I always enjoy discovering that a political party’s platform includes obvious contradictions. The most obvious is abortion v. capital punishment. The Republican base tends to be pro-life, but pro-capital punishment. The Democrat base tends to abhor capital punishment, but is staunchly pro-choice. Life is precious…sometimes.
I’ve recently come to realize that positions on 2nd Amendment issues and decriminalization of drugs have similar illogical contradictions. The Republican base tends to see the 2nd Amendment as sacrosanct. The National Rifle Association is a major donor and supporter of Republican politicians and PACs. They will say without hesitation that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Democrats, on the other hand, nearly always respond to a gun-related tragedy by pushing for gun control legislation and decrying the NRA. To them, the gun is the problem.
However, their positions flip-flop when it comes to recreational drugs. The fairly recent explosion of homelessness in urban centers is also associated with rampant and often public drug abuse.
Democrat solutions to drug issues are focused on the demand side (it’s not the drug, it’s the person) as are Republican solutions to gun violence (it’s not the gun, it’s the shooter). Democratic solutions to gun violence are primarily focused on the supply side (outlaw possession of and distribution of guns and the problem will go away), as are Republican solutions to the drug problem (outlaw possession of and distribution of drugs and the problem will go away). The contradictions are obvious. Either the person holding the gun, needle or pill is responsible for their actions or society, drug dealers, or gun manufacturers are responsible. It seems illogical to take one position on one issue and another on the other.
As a practitioner and proponent of individuals and cultures having an internal locus of control, I tend to side with the Democrats on decriminalization of drug use and Republicans on gun control issues. The war on drugs goes back at least to the Temperance movement in the late 1800s that eventually led to Prohibition in 1920. It ratcheted up again in the 1960s targeting marijuana, LSD, cocaine and other recreational drugs, partly financed by the alcohol industry that saw these vices as a direct threat. President Nixon declared a war on drugs in 1971 and it has been a massive failure by all measures. The U.S. had the highest incarceration rate in the world in 2018, in large part due to the war on drugs. Attacking the supply side has not impacted demand at all and there will always be people committed to meeting that demand, no matter how many get put behind bars. By 2023 we had fallen to the sixth highest rate. While there are many factors in this reduction, the decrease in drug-related imprisonments is one of them.
While Democrats are right to decriminalize the use of drugs, they’ve made the mistake of simultaneously decriminalizing behaviors associated with drug abuse – from vagrancy to shoplifting to street violence. These are separate issues and it is the urban centers’ approach to these issues that is causing the problems we see in places like San Francisco and Philadelphia.
Since the end of prohibition in 1933, society’s position on alcohol has been that it’s perfectly legal to purchase and consume alcohol in most places, so long as the alcohol is properly taxed. But you are still responsible for what you do while under the influence. Being drunk is not a defense for traffic violations (like speeding, reckless driving, etc.), property violations (like running down someone’s fence or mailbox or urinating in public), or violent offenses (like punching a guy in a bar or your girlfriend at home). Society doesn’t care if you drink yourself into a stupor in the privacy of your own home, but you can’t make a nuisance of yourself in public or harm other people or their property.
The same logic has historically applied to firearms as well. If you meet the criteria in your state, it’s perfectly legal for you to own a firearm. But if you use it in the commission of a crime, the penalties are much steeper. It’s perfectly fine for society to debate where the line should be drawn. Is it OK to own a tank, surface to air missile, bazooka, etc.? What size magazines should be allowed or prohibited? But the law appropriately assumes most gun owners will be law abiding and sets consequences not on ownership but on inappropriate use.
Back to homelessness and public drug use. I would argue that decriminalizing most recreational drugs will continue to have the effect of reducing violent street crime. If you can buy your cocaine at a legitimate retail outlet, kids won’t need to kill each other to control a street corner. But simultaneously, cities must go back to a version of the broken window theory of law enforcement. While this theory was fairly criticized for its abuses in New York under Mayor Giulliani in the 1990s, the underlying theory is still valid. There is no question that crime went down significantly in New York during this time and has risen during the time when the current approach of not prosecuting minor crimes has been in favor.
As a society we have to get past concerns that one group or other might be over-represented if we crack down on shoplifting, vagrancy and other somewhat minor crimes that become a big social problem when left unchecked.