This is the wrong way to read the paper. The author isn't making a case against decriminalizing drugs. He's saying that even if you decriminalize drugs, you will still need other stronger interventions to work against mass incarceration and, for that matter, the racial disparities in incarceration.

The specific argument is made that if you decriminalize marijuana, it won't make a difference because there aren't that many incarcerations for marijuana specifically.

Which is an argument so obviously true as to be banal; even the marijuana decriminalization campaign in Colorado pointed it out.

Marijuana is going to be legal in the US. It's not a live issue. We don't have to import it into every other social science inquiry.

Keep in mind that the "business" of drugs creates a lot of other crimes - theft, murder, extortion etc.

A change in policies towards illegal drugs would have a wide ranging impact.

Even putting aside the penal effects, the primary opposition to the War on Drugs has always been about personal freedom and the right to determine one's own destiny. All else is secondary.

> the primary opposition to the War on Drugs has always been about personal freedom and the right to determine one's own destiny

Maybe if one or one's family hasn't been directly harmed by the drug war? I don't think such an abstract idea could possibly be the primary opposition to any policy. These state policies have physically destroyed communities and lives. People want their families, and they want to stop being oppressed by the police. They want the baton and tear gas out of their face. That's the primary opposition.

Abstract principles are always secondary to material reality.

"Always"? Pretty sweeping, categorical assertion. Voters' politics is based on interest, identity, and values. The latter two often run counter to the first (e.g. poor whites in the Republican Party, blacks in the Democratic Party). Blacks suffer disproportionately from Drug Prohibition, but many are religious and culturally conservative, and would like to see the death penalty for drug dealers (assuming the police could be trusted). They blame the drugs, not Drug Prohibition.

Lots of your anti-prohibition activists are wealthy progressives and libertarians who, like me, like David Simon, have no personal stake in the outcome.

Sorry, that "always" should have been accompanied with an "ought". Adhering to principle in spite of material conditions and consequences is, and I know I haven't supported this thesis, "bad".

> I don't think such an abstract idea could possibly be the primary opposition to any policy.

Then why have a big, green statue on an island off the shore of New Jersey? What does that stand for?

Propaganda. The big green statue that was supposed to welcome people to its shores has not lifted its finger to protect the millions of people whose personhood is being deemed 'illegal'. It stands for an "idea", an idea defends no one and can be claimed by anyone. The idea that statue stands for is claimed by all sides of all mainstream politics in this country.

"A disordered country is full of loyal patriots."

The practical results of minimized police state flow quite organically from the broader abstract principle.