| A Century Of Prohibition Has Not Worked
The federal budget for the drug war in the first year of
the new millennium is $17 billion.In 1972 when President Richard
Nixon first called for a "war against drugs," the federal
drug-law enforcement budget was about $101 million.
It is difficult for most of us to comprehend what these numbers
mean. But the true magnitude of cost can be understood if
we consider that in 1972, the average monthly Social Security
retirement check was $177. If Social Security benefits had
increased at the same rate as drug-war spending, the monthly
benefits would now be $30,444 a month. Similarly, the average
1972 salary of $114 per week would have soared to $19,608
a week.
What have we got for our money?
President Clinton assures us we are winning, as did his predecessors.
Yet, for good reason, people in law enforcement and local
communities are unconvinced. Although it appears that casual
illegal drug use has declined in recent years, regular use
has not. And young people are increasingly using drugs and
at an earlier age.
Furthermore, the decline in casual drug use may be unrelated
to the war on drugs. Cigarette smoking, and consumption of
hard liquor and high cholesterol food, all as dangerous as
illegal drug use, declined because of greater awareness of
health dangers, not because consumers were jailed or because
the government reduced the supply of these substances.
During the past decade, opium production has more than doubled
in Southeast Asia and cocaine production also increased. Eighty
to 90 percent of illegal drugs shipped to this country arrive
undetected. Illegal drugs are cheaper and more potent. The
United States, indeed the world, is awash in illegal drugs.
The vast profits resulting from prohibition a mark-up as great
as 17,000 percent - have led to worldwide corruption of public
officials and widespread violence among drug traffickers and
dealers that endangers whole communities, cities, and nations.
The United Nations reports that there is a $500 billion international
black market in drugs. In our own country, drug-related overdose
deaths and drug emergency room visits have increased. Half
of seniors in high school report using an illegal drug and
85 percent of them say illegal drugs are easier to obtain
than beer.
As we approach the year 2000, we should be mindful that the
drug war started about 100 years ago.Protestant missionaries
in China and other religious groups joined with temperance
organizations in convincing Congress that drugs were evil,
and that drug users were dangerous, immoral people.
On Dec. 17, 1914, the religious groups got their version
of sin outlawed in the Harrison Act. Until this federal law,
the nation had viewed drug use as a social and medical dilemma.
Making possession of drugs a federal crime was a radical change
in policy. It certainly did not solve the drug problem, but
it did give birth to unanticipated social damage.
I was a policeman for 35 years of this century. As a beat
officer in New York's Harlem, and as police chief in Kansas
City and San Jose, I caused many drug users to be locked up.
I have come to believe that jailing people simply because
they put certain chemicals into their bloodstream is a gross
misuse of police and criminal law. Jailing drug users does
not lessen drug use, and incarceration usually destroys the
person's life and does immense harm to that person's family
and neighborhood.Non-whites have borne the brunt of the punishment
even though most drug use is by whites. Alfred Blumstein,
former president of the American Society of Criminologists,
described the drug war as "...an assault on the Africa-American
community.The current protests over racial profiling by the
police are a reflection of the damage that an ill-chosen law
enforcement war against drugs has on the ability of the police
to win the cooperation that they need to do their job.
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Because drug transactions are consensual, the police do not have
a victim, witnesses and physical evidence that helps them solve
crimes like murder, assault, robbery, rape and burglary. And
under the Fourth Amendment, the police, with few exceptions,
are not allowed to search people or their homes without a warrant.
Yet, last year, state and local police in the United States
made approximately 1,400,000 arrests for illegal possession
of drugs. Overwhelmingly, these were minor arrests and rarely
did they involve a court approved warrant.
The inescapable conclusion is that in hundreds of thousands
of cases police officers violated their oath to uphold the
Constitution and often committed perjury so that the evidence
would be admitted. The practice is so prevalent that the term
"testilying" is frequently substituted in police jargon for
"testifying." The injury that unlawful searches and perjury
by the police does to the credibility of our justice system
is immeasurable.
Just as damaging is the destruction of trust that follows
exposure of gangster cops who have robbed drug dealers, sold
drugs and framed people in the communities that they were
sworn to protect.
The nation has been unable to face the failure of our drug
policies and to examine alternatives that would lessen dangerous
drug use because we are still captives of the false stereotypes
of drugs and drug users created a century ago by religious
zealots.
The new millennium provides the opportunity for reflection
and change. Marijuana should be decriminalized. There is no
record of anyone dying from marijuana or committing a murder
under its effects. Any number of scientific studies have indicated
that in some cases it may be an effective medicine and it
is certainly a less dangerous drug than alcohol. We would
eliminate almost 700,000 arrests a year which would not only
save money but also avoid ruining the lives of those arrested.
In addition, our country should revert to the pre-Harrison
Act principle that no one should be arrested if his/her only
crime is putting certain chemicals into their bloodstream.
Treatment should be substituted for arrests. As to the "harder"
drugs, we should reject the inane demagogic slogan of a "drug
free America" and recognize that drugs are here and they need
to be dealt with on a humane and just basis.
Once we are beyond the emotional straight-jacket imposed
by the Harrison Act lobbyists, we can study how other countries
minimize the harm of drugs. The Swiss, for example, found
during a five-year experiment that providing heroin to addicts
actually reduced heroin use and significantly reduced the
crime committed by the addicts. The Netherlands regulates
and controls the distribution of small amounts of hashish
and marijuana and has a lower per capita use of drugs and
lower crime rates than the United States.
As long ago as 1936, August Vollmer, former police chief
of Berkeley and later professor of management at the University
of California, Berkeley, and the leading police expert of
his time wrote: "Repression has driven this vice underground
and produced the narcotic smugglers and supply agents who
have grown wealthy. Drug addiction is not a police problem;
it never has and never can be solved by policemen. It is first
and last a medical problem ... ."
There is no panacea, but it is clear that continuing to do
more of what has not worked in the past century is not the
way to start a new millennium. We have paid a heavy price
in wasted lives and money for not listening to August Vollmer
63 years ago.
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