Mike at Night Stop the War This was a popular phrase among the anti-war protestors during the Vietnam War and it is time for the phrase to be uttered again. I'm not talking about the War on Terrorism; I'm talking about the War on Drugs. It has been an utter and dismal failure since Richard Nixon first used the phrase in 1971. Over the past 30 years, billions of American taxpayer dollars has been spent attempting to curb the use of drugs in this country with hardly any success at all. What the War on Drugs has accomplished has been the creation of a cottage industry for the police, courts, corrections, politicians, counselors and therapists, pharmaceutical companies, and many other entities that spend an inordinate amount of time in the area of drug use and abuse. Let's look at some figures: * The United States contains less that 5% of the worlds population but has 25% of the world's prisoners. *There are 6 times as many Americans behind bars as are imprisoned in the 12 countries that make up the entire European Union, even though those countries combined have 100 million MORE citizens than the U.S. *Our jails and prisons have become the 51st state, with a greater combined population than Alaska, North Dakota and South Dakota (Editorial from the San Jose Mercury News, December 31st, 1999) *In August of 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed that the number of people behind bars at the end of 1999 exceeded two million and the incarceration rate had reached 690 per 100,000 citizens, the highest incarceration rate in the world with the exception of Rwanda. *In 1998, over 1 ½ million people (1,559,100 to be exact) were arrested on drug charges and approximately 450,000 drug offenders were confined in jails and prisons. According to the Department of Justice, 107,000 people were sent to state prisons on drug convictions in 1998, representing 30.8% of ALL new state admissions. Drug offenders accounted for 57.8% of ALL federal inmates. (Human Rights Watch World Report - 2001) "We have tried prohibition before. When Prohibition began in 1920, it had some shocking results and none of the results were what the government had intended. Innocent people suffered; organized crime grew intoan empire; the police, courts and politicians became corrupt; disrespect for the law grew; and the per capita consumption of the prohibited substance - alcohol - INCREASED dramatically, year by year for the next 13 years, never to return to pre- 1920 levels. In 2002, we have prohibition again. The only thing that has changed are the prohibited substances and the results are again the same." (Peter McWilliams- "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do" p. 61.) There are absolutely no statistics anyone can use that would suggest that the War on Drugs has been profitable on any front, outside the cottage industries that have emerged because of it. So, why do we continue to fight a war that is un-winnable? Opponents of drug use suggest that drugs are bad for people, bad for society and that they must be outlawed and prevented. Yet the two most dangerous drugs in the United States (alcohol and tobacco) are both LEGAL. Alcohol and tobacco combined claim more lives, cost more money in terms of lost wages, hospitalizations, car crashes, etc. than all the illegal substances combined. We are admonished constantly through public service announcements on television and radio to talk to our kids about drugs but what do we say to them when the two most dangerous drugs are legal. The United States has had a long love affair with alcohol and tobacco. In fact, when the Mayflower sailed for the new country, there was more wine and beer aboard than there was fresh water. These two drugs have always been the drugs of choice for people in positions of power and influence, those people who either make or influence the making of laws. We tried banning alcohol by making it illegal and the per capita use of alcohol increased. We took a different tact with tobacco with much more effective results. Instead of illegalizing it, we made it "less cool" to do and the number of users decreased significantly because people "chose" to change their habits. A fact of life that government has not yet recognized is that change comes from within, not without. A person can only change their behavior if THEY want to and they hardly ever change their behavior because someone else wants them to. Although it's not yet a popular stance to take, I have for a long time been in favor of decriminalizing most drugs for a variety of reasons. One of the primary causes of death due to drug use is the potency of the drug and the other, often dangerous, substances that are laced into the drug. Legalization and regulation would insure the potency and purity of the drug. Legalization and regulation would also get street gangs and organized crime out of the drug business. They're only in it because of the incredibly high profit margins attached to the illegal drug trade. That's why the War on Drugs hasn't worked. For every drug dealer and every drug kingpin that is arrested, there are scores more waiting to take up where they left off because the gain (obscene profits) more than offsets the risk (going to jail.) My final reason for supporting drug decriminalization is value consistency. It makes no sense at all for some drugs to be legal and others illegal, just like it makes no sense for some forms of gambling to be legal and others illegal. It should either be permissible or not and there should be no exceptions. It makes no sense that someone can go to jail for possession of more than an ounce of marijuana but that same person can load down the trunk of his car with beer and liquor and commit no crime at all. Beer and liquor gets you drunk, marijuana makes you high. One is no better or worse than the other. More and more influential people are weighing in on the side of drug decriminalization, including both Republican and Democratic politicians. When I was on the Tulsa Police Department 30 years ago during the days of the hippies, it was not unusual at all to see groups of flower children sitting on the curb as we drove through the city parks, smoking marijuana and we simply kept on going. It was generally accepted that legalization of marijuana was just around the corner and we were told to focus our attention on the harder, more addictive drugs. I believe that perception is seeing new life and I believe it's time. We have enough real criminals in this country without constantly creating new ones. "The Drug War cannot stand the light of day. It will collapse as quickly as the Vietnam War, as soon as people find out what's really going on." (Joseph McNamara, former Kansas City and San Jose Police Chief and a Hoover Institution Fellow)____________ Mike can be e-mailed at mikeatnight@hotmail.com |