Commonly-cited arguments for and against the prohibition of drugs include the following:
Efficiency
Arguments that drug laws are effective Supporters of prohibition claim that drug laws have a successful track record suppressing illicit drug use since they were introduced in the 1910s.Drug Free Australia For example see The licit drug alcohol has current (last 12 months) user rates as high as 80–90% in populations over 14 years of age,Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey: first Results. Drug Statistics Series number 20.Cat. no. PHE 98. Canberra: AIHW and tobacco has historically had current use rates up to 60% of adult populations,For example, see Johnson A, Gerstein D American Journal of Public Health, Jan 1998, Vol. 88, No 1 p 27 ff yet 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%.UNODC
In the 50-year period following the first 1912 international convention restricting use of opium, heroin and cocaine, the United States' use of illicit drugs other than cannabis was consistently below 0.5% of the population, with cannabis rising to 1–2% of the population between 1955 and 1965.See Johnson A, Gerstein D American Journal of Public Health, Jan 1998, Vol. 88, No 1 p 27 ff With the advent of the counter-culture movement from the late 1950s, where illicit drug use was promoted as mind-expanding and relatively harmless,Guinness O, The Dust of Death – A Critique of the Counter-Culture, IVP 1973 pp 232–249 illicit drug use rose sharply. With illicit drug use peaking in the 1970s in the United States, the "Just Say No" campaign, initiated under the patronage of Nancy Reagan, coincided with recent (past month) illicit drug use decreases from 14.1% in 1979 to 5.8% in 1992, a drop of 60%.Section 2 "Any Illicit Drug Use", 1996 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Preliminary Results
In March, 2007, Antonio Maria Costa, former executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, drew attention to the drug policy of Sweden,The Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs (Feb 2008). The Swedish action plan on narcotic drugs 2006–2010.UNODC (Feb 2007). Sweden's successful drug policy: A review of the evidence , United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. arguing:
In Europe as of 2007, Sweden spends the second highest percentage of GDP, after the Netherlands, on drug control.UNODC The UNODC argues that when Sweden reduced spending on education and rehabilitation in the 1990s in a context of higher youth unemployment and declining GDP growth, illicit drug use roseUNODC but restoring expenditure from 2002 again sharply decreased drug use as student surveys indicate. In 1998, a poll run by SIFO of 1,000 Swedes found that 96% wanted stronger action by government to stop drug abuse, and 95% wanted drug use to remain illegal.
Criticizing governments that have relaxed their drug laws, Antonio Maria Costa, speaking in Washington before the launch of the World Drug Report in June 2006, said:
Arguments that drug laws are ineffective One of the prominent early critics of prohibition in the United States was August Vollmer, founder of the School of Criminology at University of California, Irvine and former president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. In his 1936 book The Police and Modern Society, he stated his opinion that:
Stephen Rolles, writing in the British Medical Journal in 2010, argues:
These conclusions have been reached by a succession of committees and reports including, in the United Kingdom alone, the Police Foundation, the Home Affairs Select Committee, the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit, the Royal Society of Arts, and the UK Drug Policy Consortium. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime has also acknowledged the many "unintended negative consequences" of drug enforcement.
The editor of the British Medical Journal, Dr. Fiona Godlee, gave her personal support to Rolles' call for decriminalisation, and the arguments drew particular support from Sir Ian Gilmore, former president of the Royal College of Physicians, who said we should be treating drugs "as a health issue rather than criminalising people" and "this could drastically reduce crime and improve health".
Danny Kushlik, head of external affairs at Transform, said the intervention of senior medical professionals was significant. He said: "Sir Ian's statement is yet another nail in prohibition's coffin. The Hippocratic oath says: 'First, do no harm'. Physicians are duty bound to speak out if the outcomes show that prohibition causes more harm than it reduces."
Nicholas Green, chairman of the Bar Council, made comments in a report in the profession's magazine, in which he said that drug-related crime costs the UK economy about £13bn a year and that there was growing evidence that decriminalisation could free up police resources, reduce crime and recidivism and improve public health.Boseley, Sarah (2010). Leading doctor urges decriminalisation of drugs . The Guardian.
A 2006 report sponsored by the New York County Lawyers' Association, one of the largest local bar associations in the United States, argues on the subject of US drug policy:
In response to claims that prohibition can work, as argued by Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, who drew attention to the drug policy of Sweden, Henrik Tham has written in 1998 that sometimes it's domestically important to stress drug policy as successful; in the case of Sweden, where this notion is important, such claims serve "the function of strengthening a threatened national identity in a situation where the traditional 'Swedish model' has come under increasingly hard attack from both inside and outside the country." Tham questions the success of the Swedish model – "The shift in Swedish drug policy since around 1980" ...(more difficult to receive nolle prosequi for minor drug crimes)Henrik Tham: Narkotikapolitiken och missbrukets utveckling, page 4, Kriminologiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet, 2003 ..."towards a more strict model has according to the official point of view been successful by comparison with the earlier, more lenient drug policy. However, available systematic indicators show that the prevalence of drug use has increased since around 1980, that the decrease in drug incidence was particularly marked during the 1970s and that some indicators point towards an increase during the 1990s."
Leif Lenke and Börje Olsson from Stockholm University have conducted research that showed how drug use have followed the youth unemployment in close correlation. They noted that unlike most of Europe, Sweden did not have widespread and lingering youth unemployment until the early 1990s financial crisis, suggesting that unattractive future prospects may contribute to the increase in drug use among the young.Lenke, L. & Olsson, B. (1999) "Swedish drug policy in perspective", i Derks, J., van Kalmthout, & Albrecht, H.-J. (red.) Current and future drug policy studies in Europe , Freibourg. CAN, the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs, 2009 report stated that the increase in drug use have continued since the 1990s with a slight dip in the mid-2000.CAN "Drug Trends in Sweden 2009 – English Summary" Stockholm 2009
The professor emeritus in criminology at the University of Oslo, Nils Christie, pointed out Sweden as the hawk of international drug policy in a 2004 book. He said that Sweden is serving the role of being welfare alibi for, and lending legitimacy to, the US drug war. Adding that USA and Sweden have had an extraordinary influence on UNODC as the biggest donor countries.Christie, Nils (Mar 2004). A Suitable Amount of Crime. Routledge. . Sweden was the second biggest donor financing 8% of the UNODC budget behind the European Commission in 2006, followed by the US. In 2007 and 2008 Sweden was the fourth biggest donor, behind the European Commission, USA and Canada. In 2009 it was the third, as USA withdrew some of its funding.United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: "Annual Report 2007" , "Annual Report 2008" , "Annual Report 2009" , "Annual Report 2010"
A 2009 editorial in The Economist argued:
Antonio Maria Costa's conviction that "countries have the drug problem they deserve" if they fail to follow the "Swedish Model" in drug control has also been criticised in Peter Cohen's work – Looking at the UN, smelling a rat.Cohen, Peter (2006). Looking at the UN, smelling a rat . Amsterdam: CEDRO.
In its 2011 report, the Global Commission on Drug Policy stated that "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world".
Deterrence
Arguments that prohibition discourages drug use A 2001 Australian study, of 18- to 29-year-olds by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research suggests that prohibition deters illicit drug use.NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research 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.
Gil Kerlikowske, director of the US ONDCP argued,
The DEA argues "Legalization has been tried before—and failed miserably. Alaska's experiment with legalization in the 1970s led to the state's teens using marijuana at more than twice the rate of other youths nationally. This led Alaska's residents to vote to re-criminalize marijuana in 1990."
Drug Free Australia has cited the Netherlands as an example of drug policy failure because it is soft in approach. They argue that the Dutch idea of going soft on cannabis dealers, thereby creating a "separation of markets" from hard drug dealers has failed to stem the initiation to drugs such as heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines, saying that, in 1998, the Netherlands had the third highest cannabis and cocaine use in Europe. According to Barry McCaffrey of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, Dutch tolerance has allowed the Netherlands to become a criminal epicentre for illicit synthetic drug manufacture, particularly ecstasy, as well as the home for production and worldwide export of strains of cannabis with THC reportedly 10 times higher than normal.Testimony of Barry McCaffrey, Director, US Office of Drug Control Policy to House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. Gil Kerlikowske has attested that, where there were once thousands of cannabis cafés there are now only several hundred.Gil Kerlikowske Levels of cannabis use, in 2005 only marginally higher than in 1998, while other European countries have accelerated past them, are more likely, Drug Free Australia argues, the result of a growing intolerance of cannabis in the Netherlands rather than a growing tolerance. Drug Free Australia has also argued that British reductions in cannabis use after softer legislation may be more so the result of heavy UK media exposure of the stronger evidence of links between cannabis and psychosis.BBCBBCBBCBBC
Arguments that prohibition does not discourage drug use It has been suggested that drug law reform could reduce the use of hard drugs as it has in countries such as the Netherlands. According to a 2009 annual report by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the Dutch are among the lowest users of marijuana or cannabis in Europe, despite the Netherlands' policy on soft drugs being one of the most liberal in Europe, allowing for the sale of marijuana at "coffee shops", which the Dutch have allowed to operate for decades, and possession of less than .