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Who are the Champions of the Drug War?
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In 1924, the great social critic H.L. Mencken wrote of prohibition:
Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favourite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.[1]
Likewise, when he first visited the United States in 1921, Albert Einstein wrote of America's ban on alcohol:
The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law... For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced..jpg)
[2]
[2]And in 2009, Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzeneeger said, concerning drug reform:
I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues, I'm always for an open debate on it. And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs.
Maybe, like America’s war on alcohol in the twenties, the War on Drugs has finally begun to fall, though it stumbled for decades instead of just thirteen years.[3] The National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009, introduced by Virginia Senator Jim Webb, is the starkest admission by someone important in Washington that the American system for the prosecution and incarceration of criminals not only needs reform, but has become a “national disgrace”.[4] It appears that finally people with a voice are saying out loud what has been known for a very long time.
So who is in charge of sticking up for the drug policies of the last forty years? On May 20, 2009, FBI Director Robert Mueller seemed legimately embarrased to be forced into the position of touting the successes of the War on Drugs while being questioned during a congressional hearing.( www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY0TQ1uOn3k ) The present Justice Department actually appears to disagree with some of the fundamental beliefs underlying the Drug War.
For decades, politicians have scared voters into believing that spending money to incarcerate drug dealers and dope fiends would make them safer. The amazing part is that it has taken so long for some measure of reform to begin. The drug crime incarceration numbers increased by 1200% since 1980 while crime increased or remained the same.[5] Even in recent years, politicians continued to vote for more interdiction, supply-side enforcement, and punishment instead of demand-reduction strategies. From 2002 to 2009, federal spending on interdiction (sealing the borders to stop the drugs from coming into America, a policy which has never decreased the amount of drugs in America[6]) increased 100%, supply-side enforcement (policing suppliers in foreign countries, which results in no net reduction of drug supply, but does result in incarceration[7]) grew by 50% percent, domestic law enforcement ( which has increased those serving time in prison for drugs from about 40,000 in 1980 to 500,000 in 2008 while failing to reduce drug use at all) resources 31%, and demand-side policies (addressing addiction) by only 2.5%.[8] The United States spent half a trillion dollars on the Drug War since 1990, including funding of the Drug Enforcement Agency at 2.3 billion dollars a year to support more than five thousand agents to chase drug growers and dealers around the globe.[9] Whether a valid endeavor or not, all of this spending and incarceration supports at most a social choice, (alcohol is a harmless vice, but marijuana, cocaine and heroin are not), rather than a moral imperative. (Terrorism is a substantial threat to American and world security). Americans have always disagreed with each other over this issue. But for the last forty years politicians have at least pretended to agree that drug offenders were worthy of as much, or more, national animosity as cancer, AIDS, illegal immigration, or illiteracy. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/story?id=2801811; http://www.drugpolicy.org/library/factsheets/economiccons/fact_economic.cfm; http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5234
In June of this year Senator Webb said:
We find ourselves as a nation in the midst of a profound, deeply corrosive crisis that we have largely been ignoring at our peril. The national disgrace of our present criminal justice system does not present us with the horrifying immediacy of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, which in the end rallied our nation to combat international terrorism. It is not as visibly threatening as the recent crash in our economy.But the disintegration of this system, day by day and year by year, and the movement toward mass incarceration, with very little attention being paid to clear standards of prison administration or meaningful avenues of re-entry for those who have served their time, is dramatically affecting millions of lives, draining billions of dollars from our economy, destroying notions of neighborhood and family in hundreds of communities across the country, and – most importantly – it is not making our country a safer or a fairer place.[10]
Isn't someone going to argue that the current policy should not be revisited? Where are the champions for the War on Drugs? Won't someone step to the podium in the U.S. Senate and angrily demand more prisons for drug offenders? Some higher penalties for crack cocaine? More ships patrolling the coast for drug mules? Less funding for treatment for American addicts and more money to burn poppy fields in Central Asia? How about a national “Just say no” campaign instead of drug programs? Where are the proponents of these policies now?
Hopefully, the Commission Act will produce a rational, objective study that Members of Congress can use to justify votes that for years would have been derided as “soft on crime.” Or maybe the problem has finally become even more obvious than that. Maybe we have other things to worry about.
TOP TWENTY COUNTRIES IN NUMBER OF PRISONERS (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pri_per_cap-crime-prisoners-per-capita):
# 1 | 2,019,234 prisoners | ||
# 2 | 1,549,000 prisoners | ||
# 3 | 846,967 prisoners | ||
# 4 | 313,635 prisoners | ||
# 5 | 308,304 prisoners | ||
# 6 | 213,815 prisoners | ||
# 7 | 198,386 prisoners | ||
# 8 | 181,944 prisoners | ||
# 9 | 172,888 prisoners | ||
# 10 | Iran: | 163,526 prisoners | |
# 11 | 112,000 prisoners | ||
# 12 | 87,000 prisoners | ||
# 13 | 84,357 prisoners | ||
# 14 | 80,467 prisoners | ||
# 15 | 78,753 prisoners | ||
# 16 | 74,904 prisoners | ||
# 17 | 74,170 prisoners | ||
# 18 | 70,383 prisoners | ||
# 19 | 69,502 prisoners | ||
# 20 | 64,051 prisoners |
[3] Periods of Alcohol Prohibition in various countries:
1900 to 1948 in Prince Edward Island, and for shorter periods in other locations in Canada
1914 to 1925 in Russia and the Soviet Union
1915 to 1922 in Iceland (though beer was still prohibited until 1989)
1916 to 1927 in Norway (wine and beer also included in 1917)
1919 in Hungary (in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, March 21 to August 1; called szesztilalom)
1919 to 1932 in Finland (called kieltolaki)
1920 to 1933 in the United States
1914 to 1925 in Russia and the Soviet Union
1915 to 1922 in Iceland (though beer was still prohibited until 1989)
1916 to 1927 in Norway (wine and beer also included in 1917)
1919 in Hungary (in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, March 21 to August 1; called szesztilalom)
1919 to 1932 in Finland (called kieltolaki)
1920 to 1933 in the United States
[5]http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/04/23/webb-pot-legalization-on-the-table-in-prison-reform-effort/; http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/04/23/webb-pot-legalization-on-the-table-in-prison-reform-effort/ (argument on both sides of whether the War on Drugs has reduced crime). http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/34
[7] The “balloon effect”, a term of art that describes how supply remains unaffected by the elimination of individual networks, further explains why the mission of the DEA and other federal drug accomplishes nothing except for punishment of the specific offenders. "This balloon effect is commonly seen in South and Central Asia, and Latin America, where the majority of illicit drugs are produced and trafficked and where international interdiction efforts are focused. Drug trafficking continues to expand, with networks including cross-border cooperation and international connections. This growth and increased organization results not only from an expanding consumer market, but from poverty. The war against drugs increases the cost of drugs, making drug production and sale more profitable and therefore more attractive - particularly to those living in poverty. Drug trafficking across the world exists as a $400 billion (US) trade - drug traffickers earn gross profit margins of 300 per cent.” http://www.drugpolicy.org/global/drugtraffick
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