Editor’s Note: Sean W. Cooper is a sophomore at UNCW majoring in Communication Studies. He is the Assistant Opinion Editor for The Seahawk. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. Assistant Opinion Editor Sean W. Cooper can be found on Twitter @SWWCoop. All suggestions or inquires may be sent via email to [email protected]

During my time here at UNCW, many of my friends, colleagues and even instructors have mistaken me for a conservative. I would like to clear that up right now. I am not a conservative. I am a libertarian. It took me a full semester of involvement with UNCW’s College Republicans before I realized that many of us simply cannot boil our political views down to bipartisan lines.

We don’t hear much from the Libertarian Party because most of America willingly adheres to the two-party group think of this nation. However, they are still there and their messages ring true with us more often than we give them credit.

It is important to understand that the libertarian ideology isn’t as simple as siding with the Republican Party on economic issues and the Democratic Party on social issues. There are a handful of economically conservative views held by libertarians that the Republican Party neglects to address, as well as socially liberal views that the Democratic Party fails to address.

I’m here to address one specific issue Democrats have neglected: the regressive drug laws we have here in America. The most we’ve ever heard about reforming them is from Bernie Sanders, who campaigned on legalizing recreational marijuana use and recently proposed a bill to Congress that would put this into effect.

This issue, however, is so much larger than just marijuana. It is all drugs. I’m not saying that all drugs need to be legalized; I believe that some measure needs to be taken to deter people from using them–but there needs to be some action taken to change the sentences nonviolent drug offenders receive.

At the core of the problem with laws for drug-related crimes is a concept known as mandatory minimum sentencing. These are provisions aimed at correcting “moral vices” (i.e. drugs, gambling, prostitution), and they work exactly as the name implies: for each different offense, the law specifies a certain length of time and judges are required to sentence offenders for at least that amount of time.

This policy came into effect in October of 1986, when President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Not only did this legislation impose mandatory minimum sentencing on drug offenders, it also shifted American drug policies’ focus from rehabilitation to punition.

Let’s also remember that punishing drug offenders rather than rehabilitating them has been deemed ineffective by many sources, including RTI International, the Justice Policy Institute, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and a variety of others.

A major problem with mandatory minimum sentencing lies in how it handles cocaine. Possession of 28 grams of crack cocaine will trigger a five-year minimum sentence. Meanwhile, 500 grams of powder cocaine will trigger the same sentence.

Let’s be clear that this is exactly the same drug, just manufactured differently. Granted, a given amount of coke will produce a substantially stronger high if it is crack than if it is powder, but to say that there should be such a disparity in sentencing is like saying that somebody should receive a stronger sentence for smoking marijuana from a bong than from a blunt.

Then there’s also the fact that five years is a ridiculous amount of time to put somebody away for possessing cocaine. Now 500 grams of powder cocaine is a lot; for those who aren’t familiar with it, there are roughly eight lines in a gram of coke.

However, these are not violent crimes at all. According to FindLaw, in the state of California, voluntary manslaughter (also known as third-degree murder) carries a minimum sentence of three years. We are giving people sentences almost twice as long for just having cocaine as for people who commit voluntary manslaughter. Let that sink in.

I’m not saying that coke is harmless; obviously a great many people have died from overdosing on this drug. However, perhaps even more people have died from alcohol poisoning, as well as from long-term effects of chronic alcohol use. If the government can’t treat us all like adults and trust us to know our limits, then why shouldn’t alcohol be illegal too? Granted, many people choose to exceed their limits, but this is the concept of Social Darwinism in the works.

What makes drugs dangerous is that if they do not kill the user, they have the potential to screw up his or her life through addiction (with the exception of marijuana, which I believe should be legalized entirely, as it has been proven to have neither addictive factors nor the potential to overdose.)

In theory, people should be punished for their addictions and I do believe that these laws are right to exist, even if they are certainly too harsh. However, as mentioned earlier, the main focus shouldn’t be punishment; it should be rehabilitation.

It is extremely difficult to start one’s life over again after receiving a felony conviction, as it is nearly impossible to acquire a good job with one: the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights reported in October of 2015 that nearly two-thirds of ex-felons are underemployed or even unemployed five years after their release.

In addition to this, people who are put away in prison for long periods of time are prone to treat prison as their new homes, when they cannot re-adapt to society upon their release. This leads to the revolving door scenario, in which ex-convicts are commonly seen returning to prison shortly after their release.

We see this right here in Wilmington. According to Star News, Wilmington is the nation’s #1 hub for heroin abuse, with more than 100 cases per month of Wilmingtonians using Naloxone to reverse an overdose. Think about how many lives we could save if we didn’t have counter intuitive laws that do nothing to help our citizens with their addictions.

Simply put, drugs are bad. By using them, one can screw up one’s brain, one’s family life and one’s career. However, the laws we have put in place to “protect” people from using them are equally as bad and they carry just as much potential to ruin one’s life.