Pubdate: Thu, 02 Nov 2017
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2017 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Jonah Goldberg

LEGALIZATION ISN'T THE SOLUTION TO THE OPIOID CRISIS

One painful aspect of the public debates over the opioid-addiction
crisis is how much they mirror the arguments that arise from personal
addiction crises. If you've ever had a loved one struggle with drugs
-- in my case, my late brother, Josh -- the national exercise in
guilt-driven blame-shifting and finger-pointing, combined with flights
of sanctimony and ideological righteousness, has a familiar echo.

The difference between the public arguing and the personal agonizing
is that, at the national level, we can afford our abstractions. When
you have skin in the game, none of the easy answers seem all that easy.

For instance, "tough love" sounds great until you contemplate the
possible real-world consequences. My father summarized the dilemma
well. "Tough love" -- i.e., cutting off all support for my brother so
he could hit rock bottom and then start over -- had the best chance of
success. It also had the best chance for failure -- i.e., death.

There's also a lot of truth to "just say no," but once someone has
already said "yes," it's tantamount to preaching "keep your horses in
the barn" long after they've left.

But if there's one seemingly simple answer that has been fully
discredited by the opioid crisis, it's that the solution lies in
wholesale drug legalization.

In "Libertarianism: A Primer," David Boaz argues that "if drugs were 
produced by reputable firms, and sold in liquor stores, fewer people 
would die from overdoses and tainted drugs, and fewer people would be 
the victims of prohibition-related robberies, muggings and
drive-by-shootings."

Maybe.

But you know what else would happen if we legalized heroin and
opioids? More people would use heroin and opioids. And the more people
who use such addictive drugs, the more addicts you get.

Think of the opioid crisis as the fruit of partial legalization. In
the 1990s, for good reasons and bad, the medical profession,
policymakers and the pharmaceutical industry made it much easier to
obtain opioids in order to confront an alleged pain epidemic. Doctors
prescribed more opioids, and government subsidies made them more
affordable. Because they were prescribed by doctors and came in pill
form, the stigma reserved for heroin didn't exist.

When you increase supply, lower costs and reduce stigma, you increase
use. And guess what? Increased use equals more addicts.

A survey by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation found
that one-third of the people who were prescribed opioids for more than
two months became addicted. A Centers for Disease Control study found
that a very small number of people exposed to opioids are likely to
become addicted after a single use.

The overdose crisis is largely driven by the fact that once addicted
to legal opioids, people seek out illegal ones -- heroin, for example
-- to fend off the agony of withdrawal once they can't get, or afford,
any more pills. Last year, 64,000 Americans died from overdoses. Some
58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War.

Experts rightly point out that a large share of opioid addiction stems
not from prescribed use but from people selling the drugs secondhand
on the black market, or from teenagers stealing them from their
parents. That's important, but it doesn't help the argument for
legalization. Because the point remains: When these drugs become more
widely available, more people avail themselves of them. How would
stacking heroin or OxyContin next to the Jim Beam lower the
availability? Liquor companies advertise -- a lot. Would we let, say,
Pfizer run ads for their brand of heroin? At least it might cut down
on the Viagra commercials.

I think it's probably true that legalization would reduce crime,
insofar as some violent illegal drug dealers would be driven out of
the business. I'm less sure that legalization would curtail crimes
committed by addicts in order to feed their habits. As a rule,
addiction is not conducive to sustained gainful employment, and
addicts are just as capable of stealing and prostitution to pay for
legal drugs as illegal ones.

The fundamental assumption behind legalization is that people are
rational actors and can make their own decisions. As a general
proposition, I believe that. But what people forget is that drug
addiction makes people irrational. If you think more addicts are worth
it in the name of freedom, fine. Just be prepared to accept that the
costs of such freedom are felt very close to home.

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Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of National Review Online and a
visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.