Bennett, William

Bennett and Drug Legalization

Bennett was a passionate opponent of drug legalization and decriminalization (and at one point during his tenure as director of ONDCP, he engaged in a debate on the subject with economist Milton Friedman in the pages of the Wall Street Journal). He considered support of drug legalization to be a misguided and overly simplistic response to a complex problem and one that represented an unwillingness to recognize and address the myriad consequences associated with drug use. At the heart of his support of drug criminalization was his characterization of drug use as fundamentally wrong and a manifestation of a “moral poverty” that is also associated with street crime and other significant social ills. He framed drug addiction as a moral issue as well, believing it to be a result of moral weakness. In considering the connection between drugs and crime, he rejected the assertion that addicts engaged in crime as a reaction to their addiction and as a desperate attempt to support their habit; rather, he suggested that many drug [Page 94]addicts were criminally active prior to their initial drug involvement, although their addiction would also influence subsequent criminal activity.

Bennett believed drug legalization to be an unrealistic approach with likely devastating societal consequences. Citing James Q. Wilson's work, he predicted that drug legalization would lead to a greater prevalence of drug consumption and higher levels of addiction; he believed that this was dangerous for both society and individuals, as not only was drug use harmful physiologically and psychologically, it also undermined the user's fundamental human dignity and destroyed character and autonomy. He rejected the oft-cited example of Prohibition laws encouraging alcohol consumption, asserting instead that the repeal of those laws actually resulted in a dramatic increase in alcohol usage. He warned that legalization would be disastrous on many fronts, including economic (loss of worker productivity and rising health insurance costs), public health (increase in drug-related accidents, drug overdoses, and accidental deaths) and personal (destroyed families and decimated communities).

...