Prohibition, which pushed the enormous commerce in drugs outside the law and relinquished any regulatory control over it, has largely failed.  By bringing drug use within the law, we can take management of drug distribution away from criminals, turning it over to law-abiding business people and government employees. We can regulate, tax and control the manufacture, sale and use of all drugs. We can drive out prohibition-related crime, prevent and treat drug abuse, and encourage responsible drug use. The Seattle-based King County Bar Association Drug Policy Project proposed a framework for how this can exist on the state-level in their report "Effective Drug Control: Toward a New Legal Framework". This report is highly recommended.

Drug regulation will require a multi-pronged effort using the business community, law enforcement, judicial system, medical community, the media and of course educators and families. Just as different drugs and drug quantities trigger different criminal penalties under prohibition, different drugs will be subjected to a different controls under regulation regarding their manufacture, sale and possession. Essentially, drug-specific regulation will build upon the elements in the systems for two common drugs that are already regulated: alcohol and tobacco. In addition to creating drug-specific regulations based on their toxicity, special conditions are needed for the medical use of drugs (specifically opiates, marijuana, and MDMA), for drugs that are grown (marijuana, mushrooms, coca) as opposed to drugs that are man-made (cocaine, MDMA, LSD, heroin), and for drugs that use high-risk delivery methods (such as intravenous injection). Additional regulations are necessary for defining the limitations of drug advertising and marketing.

In considering the framework for drug regulation, citizens and law-makers will also need to clarify how they view drug use and responsibility. The following thirteen principles will help guide the creation and management of a realistic system of drug regulation. Descriptions of each principle are linked below, or you can read the full document, Principles and Proposals for Managing the Drug Problem, which was published in the 1998 book "How to Legalize Drugs".            

1.  The purpose of drug laws and drug policy is to help people, not hurt them.
2.  Adopt a public health approach toward all drugs and drug users.
3.  Insist upon drug and alcohol user accountability and responsibility.
4.  Insist upon vendor accountability and responsibility.
5.  Maximize the reach of law and respect for the law.
6.  Set appropriate priorities and achievable social goals.
7.  Be honest and self-critical in making policy.
8.  Be comprehensive in addressing "root causes" of drug abuse.
9.  Respect other peoples, other nations and other cultures.
10.  Recognize that drugs are a major commodity in international trade.
11.  Be creative and flexible to meet our goals.
12.  Turn down the volume on drug messages.  
13.  Recognize that drug policy, as well as being a public health and social issue, is a component of  and affected by general anti-crime policy.

1.  The purpose of drug laws and drug policy is to help people, not hurt them.
            People who use drugs but do not have drug "problems," and are hurting no one, should be left alone. As a society, we are able to distinguish people who use the drug alcohol socially and pleasurably, from uncontrolled users (whom we call alcoholics), and those who endanger others such as drunk drivers.  People with drug problems are usually in some kind of physical or psychological pain.  They should not be "demonized" as "dopers", "junkies", or reviled in slogans like "users are losers," as were lepers under the laws of the Old Testament. They must be offered help as Jesus did to lepers.¹ 
            In a post-prohibition environment, abundant and effective treatment options must be a reality.  A significant percentage of the billions of dollars we squander annually in enforcement can amply fund sufficient drug treatment for those who need it.
            Anyone who wants to, but cannot, quit using drugs should have access to appropriate maintenance treatment.  Addicted single parents need residential treatment that won’t break up their family.  Many treatment programs won’t accept pregnant addicts.²  Addicts who are HIV positive should receive high priority for treatment, for their own benefit and for society which is imperiled by spread of the virus.   Yet many treatment programs won’t take persons who are HIV positive.  All drug addicted prisoners should get treatment before they are released.  But prosecution or imprisonment should not be the most attractive route to treatment.

2.  Adopt a public health approach toward all drugs and drug users.
            The distribution of drugs is a significant economic and social issue that requires regulation and inevitably, enforcement.   But the use of drugs is different.  Some misconduct while under the influence of drugs, such as driving while impaired, is universally recognized as a criminal justice matter.  On the other hand, voluntarily engaging in high-risk sexual activity while intoxicated with alcohol or other drugs (i.e. life-threatening conduct) is not usually a criminal matter but, rather, it is an issue of public health.  A proper drawing of these distinctions is necessary to create the correct model for regulation and enforcement.
            Probably the most important drug policy change that could be adopted is to provide for universal health care. First, many people who lack access to health care are self-medicating depression, anxiety, post traumatic stress disorder and other serious psychiatric conditions through the use of illegal drugs. Ironically, illegally using drugs may have less stigma in some circles than psychiatric care. Even many who have some form of health insurance do not have affordable access to prescription medication for such conditions. Many insurance plans raise substantial burdens to getting prescriptions filled on a timely basis. As a culture we have failed to de-stigmatize mental illness and emotional problems and their treatment. A great deal of substance abuse is “dually diagnosed” with mental illness. And such persons often find it easier to get into a kind of treatment for their substance abuse problem, which in an "abstinence only" paradigm casts doubt on the value of pharmacotherapy for their mental illness.
            Second, many people without health insurance are unable to obtain adequate treatment for injuries and physical ailments. Day laborers, meat cutters, and agricultural workers, for example, are frequently injured on the job, but are unable to get sustained care. They may not be able to afford pain medication. The ubiquitous illegal market offers powerful narcotic pain-killers without a prescription. Poor people (meaning people without access to stigma-free prescriptions) with arthritis and other chronic pain find the palliative effects of illegal drugs seductive. The risks of dependence in such use are not trivial.
            Third, drug treatment is expensive. Free drug treatment is hard to find. Often health insurance programs limit treatment to one thirty-day inpatient treatment. Yet everyone who works in drug treatment knows that relapse is frequent and multiple treatment attempts are frequently necessary. Universal health care offers the best approach to making drug treatment available to those who need it most when they need it.
            Fourth, a public health approach toward drug use would rely upon interventions that are effective, not those that appeal to prejudice.

3.  Insist upon drug and alcohol user accountability and responsibility.
            People who hurt or endanger others must be held responsible for their actions.  Drug or alcohol use is not an excuse for criminal or negligent conduct.  All offenders must confront their wrong doing, apologize to those they have harmed, and pay restitution to the victims.  Just punishment should be imposed.  Drug addicted offenders and prisoners should get drug treatment.  But in the absence of a serious crime, actual harm or substantial risk of endangering others, persons should not be prosecuted or imprisoned simply as a means to get treatment. 
            Those who commit acts of violence could forfeit the privilege of using alcohol or drugs legally.  Those who commit crimes under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or in order to obtain alcohol or drugs, after the appropriate punishment, must be placed in drug treatment.
            Convicted predatory criminals such as robbers, rapists, assaulters, and burglars should be drug and alcohol-abstinent while in custody and while on probation and parole.³  This requires frequent and extensive surprise drug and alcohol testing, and a system of consistent sanctions for violations.  Without testing and treatment, such persons will use drugs, and commit crime to obtain them.
            In safety-critical areas, we should require performance tests to detect actual impairment. When we ignore impairment by sleepiness, exhaustion, illness or use of legal over-the-counter or prescription drugs, the public safety rationale for drug testing is revealed to be a fraud.  Following an accident, it is perfectly appropriate to immediately test the blood of who caused the accident-- pilots, engineers, drivers, surgeons, nurses, etc-- for evidence of use of alcohol and other drugs. This would be appropriate not only for airplane, rail, maritime or motor vehicle accidents, but also for medical accidents such as administering medications improperly or surgical errors.  By contrast, past use of intoxicants, identified by urine or hair tests, is irrelevant to public safety and drug user accountability. 
            We must encourage increased professional responsibility and  peer supervision of professions like medicine, airline piloting, etc. to police against on-the-job recklessness such as alcohol or drug use.  Suspected misconduct that threatens public safety must be investigated and prosecuted where criminal recklessness has occurred.
            Alcohol use by non-offending adults ought to be seen as a privilege, and should be subject to a license which can be revoked for misuse.⁴  Drug use by adults could be regulated, in part, in a similar manner.   Persons who use drugs or alcohol might be required to get special liability insurance coverage.  It need not be presumed that persons over 21 are responsible alcohol, or drug users.
            After the end of prohibition, we can develop social controls which set acceptable limits and manners in which drug use will be considered responsible.  For example, upon meeting someone at a business dinner, most of us would think nothing if he or she ordered a cocktail.  If it were a business breakfast, most of us would have an entirely different reaction.  New and appropriate social constraints will evolve after drug prohibition is ended.

4.  Insist upon vendor accountability and responsibility.
            Just like users, vendors of alcohol and drugs need to be held responsible for their actions.  The privilege to engage in such sales is subject to license.  Strict regulation and enforcement will be required.  Adulteration and mislabeling of legal drugs and alcohol are now subject to regulation and enforcement by BATF, FDA, and other agencies, and by virtue of product liability civil law remedies⁵.   This body of law can be extended to drugs such as heroin, marijuana, cocaine, etc. if the vendors are licensed and regulated.  Vendors must comply with reasonable regulations and inspections, pay taxes, and resolve marketplace conflicts through the law.  This will be a major benefit of ending prohibition-- a complete end to drug business violence. Violations are much more easily investigated and enforced in a regulated environment than under prohibition.
            Convicted criminals cannot now be licensed to legally sell alcohol⁶ -- they need not be allowed to sell other drugs after the repeal of drug prohibition.  The prohibition of sales to minors of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs must be more effectively enforced.  This prohibition is much easier to enforce against licensed dealers than against illegal distributors of alcohol and tobacco, and is a lesson in the control of other drugs.
            There is a steadily growing movement to discourage use of tobacco and alcohol by juveniles⁷  -- with appropriate exceptions for supervised parental provision to their children.  This is a step in the right direction.  Indeed, to focus as we have, the bulk of our juvenile protection enforcement on the now illegal drugs has ignored the most important public health issue in this area.
            The widespread violation of juvenile exclusion laws regarding alcohol and tobacco because of half-hearted enforcement has been twisted into an argument to maintain prohibition.  The reasoning runs:  since we can't (i.e. don't) keep alcohol and tobacco out of the hands of kids today, it will be impossible to prevent kids from getting the now illegal drugs if they are available to adults.  Until we have a sincere attempt at effective enforcement against underage purchase, it would be difficult to know what effect it would have on availability.  Improving regulatory enforcement techniques regarding use by juveniles will be useful lessons for post-prohibition control of vendors of other drugs.
            Using the model of alcohol dram-shop laws⁸, over-the-counter sales of drugs to those who are already intoxicated could be barred, and if an accident results, should trigger vendor liability.
            Legal theories to block or control the promotion of alcohol, tobacco and drug use should be carefully explored.  It will take a lot of work to find the approaches that do not violate the First Amendment protections of speech and the press.  Tobacco, alcohol and drug advertising might not be deductible expenses for corporation taxation purposes. Advertising that either targets kids or is placed in media in which kids have legitimate interest in (e.g. professional and amateur athletics, popular music, motion pictures, etc.) should be subject to extensive counterpressure such as boycotts and picketing.

5.  Maximize the reach of law and respect for the law.
            Drug and alcohol buyers should be discouraged from patronizing criminals.  Yet, growing marijuana exclusively for one's own use is today still a felony⁹, and home growers risk the forfeiture of their homes or land.¹⁰  In order to obtain marijuana, every marijuana user today (about 20 million persons) either becomes a felon or has to patronize criminals.  Shouldn’t home cultivation for personal use be encouraged in lieu of buying marijuana, even under prohibition?  We should be reducing the commercial opportunities of criminals, not expanding them.  Even under prohibition, decriminalizing home marijuana cultivation would sharply reduce the $9 billion in annual profits now funding organized crime.¹¹
            Almost no police officers or revenue agents are killed or injured enforcing the liquor laws.  Marijuana, the most widely consumed illegal drug, should be taxed and sold to adults with warning messages.  No law enforcement officers will be killed or injured enforcing a managed, regulated drug trade.

6.  Set appropriate priorities and achievable social goals.
             There are no magic solutions to problems, especially complex problems of crime, violence and drug abuse.  At the end of prohibition, while much prohibition crime will be reduced, there will continue to be crime.  (And there will be violations of the regulations which will require enforcement, just as every regulatory regime requires some enforcement.)  The principal immediate goal should be to reduce the harms from drug and alcohol use and commerce to a minimum.  We must realistically acknowledge that we are not aiming for the elimination of these problems, but a dramatic reduction in their severity.

7.  Be honest and self-critical in making policy .
            As we confront the challenges of the post-prohibition world, we must ask ourselves if are our programs are working and we must be prepared to hear the answers.  We have not been good at this evaluation during the prohibition era.  Repeated studies by the General Accounting Office, the RAND Corporation, and numerous scholars have pointed out serious shortcomings in our anti-drug initiatives.  Some shortcomings in evaluation have been revealed as the consequence of agency nonfeasance.  Other shortcomings in evaluation are the inevitable consequence of economic, political, or technological limitations.¹²  Fundamental problems in national drug control strategy have been ignored by Congress and the executive branch.
            Teenage drug use has increased since 1991 but we failed to rigorously evaluate drug abuse prevention programs.  Mathea Falco in The Making of a Drug-Free America (1992) pointed out that most programs had not been evaluated. That is still the case. Critical research of politically favored programs is actively suppressed.  For many years, evaluations of D.A.R.E.®, America’s most common drug abuse prevention program, found it be ineffective. At the direction of the U.S. Department of Justice, Research Triangle Institute carefully reviewed 18 studies in September 1994 and found D.A.R.E.®,was substantially less effective in reducing drug use among the children who were exposed to the program than certain other approaches.¹³  The Justice Department declined to publish the study. When the authors took the study to the American Journal of Public Health, D.A.R.E.®  America attempted to intimidate the editors into not publishing these important conclusions.¹⁴  No member of Congress has questioned the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on a proven ineffective program.  Evaluations of similar teenage drug-use prevention programs in California came to similar conclusions.¹⁵  In the political realm, honest criticism is always weighed against the potential for political gain or loss.
            If we are serious about prevention, we must be willing to abandon programs that don’t work well, even if they are politically popular. 

8.  Be comprehensive in addressing "root causes" of drug abuse.
            Drug use is not necessarily attractive.  The use of drugs requires overcoming aversion to rule breaking.  The immediate effects are often unpleasant.  Opiates, for example, frequently lead to nausea.  Marijuana smoking is harsh to the throat and lungs, and often causes fits of coughing.
            Many products are offered for sale that are not purchased, and the product disappears from the market.  The fact that drugs are offered for sale does not mean that they have to be consumed.  Most people who try drugs don't go on to be regular users.  All of the prevalence data show that there is a substantial drop off between those who have tried drugs in their lifetime, and those who are current users (use in the past 30 days).  And the daily users are a small fraction of current users for most classes of drugs.
            The opportunities of drug trafficking offer enormously tempting routes to reach the American dream of prosperity.  Training in the tools of entrepreneurship for legitimate business must be offered to our children, and economic opportunities need to be created to provide real alternatives to crime for the young.  In addition to an education that prepares our youth for the workplace of the 21st century, we must construct an economy that provides genuine opportunity. 
            Ending drug prohibition is the key to sharply reducing the violence and crime that make business investment in inner cities so risky and rare.  Eliminating prohibition-related crime will draw manufacturing, research and development, retail, and housing into communities with readily available labor and the infrastructure of rental buildings, public utilities, and transportation.

9.  Respect other peoples, other nations and other cultures.
            It is pathetic when America blames other countries for our drug problems.  Government corruption is a global epidemic that is spread by drug prohibition, and tragically such corruption exists in many places in the United States.  America’s failed domestic drug policies aggravate the corruption problems in many other societies.
            Careful economic research has shown that there is no crop eradication strategy and no military operation overseas that can substantially reduce the availability of drugs in the U.S.  The notion that "it is more efficient or more economical to stop drugs at the source" has been conclusively shown to be false.¹⁶  To deploy military or paramilitary forces against peasants who grow coca or opium not only wastes money, it politically strengthens anti-Western, anti-government political insurgencies.  To incarcerate "mules" who are at the bottom of the distribution organizations is a waste of very expensive prison space.¹⁷
            Indians in Peru and Bolivia chew coca leaf, and professionals drink coca tea -- these are harmless practices.  Those practices are the business of those societies, not ours.  It is silly that coca leaf chewers in Peru and Bolivia became international outlaws in 1989 in violation of the Single Convention on Narcotics of 1961.¹⁸
            In our own country, peyote (which contains the entheogenic alkaloid mescaline) is the sacrament of the Native American Church.  The use of peyote by members of the church has been protected under Federal law since 1965 where Federal jurisdiction applied, but until 1994, almost half the States did not provide protection of Indian religious use of peyote.  There has been no evidence of a "peyote abuse" problem, but Indians and non-Indians are prosecuted for their possession of peyote.  With the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994, Native Americans are no longer be subject to criminal prosecution and religious persecution by various states for possession or use of peyote for "bona fide traditional ceremonial purposes in connection with the practice of a traditional Indian religion."¹⁹   Spiritual peyote use is no more "drug" use than sacramental wine consumed at Communion is drug use, and thus religious peyote use must be protected.   The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that all people are free to be religious seekers.²⁰  Peyote use by non-Indians is not a social or public health problem.  All Americans should be free to use peyote in a religious manner, without regard to their race or parentage.

10.  Recognize that drugs are a major commodity in international trade.
            Drugs have been a part of international trade since coffee, tea and spices were introduced to Europe centuries ago.²¹  By ending prohibition, we will take control of this enormous trade away from criminals and corrupt customs officials and regulate and tax it.
            The legitimate institutions in Colombia, Mexico and at least a dozen other countries are subverted by prohibition-financed corruption.  Upon adopting a regulatory drug policy, the U.S. should deploy its resources in the fight against global criminal enterprises which have used their enormous profits to gain power.
            Simultaneously, the U.S. should renounce increasing cigarette exports as a principal objective of U.S. trade policy.  It is despicable to push an addictive and dangerous drug on others.  Americans, pushing tobacco in Asia, are as contemptible as the British were when they forced China to accept Indian opium in the 19th century.  An American cigarette brand, Marlboro®, manufactured by Philip Morris, is the most popular cigarette brand in the world, and was reported as early as 1989 as selling more cigarettes outside the United States than inside.²²

11.  Be creative and flexible to meet our goals.
            Through regulation, we can encourage means of drug administration that are less harmful and easier to control -- physically, socially, culturally, and legally.  A combination of educational, social and regulatory controls are needed to discourage the more harmful means of using drugs, and the means that lead to usage patterns that are harder to control.  For example, try to limit smoking of drugs -- nicotine, cocaine, heroin, marijuana -- which gives an intense "rush" but which is much more harmful and harder to control than other forms of ingestion.  But as troubling the smoking of drugs is in its effects upon the lungs, it is probably safer than intravenous injection with its many serious risks.  Education about less hazardous techniques should be a part of drug policy.  It was reported in 1996, for example,  that smoking heroin on aluminum foil, may be leading to neurological disorders.  Switching to glass pipes may be a safer means of ingestion.  Less safe patterns of smoking and injecting should be discouraged.  Oral ingestion is less intense, less habit-forming, and less harmful, and perhaps can be encouraged as an alternative when appropriate.
            Another goal is to obtain revenue from the commerce in drugs and alcohol to cover the social costs as much as possible.  Federal, state and local alcohol taxation even at contemporary low rates raised more than $12 billion in 1989.²³  Federal and State tobacco excise taxes  raised more than $11 billion in fiscal year 1992.²⁴  Alcohol and tobacco taxes should be substantially higher.  Setting appropriate rates of taxation requires balancing discouragement of use with the profitability of bootlegging and its costs. 
            Excise taxes, occupational taxes, and user fees on marijuana alone could raise $10-20 billion yearly for state and Federal governments. Consumption t axes should initially be set at low levels to draw the maximum number of buyers from the criminal markets, which will help eliminate such markets.  Of course enforcement will be required to police the legal market.  After the black market infrastructure has decayed, taxes can be raised as appropriate to discourage use.

12.  Turn down the volume on drug messages.  
            In order to delay the onset of teen alcohol and tobacco use, which delays the onset of other drug use, we must reduce the promotion and availability of tobacco and alcohol to children.  The Clinton Administration is making a start.²⁵  Unfortunately, the absolute separation between legal and illegal drugs, imposed by strict prohibition, cripples any effort to convey credible cautions about the relationships between substances which fall on opposite sides of the legal divide. 
            Generally, drugs should neither be promoted, nor hysterically attacked.  We need to support strategies that prevent tobacco, alcohol and other drug advertising from being aimed at youth.  Such youth targeting advertising includes cartoon characters such as "Spuds MacKenzie®" (the dog promoting Bud Light® beer), the Budweiser® frogs, the Bud Bowl® cartoon football battle between competing brands of beer advertised during the National Football League's Super Bowl, or Camel® cigarette’s "Joe Camel®."  A variety of constitutional mechanisms can be used to keep such advertisements from placement in youth-oriented media.
            Keep anti-drug messages in front of children but keep them reasonable and truthful.  Subject them to tests of effectiveness, not by their political appeal to adult anti-drug crusaders.  The TV spot featuring a skillet and frying eggs (“This is your brain, This is your brain on drugs, Any questions?”) was an example of a ludicrous anti-drug message.   Its dishonesty and exaggeration provoked contempt.  Some young people asked friends to get stoned by saying, "Want to fry an egg?"  Ironically, spokespersons for the Partnership for a Drug-Free America sometimes introduce themselves as, "We're the fried egg people."  Many of their ads are effective, and their better work is very important.  But to bombard children with the message that " the most important thing in world is that you shouldn’t do drugs" has been an enticement. 
            TV PSAs that show realistic scenarios affirming kids who decline drugs offered by friends are important.  Anti-drug messages are a component of public health, harm reduction, pro-social programs teaching safer-sex and pregnancy prevention practices, staying in school, non-violence, etc.  TV PSAs should be part of community-wide, integrated anti-drug programs such as Project STAR, developed with NIDA assistance.  Teenagers are more likely to listen when the messages are not clearly hypocritical or ludicrous.

13.  Recognize that drug policy, as well as being a public health and social issue, is a component of  and affected by general anti-crime policy.
            As well as redesigning a national drug control strategy to more effectively fight crime and prevent drug abuse, it is critical that we recognize that drug policy is affected by the more dominant features of anti-crime policy.  Crime and drugs are intertwined and it is not only drug policy that must be changed.  Essentially, we must concentrate upon crime prevention, especially juvenile delinquency prevention, as well as the adoption of better policing, prosecutorial and penological programs.

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