President Biden is taking some baby steps toward drug policy reform, a move I recommended in the New York Times 34 years ago. As I wrote then:
Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920’s failed because it proved impossible to stop people from drinking. Our 70‐year effort at prohibition of marijuana, cocaine, and heroin has also failed. Tens of millions of Americans, including senators, presidential candidates, a Supreme Court nominee and conservative journalists, have broken the laws against such drugs. Preserving laws that are so widely flouted undermines respect for all laws.…
Our efforts to crack down on illegal drug use have created new problems. A Justice Department survey reports that 70 percent of those arrested for serious crimes are drug users, which may mean that “drugs cause crime.” A more sophisticated analysis suggests that the high cost of drugs, a result of their prohibition, forces drug users to turn to crime to support an unnecessarily expensive habit.
That article seemed to be followed by an accelerating national debate on the value of drug prohibition. Within six weeks the Economist had endorsed legalization, a bill to decriminalize drugs had been introduced in the New York legislature (just 15 years after the draconian Rockefeller drug laws), and Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke called for a national debate on legalization. A bit later Congress held hearings on the topic, and drug czar William Bennett criticized my article in an article in Reader’s Digest, then the best‐selling magazine in the United States.
But policy change was slow in coming. Only about a decade ago did states start passing bills to decriminalize or legalize marijuana. That of course created conflicts between state and federal law. Since then, Cato Institute analysts have been urging — along with the general case for legalization — that the federal government respect state policies and refrain from trying to enforce federal prohibition in states where legislators or voters have chosen to change drug policy.
Throughout his 50 years in federal office, President Biden has always tried to position himself in the sweet spot just between the ideological center of the country and the ideological center of the Democratic party, from his early opposition to school busing for desegregation to his punitive 1994 crime bill to his 2002 vote for the Iraq war to his recent support for trillions of dollars in new deficit spending (but not the trillions more supported by Sen. Bernie Sanders). Now, commendably, Biden has joined 68 percent of Americans and 83 percent of Democrats in moving toward marijuana legalization. He announced Thursday that he would pardon U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who were convicted of simple possession of marijuana in federal courts. That’s about 6500 people, none of whom are currently in prison. But some of those people may benefit from the pardon because the lack of a criminal conviction could improve their employment prospects.
Perhaps more importantly, he also also directed his administration to review whether marijuana should continue to be listed as a Schedule I substance, a classification reserved for the most dangerous drugs, including heroin, LSD and ecstasy. That’s another step that Cato analysts have long advocated.
I join my colleagues Jeff Singer and Trevor Burrus in welcoming President Biden’s announcement. And I regret that Sen. Tom Cotton predictably opposed even this modest move in the direction of individual freedom. But I’m encouraged that I can’t find any other Republicans criticizing the announcement, notably those running in tight Senate races and pounding their opponents on crime.
For comic relief, here’s my first and so far only TikTok, from a few months ago, pointing out that it’s been 34 years and we’re still pursuing the failed policy I objected to in 1988. And this week’s announcement won’t change that.
