What Will It Take?

We know we have a problem. But how can we quit the War on Drugs?

By Norm Stamper, Guest Writer

Since 1971 when Richard Nixon made his infamous declaration, we have spent over $1 trillion prosecuting the “War on Drugs.” What do we have to show for it? Illicit drugs are more readily available at higher levels of potency and lower costs than ever (labeling the current spike in cocaine prices a “success,” as the drug czar has done, is like saying oil producers lose money when prices go up). Our kids have virtually unfettered access to mood, mind, and behavior altering drugs. Yet we cling to our failed strategy, pumping another $69 billion down the rat hole each year.

Over 2.3 million Americans spent last night behind bars. In 2006, arrests of nonviolent drug offenders hit an all-time high of 1.9 million, 830,000 of them for marijuana offenses, 90 percent of them for simple possession. Feel safer?

Let’s be clear. The drug war has never been a battle against substances. It’s always been about people: poor people, young people, people of color. Not only has the drug war failed to achieve its mission of a “drug free” America, it has visited incalculable damage upon the lives of tens of millions of marginalized individuals and their families, all struggling to survive in this nation of plenty.

It’s not only Americans who suffer. The U.S.-led global war on drugs has produced a $500 billion international trafficking industry; political and economic destabilization; environmental devastation; and wholesale street violence in countries around the world, especially in Latin America. Thanks largely to obscene profits, and U.S. demand for meth, heroin, and cocaine, thousands of Mexicans will die this year, victims of shootouts, execution-style killings, and decapitations. The children of snitches, competing traffickers, honest cops, and judges will not be spared.

Here at home, we’ve seen drug-related corruption and criminality within our own police forces; the tragic deaths of law enforcement officers and innocent citizens (including grandmothers and toddlers), caught in the crossfire between rival drug dealers -- or gunned down on police raids gone bad; development of mistrust between local cops and the people they serve; and cruel, pointless harm to the physical and fiscal health of entire neighborhoods.

Today, we spend seven times more of our tax dollars on enforcement than on prevention and treatment. Drug addicts seeking to kick their addictions are hard pressed to find help; most don’t. Even sensible harm-reduction approaches, like clean needle exchanges are scarce or nonexistent in many areas, a testament to blind, ideological opposition and/or the timidity of political leadership.

The solution? The re-legalization and regulation of all drugs.

Prior to 1914, except in places like San Francisco (which, taking aim at its Chinese population, criminalized opium possession late in the 19th century) all drugs were legal. Then Congress, acting out of fear of “drug-crazed” blacks, Latinos, and Asians, began criminalizing every drug in sight. In 1920, with the passage of the Volstead Act and the 18th Amendment, we effectively criminalized America’s all-time favorite drug.

Not surprisingly, alcohol prohibition gave instant rise to a whole new lawless class, making criminal syndicates rich beyond their wildest dreams, and robbing government coffers of untaxed billions. Prohibition guaranteed armed conflict between rival dealers. Thousands of bootleggers and innocent folks were struck down by machine gun fire. Overdose deaths skyrocketed, the result of bad bathtub gin. Sound familiar?

In 1933, we wised up to the folly of prohibition and passed the 21st Amendment (thereby repealing the 18th, the only such repeal of a constitutional amendment in the history of the country). It was a good day for sanity and common sense.

Ah, but didn’t it increase the number of alcoholics? No. Well, surely it made alcohol more accessible to children, right? No. What repeal of prohibition did was to create industry-wide standards, enforced state by state, for the controlled regulation of the drinkable drug. When’s the last time you saw the driver of a Budweiser truck shooting it out with an Old Milwaukee distributor?

Regulation works. Not perfectly, of course. But who would you rather have controlling today’s illicit drugs? Cartels, with their kingpins and armed street traffickers, pushing product of lord knows what substance, quality or dosage? Or the government: presiding over every aspect of the growing, manufacturing, packaging, pricing, and regulated sales of those same drugs?

What will it take for us to end the drug war? The same wisdom, will, and courage it took our aroused forebears to admit that alcohol prohibition was a failure. Please join me in speaking out for a better answer. Demand an end to the War on Drugs.