The "L" Word and the "D" Word
Published February 23, 2005
Margaret Romao Toigo
The words, "legalization" and "decrminalization" should be struck from the vocabularies of all people who support the basic ideas which they represent. To suggest that we need to "legalize" something that is illegal or to "decriminalize" something that has been traditionally considered a crime for a century only feeds the powerful propaganda machine which operates in conjuction with the war on drugs.
Advocates of drug policy reform — whom prohibitionists call "legalizers" — understand the true meaning of those two words, but the general public has been trained to equate them with a sort of chaos and anarchy which will turn America into a "nation of stoned-out zombies." Even in the minds of average Americans who agree that the war on drugs has failed, those two words are not percieved as viable solutions to the failure of interdiction because they are not so much solutions as they are platitudes.
To simply state that prohibition doesn't work so we ought to just "legalize it" only leads the skeptical to ask, "then what?" Because it is not logical to suggest the repeal of nearly 100 year-old policies without offering some detailed, concrete alternatives. Plus, attempts to demonize staus quo laws and policies are almost always ineffective because the people who try can easily be put on the defensive with accusations of "giving in to the criminal element."
The real evil of prohibitionist policies is the black market they created and continue to support. Therefore, it is more effective to demonize the lawless black market rather than the law itself because those laws still continue to successfully masquerade as deterrents to the black market. The idea is to break that circular reasoning by emphasizing how prohibitionist policies feed and nurture the black market instead of deterring it.
The black market in unregulated drugs is a low-risk, high profit business because of — not in spite of — the "war on drugs." The black market drug business thrives without taxes, restrictions or regulations. The black market considers interdiction as one small line-item in its loss column, mere "spillage" which can be easily minimized by producing and moving more product (and so what if quality and purity suffer in the process?).
The black market drug business is not regulated. The black market does not have labeling or packaging requirements. The black market is not subject to zoning restricitions or licensing or regulatory inspections. Black market businesses do not collect sales taxes or pay income or property taxes. Today's war on drugs, like Prohibition in the 1920s, has become the ultimate de-regulation policy.
Margaret Romao Toigo is a retired stripper, beauty school dropout, and wannabe intellectual who dabbles in a wide variety of fleeting endeavors and life-long obsessions. Although Ms. Toigo is not a real writer, she nonetheless has her very own web site: Land of the Free, Home of the Brave 
- The "L" Word and the "D" Word
- Published: February 23, 2005
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- Writer: Margaret Romao Toigo
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Excellent points, Margaret. To say that I support the regulation of the sale of, say, marijuana, would leave people with an impression of control. There is no doubt that what I have seen in using a term like legalization is the accusation of anarchism, which I do not support. May seem like semantics to some, but there is certainly a different appeal to be struck by using particular words.
Words are more powerful than most people think. Consider how the people who are promoting the President's plan to reform Social Security have been instructed not to use the expression "private accounts" but rather, "personal acounts," in order to deflect attention away from the unpopular idea of "privatization," a term which the opponents of SS reform use frequently in their rhetoric.
Likewise, the words legalization and its cousin decriminalization have been adopted by prohibitionists and transformed into scare words to suggest a loss of control, a mere repealing of punitive laws that would leave the currrnt system of marketing and distribution in place.
It is in our nature for us to want to feel in control of our world and speaking and writing about prohibition in terms of how it has created a loss of control and how regulation will let us regain that control while at the same time reducing violent prohibition-related crime is far more convincing than any of the numerous "human rights" arguments.
The idea is to chip away at the myth that prohibition is the solution to, rather than the cause of so-called "drug-related" crime. A good working knowledge of the history of Prohibition (1919-1933) and the gangsterism and subsequent crime that fostered provides a rich library of very effective analogies and comparisons.
Always remember that the real "drug problem" is prohibition masquerading as a solution to itself.
excellent post Margaret and I agree entirely: regulate and tax is the proper approach and wording.
Pat's right: please put in one or more ASIN with every post. Thanks!
I have added two books after finding the right numbers to use when there is no apparent ASIN available.
Dan Russell's Drug War is a real eye-opener. Those who read it might never look at the US government in the same way again.
ASIN=ISBN
While I agree wholeheartedly with your argument, I don't think rewording the political stance of the "legalizers" would really accomplish much. The American public isn't interested in long-winded explanations or complicated terminology. The average soundbite is only seven seconds long. In order to get across a statement or message in today's society, you need a short powerful slogan. "Legalize it" is far catchier and memorable and provocative than "regulate and tax it." It's a sad truth, but the American public these days is much happier being misinformed.
While I fully understand that the national attention span is barely long enough to comprehend a 30-second television commercial, what must also be considered is how soundbites are related to the longer term evolution of political and cultural memes.
The expression, "legalize it" might sound catchy, but its meaning has been twisted by prohibitionist rhetoric to the point where it is most often perceived as the "stoners'" cry for their right to get high (and be irresponsible and spread STDs and corrupt the moral fiber of the nation and kill our children and bring on the apocalypse and...).
So, we need to let the prohibitionists have the "L" word and adopt new short and powerful slogans that convey the ideas which I outlined in my rather long-winded essay above (which was mostly intended to instruct reformers in debating methodology rather than to convince the unquestioning advocates of prohibitionist policies that interdiction is ineffective).
The idea is to inspire new political and cultural memes, like forwarding the idea that the interdiction-fueled black market causes prohitbition-related crime, not "drug-related" crime. And to focus on the loss of market control that results with prohibtionist policies (the ultimate deregulation).
Now, I am not much of a sloganeer, but I do hope to give those who are good at thinking of effective soundbites some ideas about what they must convey in seven seconds or less.
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(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/25910)
Here are some free ASINs: 052179997X (Drug War Heresies: Learning from Other Vices, Times, and Places) and 0945999909 (Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition). Or maybe you'd rather: 1577662172 (Drugs, Crime, & Justice: Contemporary Perspectives) or 1583605428 (Drugs in Society: Causes, Concepts and Control).