The Drug War is the Other War Bush-Era Neocons Can’t Quit

You’ve likely seen former Vice President Dick
Cheney defending failed U.S. efforts in Iraq. He’s been hitting the
TV shows and the op-ed pages with his daughter to argue that Iraq
was going super-well until President Obama screwed things up by
leaving that country on the timetable put into place by…George W.
Bush.

Yeah, well, as I write in a new column at The Daily Beast:

It turns out that Dick Cheney isn’t the only Bush administration
muckety-muck still fighting the last war.

Even as the former vice-president took to the pages
of The Wall Street Journal to blame Barack
Obama for the deteriorating situation in Iraq, George W. Bush’s
drug czar, John P. Walters, is arguing
in Politico that no, really, victory in the war
on drugs is just around the corner. We’ve just got to hold the
line, don’t you see, especially against Barack Obama, “whose
administration has facilitated marijuana legalization” despite also
setting a
record for federal raids against medical pot dispensaries
in California.

More important, insists Walters, is that you understand
“Why
Libertarians Are Wrong About Drugs.”

The short version: Currently illegal drugs are uniquely
addictive and destructive of individual autonomy. If they were
legalized, we would become addicts incapable of the very sort of
personal responsibility upon which libertarianism is
predicated.

It’s nice that a former drug czar is so invested in libertarian
philosophy that he’s looking out for its future. It goes without
saying that Walters has no idea of what he’s talking about whether
he’s discussing classical liberalism or the effects of drugs on
people or even basic drug policy (yes, he immediately leaps from
legalized pot in two states to legalized heroin everywhere and
drums up the specter of a heroin-addict voter bloc: “all heroin
users, compelled by their disease to support a particular political
candidate?”). In any case, he pleads, if you think drug prohibition
is bad, just wait until you see drug legalization! To which I
respond:

What exactly will replace prohibition?
When it comes to pot, we’ve got two states—and the country of
Uruguay–exploring options right now. When it comes to
wider-ranging experiments, we’ve got countries such as Portugal,
which decriminalized drugs a dozen years ago and has
had strongly
positive results. And we’ve got our own imperfect
repeal of alcohol prohibition to learn from.

Exactly what a more libertarian America—one in which adults are
allowed to modulate their moods more freely–will look like is
anybody’s guess. But just about anything would be preferable
to a
decades-old drug war that has spent trillions of dollars,
locked up millions of people, warped American foreign policy,
shredded the Constitution, and stolen time from K-12 classrooms.
Only battle-fatigued drug warriors like John Walters can’t see
that.

Read the whole column.

Jacob Sullum discussed Walters’
op-ed here.