Last month I was interviewed on CNN.com as part of the network's coverage of the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon declaring the "war on drugs." It was just one of thousands of articles, broadcasts and blog posts featuring the voices of police officers, politicians and scholars marking an anniversary that offers little to celebrate. Many commentators across the political spectrum eagerly welcomed the opportunity to seriously examine the failures of our drug policies, evaluate possible reforms and opine on what it all might mean.
But not everyone was as excited by the opportunity for reflection on how we can make drug policy more effective. After reading my interview on CNN.com, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy apparently contacted the news organization and demanded equal time to defend the Obama administration's continuation of U.S. drug prohibition policies.
The published response presents a rare and revealing window into the thinking behind the nation's drug policy at the beginning of the fifth decade of the "war on drugs." The transcript is of great interest to anyone who wants to understand why -- despite clear scientific evidence, real-world experience and political opportunity -- a policy that is so obviously failed and is so profoundly harmful is able to continue year after year.
Written by Rafael Lemaitre, a public affairs staffer in the drug czar's office, the interview answers obfuscate important facts and completely avoid many of the most important issues in the debate about drug policy.
With polished clarity, Lemaitre spells out a worldview and political intent based on three key (false) ideas:
Is the "War on Drugs" Working?
As proof that we are making "tremendous progress," Lemaitre clings to the fact that that cocaine production in one country -- Colombia -- has dropped over the past decade according to some metrics and that drug use in the U.S. is now lower in some categories and demographics than it was during the raucous 1970's.
First of all, the fact that cocaine production in Colombia seems to be falling isn't really a sign of success in light of the fact that U.S.-backed eradication efforts -- to the extent they have "worked" -- have only really succeeded in pushing production of the drug into neighboring Peru, where coca growing has risen every year for the past five years.
And when it comes to drug use in the U.S., the truth is that use rates have continually fluctuated over the years and decades. The fact that drug use today is down in some categories compared to 1979 isn't all that meaningful when you consider, for example, that the percentage of 12th graders who regularly use illegal drugs has sharply increased over the past two decades.
Now, compare this to the historic across-the-board reduction we've seen in tobacco use over the past few decades. To achieve this, we haven't had to knock down any doors with SWAT teams, sentence anyone to decades in prison under harsh mandatory minimum sentences or strip anyone of their right to vote or to receive government benefits. Instead, a long-term and diverse educational campaign, in which government and industry have collaborated, has defined nicotine addiction as a health issue and has helped many Americans quit smoking without the threat of the criminal justice system.
But:
Could Ending the "War on Drugs" Open the Drug Use Floodgates?
Lemaitre says that ending prohibition of the currently illegal drugs would be irresponsible and would make drugs "more available in our communities," leading to an explosion in use and abuse.
But, consider a recent study by the World Health Organization showing that the U.S. -- despite being the home of the global "war on drugs" -- has the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use in the world. Indeed, Americans use drugs at a higher rate than people in other countries that have modernized their laws by treating drugs as more of a health -- rather than a criminal -- issue.
It's clear that creating harsh penalties for drugs doesn't reduce use, and the absence of harsh penalties doesn't lead large numbers of people who wouldn't otherwise imbibe to become addicted to dangerous drugs.
Lemaitre says he sympathizes with people who are "frustrated by the negative impacts of drug use and who might be tempted to submit to "silver bullet 'solutions.'" To be clear, though, no one on the anti-prohibition side of this debate would characterize regulating drugs as a panacea. We have to do a lot better, and while legalization itself won't be a cure-all for drug abuse problems, it will at least bring those problems out of the criminal realm and above-ground where a true public health strategy can begin to work. As an added benefit, ending prohibition would undo much of the additional non-use-related damage that banning drugs has created.
Which brings us to the third question raised by Lemaitre's comments:
Is Reducing the Number of Drug Users the Most Important Goal in Drug Policy?
When asked by CNN what individuals can do given the enormous complexity of the drug problem, Lemaitre offered a quick to-do list: talk to your kids about drugs, be alert to risk factors such as "association with drug-abusing peers" and clean out the medicine cabinet. Implicit here is the view that it's all about individual users. While concern for drug-using individuals is obviously an important issue for anyone looking at drug policy, there are several other considerations one should not ignore -- like market violence, economics, human rights and international relations, just to name a few.
This use-focused mindset is an important part of what lets prohibitionists like Lemaitre essentially turn their backs on pressing concerns about the hundreds of billions of dollars in global tax-free revenue that prohibition creates. No more worries about why we have given control of this lucrative traffic to violent criminals. Not once in his CNN interview does Lemaitre express any concern about the forty thousand dead in Mexico's drug wars in the last five years or the millions of Americans whose lives have been tainted by criminal records resulting from pointless drug possession arrests. The drug czar and those in his office know all-too-well that these horrors are a regrettable but unavoidable price for a drug prohibition strategy that they mistakenly believe is helping to significantly reduce drug use. So, they'd rather not talk about it.
In an encouraging sign, the administration does appear to at least acknowledge the emerging political consensus that the "drug war" is a failure and that a new direction is severely needed. To wit, the Lemaitre interview contains glossy rhetoric about our inability to arrest our way out of the drug problem and the "balanced" approach that the Obama team is taking. But nobody should be fooled. The Obama administration's own drug control budgets show that it, like every recent one before it, is all-in with a punishment-oriented drug policy in which "victory" is impossible, "defeat" is unthinkable and evidence, science, common sense and compassion can take a hike.
If the Obama administration really wants to go down in history as the first to take drug policy in a significantly new direction, they're going to have to change their thinking, their polices and their budgets, not just their rhetoric.
Kurt Schmoke and Dan K. Morhaim, M.D.: War on Drugs: Time for a Surge in New Thoughts
Obama and David Cameron have run fairly parallel. In their pragmatic days of a young politician, they both spoke of reform and the utter failure of drug policy. Once elected, they prop up existing laws and defend the status quo.
The President is a consummate politician. He cares nothing about doing what's right but only what's perceived as politically correct.
Ron Paul 2012
Mike Parent, NYPD ret, New Leap Member
Heck, it's his only chance, aside from "end the war(s)", which would only get him a first down.
If it wasn't for the whole marijuana thing, cannabis would be legal, and the "Billion Dollar Crop" (Billion dollars in 1937 - imagine how much now) would be legal, and literally grow america. FOOD from hempseed, FUEL from hempseed oil (biodiesel, etc), and FIBER for clothes, textiles.
How many jobs-exports-revenue-self sufficiency-national security is THAT?!?!?!
* 73% of all felonies * 73% of child beating cases * 41% of rape cases * 80% of wife battering cases * 72% of stabbings * 83% of homicides.
10 years after Portugal's 10 years of decriminalization of all drugs has done more good than their 30 years of criminalization.
HIV infections are down 17%
Drug deaths reduced by 50 %
Marijuana use is down to 10% of adults - the lowest rate in the European Union
Herion use is dramatically lower
Addiction is in decline
Decreased youth drug use
Lower crime rates
Reduced court expenditures
Greater access to drug treatment
Safer and healthier communities
Portugal simply made small amounts of drugs a civil offense instead of a criminal offense.
-A study by the RAND Corporation found that every additional dollar invested in substance abuse treatment saves taxpayers $7.46 in societal costs.
-$1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $7.3spent on enforcement.
-$1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $10.8spent on border control.
-$1 spent on treatment will achieve the same reduction of flow of cocaine as $23 spent trying to persuade Colombian farmers to grow crops other than coca.
WODSEC, in turn, has minor and major sub-sectors. The enforcement industrial complex (prison guards, private prisons, enforcement agencies), operate on the putatively "legal" side of the line, while the much larger sub-sector, drug cartels, money launderers and others, operate on the illegal side, generating grossly exaggerated cash flows to the benefit of themselves and host countries. That's trickle down in action.
Subsidizing WODSEC is politically easy; it appeals to popular authoritarian impulses easily exploited by self-interested politicians and agencies, and is much less controversial than, say, farm price supports. It is monetarily cheap because Prohibition multiplies the investment many times, generating vastly outsized results in WODSEC's illegal sub-sector.
Other reasons to justify prohibition exist, but as above, they have little to do with drugs. If the properties of drugs themselves were the justification for drugs policy, policy would play out in the health arena. But no, that would mean reduced cover for foreign misadventures and increased surveillance-statism, while wounding other gorable oxen.
I used to keep my tongue in my cheek when entertaining this angle on our drugs policy, but now I'm not so sure. I am sure, though, that the War on Some Drugs is all about serving special money and power interests, and very little to do with the public interest.
Yet the Feds, are in utter denial.
Question: How can the citizens elevate this debate and force the Feds to listen???
Hilarity is part of the one-ring circus. It doesn't matter who you vote for, despite what they say, said, or will say, there is only one way. If it's not obvious to you yet, I don't think anything can help. Please, robot your way to your chosen primary as programmed.
Lemaitre claims: "the "war on drugs" is permanent, and any alternative to it means anarchy,"
Really? This administration is so arrogant that it could make such an irresponsible proclamation from "on high?" And "anarchy?" Thomas Jefferson once said that ""The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." When the government becomes tyrannical to the extent that it suppresses fundamental civil liberties that are an invasion of privacy and tears up the Constitution in the process, this WARRANTS anarchy! Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and Patrick Henry would almost certainly advocate throwing off the tyrannical government that we now have, as they would be APPALLED at the GROSS Constitutional violations that have taken place in this country since 1915--ironically sparked by racism. The Obama administration, it would seem, is the worst violator of civil rights and a perpetuator of policies that clearly have their origin in keeping minorities in check at the expense of all. No, on the contrary, to continue laws and policies that SO egregiously violate the Constitution are destined to failure solely due to unconstitutionality.
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. " - The Declaration of Independence