Tag: war on drugs

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War on Drugs

I am against drug abuse on a deeply personal level, but I am against drug prohibition on every level, personal and political. But it doesn’t matter that I am or that The Wire reflects this, because our political culture cannot and will not produce the selfless courage necessary for a political leader to address the problem honestly. Our political culture only produces politicians and it serves only the relentless ambition of those willing to tell us what we think we want to hear. David Simon, Co-creator of “The Wire”.

Was a war ever fought, for so long, and with such poor results, as the war on drugs?

It was started over 40 years ago by Richard Nixon, as part of his law and order campaign, a successful appeal to middle America, in the belief that more resources and money and manpower could eliminate the scourge of drug addictions. In fact the opposite has happened: drug smuggling, sales, and use are more pervasive than ever before. The initial reduction in the amount of drugs entering the country resulted in increased prices which resulted in increased imports, more dealers, more runners, more robbery and murder, and more addiction. The war on drugs was a compete failure.

Now, in a normal situation, people might look at a program, at it’s goals and methods, and it’s expectations, and decide whether or not it was a success. And if it was a failure, they would abandon that program and try something else.

But the thing about drugs is that America can always imagine that it could be worse. It’s not easy to analyze the drug problem from the point of view of what the untold billions of dollars the war on drugs is costing America could do if they had been spent on treatment instead of interdiction.

As Simon observes, there is almost no politician with the guts to admit that the war on drugs is a complete failure even though, by any reasonable measure, it obviously is. Except, perhaps, for Ron Paul, who has more or less declared that if anyone wants to destroy himself with drugs, why should the government get in the way?

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Drug War Sponsors

The United States is going to give the government of Columbia $1.5 billion of aid in their war against drugs.

Now, on the surface, this might sound to you like a bad idea. You don’t think some of Columbia’s military and political leaders might get the idea that the more drugs Columbia supplies to the United States, the more money they are going to get for new equipment, training, and fringe benefits, do you? Or do you think that their reputation for honesty, integrity, and diligence is such that after a few years of aid, they will announce to the world that the program has been a success and therefore no more American money is needed?

It is pretty well documented that the small successes early on in the war against drugs contributed to the over-all failure of the same war. When the FBI and other government agencies cracked down on the most visible agents of drug trafficking in the early 1980’s, the prices of many of these drugs went soaring, which caused a huge number of new sellers to appear. Furthermore, the really smart dealers went deeper underground to avoid detection and became ever more entrenched and sophisticated, and almost impossible to stamp out. The result is that drugs are now far more profitable and widely available than ever before.

Isn’t that kind of shocking? If a private business set out to accomplish something that cost hundreds of billions of dollars over more than twenty years, it would probably have the good sense to sit down at some point and try to answer the question of whether it was moving closer or farther from it’s goal. If it found that, after twenty years, it was farther away from its goal than ever before, I tend to think they would stop wasting their money and come up with a new plan.

But this is a government plan of course. Ironically, the very people who most decry government waste in other areas of the economy– conservatives and Republicans– are the most enthusiastic about spending a few hundred billion more on the same self-defeating program.

And now they are pouring $1.5 billion into a corrupt Columbian government to ensure that even worse results can be obtained. You see, when the Columbian army is not busy stamping out drug dealers, or fighting an entrenched guerrilla movement, it tends to spend a lot of time and effort assassinating human rights activists and peasants.

Nice to know that now they will be able to violate human rights with state of the art equipment.

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Just Say No

Universities in Canada got 60% of their funding from the government in the 1960’s. Now they get 40%. The rest comes from tuition and corporate donations.

The Corporate sponsorship is disturbing.

Apparently, according to the Canadian Association of University Professors, many of these agreements are secret, especially in regard to intellectual property rights. It was this kind of agreement that led to the University of Toronto trying to silence researcher Nancy Oliveri when her research showed that there might be harmful side effects of a drug produced by Apotex.

In a related story, a professor at McMaster University imposed a new policy on all researchers at that facility: no meetings with representatives of drug companies. Why? Because he felt that medical research was becoming compromised by the intermingling of the interests of the drug companies with those of the universities and the medical profession itself.

Perhaps the most laughable slogan of the entire 1980’s was pet phrase of Nancy Reagan’s: “Just say no to drugs”. Just say no to drugs? Ritalin! Valium! Prozac! Viagra! Lithium! Etc. Etc. Etc. We are the most drug-addled society on earth! Say “no”? And bring the stock market crashing down?!

Our society loves drugs. Institutions love them because violent patients can be sedated into harmless mindless sacks of inert flesh. Doctors love them because they provide convenient and speedy personality modifications to persistently annoying patients, and spare them the aggravating ordeal of actually trying to find a real remedy. Drug companies love them—naturally—because they provide incredible profits, since they can charge far in excess of the actual cost of the chemicals in the prescription, to cover—ha ha—research and development. Research scientists love them because drug companies provide them with millions of dollars to conduct research to arrive at just that conclusion (and if they don’t reach that conclusion—see above—the money is withdrawn).

So what’s with this “just say no” campaign? Well, you see, those poor inner city blacks don’t play by the rules. First of all, their drugs don’t include a healthy royalty to some large pharmaceutical firm (just imagine their apoplexy had Nancy Reagan added—”and let’s all try to do with a little less Prozac and Valium ourselves, shall we?”). Secondly, they haven’t developed this wonderful rationale of how stressed out they all are and how they’ve all seen so many psychiatrists and been to all the doctors and just can’t get over this severe depression that’s been limiting their ability to work, you know… The truth is this: in the U.S., blacks constitute 14% of the drug-using population, but they constitute 58% of those convicted for drug use. Look at those numbers carefully. Think of all the movies and tv shows you see about drugs and crime. Think about the reality. The war on drugs is the war on black America. And this war cost $18 billion a year (Harpers Magazine, November 1999). And it is the most one-sided debacle in U.S. history. It has been lost over and over again but America continues to fight it because it’s a winner as an election issue.

It is at moments like this I feel somewhat pessimistic about the human race.

There is a pretty good argument to be made that marijuana, especially, is illegal today because it provides the same sort of hit that Prozac and Valium provide, but at much, much less cost. In fact, you could grow it yourself in your backyard, if the police would let you. A similar argument could be made for cocaine. So, even though I feel pessimistic, I must admit that there are signs of hope. In seven states, voters have indicated, by substantial margins, that they approve the use of marijuana for medical purposes. Representative Bob Barr, in fact– he of impeachment fame– used some nefarious and obscure loopholes to prevent the results of the vote in the District of Columbia from becoming known. When it was finally released, 70% of the voters supported medical use of marijuana. But Mr. Democracy, Bob Barr, has blocked the implementation of the law on a technicality.

It might strike you as surprising that it is only recently in human history that drugs like Cocaine and marijuana have been made illegal. The prohibition of these and other “recreational” drugs coincides perfectly with the rise of the large pharmaceutical companies (who also tried to ban or hobble sales of herbal remedies).

Ah, you say—but aren’t those evil, illegal drugs addictive? Precisely. Why some of them are almost as addictive as, say, lithium. In fact, many of the heavy duty, most frequently-prescribed pharmaceuticals are at least equally addictive.

So what am I saying?

First of all, I am not saying that drug use is good. Get that clear. I don’t drink more than two or three beers a YEAR myself. I dislike anything that messes with your mind. And I certainly don’t use any prescription drugs and whenever I hear of someone who is depressed or disturbed, I hope they find some way to deal with problems that does not involve pharmaceuticals.

However, just as Prohibition of alcohol failed, the war on drugs has failed. And just as most people came to realize that Prohibition did more damage than good, people should come to realize that the war on drugs does more harm than good. The war on alcohol produced powerful criminal organizations that branched out into prostitution, gambling, and murder. Does that sound familiar?

As shocking as the idea sounds, the fact is that some countries have already tried legalizing drugs. In Holland, marijuana and hashish are freely available. And surprise, surprise, more adolescents try marijuana in the U.S. than they do in Holland!

That drugs like cocaine and marijuana should be legal? Well, think about it. Alcohol, in terms of sheer quantity, does far more damage to our society than marijuana. Yet it’s perfectly legal. In fact, it is downright easy for any teenager to get a six pack or a bottle of wine.

We did try banning alcohol once too. Of course, we all know how disastrous that was, and how it led to the development of powerful criminal organizations in North America that branched out into other forms of crime and plagued our society for years afterwards. Does that sound familiar?

Now, the U.S. Supreme Court, featuring embarrassingly second-rate minds like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, appointed during the twelve years of Republican Administrations between Carter and Clinton, have been steadily eroding constitutional rights protecting citizens from “unreasonable search and seizure”. Police in helicopters can now peer inside your windows, and officers can search your car just because they feel like it. What does this mean? In California, according to Harper’s, an elderly grandfather was shot twice and killed by police who burst into his house in a hail of gunfire searching for a suspect who had lived next door fifteen years earlier. In New York, a mentally retarded, menstruating young girl was dragged naked from the shower and hand-cuffed while police searched the house. Again, no drugs were found.

Nor were any apologies offered. Why should we apologize? We’re the police! We’re in a war on drugs! You don’t apologize to civilian casualties during a war!

And those two cases are just the tip of the ice berg. Under the Supreme Court’s relaxed rules on search and seizure, it has become very profitable for police to pull suspects over the side of the road, seize their cars and property, and leave it to the hapless citizen to “prove” that the property was not used for the purpose of drug-dealing. Not every citizen is smart enough to respond within the 10 days allowed, or rich enough to afford a lawyer, or patient enough to challenge the constipated U.S. criminal court systems. It’s easier, quicker, and safer to please guilty to a reduced charge and turn snitch, thereby providing the police with fresh leads on new property to seize.

It’s utterly incredible, contemptible, and outrageous. Why isn’t this on the front pages of the newspapers, the lead story on television?

Because there’s no sex.

Hollywood stars can afford lawyers.

Everyone has been convinced by successive administrations that drugs is the number one problem in our society and nobody– not Al Gore, not George Bush Jr., not Bill Bradley, not even John McCain– has the guts to stand up to his juggernaut of imbecilic brutality.