Gore Vidal -- Drugs in Essay

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Wouldn't the government need the same amount of money, or perhaps even more, to regulate the new drug system. I can' only imagine the bureaucracy necessary to manage the legal trade of things like heroin, crack cocaine and meth.

The other prong of Vidal's argument is that "forbidding people the things the like or think they might enjoy only makes them want those things all the more." He claims that this psychological insight is obvious and yet denied by our government. As evidentiary support, he points to prohibition, but his arguments about prohibition don't directly support his thesis. He argues, correctly, that crime increased because of the prohibition of alcohol, and that the law caused a general contempt for the government, but he does not prove that people wanted to drink more because alcohol was prohibited to them.

The analogy between alcohol and drugs also does not hold up to close scrutiny. Alcohol, although addictive, has always been consumed legally by human beings for centuries, only to be abruptly prohibited by the 18th Amendment. Yes, people broke laws to get alcohol, but this is not evidence that there were more drinkers than before or after prohibition, only that these drinkers were breaking the law. They were trying to obtain something that had been legal to them and part of their culture, the national culture, before being abruptly taken away from them. Vidal cites no statistics on an increase in alcoholism resulting from the prohibition -- perhaps because the evidence just doesn't exist.

Vidal also insists that if there were no money in the drug trade for the Mafia to profit from, there would be no playground pushers and addicts would not commit crimes to get their fixes. First, this supposed that all drug addicts would be able to afford the government-set prices for drugs and that they would be willing to pay them. The rise in black market cigarettes recently in response to high government taxes serves as evidence that a legal supply does not prohibit illegal trafficking (Caruso).

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There would also exist an illegal market for underage users, as there does now for alcohol. Everyone who participates in such transactions is committing a crime, so not all crime would be eliminated by legalization. There would still be illegal uses and users and criminals to provide the product for them. Thus, not only would the government have to absorb the cost burden of setting up the necessary regulatory agencies, they would also have to keep law enforcement in place to catch the abusers of the system.

It may be the 40 years that have passed since Vidal wrote his article and now, but he seems to be ignorant about the nature of addiction as a disease. He equates a restrictive drug policy to moralism that has no practical value.

At its core, Vidal's argument is based on a libertarian ideal of a small government which does not get in the way of individual freedom. Vidal goes all the way back to the founding fathers, recalling that their idea of freedom was that "each man has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbor's pursuit of happiness." He admits that things get confused when not everyone has the best intentions toward each other, but he doesn't include anything about drug use in the possibly negative category. Vidal's arguments miss the mark and are not convincing because they are not set on a firm foundation but rather a twisted idea of utopia, where everyone behaves as they should and people are able to overcome anything with willpower. If only it were so, Mr. Vidal, I may support your policy.

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