Father John Clifton Marquis on the Futility of Drug Laws in *U.S. Catholic* May 1990 (p14) by Father John Clifton "Drug laws are a moral issue. Fifty years of drug legislation have produced the exact opposite effect of what those laws intended: the laws have created a tantalizingly profitable economic structure for marketing drugs."

"Drug laws are a moral issue. Fifty years of drug legislation have produced the exact opposite effect of what those laws intended: the laws have created a tantalizingly profitable economic structure for marketing drugs.

When law does not promote the common good, but in fact causes it to deteriorate, the law itself becomes bad and must change .... Moral leaders have no alternative but to choose between authentic morality, which produces good, and cosmetic morality, which merely looks good. Drug laws

look good! But the tragic flaw of cosmetic morality, like all other forms of cosmetics, is that it produces no change of substance .... Authentic moral leaders cannot afford the arrogant luxury of machismo, with its refusal to consider not "winning." Winning, in the case of drug abuse, is

finding the direction and methods that provide the maximum amount of health and safety to the whole society without having a cure that is worse than the disease."

Reprinted in *After Prohibition* ed. by Timothy Lynch

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