End the War on Drugs

America has had a lot of wars, and that isn’t even counting the military wars! The “War on Poverty,” the “War on Crime,” and the “War on Terror,” why so many wars? Naming something a war invokes automatic patriotism and support from many groups, both conservative and liberal. That makes it an effective political tactic.

There is another: the “War on Drugs” declared in 1972 by President Richard Nixon as he was winding down the Vietnam War.

Illegal drug use costs America huge sums of money every year through crime, cost to punish offenders, and lost productivity. Yet, even though we make no progress in this war, we continue to use the same tactics year after year, decade after decade. No one disagrees that illegal drug use does great harm, both to our people and the economy. The question is what to do to reduce that harm.

Some argue a lack of progress is because America does not fund the problem adequately. More resources, they argue, will net better results. Others argue the exact opposite; the more America spends to fight the drug problem, the more it reinforces the illegal drug underground; they argue for decriminalization. Some of those arguing for decriminalization do not match the profile you would expect.

Below are a noted political conservative, a Nobel Prize winning economist, and a former police chief, all in support of decriminalization.

CONSERVATIVES FOR AN END

William F. Buckley, founder of the iconic conservative magazine, National Review. Mr. Buckley was asked by the New York Bar Association to make a statement to a panel of lawyers considering the drug question. He made the following statement in 1996.

“We are speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen-yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect.”

Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning economist in 1991.

“…drug dealers have a financial incentive to create addicts. If they can create an addict, they have a captive customer. Under a legalized system, you don’t see anybody on the street corners giving away bread.

It doesn’t pay to give away bread because if you create somebody who loves bread, he can buy it at the cheapest place. It would not pay anybody, for financial reasons, to create addicts…I am not questioning for a moment that the number of drug addicts is likely to go up. What I am saying is that the innocent victims created by even a much higher level of addiction would be vastly smaller than the number now created by drug prohibition.”

Joseph McNamara, former San Jose Police Chief. Joseph McNamara has been responsible for enforcing drug laws and viewing their consequences:

“A corrections administrator responsible for running San Francisco jails told me recently that when the county of San Francisco decided that smoking would no longer be allowed in public buildings, cigarettes were banned in the jail. The immediate consequence: The price of cigarettes in the underground jail market went to $120 a pack. It sums up prohibition; $500 worth of drugs in a foreign country can bring as much as $100,000 on the streets of an American city merely because they are illegal. All the armies, cops and prisons in the world can not stop that kind of economic force.”

In a San Francisco Examiner, April 9, 1995 article, McNamara, now at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, surveyed nearly 500 police chiefs, police officers, district attorneys, public defenders, lawyers, judges and Stanford students. Here are the results:

95% of the police officers believe the U.S. is losing the war on drugs

98% think drug abuse is not primarily a police problem

Over 90% of the cops said increased prevention/treatment could control drugs more effectively

Over 30% of the cops felt decriminalization would decrease drug use or have no effect

WAR ON DRUGS IS INEFFECTIVE

The most on-point critics of our war on drugs come from within the federal government’s own ranks; the Government Accountability Office. The GAO provides insight on the ineffectiveness of “war on drugs”. After decades, the government still has not developed methods to measure either the extent of the drug problem in America or how to measure whether interdiction is successful.

How can the government state with any accuracy they are having any positive effect without such measurements? And since when is it effective to spend most of your time on the lesser crimes (marijuana) at the cost of enforcement of the larger crimes?

Refer to the GAO report titled: Briefing Report, 09/26/96, GAO/GGD-96-189BR at the GAO website: http://www.gao.gov/

You can visit other GAO reports on drug interdiction efforts by the federal government. The theme is ineptitude and lack of results.

Since the government is unable to effectively stop drugs from entering the United States, it turned its effort to eradicate them at the source of origin. Whether in Mexico, Columbia, Bolivia, or else where in Latin America or Asia, the same inefficiencies blocked success.

The effort to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States has one important effect; it raises the price of drugs, which provides drug dealers with more money to corrupt Bolivian politicians, buy more effective weapons, and combat U.S. intelligence. Four years after the GAO recommendations, the government still had not adopted proper measures and still uses the unsuccessful plans of the past.

If the U.S. had a chance for a successful interdiction program, it would be in Afghanistan. The stakes are high politically and strategically, in the war against the Taliban. The U.S. has a strong military presence, support from the American public, and a need to control the war lords. Additionally, the U.S. knew going in that controlling opium production was vital to long-term success in eliminating Afghanistan as a source of terrorism. Yet, the same difficulties found elsewhere have prevented any significant level of success in Afghanistan.

PROBLEMS NEVER ADDRESSED

When Nixon started the war on drugs in 1972, his own national commission anticipated key problems. The government had the experience of alcohol prohibition in the 1920’s, and were warned of similar problems facing the task force in war on drugs (National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, Drug Use in America, 1972). Yes, more than 35 years after Nixon’s ill-conceived war on drugs, our government continues to chase a failed policy.

The war on drugs and its drug czar are an institutionalized bureaucracy without proper oversight, and without any tangible benefit to the American people. The damage that drug wars and drug money cause in our inner cities is matched only by the devastation that American’s craving for drugs has caused throughout much of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. And yet we continue on this course, with no real dialogue taking place in our government. It is truly shameful!