The libertarian framing
Bob Zadek opened his 2009 discussion of California’s marijuana ballot measure by stating that libertarians “always look to principles,” and identifying the subtext of the debate as the question of what business the federal government has regulating drug use at all Legalizing Pot in California (2009). In a later episode devoted to the legalization of drugs, he framed the topic as one that “seems to transcend traditional party lines,” calling it neither a Democratic nor a Republican issue but a libertarian one, and rested it on three principles: that people are smart, that politicians crave power, and that individuals matter Legalize drugs. (2009). He described the drug to be avoided as “the intoxicating drug of power” rather than any substance a person might take into his body.
Zadek’s argument for legalization was framed as a claim about freedom rather than about drugs. Asked what social good is served by introducing another mind-altering substance, he answered that the social good is that people should be free to do what they want, that they are not free to harm somebody else, and that freedom is the most significant social good there could be Legalizing Pot in California (2009). He also distinguished favoring legalization from favoring use: favoring the legalization of alcohol, he said, does not mean favoring people using alcohol, only not devoting resources to criminalizing it Libertarians For Change (2010).
The 2009 California marijuana debate
The April 2009 episode concerned a pending proposition Zadek named as the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, to be put before California voters that November, and asked whether California should legalize the private use of marijuana, perhaps tax it and allow its cultivation Legalizing Pot in California (2009). His guest was John Lovell, described by Zadek as a lobbyist who had been hired to help defeat the legislation.
Lovell argued that the easy availability of mind-altering substances does not yield positive social results, citing police calls for domestic abuse crimes that he said are alcohol-involved, and said that while alcohol could not be outlawed — “that boat has sailed” — the problem should not be added to by increasing the inventory of legal mind-altering substances. He drew a distinction between freedom and license, and said that when people’s five senses are impaired they are frequently hurting other people, not just themselves. As evidence he cited what he called the Alaska experience, saying that use among children went to 51%, and argued that introducing mind-altering substances to children whose brains are still physiologically developing is not a good idea. He also said that MADD had come out against the ballot measure, and that one of the prices of legalization would be that use among children would increase, leaving policymakers to decide whether that is a worthwhile price to pay.
Zadek countered on two fronts. On harm to others, he cited drunk driving as a problem that had been addressed not by prohibiting alcohol but by awareness, increased penalties, peer pressure and education, through organizations including Mothers Against Drunk Driving, so that the incidence of drunk driving had gone down dramatically. On children, he argued that denying freedom to an entire society because parents are doing a crummy job in educating their children puts the emphasis in the wrong place, and that parents are the primary line of defense.
The racist history of drug regulation
In the same episode Zadek devoted a segment to what he called the ugly racist history of drug legislation, and put a series of quotations to Lovell. He said that in the 1800s cocaine was totally unregulated, and that the Sears and Roebuck catalog offered a syringe and a small amount of cocaine for $1.50. He quoted an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association — “Negroes in the South are reported as being addicted to a new form of vice, that of cocaine sniffing” — and said newspapers claimed that cocaine use caused blacks to rape white women and also improved blacks’ pistol marksmanship. Turning to opium, he said the Chinese started to be blamed, and that a blue-ribbon panel appointed by Washington found, “If the Chinaman cannot get along without his dope, we can get along without him.” He cited congressional hearings in which fear was stated of “drug-crazed, sex-mad Negroes” under drug influence murdering whites, and of “degenerate Mexicans” smoking marijuana and “Chinamen” seducing white women with drugs, and a New York Times editorial headed “Negro Cocaine Fiends Are New Southern Menace. Murder and Insanity Increasing Among Lower-Class Blacks.” Zadek said that was the environment in which the first narcotics prohibition legislation was passed, that nothing was born of science, and that freedom took a back seat to race hysteria and bad science.
Lovell stipulated that much public policy of that period, not just narcotic policy, was racially motivated, and said that Woodrow Wilson, president at the time, was an unvarnished racist who dismissed African Americans from federal work wherever he could. Lovell then turned to the modern debate, citing Proposition 5, which he said would have decriminalized all drugs and was on the 2008 ballot, and which he said was opposed by the Interfaith Based Council, an organization primarily made up of inner-city African American clergymen, and by LULAC, which he described as the oldest Latino civil rights organization in America. He predicted that advocates for quality of life in the inner city would oppose marijuana legalization as adding to what he called the misery index in the inner city, and said the Interfaith Based Council had already come out against the marijuana initiative.
Zadek also raised a constitutional question, noting that Congress had needed the 18th Amendment to prohibit alcohol, and asking why a constitutional amendment was not likewise needed to prohibit drug use, and how one could be regulated by statute and the other by constitutional amendment. He dated the Harrison Act to 1913, while Lovell said he had thought it was around the turn of the century.
Gary Johnson: cost-benefit and harm reduction
In an August 2010 episode Zadek’s guest was Gary Johnson, whom Zadek introduced by reference to having started with one employee, grown a business to a thousand, and sold it. Johnson said he espoused the legalization of marijuana and that it should be controlled, regulated and taxed, and estimated that about 70% of the border violence is marijuana-related. He cited a task force set up in Phoenix to determine why Phoenix was the kidnapping capital of the world, which he said reached a 100% conclusion that 100% of the kidnappings in Phoenix were drug-related, involving legal and illegal immigrants with ties to Mexican drug cartels. Johnson said that 90% of the drug problem is prohibition-related, not use-related, and that what exists at the border are disputes played out with guns rather than in the courts Libertarians For Change (2010).
Johnson framed legalization as compatible with continued prohibition of impaired driving: it would always be illegal to smoke pot, become impaired, get behind the wheel of a car and do harm to others, as with alcohol, but smoking pot confined to one’s own home and doing no harm to anyone other than oneself should not be criminal. For other drugs he advocated harm reduction strategies, which he described as reducing death, disease, crime and corruption. He cited Holland and Portugal as countries that had effectively decriminalized all drug use: in Holland’s case, he said, 60% the drug use of the United States on a per capita basis, covering kids and adults, marijuana and hard drugs; and Portugal, he said, had documented that all drug use had actually declined in the years since.
Johnson also supplied figures on enforcement: that half of law enforcement, half the courts and half the prisons deal with illegal drugs, at about $70 billion a year, and that 1.8 million people a year are arrested in this country. Zadek, for his part, compared anger at illegal immigrants to anger at patrons of speakeasies during Prohibition, when everybody was drinking and committing felonies but the law was silly.
Across episodes: the same question, different evidence
The excerpts show the legalization question argued in more than one episode, with the treatment shifting in what it rests on rather than in the underlying position. In April 2009 the argument is conducted as a direct exchange with an opponent, John Lovell, over a specific California ballot measure, and turns on freedom versus license, the Alaska child-use figure, and the racist pedigree of drug regulation. In May 2009 Zadek carries the case alone, framing legalization as a libertarian rather than partisan issue and noting that California, which he said was the first state to prohibit marijuana in 1913, could undo the damage it started Legalize drugs. (2009). By August 2010 the supporting material is empirical and fiscal — border violence, kidnapping, enforcement costs, arrest counts, and the Holland and Portugal examples — advanced by Gary Johnson Libertarians For Change (2010). What changed between the earlier and later treatment is the evidence rather than the principle; what did not change is the framing of legalization as a question of individual liberty against government power.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not report the outcome of the November vote on the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, nor whether Tom Ammiano’s bill became law. They do not state what the Harrison Act provided, what Proposition 5’s text said, or on what constitutional provision federal drug prohibition rests; Zadek’s question about the amendment is left as a question. The Alaska and Phoenix figures are given as the speakers’ assertions, and the excerpts supply no source or method for them. The May 2009 episode’s later segments and the August 2010 episode’s remaining discussion break off mid-transcript.