Today Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed SB 1027, which would have placed a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison on the first offense, and 15 years on the second offense, for anyone convicted of possessing, distributing, transferring, selling, or manufacturing heroin, fentanyl, or fentanyl analogs. In 2006 Arizona voters passed Proposition 301, imposing mandatory minimum prison sentences for possessing, transferring, selling, distributing, or manufacturing methamphetamine. This did nothing to decrease meth-related deaths. Meth-related drug deaths per 100,000 increased nationally by 1,500 percent between 2006 and 2021. From 2020 to 2021, meth-related deaths in Arizona increased by 33 percent. Why would lawmakers expect it to work differently with fentanyl?

No evidence exists that mandatory minimum laws deter the illegal drug trade or affect overdose deaths. And multiple studies show “no relationship between prison terms and drug misuse.” In 2020 Arizona ranked seventh among all states in prison population, with 526 prisoners per 100,000 population, and spent $30,000 per prisoner that year. Adding more people to the prison population will cost taxpayers money, with nothing to show for the millions spent.

Mandatory minimums will also make it easier for prosecutors to engage in coercive plea bargaining, which is responsible for more than 94 percent of state-level criminal convictions and disproportionately impacts people in lower socioeconomic groups who can’t afford to post bail or hire good lawyers.

As I testified to the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance last month, harsher penalties—including death—will not deter the drug trade. Most drug dealers already factor these risks into their decision to get into the business and, correctly, have a greater fear of being killed by rival cartels and dealers than they fear federal or Arizona law enforcement.

I also told the Subcommittee about the “Iron Law of Prohibition” (a variant of what economists call the Alchian-Allen Effect): “The harder the law enforcement, the harder the drug.” Enforcing prohibition incentivizes those who market prohibited substances to develop more potent forms that are easier to smuggle in smaller sizes and subdivide into more units to sell.

During alcohol prohibition, bootleggers and dealers were not smuggling beer and wine but whiskey and other hard liquors. At football games, tailgaters drink beer and wine but smuggle flasks of hard liquor into stadiums that prohibit fans from bringing alcoholic beverages.

The Iron Law of Prohibition is why cannabis THC concentration has grown over the years. It is what brought crack cocaine into the cocaine market. And it made fentanyl replace heroin as the primary cause of overdose deaths in the United States.

Therefore, doubling down on penalties will do nothing to deter drug dealing and drug possession but will increase incentives to create new, more potent drugs. And it’s already happening: the veterinary tranquilizer xylazine is being added to fentanyl to boost its potency and ravage Philadelphia and other East Coast cities.

Doubling down on penalties will also undermine Arizona’s “Good Samaritan Law,” intended to make drug users unafraid of calling first responders if a person with whom they are doing drugs has an overdose. If mandatory minimums have any deterrent potential at all, it is the potential to deter people from calling 911.

The rising overdose rate understandably exasperates Arizona lawmakers. But they should think about unintended consequences before acting out of frustration. Repeating the same mistakes that drug prohibition enforcers have made for the last 50 years only worsens matters. If Arizona lawmakers want to take meaningful steps to reduce Arizona drug overdose deaths, they should remove government obstacles preventing harm reduction organizations from helping their neighbors, starting with the state’s drug paraphernalia laws. In vetoing this bill, Governor Hobbs didn’t allow anger and frustration to trump reason.