We have had drug dealers living in our neighborhood for many years and we are afraid of them. Their customers block our streets with their cars, they are sometimes very loud, and they are aggressive. From time to time some of the meighborhood teenagers join gangs, which consume and sell drugs. All parents are afraid of what the gangs do to their children: some join gangs and get in trouble with the police, others are victims of gang violence. Who wouldn't be afraid of drugs and gangs? We do not have to go very far to find neighborhoods that have been ravaged by drugs and drug-related violence: burned out houses, gang graffiti everywhere, shootings, rampant street crime.

Somme of my neighbors are refugees from just those drug-infested ghettos: they have fled from some of the most dangerous areas of Chicago to our integrated, middle class neighborhood in Evanston, just north of Chicago. My neighbors are black andwhite; some are immigrants, from Mexico, Haiti and Jamaica. They are teachers, postmen, secretaries, nurses, truck drivers, psychotherapists, librarians, artists, electricians, and insurance investigators. Some are on welfare and have a very hard time making ends meet, but they are just as determined as the rest of us to prevent drugs and dealers from destroying our neighborhood.

Not one of them has anything good to say about narcotics. They are certain-because they can see it with their own eyes-that drugs rob people of good judgement and make them behave in irrational and self-destructive ways. My neighbors know that drug users are sick people who may kill themselves if they are not cured; they would feel sorry for drug users if they were not afraid of them. They are afraid that their children will start using drugs and ruin their lives; some children have done just that. Weare all afraid of what people who use narcotics do to themselves and their families.

So most of my neighbors naturally think that the only way to deal with narcotics, the only way to save our neighborhood and our children from drugs, drug dealers, and violence, is to increase the penalties for using and selling drugs, and to make the police enforce the laws. It is easy to understand why they believe this, but they are wrong.

We have tried to suppress drug use and drug dealers already, and we have failed completely. The evidence of our failure is all around us, in the neighborhoods destroyed by drugs and gangs. In fact, the effort to suppress drug use has certainly made the drug problem worse than it would otherwise have been. We and the legislators whom we elect have tried to make our society safer by outlawing drugs, but we have instead made our society more dangerous.

The violence we associate with drugs is entirely a byproduct of prohibition. Because they are illegal, drugs are sold at high prices that cover the risk the dealers run. Because profits from selling drugs are enormous, dealers fight for control of the drug market; they kill each other and anyone who gets in their way. We know that prohibition of drugs, high prices, and violence are linked because we have had a lot of experience with prohibition: prohibition of alcohol in the United States in the 1920's made Al Capone and other gangsters rich, and organized crime became far more violent than it had been before. We can see analogous developments in the Soviet Union today: when goods that people want are in short supply, prices and profits rise and criminals take over control of tha market.

The greater part of the danger that narcotics pose to society can be eliminated by making the use, sale, and manufacture of drugs legal. What criminal will waste his time selling drugs if any businessman can sell drugs, if drugs are available legally and inexpensively? Legalization would put the drug dealers in my neighborhood out of business immediately. The unsavory people who hang out their houses would disappear. The drug users who come to buy drugs late at night would come no more. The teenage gagngs would no longer be able to make money selling drugs, and membership in a gang would be afr less attractive to our children. If we make legal, in other words, my neighborhood becomes safer.

The strongest argument for legalizing narcotics is purely pragmatic: the old policy of making narcotics illegal has failed, so we need to try another policy; the old policy of suppression has created incentives for violence, so we need o police that will eliminate the incentive for violence. Whether we like it or not, there is a steady demand for narcotics-whether they are legal or illegal, cheap or expensive, many people want them. If many people want drugs, and will use them no matter what the law says, we ought to accept that reality. It makes no more sense to outlaw narcotics than to outlaw alcohol, or cigarettes, When we try to prevent what cannot be prevented, we merely create a new source of profit and violence.

But-opponents of legalization always say--won't we just encourage more drug use if we make inexpensive and legal? That is an empirical question that cannot be ancwered untill narcotics are cheap and legal. But there is no a priori reason to think that legalization will dramatically increase consumption, unless we believe that narcotics are inherently attractive--and most opponents of legalization do not believe that. If drugs are truly awful, then most people will have the sense to avoid them.

We can in fact be certain about some consequences of legalization. For one think, there will be much less reason to fear drug users when they are breaking no laws and when drugs are cheap. We may disapprove of their behavior, just as we disapprove of drunkenness, but what they do will be a problem for themselves and their families, not a threat to us. Indeed, it will be much easier to treat drug use as an illness, just as we treat alcoholism as an illness. The money presently wasted in the futile attempt to suppress the use, sale, and production of drugs can be devoted to treatment of those who want to stop using them.

We can also be certain that it will be easier for drug users to ask for help, because when they ask for treatment they will no longer be admitting that they have committed a crime. It is never easy to admit that you are dependent on drugs, or on alcohol, or even on cigarettes--all smokers deny the fact of their addiction--but there will no longer be any legal reason not to ask for help.

There are, of course, people who argue that the use of narcotics is in itself not really such a problem, that drug use is a fashion, and that when public opinion turns against drugs than people will stop using them. That has been the case with cocaine in the United States in the last few years. The same is true with respect to cigarettes, and distilled alcohol: the consumption of both has declined steadilly in the United States because it is no longer fashionable to smoke, or to drink heavily. And public opinion is far more likely to influence drug users when they no longer hide in the drug underground but live a more or less normal life.

Howerver, my neighbors certainly would not agree that legalizing narcotics would do drug users any good. They have a great deal of experience with whate drugs do to society, they have seen too many lives destroyed by drugs, and they think that most advocates of legalization are naive, and completely unfamiliar with life in a drug-unfested neighborhood. They would never agree that drugs are harmless. But they might very well agree that the fruitless attempt to suppress drugs causes even more damage to society than do the drugs themselves.