La guerra contra las drogas es contra-producente a varios niveles, pero hay uno que rara vez se menciona en las críticas: impide el surgimiento de comportamientos de consumo responsables y de actitudes sociales que conducen a abordar mejor el problema del abuso de estas sustancias. Juan Carlos Hidalgo, colaborador del Cato Institute, destaca este punto en un imprescindible artículo que está disponible en Liberalismo.org:
La legalización conducirá a que la sociedad aprenda a convivir con las drogas, tal y como lo ha hecho con otras sustancias como el alcohol y el tabaco. El proceso de aprendizaje social es sumamente valioso para poder disminuir e internalizar los efectos negativos que se derivan del consumo y abuso de ciertas sustancias. Sin embargo, políticas como las de la prohibición, al convertir a los consumidores en criminales, desincentivan la aparición de comportamientos y actitudes sociales necesarios para poder lidiar con los problemas de la adicción y el consumo tempranero de dichas sustancias.
Jacob Sullum, en su libro Saying Yes. In Defense of Drug Use, hace una reflexión que me ha parecido que está relacionada, sobre el alcohol y el papel que deben jugar los padres y los colegios en el fomento de comportamientos responsables. La reflexión de Sullum podría ser extrapolable al caso de otras drogas de consumo masivo como la marihuana.
Colleges cannot try to foster responsible drinking habits through explicit instruction or faculty-supervised events. (...) Amid all the hand-wringing over this trend, little attention was given to the possibility of training students to drink moderately, because any college that tried to do so would risk losing federal funding. In the late nineties, however, a few colleges experimented with an intriguing program that, rather than trying to scare students about the consequences of drinking, simply informed them them about typical drinking patterns for people of their age. These schools found that students tended to drink less after learning that their peers were not drinking as heavily as the furor over alcohol on campus might have led them to believe. (...)
These programs implicitly acknowledge that students will continue to drink regardless of the law. Rather than demanding abstinence, they try to limit the damage that drinkers do to themselves and others. (...)
[A]dults could try to educate them about the dangers of acute poisoning and traffic accidents. They could also try to channel teenage drinking into controlled environments. (...) Organizations and government agencies that deal with alcohol abuse tend to reject such possibilities out of hand, insisting on zero tolerance of underage drinking. Since more than 70 percent of teenagers are drinking by their senior year in high school, this approach seems unrealistic. (pp. 94-95)
Más sobre el libro de Sullum, un punto de vista intelectualmente refrescante, cuando lo termine. Falta poco.
