Revamping the war on drugs won’t work

This past week, Gov. Gavin Newsom indicated he both understands and doesn’t understand the problem with America’s long-running war on drugs.

On Wednesday, Newsom criticized the decision of Assembly Public Safety Committee Chair Kevin McCarty to hold Senate Bill 1502 from advancing. That bill, introduced by Sen. Angelique Ashby, would designate the commonly-used veterinary tranquilizer xylazine a Schedule III substance and subject to criminal penalties.

Xylazine has increasingly come up as an adulterant in fentanyl, which in turn emerged as a adulterant and substitute for heroin. As Reason Magazine’s Jacob Sullum has previously explained, this is “a familiar consequence of prohibition, which creates a black market in which drug composition is highly variable and unpredictable.”

In response to SB 1502, the Drug Policy Alliance warned, “Placing xylazine on the CSA will result in the disproportionate prosecution and sentencing of people struggling with substance use, including people who may not know xylazine is in their drug supply.” Further, DPA notes, “Historical evidence shows that prohibiting substances does not reduce overdose rates. Instead, it creates a dangerous cycle that exposes people who use drugs to newer and potentially more dangerous alternatives from unknown sources.”

Indeed, as the Cato Institute’s Jeffrey Singer notes, even riskier substances are already on the way to supplant xylazine if the latter becomes harder to access. “As is usually the case in the war on drugs, policymakers are fighting the last battle while drug trafficking organizations are opening new fronts,” he wrote in a commentary posted by the Cato Institute blog.

Accordingly, SB 1502 was held. But Newsom, mindful of the need to look like a future president, complained about the bil being derailed.  “I felt it a huge mistake that a member of the Legislature killed the tranq bill, the xylazine bill,” Newsom said. “That was a big mistake. So I’m very active in that respect.”

No, it wasn’t a “mistake” to hold a bill that simply doubles down on the failed drug warrior approach of the last half century. It is perfectly reasonable to take a more measured and thoughtful approach.

At the same time he wants to be seen as tough on drugs, Newsom appears to want to seen as not too tough on them. At a press conference in Oakland, Newsom criticized Proposition 36, which, among other things, would allow for certain cases of drug possession to be charged as felonies.

“I’m very concerned about this drug policy reform that takes possession and makes it a felony,” Newsom said. “And increases the size of our prison population by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousand, over the next decade at a profound cost to the taxpayers. And I don’t think an improvement of public safety.”

While this editorial board has not yet taken a position on Proposition 36, we share the governor’s concern about any proposal which could be used to jail or imprison more people for simple drug possession. Or, for that matter, saddle the stigma and collateral consequences of a felony conviction for drug possession alone.

Drug addiction and drug overdoses are serious problems, not doubt. Both problems, however, have never been solved with the sledgehammer of the criminal justice system. If anything, both problems have been aggravated by the fiction that we can arrest our way out of these problems. We can’t.

That doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t hold drug addicts accountable when they infringe on the rights and well-being of others. We should.

The problems we face today echo the problems of alcohol prohibition a century ago and the various drug prohibitions of the last half century. Like the naive college student who believes communism can work, it just hasn’t been tried for real, the drug prohibitionists among us wrongly believe that, if only we try harder, prohibition can work. It won’t.