This past Monday Justin Cosby, 21, was shot in the basement of Kirkland House, one of Harvard’s twelve residences for upperclassmen. The tragic events were a huge surprise to a campus neck deep in finals, papers, and graduation preparations. Basic facts such as why Cosby was in a Harvard residence, how he gained entrance, and the identities of the assailants were all unknown when Cosby died of his wounds early Tuesday morning. The Harvard Crimson began to shed some light on these questions when it reported on Wednesday that Cosby was involved in the Harvard campus drug trade. While, at the time, there was no official confirmation from authorities that drugs caused the shooting, the pieces seemed to be falling into place to add another terrible chapter to the history of America’s foolish drug policies.
Today the Middlesex County District Attorney, in a press conference, confirmed that the drug trade led to Cosby’s death. I expect the typical reaction to these events to be a lot of carping about the dangers of illegal drugs and renewed emphasis on the importance of security policies on campus. While the latter is extremely important the former, though still worth discussing, seems to miss the bigger and more significant point entirely. Cosby was not shot because marijuana is a particularly addictive and dangerous drug; even accounts that try to give weight to both sides in the medical debate over marijuana concede that it is less physically harmful than tobacco and less psychologically harmful than alcohol, and is substantially less addictive than both. The most dangerous things associated with marijuana in the United States are not a result of the drug itself, but of it being illegal.
The sale of illicit drugs is a very dangerous business in this country. Because those who work in the black market cannot go to police with complaints or to advertisers with business plans, they are left to their own devices to protect their operations and defeat competitors, often resorting to violence, as appears to have been the case in the death of Justin Cosby. Nobody gets shot for alcohol or tobacco, and the reason is because legitimate business sell alcohol and tobacco and have incentives to be peaceful and cooperative, whereas they are prevented from selling marijuana. When one is already breaking the law by selling an illegal drug, there are no disincentives to resorting to violence, scamming competitors, or selling to youths. The only way to disincentive those activities is to create an avenue by which people can sell the product legally. Cosby’s death proves that even in Massachusetts, where marijuana possession is decriminalized, drug prohibition generates serious social costs. Monday’s events will now serve as a sad piece of evidence in the case for full legalization.
Not a single person has ever died from a marijuana overdose or from health complications from using marijuana; the evidence is clear on this point. The only deaths associated with marijuana are the deaths caused by prohibition of the drug, not to mention the thousands of deaths America’s drug policy is causing in Mexico as we speak. By making the reduction of consumption the primary aim of America’s drug policy the government has inadvertently created a public safety risk that dwarfs the risks that even widespread legal consumption would pose. Is anybody really prepared to argue that marijuana is so deleterious to society that we ought to continue to precipitate homicides to keep it illegal? Justin Cosby should be alive right now, and only by recognizing that changes to America’s drug policy are long overdue, and by taking the issue seriously, will we be able to spare the lives of countless others like him. It is, quite literally, an issue of life and death.