Leonard Read, the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), had a succinct way of stating the philosophy of freedom and individual rights: Anything that’s peaceful. (His book by that title is here. I give a short appreciation of Leonard Read here.)
So I was disappointed, to put it mildly, to see on FEE’s website an article by Trace Mitchell titled “Drug Courts, Not More Jail Time, Can Help Reduce Criminal Recidivism.” (March 12, 2019.) I hasten to add that my problem is not with the title or with Mitchell’s claim that the title accurately summarizes. Mr. Mitchell may well be right, and probably is right, that drug courts are better than jails to deal with “nonviolent, drug-related offenses.” It may well be a step in the right direction.
But there’s an even bigger step that should at least be mentioned: not criminalizing the peaceful activity of producing, distributing, or consuming drugs.
But Trace Mitchell doesn’t even mention it. Indeed, he writes:
If the goal of criminal justice reform is to effectively reduce criminal activity while protecting the rights of the individual, drug courts are an efficient and cost-effective way of achieving that.
But drug courts by definition don’t protect the rights of the individual. Instead, they violate the individual’s right to produce, distribute, or consume drugs.
Later in the piece, Mitchell writes that drug courts are “a cost-effective way of combating drug abuse.” What does he mean by drug abuse? I think he means drug use. Ask yourself this. Let’s say that cops bust someone for using marijuana, heroin, or cocaine. Do they try to figure out whether the person is abusing those drugs? How would they know? What if the person is using those drugs responsibly? The person still gets busted. Moreover, what if the person were abusing one or all of those drugs? How would that justify sending them to a drug court? People abuse all kinds of things: alcohol, ice cream, golf, and coffee, to name four, two of which are, or contain drugs. Should the government bust them?
Literature from FEE, written by Ben Rogge and others, was very important in my intellectual development when I was 18. I hope FEE returns to Leonard Read’s “Anything that’s peaceful” philosophy so that other young people can be inspired by the idea of a peaceful society.
READER COMMENTS
Trace Mitchell
Mar 30 2019 at 3:47pm
As the author of this article, I could not agree more! I apologize for my lack of clarification. The ultimate goal is legalization. I originally wrote this for an audience slightly different than FEE’s and did not want to undermine my argument with that audience. However, I should have altered it when I published it with FEE. Thank you for this well thought out piece, I will be careful to make my ultimate goals explicitly stated in the future!
David Henderson
Mar 30 2019 at 6:06pm
Thanks, Trace.
Mark Z
Mar 30 2019 at 8:35pm
In defense of Mitchell’s approach, it’s well worth exploring lesser evils on which the ideal (such as decriminalizing hard drug use) is unpopular, and promoting such lesser evils among those who oppose the ideal.
David Henderson
Mar 31 2019 at 10:13am
I agree. Moreover, I pointed out in my post that I agree.
Comments are closed.