In
remarks
to reporters at the United Nations last week, William Brownfield,
the assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and
law enforcement affairs, called for flexibility in interpreting
anti-drug treaties, saying signatories must learn to “tolerate
different national drug policies,” which means “accept[ing] the
fact that some countries will have very strict drug approaches,”
while “other countries will legalize entire categories of drugs.”
It was a pretty striking departure from the U.S. government’s
traditional role as enforcer of prohibitionist orthodoxy. “I would
have to take that position,” Brownfield explained. “How could I, a
representative of the government of the United States of America,
be intolerant of a government that permits any experimentation with
legalization of marijuana if two of the 50 states of the United
States of America have chosen to walk down that road?”
Contrary to the
position of the International Narcotics Control Board,
Brownfield said the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 and
the subsequent agreements that expanded on it can reasonably be
read to allow legalization of not just marijuana but “entire
categories of drugs.” Regardless of their own preferences, he said,
signatories must accept “flexible interpretation of those
conventions.” Otherwise, he warned, “the world is going to divide
between those who are exploring a more user-friendly approach and
those who are adamant in their opposition.”
Brownfield did insist that “whatever our approach and policy may
be on legalization, decriminalization, depenalization, we all agree
to combat and resist the criminal organizations—not those who buy,
consume, but those who market and traffic the product for economic
gain.” But businesses that produce and sell marijuana or other
drugs in jurisdictions that have decided to legalize those
activities do not qualify as “criminal organizations.” Brownfield
suggested that drug warriors must accept such deviations if they
want to maintain international cooperation against “transnational
criminal organizations” that “both traffic in product and use
violence and blood to accomplish their objectives.”
Asked about the federal government’s attitude toward marijuana
legalization in Colorado and Washington, Brownfield described a
policy clearer than anything explicitly promised by the Justice
Department:
The deputy attorney general’s words were that the federal
government will not intervene in the application of the laws of
Washington and Colorado on marijuana legalization, but will monitor
and hold them responsible for performance in eight specifically
designated areas….We have a national interest to ensure that this
does not cause undue harm….The United States of America reserves the right and can at any
time it chooses enforce the law against marijuana and cannabis
cultivation, production, sale, purchase, and consumption in
Washington state and Colorado. The deputy attorney general in a
public document has asserted that for now we will not do that
unless it crosses the line in eight specifically identified
categories in those two states.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole did not quite say that in the
August 2013 memo to which Brownfield refers, although such
restraint was strongly implied.
Brownfield mixed his talk of tolerance with plenty of
prohibitionist boilerplate. “We have reduced demand [for] cocaine
by nearly 50 percent” since 2004, he claimed, thereby ascribing
that change entirely to government policies of dubious
effectiveness. He emphasized his own opposition to legalization and
continued the Obama administration’s habit of
caricaturing antiprohibitionists as people “who say, literally,
‘Let us legalize everything, and the problem will go away.'”
Literally? The administration has yet to produce a single actual
example of such critics. “I actually believe there is a good and
productive debate going on,” Brownfield said. Stupid strawmen do
not advance that debate.
“Illicit drugs are illicit for a reason,” Brownfield declared.
True, but not necessarily for a good reason. “They were made
illegal initially,” he said, “because they are perceived
scientifically to be a toxic substance harmful to the human body in
and of themselves and an addictive, or at a minimum, a
dependency-producing substance which is both physically and
psychologically harmful.” Notice how the phrase “perceived
scientifically” implies an objective basis for prohibition while
leaving room for retreat. After all, it is pretty hard to defend
the proposition that marijuana
prohibition was based on perceptions that could fairly be
described as scientific.
Even when a substance is accurately viewed as potentially
addictive and harmful (a description that applies to all
psychoactive drugs, along with pretty much everything else that
people enjoy), that is not the end of the inquiry. Brownfield
implies that prohibited drugs are more dangerous than legal ones,
which is clearly not true, as the boss of Brownfield’s boss
could confirm. And Brownfield takes for granted that the use of
violence is morally acceptable “to protect people” from their own
choices. In other words, he is still a prohibitionist, but he is a
prohibitionist who has been compelled by political circumstances in
his own country to concede that there might be some value to other
perspectives.
[Thanks to Mike Riggs for the tip.]
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