Framing the Legalization Argument: More Thoughts

Pete at Drug WarRant has a good post responding to Paul Armentano's recent discussion of why the marijuana legalization movement hasn't seen more success. Pete argues that the argument over legalization needs to be "made personal" by bringing home to people the threat that prohibition poses to them. He writes:

Wrong approach:

Pot isn't very harmful.  We can protect against drugged drivers. It's not a proper law.  We should legalize marijuana.

Right approach:

Pot prohibition is causing criminals to prey on your children. We must legalize and regulate it NOW to cut back on damage to our cities and our families.

I'm not crazy about the use of the "criminals are going to prey on your children" trope, at least not when it's framed that way. But I agree that it's time to move away from the argument that "we should legalize drugs because, hey, they aren't that harmful."

My take on the "right" approach tends to be more oriented around civil rights and the costs of using prisons as tools of social control. Pete argues that this approach is a little abstract because "people as a whole are not, unfortunately, interested in looking after the Constitution. They want others to do it for them, and may even find the content of it a bit of an annoyance." That's certainly true. In a state like California, however,  we have a $16 billion budget shortfall the year after we committed to spend $8 billion on prison construction. In other words, it's an issue that's starting to become increasingly concrete.