2. Some Major Contributions to Ending Prohibition
The contributions that I look at here came in two varieties, policy-relevant writings and real-world policy implementations. I will focus mostly on writings, though the concrete steps associated with the end of national alcohol Prohibition, along with the drug decriminalizations or depenalizations taking place in Netherlands, Portugal, Mexico, and other countries, also receive some notice.
Fosdick and Scott
Toward Alcohol Control was published when the end of Prohibition was a foregone conclusion. Beer had already become available thanks to a revision of the Volstead Act, and the 21st amendment was shortly to be ratified. The book takes it as a given that national alcohol Prohibition is a failed policy, and that the country will be well-served by repeal. Perhaps the chief aim of the proposals in Toward Alcohol Control is to ensure that the Prohibition-induced lawlessness be ended. A second concern is to control the commercial forces that might provoke intemperance in a regime of legal alcohol. Fosdick and Scott note that distilled alcohol is much more socially dangerous than beer and wine, and argue for much tighter controls for the high-proof beverages; indeed, they doubt (p. 48) that distilled spirits should legally be sold for on-premises consumption. They examine two alternative systems of legal control, one in which sellers are licensed, and a second where the state assumes direct control of all sales for off-premises consumption. While they think that both systems potentially are viable, they fear that in the US, a license system will give way to commercial liquor interests over time; hence they prefer a state sales monopoly. Taxes can be employed with an aim to promoting temperance, not for the purpose of revenue collection. Areas within states are themselves quite heterogeneous, so Fosdick and Scott support Local Option, where jurisdictions such as counties and municipalities can choose their own liquor laws.
Hofstra 1990
The Hofstra Law Review published a symposium on drug decriminalization in 1990. Among the articles, which took various pro- and anti-decriminalization positions, was one by Joseph L. Galiber, a New York state senator, that included a draft law to replace New York’s drug prohibition with a regulatory scheme. Galiber’s proposal would have made drugs legally available to adults, though in a potentially highly-regulated manner. Pharmacists and doctors who wanted to dispense the newly-legalized drugs would need a special license. Detailed regulations, including licensure provisions, advertising controls, quantity limits, and pricing (including a tax component), would be promulgated by a state-level Controlled Substances Authority, modeled after New York’s post-Prohibition State Liquor Authority. Galiber’s proposed law endorses a licensing regime, as opposed to Fosdick and Scott’s preferred state monopoly plan. Galiber (1990, p. 846) suggests that drug tax revenues be earmarked for treatment: “It seems proper and fitting that the costs of drug use ought to be borne by drug-users rather than by the public at large from general tax revenues.” Galiber did not limit his proposal to publication in a scholarly journal; he introduced his draft law to the New York Senate in 1989.[4]
How to Legalize Drugs
How to Legalize Drugs, a book of more than 650 pages, edited by Jefferson M. Fish, appeared in 1998.[5] The volume does not argue the case for ending prohibition, but rather, as the title indicates, discusses (especially in Part II, “Approaches to Legalization”) how to implement a legalization; as with Fosdick and Scott, the desirability of legalization (or at least decriminalization) is taken as a given. How to Legalize Drugs illustrates, however, the lack of one or two standard models for post-legalization drug regulation – a sharp contrast from the Fosdick and Scott predecessor. There are medicalization approaches, suggestions for consumer licensing, mail-order delivery requirements, personal consulting pharmacists, and laissez-faire, to name just a handful of the ideas presented in How to Legalize Drugs.
Transform
Transform is a British Drug Policy Foundation (www.tdpf.org.uk) that has provided a detailed guide to global drug legalization. After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation examines all of the popular recreational drugs, and suggests the steps that should be taken to bring them into legal control.
California’s Proposition 19
In November, 2010, California’s Proposition 19 was defeated at the polls, with 53.5 percent of the electorate voting against the initiative. Had it passed, the Proposition would have legalized adult possession for personal use of up to one ounce of cannabis, and small-scale cultivation for personal use, too. These elements would have had statewide scope, though of course the federal marijuana prohibition would remain in effect. Further, Proposition 19 included an option provision that would have allowed local governments to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana sales, and to license premises for marijuana consumption. (Consumption in private residences would be legal statewide, as long as no minors were present.) Premises licensed for sales and/or consumption could be subject to various restrictions, such as advertising controls, hours regulations, and taxes.
Portugal
[4] Galiber’s 1989 proposal built on a marijuana-only legalization bill that was first introduced in the New York Senate in 1971; see Evans (1998, p. 377).
[5] Fish followed up with a 2006 volume, Drugs and Society, that covers some of the same ground.
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