Liberty Sacrificed in Drug War

If Michael Irvin does the least little thing wrong in the next four years, he will face 20 years in the penitentiary. That’s the word from the prosecutors and the judge who accepted the Dallas Cowboy star’s no contest plea to cocaine possession. “Irvin,” the local district attorney warned, “is walking around with the keys to the penitentiary in his pocket.”

I know that there are more deserving cases to write about, but I can’t let it go. Some warning bell keeps going off in my brain suggesting that if we can put someone away for 20 years for a victimless crime, we are in serious trouble.

I got alarmed by scanning the Internet and reading dozens of columns, mostly by underpaid sportswriters, about how this overpaid sports star had betrayed some sacred trust and should now be banished. Paint a C on his forehead and leave him to wander in that cultural desert of football-less Sundays--at least for six games. Then there were those letters of outrage from sports fans who insist on having the last word in denigrating the very sports stars they once cravenly idolized. Nowhere did I find even the suggestion that the war on drugs is out of whack when the mere possession of a drug can lead to 20 years in prison.

Lost in this brouhaha was the simple issue of personal freedom. What business is it of the government to incarcerate someone simply because drugs are present in his residence? In Irvin’s case, no noise was being emitted that disturbed neighbors, walls and people were not being smashed inside, and the purported sexual activity was no wilder than what pops up unsolicited on my local cable service. If Irvin had been drunk out of his mind on beer or bourbon and doing exactly what he did, no one would have thought to bother him.

The crusade against drugs has reached such a point of hysteria that we now equate the mere possession of drugs with the commission of serious antisocial activity. In this context, it seems thoroughly plausible to lock this man up and throw away the key if he just fails one of those random urine tests he is now required to take 10 times a month.

But what if his record, off the field and on, is otherwise perfect? Should we taxpayers pay upward of $50,000 a year to incarcerate a football player who as a free man would be paying the government at least $400,000 a year in taxes? Last year was Irvin’s best, and he certainly earned his Super Bowl ring. Clearly, if he had been using drugs, they did not impair his performance or his earning capacity.

Drugs may or may not undermine one’s productivity, just as there are those who can handle a martini and two glasses of wine at lunch, while others go berserk after a few beers. Substance abuse is a personal medical issue and should be handled as such.

Please don’t send me heartfelt letters about how some loved one self-destructed with drugs. I know they are all true, but those sad tales are overwhelmed by the number of people who have killed themselves and others with alcohol. We have winos and we have connoisseurs of fine wine, and if alcohol were illegal, jail time would serve the needs of neither.

There is a long list of writers and artists who claim they have done better work because of illicit drugs. Timothy Leary, for example, lived to a ripe old age, despite or because of extensive drug use, and he seemed quite lucid even to the end. Leary should not have been allowed to drive under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but what he did in the privacy of his own home was his own business.

None of this is to suggest that Michael Irvin was having a heightened artistic experience in that hotel suite, only that he wasn’t hurting anybody other than possibly himself and other consenting adults. Maybe continued use would have destroyed him, and maybe it wouldn’t have, but we do know that the obsessive national crusade to regulate the personal behavior of free citizens is ineffective, costly and destructive.

The net result is that the price of drugs and the profit for criminals has increased, we have the largest percentage of our citizens in jail of any modern country and more people than ever use illegal drugs. The war on drugs, with its emphasis on harsh criminal penalties, has proved a stunning failure. But, sadly, no leading politician is willing to stand up and say so. They are all addicted to getting reelected, a habit that truly rots the brain.