Ending the War on Drugs
Thomas Swiss
May 9, 1991
The consequences of this nation's War on Drugs are, to say the least, frightening. Violent crime is on
the rise all over the nation; the rate of violent crime was up ten percent in America last year. Cities are
hardest hit by the high rates of crime; Baltimore, for example, has recently had its hundredth homicide
of the year; at this rate, 1991 will be the most murderous year there since 1972. And police in that city
estimate that forty percent of these homicides were drug-related. [So far, it's a murderous year in
Baltimore, Baltimore Sun, April 25, '91] Figures from Miami and New York City from the early 80's
show that about one-fourth of homicides in these cities were drug-related during those years.
[Wisotsky, p. 151] If the trend in these cities is similar to that in Baltimore, the War on Drugs has, in the
past few years, caused an increase in drug-related violent crime.
Federal and state governments are coming down hard on drug users, thinking that by eliminating drug
use, they will eliminate the violence - not realizing that it's the highly profitable drug trade, and not drug
use, that is getting people killed. But in spite of over ten billion dollars spent yearly on enforcement
efforts, the problem persists and gets worse. [The Costs of the War on Drugs, High Times, Sept '90]
The War on Drugs hasn't, and won't, reduce crime; but it is turning "the land of the free and the home
of the brave" into "the land of the imprisoned and the home of the scared-to-walk-the-streets-at- night."
Thanks to the War on Drugs, the United States now has the highest per-capita rate of imprisonment in
the world - 426 per 100,000 (according to a Sentencing Project report based on Justice Department
figures). This works out to over one million imprisoned persons. South Africa only locks up 333 of its
citizens per 100,000; the Soviet Union, 268 per 100,000. [The Iron Medal, The New York Times, Jan 9
'91] According to a Brookings Institution report released last October, if the U.S. prison population
continues to grow at this rate, half of America will be in jail by the year 2053. [News of the Weird,
Washington City Paper, Mar 22 '91] For comparison, note that the Netherlands imprisons only forty
citizens per 100,000, and Australia, only seventy-two. [The Iron Medal...] Both these nations have drug
policies that are much less punitive than that of the United States. To imprison as many people as the
United States does, we need a lot of convictions. And to get those convictions, law enforcement
organizations are trampling civil rights. The idea of probable cause for searches has almost
disappeared. In one case in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the court allowed into evidence cocaine
seized by a D.C. police officer who admitted that he began questioning a bystander at the Greyhound
bus terminal because, in the court's words, "he had nothing else to do." [4th Amendment is Trampled in
Drug Offensive, Critics Say, The Washington Post, May 7 '90] As for searches of people's homes,
James Joy, executive director of the ACLU's Denver chapter, says, the courts "give warrants just
about anytime the police ask for them." [Quick Flashes, High Times, Dec '90].
And many of these raids produce no drugs, only damaged private property. The Columbus Dispatch
reported that narcotics officers fail to find drugs in one out of every three local raids. [Quick Flashes,
High Times, Jan '91] A Denver Post article reported that nearly half of that city's narcotics raids fail to
produce any drugs.
Free speech is also in serious jeopardy. Just talking about drugs is now enough to get you arrested.
Paul Hager of the Bloomington, Indiana chapter of the ACLU, says:
...Anyway, a case has come before us for review from the proprietor of a
garden/hydroponics shop. This person is under indictment for conspiracy to grow and sell
marijuana. The charges are based upon the fact that the proprietor advertised in High
Times and Sensimilla Tips (among other pro-MJ [marijuana] publications) and is alleged
to have sold equipment and given MJ growing information to a couple of undercover
agents. In other words, and by extension, it may well be illegal for a librarian to help a
patron find back issues of Sensimilla Tips on the shelf because that information could be
used to grow marijuana.
[USENET message [email protected]]
(The emphasis is Hager's.) Writing about drugs, or advertising with does who do, can also get you in
trouble. In October of 1989, in an attempt to shut down the indoor production of marijuana, the DEA
coordinated raids in 46 states on stores specializing in indoor gardening supplies, resulting in the
confiscation of books, merchandise and records from more than three dozen stores, and the closing of
several others. Eleven store owners were arrested. All of the stores investigated advertised in High
Times or Sinsemilla Tips, indicating that this was very likely an attempt to scare advertisers away from
these magazines, and shut them down - and tear up freedom of the press. [Marijuana McCarthyism,
The New York Times, Dec 30 '89]
Freedom of religion also gets trampled in the drug war. The law attempts to prevent some Native
Americans, who use peyote in their religious ceremonies, and Rastafarians, who use marijuana in theirs,
from freely practicing their religion. It is interesting to note that during alcohol prohibition in the U.S.,
Roman Catholics were still allowed to use wine in their religious ceremonies.
To drain any remaining life from the First Amendment, we have "anti-loitering" laws, such as one in the
District of Columbia that allows police to cordon off streets, order people out of an area, and arrest
anyone who gathers in a group of two or more people on charges of "failure to move on," [Powerful
arms of drug war arousing concern for rights, The New York Times, Oct 16 '89]
But despite all these draconian measures, drug use and abuse continues; and history shows that it will.
Two of our most popular legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco, have in the past had very harsh, and very
unsuccessful, efforts directed against them. European nations like Bavaria and Russia were
unsuccessful in eliminating tobacco use in the 1600's, in spite of handing down the death penalty for
mere possession. [Szasz, p.185] And the United States' attempt at alcohol prohibition between 1919 and
1933 stands as a shining example of a very, very bad idea; alcohol use continued, many people died
from wood alcohol poisoning, and gangsters, smugglers and bootlegers profited.
Drug wars fail because there is a natural drive for intoxication. Humans have a strong drive to seek out
altered states of consciousness, whether drug-induced or not. Infants rock themselves into bliss;
children whirl or spin (a behavior also found in adult behavior such as dancing) or roll down hills to
become dizzy. Many adults seek out such "natural" highs in sensory deprivation tanks, "thrill" sports, and
meditation classes. Drug taking simply provides a short-cut to these highs.
And such behavior is not an unique to humans; many other animals will seek out intoxicating plants or
alcohol-containing fermented fruits. Bighorn sheep in the Canadian Rockies nibble on a narcotic lichen
that grows on the bare rocks. The hallucinogenic properties of mescal beans makes them popular with
many creatures who inhabit the Texas desert. Drunken elephants have been responsible for deaths in
West Bengal. Every February, migrating robins in south California gorge themselves on ripening
firethorn and toyon berries and go on a rampage. In the Andes, animals of all sorts eat the
cocaine-containing leaves and seeds of the coca plant. [High Times in the Wild Kingdom, Newsweek,
Jan 1 1990]
The attempt to eliminate drug use is a doomed quest. NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse)
estimates place the number of people who use marijuana (by far the most commonly used illegal drug)
at 11.6 million. [Quick Flashes, High Times, Mar '91] (This is almost certainly a very conservative
estimate - as one researcher put it, it depends on people's honestly answering the question, "I'm from
the government. How often do you use illegal drugs?" The survey used by NIDA also only reaches
households, and not the homeless, prisoners, and people in dormitories and barracks. [A Dirty Drug
Secret, Newsweek, Feb 19 '90]) We couldn't lock up even these regular drug users. If we were to try
to imprison everyone who ever used illegal drugs, we'd have to find jail space for almost 66 million
people. [Quick Flashes, ..., Mar '91] Current United States drug policy is a failure, but the question
remains - what can we do about it? We first must determine what changes need to be made to drug
laws; then, we must determine a plan of action for bringing about these changes. Proposals for
drug-policy reform range from simple decriminalization to a total removal of all legal restrictions on the
use of drugs. In determining which policy to work towards, we need a plan that is radical enough to
produce the desired results, while moderate enough to gain wide-spread support.
Decriminalization plans call for a reduction in criminal penalties for the use of drugs, and a redirection
of resources towards treatment rather than enforcement efforts. While an improvement over current
policy, it still leaves millions of Americans criminals, and can easily slide right back into the current
situation. It still involves an extension of government powers into the private lives of citizens, and is
therefore not acceptable. A totally libertarian plan, removing all legal restrictions on drug use, suffers
from the opposite problem; it may be quite workable, and produce the desired results, but it would be
difficult to find widespread support for such a plan.
One interesting plan between these extremes is proposed by Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation. In his Consulting Pharmacist model of legalization, drugs would be purchased from a
pharmacist trained to counsel people in safe drug use, who would try to steer users to the least harmful
drugs. Only those with "drug licenses" certifying that they had passed a course in drug education would
be legally able to purchase drugs. Those who became addicted would be given different licenses, and
would receive special counseling when they received their drugs. [The Costs of the War on Drugs ... ]
To prevent the formation of a black market, drug licenses must be reasonably easy to obtain - not much
more difficult than obtaining a driver's license. This system places few restrictions on casual users, but
still tries to prevent addiction and abuse, and provides help for those who do become addicts.
But even a good plan for drug policy reform is useless if we cannot bring it about. Past effort to change
drug policy have concentrated on the legislative and judicial branches of the government, but these
efforts have not met with much success. Lawmakers work for those laws that will keep them in office,
not necessarily for those that bring about good results. We need to create a situation in which working
for drug-policy reform will keep a lawmaker in office. We can bring this about by refocusing our efforts
on the powerful fourth branch of our government - the electorate.
We need to get the truth about the War on Drugs out to the electorate. In any war, the government
relies on controlling information to keep the support of the citizens. Innocence may be the first casualty
of war, but truth is its first prisoner. As long as people believe the misinformation put out by groups like
the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, they will support the War on Drugs. If people believe that
marijuana leads to heroin, that everyone who ever tries cocaine becomes an addict, that LSD makes
people crazy, or that PCP turns otherwise peaceful people into violent lunatics, then they will put up
with, and even applaud, a war to get rid of these evil, dangerous chemicals. So our top priority must be
to dispel these drug myths.
We need to target specific parts of the relegalization argument to specific audiences. To those living in
high crime areas, we need to demonstrate to their attention how drug laws cause crime by raising drug
prices and profits, and how the impossibility of drug-law enforcement encourages disrespect for the
law. Citizens who are more well off may be swayed more by arguments concerning the erosion of civil
liberties. It would be beneficial to get even more specific, targeting groups with certain political views
with appropriate arguments. To members of the pro-choice movement, for example, we might stress
how both abortion laws and drug laws attempt to legislate what an individual may do with his or her
own body.
Once the electorate knows the truth about the War on Drugs, the conclusion that the War must end will
follow. But how can we communicate these messages to the electorate?
The simplest way we can get information out is to engage in point-by-point refutation whenever we see
drug hysteria. Write letters to the editor when inaccurate information about drugs appears in the
newspaper. Complain to the school board when our children receive inaccurate information in drug
education classes. We cannot allow inaccurate information to pass unchallenged.
But simply responding to the opposition is not enough. The use of mass media advertising can a be very
effective way of disseminating information and swaying opinions. Television advertising by groups like
the Partnership for a Drug-Free America is partially responsible for the spread of drug misinformation;
it would be nice if we could use this medium to get correct information to the public. Unfortunately,
such advertising is rather expensive. Newspaper advertising can also be effective in swaying opinions;
for example, the recent "Poisoning of America" newspaper advertising campaign has been credited
with persuading McDonald's restaurants to begin to provide lower-fat menu options. But cost can still
be prohibitive for many grassroots anti-drug war organizations. And neither sort of advertising can be
easily targeted to a specific audience. Eventually, we will have to use these media to be taken seriously
by a large part of the electorate (the American voter is used to getting his information on political issues
from television); but we need a less expensive way to begin to build the large base of support that
would provide funding for such advertising.
An inexpensive method of getting the word out is the production of simple one-page fliers or leaflets.
Such leaflets can be cheaply produced, using modern document technology; all that's needed is access
to a computer, a printer, and a copying machine. One single-spaced page can hold over 500 words -
much more information than a TV or newspaper ad. These leaflets can be easily targeted to specific
audiences, and can be hand- distributed or mailed. By placing the text of such leaflets in the public
domain, and including messages encouraging people to copy and redistribute the text, we can reach
many people at a low cost.
Ending the War on Drugs will bring great benefits to American society. Drug-trade related crime will
cease. With purity laws regulating currently illegal drugs, the many lives lost yearly to drug impurities
will be saved. The erosion of civil liberties will cease. Legalization will prompt drug companies to work
on producing safer recreational drugs. Resources currently directed towards drug law enforcement will
be freed up for other uses - such as help for addicts, and social programs to combat the conditions that
drive people into drug addiction to start with. When we stop jailing people for drug use, we'll have
enough prison space to house violent criminals. When we make the people of this nation aware of these
benefits, they will begin to see drug policy reform in a favorable light. Only then will we be able to
convince lawmakers to enact the necessary changes.