Children of people in prison for drugs risk educational failure, delinquency, and joblessness. Moreover, 83 percent of those charged with marijuana possession in the last decade were black or Latino, even though European-Americans are more likely to use the substance.

 Yes, but if drugs were decriminalized and prices fell, wouldn’t everybody start using and just take more and more?

Not likely. Not everybody enjoys the drug experience, nor is everyone equally addiction-prone. Moreover, the available evidence (admittedly scanty) indicates that users of heroin, at least, do not generally keep ramping up the dose.

 The Victoria Times Colonist reported that a major study of addicts in Montreal—all of whom had failed methadone treatment—showed that injection of pharmaceutical-grade narcotic was followed by stabilization of dosage and sometimes by reduced frequency.

Study participants, who received the drug gratis, also in some cases gained weight, found jobs and gave up prostituting themselves for drug money.  

 I would like to see a share of the $40 billion annual spending on the drug war diverted to research, rehabilitation, and, yes, pure and sterile drugs for the hopelessly addicted.

 In the final analysis, we must wonder why people take these drugs in the first place. That’s more of a social than a medical question, with the answer often being to transcend their dreary and mundane existence. I don’t know how to cure social ills, but I submit that drug prohibition and prison-building are not alleviating any of them.

Albert Hofmann, who discovered LSD, didn’t think people needed drugs for transcendence. In all his 92 years, during which he took LSD many times, he never had keener experiences than the occasional outstanding ones of normal living. His advice: “Go to the meadow, go to the garden, go to the woods. Open your eyes!” --Richard Huemer in the Antelope Valley Press, 7/14/08, page D1