Drug Use Decriminalization is Only a Small, Albeit Positive, Step in the Right Direction

It’s not often I agree with a far Leftist. But in the case of a bill before Congress sponsored by New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, this is such an instance.

Coleman introduced Federal legislation that would decriminalize drug use at the federal level. As Jonathan D. Salant reports for NJ Advance Media for NJ.com:

New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman on Tuesday announced legislation to remove federal criminal penalties for all drug use — including marijuana and other drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

At a time when lawmakers in both houses are seeking to end the federal ban on cannabis, Watson Coleman, D-12th Dist., would go even farther.

Watson Coleman and her co-sponsor, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo. announced their bill two days before the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s announcement of a “war on drugs.”

Begun “as a cynical political tactic of the Nixon administration, the War on Drugs destroyed the lives of countless Americans and their families,” Watson Coleman said. “As we work to address the opioid epidemic, it is essential that we change tactics in how we address drug use, away from the failed punitive approach to a health-based and evidence-based approach.”

Several Republicans, including Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. and Rep. Chris Smith, R-NJ, oppose the bill on the grounds that it “basically tells people we think this is OK or relatively  harmless. It’s not. And there’s a whole criminal enterprise associated with the delivery of many of these drugs.”

This last is true. But that’s not a reason to keep sending people to prison for non-violent drug use. It’s a reason to decriminalize the manufacture and delivery of the drugs, and bring the drug business out of the criminal underworld into the transparency of the free market.

Smith asserts that “keeping such drugs illegal can dissuade people from using them.” It is important, he said, that “the law act out of an abundance of concern to protect people from hurting themselves and others. Having punitive measures against those kinds of drugs will save lives.”

But it is not the job of the law to protect us from ourselves. And legalization does not mean the government sanctions drug use or declares it’s “OK or relatively  harmless.” Legalization merely removes government from the decision making, which in the case of drug use is up to the individual. Many things are self-harmful. But it is up to each of us to balance risks with personal desires, not the government’s. The law should protect our rights to live by our own judgement. And the law would continue to protect us from harm by others, including drug-related violence. Coleman’s bill decriminalizes only nonviolent drug users. “The War on Drugs destroyed the lives of countless Americans and their families,” Coleman notes. And she’s right. Even President Donald Trump understood that. One of his signature accomplishments was that he signed legislation in December 2018, co-sponsored by [NJ Democrat Senator Corey] Booker, that allowed federal judges to hand out lighter sentences to those convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.”

Prohibition didn’t work with alcohol, and it never worked with drugs. Prohibition only leads to less safe drugs and the creation of vast violent criminal underworlds. It fills the jails with innocent people who harmed no one and violated no one’s rights. Forcing drug business underground also leads to a flood of more dangerous drugs. My only “complaint” about this bill is that it doesn’t go far enough. Nonetheless, kudos to Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman.

Related Reading:

Bill to Legalize Pot in New Jersey is the Right Step

The War on Drugs Is a War on People: All victimless crimes are an attack on liberty.