Anti-Pot Group Regrets the Repeal of Alcohol Prohibition

The anti-pot
group Project SAM was not pleased by President Obama’s
recent observation that marijuana is less dangerous than
alcohol. “We take issue with the President’s comparisons between
marijuana and alcohol,” says Project SAM Chairman Patrick J,
Kennedy in a press
release. He does not argue that Obama’s statement was
inaccurate—just that it was unhelpful to the prohibitionist cause.
Kennedy explains that “two wrongs don’t make a right: just because
our already legal drugs may have very dangerous impacts on society
it does not mean that other drugs should follow the same path.”
Note that the first “wrong,” according to Kennedy, was making
alcohol legal.  

Despite that decision, which Kennedy evidently considers a
mistake, the U.S. government has managed to keep marijuana illegal
for 77 years. Yet Kennedy worries that “the legalization of
marijuana leads quickly to a slippery slope that could open the
gates to legalization—and commercialization—of other addictive
substances for recreational use.” After all, “several of today’s
largest pro-marijuana-legalization groups have been advocating for
the full-scale legalization of all recreational drugs, including
psychedelics and cocaine.” I’m not sure which groups Kennedy has in
mind. The most prominent ones, such as the Marijuana Policy Project
and the Drug Policy Alliance, either do not address other drugs or
take a position that falls well short of “full-scale
legalization.”

In any case, I wish American politicians and voters were as
philosophically consistent as Kennedy suggests. But surveys find a
huge gap between support for legalizing marijuana—a step backed by

most Americans, according to several recent polls—and support
for legalizing other drugs. A
YouGov poll conducted in November, for instance, put support
for legalizing heroin at 9 percent and support for legalizing
cocaine at 11 percent. A 2012 Rasmussen poll got
similar results.

Kennedy seems to think those gaps will be bridged soon:

Our country hasn’t asked important questions about how far is
too far with drug legalization. As parts of the United States
plunge headlong into ill-informed drug policies rooted in opinions,
political agendas and corporate greed, the President astutely notes
that it is a matter of time before we’re also asked to consider the
legalization of a “negotiated dose of cocaine” or “a finely
calibrated dose of meth.” That is the nature of addiction and
substance abuse. It leads to the next problem, and the next problem
and the next—and many times, the damage is irreversible and
irreparable.

According to Kennedy, the buzz from legalizing marijuana will
soon fade, causing Americans to crave legalization of other
psychoactive substances. History suggests that is the pattern
followed by prohibition: A little is never enough. If legalization
also works that way, I will be pleasantly surprised.