House of Eratosthenes

There is this thing you can go out and do that happens to be illegal. I’m not saying what the thing is, but because it is against the law, our peace officers spend considerable effort trying to keep people from doing this thing, and punishing people who are caught doing this thing. Maybe I’m talking about armed robbery, maybe I’m talking about traffic stuff.

Anyway, every now and then people still do this thing. And when they do, if they’re caught, they have to appear before a judge, and then they may be fined and/or sent to jail.

Now, because people are still doing this thing, I could say that our efforts to stop people from doing the thing, represent a dismal failure. I could say that, but of course that would be nuts. “What, are you nuts, Freeberg?” you would say. And you would be right. It would be silly to make it legal to, let us say as an example, jaywalk, just because the city has been handing out tickets for jaywalking and people are still jaywalking.

Or robbing liquor stores, or banks. Of course people are still robbing liquor stores and banks. That doesn’t mean we make it legal to do so, or pronounce the laws against robbery a collective failure.

Now, let us say I start collecting some statistics about people getting hurt when this thing is done. If we’re talking about armed robbery, let us say I can present some statistics that say when a hundred stores are robbed, in 99 of those robberies, nobody is hurt. I don’t know if that’s the case, nor do I care.

The point is, that in that hypothetical, the point I would be making would be a bad one. It would be laughable. Fine, it’s one percent dangerous this year, you would say; what’s it going to be next year? The year after? How would you like to be the guy being robbed, you would ask me — probably getting a little bit huffy-puffy about my silly, tedious and intellectually dishonest challenges.

Being a sane person, you would sneer even more pronouncedly about my recidivism argument. Yes, Freeberg, robbery has been with us since biblical times. Jaywalking has been with us since there were cars in front of which you could jaywalk. So the hell what? With exasperation, I expect you would eventually abandon my argument, and the discussion of same, and move on to something more worthwhile.

My wasteful analysis of who is helped and who is hurt when this illegal thing is done…silly.

The claim that the illegal thing nearly always leaves everyone involved physically unharmed…even sillier.

The claim that people who do this illegal thing end up continuing to do the illegal thing, even after being busted…sillier still.

And the claim that law enforcement actually spends effort and money enforcing the laws against this illegal thing…silliest of all.

In fact, the longer I talk about this thing, the more you would start to form the opinion that, perhaps, I have a vested interest. Perhaps I do this illegal thing myself. Perhaps I just got busted for it, and I lack the maturity to figure out that if I don’t want to be arrested, all I have to do is stop doing the illegal thing. You would think that…although you’d be unable to prove it. And you’d probably be right.

Of course those would be the decisions you would make. You’re a sane person, after all, pursuing reasonable decision-making processes. You would call out my arguments for being tedious, tiresome, ridiculous, deceptive, and in summary a huge distraction from other things more important.

Somehow, though, there are millions of people in this country who tolerate all those arguments — indeed, even argue passionately on their behalf — when it comes to the thing I’m really talking about. I speak of using controlled substances. And I’m addressing the attacks on what we call the “War on Drugs.”

When drugs are illegal, they’re illegal. Possessing them, or using them, is therefore illegal. The fact that people still do it…somehow…is used to justify the idea that maybe the laws are bad. We don’t allow that argument with regard to any other illegal thing; most of us don’t, anyway. But somehow, we permit it with regard to this.

Why?

Anyway, enjoy this letter from Walter Cronkite, and the accompanying anti-anti-drug narrative about the ensuing dust-up between the venerable old anchorman and Bill O’Reilly. Cronkite’s fund-raising letter seems to have hit, in just two paragraphs, every single point I listed for legalizing jaywalking and armed robbery. Every single tired, dishonest, distracting, logically unsustainable one of them.

“And what is the impact of this policy? It surely hasn’t made our streets safer. Instead, we have locked up literally millions of people � disproportionately people of color � who have caused little or no harm to others — wasting resources that could be used for counter-terrorism, reducing violent crime or catching white-collar criminals.

“With police wielding unprecedented powers to invade privacy, tap phones and conduct searches seemingly at random, our civil liberties are in a very precarious condition,” he added. “Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this effort — with no one held accountable for its failure.”

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Saturday, March 18th, 2006