Maryland governor Martin O'Malley's veto statement for House Bill 992, which would have given second time non-violent drug offenders parole eligibility, is an example of the tortured logic undergirding dominant drug policy. In his refusal to allow different treatment for non-violent offenders, O'Malley rejects the idea that there is such a thing as a non-violent drug offender. O'Malley argues that the drug trade is "an activity that fuels violent crime and murder" and "the illegal drug market as a whole is shaped and protected through a culture of violence." In short, any participant in the drug trade is indirectly a violent offender. This logic treats all drug transactions as necessarily violent, just like the 21 'crimes of violence' listed in section § 14-101 of Maryland's criminal law, including maiming, armed carjacking, and murder. Quite a claim.

O'Malley also says that "the drug trade is an inherently violent business." Of course it's not: we don't see companies like Merck or Pfizer in armed warfare with one another. What he means, and what he says in other parts of his veto statement, is that the trade of heroin and cocaine under the conditions of prohibition is inherently violent. This is probably true. It is rare that a public policy or law produces violence, but that is exactly what drug prohibition does, and O'Malley essentially admits as much in this veto statement. Politicians who reject efforts to reduce the harm of prohibition implicitly tolerate its associated violence: both the robberies, murder, and assaults that 'shape' the illegal drug market as well as the violence of incarceration. Instead of addressing the role illegality plays in producing violence, O'Malley, in a novel argument, cites illegality to justify classifying the non-violent act of the exchange of commodities for money as violent. Prohibition advocates accept the violence and incarceration of prohibition in hopes of avoiding the harm that would attend drug legalization or de-criminalization, though the scope of that harm is rarely specified. The justness of this tradeoff is far from the certainty that the media and politicians would have us believe.