“Everyone Is Terrible”

That is the subject line from a friend’s email that passed along this story about the latest proposed escalation of the Drug War:

Congress is considering a bill that would expand the federal government’s ability to pursue the war on drugs, granting new power to the attorney general to set federal drug policy. 

My friend explained in a follow‐​up call that, as he started reading, he assumed the bill reflected Jeff Sessions’ passion for the Drug War, but he then realized the bill is bi‐​partisan insanity:

The bipartisan legislation, sponsored by powerful committee chairs in both chambers of Congress, would allow the attorney general to unilaterally outlaw certain unregulated chemical compounds on a temporary basis. It would create a special legal category for these drugs, the first time in nearly 50 years that the Controlled Substances Act has been expanded in this way. And it would set penalties, potentially including mandatory minimum sentences, for the manufacture and distribution of these drugs.

Hence my friend’s assessment that “everyone” is terrible (on drug policy).


This is an important point. Much discussion assumes liberals are more libertarian‐​leaning on drug policy than conservatives. This is partly right; liberals are more likely to favor marijuana legalization, for example.


But many liberals endorse marijuana legalization because they view marijuana as relatively benign, not because of a principled stance for freedom or a consistent understanding that prohibition of any substance almost certainly causes more harm than good. Thus politicians across the spectrum are indeed “terrible” on drug policy.