Rethinking America's Illegal Drug Policy
October 13, 2009
- John J. Donohue III, Yale University
Decriminalization and legalization of marijuana and cocaine should be “seriously considered” in the reform of illegal drug policy in the U.S., said John J. Donohue III, Visiting Fellow and Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School.
“There is great potential for improving our current policy of criminalizing marijuana and cocaine," Donohue said during a discussion of his paper “Rethinking America's Illegal Drug Policy,” cowritten by Yale colleagues Ben Ewing and David Peloquin, at the Law School on October 13. “Cost minimization would likely be better achieved through particular versions of decriminalization or legalization.”
Donahue said the estimated social costs of illegal drugs are roughly comparable to the social costs of alcohol and tobacco. Aggressive efforts to limit consumption through a tough penal approach tend to restrain costs from drug use but incur high costs of enforcement and incarceration. Violence centered around the criminal gangs that run the drug trade amplify the costs, he noted.
“Conversely, legalization of alcohol and tobacco drastically reduces enforcement costs, while the costs of consumption remain high,” he said. “Optimal drug policy would likely move away from a harsh punitive approach to control of the currently illegal drugs, while aggressive measures could be taken to prevent underage consumption and constrain demand.”
That said, Donohue conceded that empirical predictions of use rates after decriminalization or legalization are uncertain. Also, minimizing cost may not be the only goal and it does not consider many important values addressed in current policy. Among them is the notion of distributive justice. This value is under-theorized in criminalization policy but arguably underlies much concern about reform, Donohue said.
“While we follow standard economic analysis and treat a dollar equally across contexts, few people think so narrowly in arriving upon final judgment of alternative policies,” he said. “In light of these issues, we are not surprised that many observers fear or dismiss alternatives to criminalization. This underscores that there are no easy choices when it comes to drug policy.”