Philip Seymour Hoffman's Death Is Government's Fault, Says Congressman

What killed Philip Seymour Hoffman? During a
congressional hearing yesterday, Rep.
Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) suggested that it wasn’t just heroin.
Another factor was complicit in the death of the 46-year-old actor:
the federal government’s war on drugs.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform convened
to discuss the Obama Administration’s marijuana policy. Cohen
asserted:

It is ludicrous, absurd, crazy, to have marijuana on the same
level as heroin. Ask the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, if you could.
Nobody dies from marijuana. People die from heroin. And, every
second that we spend in this country trying to enforce marijuana
laws is a second that we’re not enforcing heroin laws… Every
death, including Mr. Hoffman’s, is partly the responsibility of the
federal government’s drug priorities for not putting total emphasis
on the drugs that kill.

The representative also criticized Republicans for being
“schizophrenic” in their calls for limited government while
simultaneously approving of federal meddling in state legalization
efforts as well as a prison system bloated by the costs of the
drug war.

Though, one could say that Cohen, who understands the relative
harmlessness of marijuana and the futility of trying to stop people
from consuming it, is schizophrenic for not following through with
this line of logic when considering other substances.

Why not give up on the laws that keep it listed as a Schedule I
drug as well?

As Reason‘s
Jacob Sullum and
Matthew Feeney have explained, prohibition actually makes
heroin more dangerous. The drug war ensures that users have to rely
on the opaque black market, where the risk of buying contaminated
and potentially deadly products increases. This isn’t just a
libertarian position, though.

Dr. Stanton Peele points
out, pure, unadulterated heroin is not particularly dangerous.
Likewise, studies have confirmed,
it is a safer and cheaper alternative to government-approved
methadone. 

“Our drug policy of prohibition and interdiction makes it
difficult and dangerous for people like Hoffman to get high, but
not impossible — and it makes these tragic overdose deaths more
common than they have to be,”
argues Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and
MSNBC.

Few politicians would outright say, “legalize heroin.” The

majority of Americans believe that recreational marijuana
should be legal, but they remain
wary of ending the prohibition of harder drugs. Perhaps, as
Cohen advocates, government should put as much focus on heroin as
it has on marijuana. Then people would see that the drug war fails
regardless of the substance.