Why Drug Prohibition is Ungodly
The failure of drug prohibition dwarfs that of violent crime. Drug prohibition is the direct cause of most violent crime. Peaceful non-governmental public-service organizations—churches, inner-city missionaries, drug intervention programs—could accomplish ten times over what the government can, if only we Christians were permitted to give our money to them instead of to the DEA.
But none of this really matters. Because the strongest case against drug prohibition is simply that it is anti-christian and immoral.
Tell me, if you discovered that your own son or daughter were involved with drugs, what would you do? Would you turn her in, so she could spend years imprisoned under mandatory-minimum sentencing laws? Or maybe you would willingly forfeit your belongings under our nation’s anti-racketeering laws. Or you could make an anonymous tip and inspire a SWAT team to kick in your door in the middle of the night. Or perhaps, as a last resort, you could leave your daughter’s life in the hands of the pushers and black-market thugs.
The politicians in Washington know the correct answer. Whenever one of their sons or daughters is caught with drugs, they treat it as a private family matter. They even pull strings to get the DEA off their backs. But, in their arrogance, they refuse to let America’s parents take responsibility for their own families.
There is nothing godly about using the force of the police power to quell consent. Is it good when government social workers intrude into the homes of christian home-schoolers? Is it right to force people to associate with homosexuals? Should we rejoice that our tax dollars are being used to fund smut and anti-christian schools? Yet this coercion flows from the same idiocy that promotes drug prohibition.
When will we ever learn? As Christians, the first thing we need to do—before anyone is ever going to take us seriously—is to acknowledge that every human being has a God-given right to be a sinner. Each of us is responsible to God for his own behavior. And to intrude into that sacred relationship is simply wrong. It was wrong when men took up swords to civilize, as they said, the heathen. It is still wrong today.
The only moral course is to end drug prohibition, and to return responsibility for righteousness to America’s families and churches.