Proportion Intoxicated

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/us/14florida.html --
The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.
The Florida report analyzed 168,900 deaths statewide. Cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines caused 989 deaths, it found, while legal opioids — strong painkillers in brand-name drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin — caused 2,328.
Drugs with benzodiazepine, mainly depressants like Valium and Xanax, led to 743 deaths. Alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug, appearing in the bodies of 4,179 of the dead and judged the cause of death of 466 — fewer than cocaine (843) but more than methamphetamine (25) and marijuana (0).
The study also found that while the number of people who died with heroin in their bodies increased 14 percent in 2007, to 110, deaths related to the opioid oxycodone increased 36 percent, to 1,253.

So this comes to about 4500 drug-related deaths: 10% from alcohol, 20% from illegal drugs, 70% from pharmaceuticals. Clearly, these numbers do not include fatalities indirectly caused by drugs (for example, drunk-driving deaths which must be at least 500 per year in Florida--or the violent deaths common in the illegal drug business). The pharmaceutical fatalities do not concern me. I am content to give people the respect of a natural personal responsibility for their own health--a key element of liberty.

Need I mention the absurd contrast between the perils of  alcohol and many pharmaceuticals compared to marijuana--which produced zero direct deaths despite frequency of usage which surpasses all others except alcohol. But, the huge senile contingent of voters plus the vast backwater of pseudo-christians, abetted by cowardly politicos keep that wonderful weed still confined to a semi-proscribed status. It ought to be legalized: this would save many billions presently spent on the police-prison-welfare industrial complex--and, as a small, incidental bonus, improve quality of life for millions. Also, it would set an example for the rest of the world to follow--though few of the wealthy nations have such costly pot policies as ours.

I am theoretically in favor of legalization of all drugs. However, the relevant portion of our criminal law renders this problematic in practice, based as it largely is on the purpose and intent of the criminal. A sufficient degree of intoxication degrades one's capacity to formulate purpose and intent--and the less of these a criminal possesses the less likely he is to be convicted of a given crime and the shorter his sentence is likely to be. So it follows--most prevalent forms of intoxication (including alcohol, but not marijuana) increase the propensity to engage in criminal conduct, and the law reinforces this propensity by offering reduced punishment for the intoxicated. Before the Victorian era English common law (and presumably American as well) considered intoxication an aggravation of the offense, not a defense or mitigation. Under that venerable dispensation legalization could work; under ours, I fear, it cannot. In a rational analysis of which drugs are susceptible to legalization, the violence-promoting aspect ought to be foremost among the determinative factors (PCP, for example, would be an unattractive candidate, LSD probably attractive).