David Borden, Executive Director

David Borden

That was the case this week when an interview with UN anti-drug chief Antonio Maria Costa was published in an Austrian magazine, in which Costa claims black market drug profits propped up the global banking system in 2008. That is, some banks that have survived would have failed, or might have, were it not for drug money laundered into the financial system.

This seems like a bold claim. But it makes sense -- drug money has to go somewhere -- and Costa isn't some local police chief exaggerating the value of a drug seizure to get headlines, he's an economist. The UN isn't always a reliable reporter of the drug situation, but it's worth something. I don't think there's a strong reason for Costa to want to make something like that up.

If the drug trade has saved the financial system, then, or helped to, this requires an evolution of thought. We're accustomed to regarding drugs and drug selling as bad things, but like everything they have their upside. Suppose the drug war magically started to work and the trade were wiped out, or people suddenly stopped using drugs. What would happen to the economy? What would happen to countries like Afghanistan or Colombia or Mexico where a lot of the money being made is in drugs and a lot of people are dependent on that money? Or in some sectors of US society, for that matter?

It would be a catastrophe. Eventually economies would rearrange themselves, to be sure. But the sudden implosion of a large sector of the economy would wreak havoc, not just on the people making a living in the drug trade now, but on the local, national and global economies of which they are a part.

Drug users and even sellers, then, are an integral part of human society -- the larger economic weal depends in part on theirs -- and so our evolution of thought should be about people too, not just economics. We need our drug users, and even our drug sellers, for the most part -- not because they use or sell drugs, but because they're here and we're connected to them, for better or worse.

And if we need them, if in a somewhat flawed way they contribute to the economy on which all of us depend, then they also don't deserve to be persecuted, jailed, have their rights taken away and their lives scarred. If a participant in the drug trade engages in violence, that is one thing; but if a person's only "crime" is a drug offense, it's another.

Along with tolerating these members of society who are now persecuted, we should not ignore the corrupting effects that this situation of money laundering and drug money -- this situation created by prohibition -- can have. With care and planning, we should chart a path away from prohibition, to some form of global legalization instead. Only then will the flood of illegal drug money be stemmed, and the suffering prohibition has caused to individuals and society alike be addressed.