One of Michelle Alexander’s main points was that no one benefits from applying overly punitive measures to nonviolent offenders (especially). The drug war in the US has a habit of criminalizing these nonviolent offenders, that doesn’t help people quit or get back on track but keeps them in a negative cycle.

So I’m touched, in a way, by the Dutch/European view of things:

“The Dutch, being sober and pragmatic people…opt rather for a realistic and practical approach to the drug problem….The drug problem should not be primarily seen as a problem of police and justice. It is essentially a matter of health and social well-being” (Marlatt 31).

The nonviolence of personal drug use and my libertarian view about the government and bodies converge to make me agree with this outlook. I like the part at the end about social well-being. Especially because I think people take drugs for very personal reasons – the goal might nearly always be pleasure but I think the drive comes from a dark place at least half the time. Universally people take drugs because their angry, depressed, lonely, can’t deal, stressed, and want to enjoy a sense of pleasure and peace a lot. This is where the “social” aspect of the statement about the Dutch: Experience with drugs has been proven to be a widely universal thing, it should be about communal acceptance and healing.

While it might still seem wrong to even the most democratic person to let drug use run rampant, consider at least that the method of punishment for possibly well-meaning but depressed and troubled people should be different than that of violent offenders?

People who take drugs are probably overall the most acceptably rehabilitate-able, because they haven’t committed a violent crime that would put any neighborhood they lived in subsequently on edge. But the problem is we are stigmatizing these nonviolent drug users in the same way we do violent felons, making it nearly impossible for them to recover from any misstep. Luckily this view seems outdated with the younger generation; Among other things I’m talking about the exercise we did in class, where we analyzed what ex-convicts we would and wouldn’t hire.  We saw in class from the offenses that involved drugs were not of great concern. Why? Because the other crimes, like drunk driving and murder clearly indicate a disregard for human life and out people in fear for their safety. The people who committed those crimes crossed a line between personal problems, or personal pleasure and gain, and potential and actual collateral damage.

The war on drugs is unique, because we are very often simply prosecuting and branding people for an act on their own, individual bodies.

Besides the emotional aspect of using drugs, there was an interesting recognition in the Netherlands about drugs that hasn’t yet occurred in the US: some illegal drugs aren’t as bad as legal vices. And a step further, some people can be both drug users and perfectly functioning members of society! Beginning in the 80s the Netherlands had a new attitude about drug treatment and began envisioning, “forms of aid…to improve addicts physical and social well-being and to help them function in society” (Marlatt 32).