WAR AGAINST THE WAR ON DRUGS

The war against the war on drugs continues. Nicholas Kristof had an op-ed column in The New York Times which offers a strong case against the war on drugs. The problem with his column is that it is full of embellishments and half-truths. His figure of 500,000 people in our prisons for drug offenses is highly suspect, if not preposterous. And most of those in prison for "possession" are really in there for the sale of substantial amounts, having copped a plea to the lesser charge of possession.

The "reformers" are fond of propagandizing the number of people in prison who are drug users. That may account for the inflated 500,000 figure. That is the same story they gave us years ago about alcohol users in prison. The truth is that those drug users have been convicted of thefts, burglaries, armed robberies, rapes and murders, crimes they committed while being willing members of a criminal subculture. To those who say that many of those crimes were committed to feed a drug habit, I say that they would have been thieves, burglars, robbers and murderers even if they had not been using any drugs.

Kristof trumpets the position of LEAP, an organization of cops, prosecutors, judges and citizens who oppose the war on drugs and advocate the legalization of drugs. Big deal. Those renegade cops and prosecutors represent less than 1% of their professions, the other 99-plus percent remaining firmly opposed to the legalization of drugs.

Oh yes, what about Kristof mentioning that a Harvard economist estimates this country spends $44.1 billion a year in enforcing our drug laws. Well, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the current federal bailouts. According to The New York Times, the same publication that carried Kristof’s column, in less than half a year, the federal government has spent $700 billion bailing out AIG, a number of banks, GM and Chrysler and it has spent an additional $2.5 Trillion – that’s trillion with a "T" – through April 30 on other economic rescue programs.

I could go on and rip apart a number of other points Kristof makes, but to what avail? The problem is that we have fought the war on drugs the wrong way. The Japanese have done a much better job. They put their efforts into reducing the demand by resorting to harsh measures against drug users, no exceptions made. Japan has a 99% conviction rate and drug users are sent either to prisons or confined in drug rehab programs.

Japan’s prisons have not been overloaded with drug users because, knowing what will happen if they get caught, relatively few of their people are into using illegal drugs. And by successfully reducing the demand, the Japanese have significantly reduced the number of criminals involved in the illegal sale and distribution of drugs. But in the United States, resorting to harsh measures against drug users would be politically incorrect.

Here is Kristof's bogus column:

The New York Times
June 13, 2009

DRUGS WON THE WAR
By Nicholas D. Kristof

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

"We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs," Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. "What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure."

For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.

Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)

I’ve seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr. Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.

Mr. Stamper is active in Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, an organization of police officers, prosecutors, judges and citizens who favor a dramatic liberalization of American drug laws. He said he gradually became disillusioned with the drug war, beginning in 1967 when he was a young beat officer in San Diego.

"I had arrested a 19-year-old, in his own home, for possession of marijuana," he recalled. "I literally broke down the door, on the basis of probable cause. I took him to jail on a felony charge." The arrest and related paperwork took several hours, and Mr. Stamper suddenly had an "aha!" moment: "I could be doing real police work."

It’s now broadly acknowledged that the drug war approach has failed. President Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to banish the war on drugs phraseology, while shifting more toward treatment over imprisonment.

The stakes are huge, the uncertainties great, and there’s a genuine risk that liberalizing drug laws might lead to an increase in use and in addiction. But the evidence suggests that such a risk is small. After all, cocaine was used at only one-fifth of current levels when it was legal in the United States before 1914. And those states that have decriminalized marijuana possession have not seen surging consumption.

"I don’t see any big downside to marijuana decriminalization," said Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland who has been skeptical of some of the arguments of the legalization camp. At most, he said, there would be only a modest increase in usage.

Moving forward, we need to be less ideological and more empirical in figuring out what works in combating America’s drug problem. One approach would be for a state or two to experiment with legalization of marijuana, allowing it to be sold by licensed pharmacists, while measuring the impact on usage and crime.

I’m not the only one who is rethinking these issues. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has sponsored legislation to create a presidential commission to examine various elements of the criminal justice system, including drug policy. So far 28 senators have co-sponsored the legislation, and Mr. Webb says that Mr. Obama has been supportive of the idea as well.

"Our nation’s broken drug policies are just one reason why we must re-examine the entire criminal justice system," Mr. Webb says. That’s a brave position for a politician, and it’s the kind of leadership that we need as we grope toward a more effective strategy against narcotics in America.