Abaker

Alyssa Baker

10/21/08

American Federal Government

Professor Hanley

The War on Drugs is a Wasted Effort

When is the last time that you, or anyone else for that matter, sat down at a fast-food joint ready

to bite into a greasy, mouthwatering quarter pounder only to have it wrenched from your hands, because it

was “dangerous” for you to eat? Seems ridiculous, but the truth is that the side effects of a steady diet of

high-calorie, high-cholesterol, and high-fat foods are type 2 diabetes and obesity. Both of these have been

linked to clogged arteries and as a consequence, heart disease and even heart failure (NIH). Here in

America, however, we are free to gulp down these tasty greaseball burgers because we have the right to

put those harmful foods into our own bodies without the government interfering in our delicious business.

The same applies to far more addictive, common, or deadly substances such as tobacco, which caused

18.1% of all deaths in the U.S. in 2000 and alcohol, which caused 85,000 deaths in 2000 (Mokdad). We

are allowed to consume as much of those substances as we’d like so long as we are old enough, and not

under the influence of them when say, behind the wheel of a two ton vehicle. It is understood that even if

people are abusing these substances, they are quite welcome to do so, so long as they don’t harm anyone

else as a result. Why is it, then, that the government feels the need to prohibit other drugs that cause less

harm, such as marijuana? Why are we throwing harmless people into prisons for years for such small

offenses that pose no threat to society? We do it partly because of our candidates’ promises to be “tough

on drugs.” This means of course that they are going to enforce the U.S.’s current, failing policies. The war

on drugs is a failure and a wasted effort because its strict enforcement and punishments cause more

problems than they solve, and it is a complete violation of the bill of rights.

To see some of the underlying causes of our failed drug laws, one needn’t look farther than the

earliest prohibition laws. The first prohibition laws passed in the last few years of the nineteenth century

were state and local ordinances that limited commerce in cocaine, marijuana, and opium. The purpose of

these was not to target all drug users and dealers. Instead they were racist laws aimed at drug users who
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were black, Mexican, and Chinese, respectively (Gray).These laws were put in place because of the

perceived threat men of these races posed to white women. I am guessing that a common fear among

whites was the thought of a lady walking down the street and being captured by a Chinese man to be

raped in a shady opium den on the other side of town. Clearly, these laws were without merit and were not

designed to help prevent drug use (or at least not for anyone who was white.)

Many other drug enforcement laws came and went, and the most notorious was of course the

prohibition of alcohol passed in 1920. To date it is the only constitutional amendment that tried to limit

the power of the people, and as expected, it failed. It was repealed in 1933 because it increased alcohol

use and sale rather than deter or prevent it. At the start of 1921, there were approximately 96,000 illicit

distilleries and fermentors seized. By 1930, that number had jumped to around 282,000 (Druglibrary.org).

Some states and towns today continue to enforce “dry” laws that prohibit alcohol, and some see this as a

legitimate solution. “It’s a problem best left to the states,” some federalists might say (the ones who

happen to think prohibition is an okay idea, anyhow).

However, other laws after “the noble experiment” of Prohibition turned a “problem best left to the

states”into a national problem. The passage of the marihuana act of 1937 took the power to enforce laws

regarding marijuana use and sale away from the states. The government (more specifically, the Federal

Bureau of Narcotics) achieved passing this act by convincing the states that marijuana was an evil

“menace.” (Belenko).

The main way in which the current zero-tolerance drug policies of the U.S. cause harm today is

that we treat drug users and abusers as evil criminals rather than addicts with a problem, or as ordinary

people who are using drugs for recreation or more personal reasons. It is for this reason that prohibiting

drug use is against basic rights of U.S. citizens - it takes away the freedom to choose, despite the fact that

the individual would not be causing harm to anyone else. We do not go easy on people, even for minor

offenses like smoking a joint or having marijuana or other illegal drugs in their possession. 1.8 million

people were arrested for drug abuse violations in 2007, which made up 13% of total arrests for 2007;

more than any other offense. 82.5% of violations were possession, and 42.1% of those were for
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possessing marijuana (U.S. Department of Justice). One in every 31 adults in the United states was in a

prison, a jail, on probation or parole at the end of 2006 (Bureau of Justice Statistics).We bust petty dealers

and smugglers, leaving behind the dangerous, better organized and more violent traffickers and

smugglers, as proven by independent researchers at Syracuse University (Lichtblau and Meyer).

Supporters of the War on Drugs would argue that there is a link between crime and drug use, and

that locking away drug users is a way to prevent future robberies, or future crimes. However, a study in

1934 by Walter Bromberg, M.D., debunked the idea that crime was caused from drug abuse. He studied

2,216 convicted felons in New York County by having them psychiatrically examined. He found that “Of

the 361 individuals diagnosed as a psychopathic personality in the routine psychiatric examination 32 (9

percent) were drug addicts and of these only seven had smoked marijuana for any period of time. None of

the assault cases could be said to have been committed under the drug’s influence,” (Grinspoon 18),

(Bromberg). And “It is clear from this study, that in this region the drug is a ‘breeder of crime’ only

when used by psychopathic types in whom the drug allows the emergence of aggressive, sexual or anti-

social tendencies” (Bromberg). In short, the people who were criminals were criminals whether they took

drugs or not.

Does it still sound like justice is being served? Keep in mind that drug laws are notoriously

lenient to people who are well-off or notable. Paul McCartney and Oliver Stone have been arrested for

drug possession and have merely been fined or put on probation (Pinkerton). It sounds to me as though

those who were going to commit crimes were going to commit them regardless of their addiction to any

sort of drug, and celebrities are getting off scott-free for doing the exact same harmless activities as

ordinary citizens. So why do we continue to imprison innocent, harmless people (and not even making the

punishments equal for everyone), when it is clearly the wrong thing to do?

The sad truth is, incarceration has become a giant business. For example, California, from the day

it became a state until the year 1984, had built a grand total of 13 prisons. Yet in the next 15 years, no less

than 20 prisons were built.(Gray) Our government is sponsoring an ever-growing “Prison-Industrial

complex,” and your tax dollars are supporting locking up hundreds of thousands of nonviolent people for
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years, for petty crimes in order to benefit this booming business. One particularly disturbing example of

jailing nonviolent people and giving them unfair punishments is the number of women in California in

1993 who were imprisoned for petty crimes like possession, or transporting drugs a short distance to, say,

their boyfriends. 75% of these women were/are single mothers of children. Their punishment, in addition

to being thrown in jail for a ridiculous amount of time, is to have their children taken from them (since by

law she has “abandoned her child” if she is in jail) and taxpayers are essentially paying close to $145,000

per year per mother in order to keep her separated from her child/children. (Gray) How is this fair or just,

to either the mother or the citizens of the United States who are paying into this big prison business for no

legitimate reason? An interesting quote about this “business” comes from the director of President

Nixon’s National Commission of Marijuana and Drug Abuse, Michael Sonnenreich: “…This year we

have spent $796 million, and the budget estimates that have been submitted indicate that we will exceed

the $1 billion mark. When we do so, we become, for want of a better term, a drug abuse industrial

complex.” (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972)

Despite the threat to constitutional rights that the War on Drugs is, and the booming business it

seems to be turning into, those in favor of our zero-tolerance policy often support it because of the harm

that drugs cause to the people that they know and love, and they sincerely believe that punishments will

help deter others from going through addiction. Though it is true that drug use can be a nasty and painful

ordeal, it is best for the U.S. to help treat the illness of drug abusers rather than lock them away and

criminalize their behavior for the sake of building bigger prisons, and there are solutions to this problem.

So, what exactly are our solutions? We do not have to “surrender” in the “War” by making

everything fully legalized, though supporters of the War on Drugs would try to make it sound like that is

what our policy would jump directly to if we stopped being “tough” on drugs. There are more logical,

reasonable solutions that would help try to prevent drug use, but would not severely punish mostly

nonviolent people with absurdly long jail sentencesfor possessing or using drugs. Some alternatives
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suggested by Judge James P. Gray are drug decriminalization (which would keep drugs illegal, but would

allow people under specific guidelines to be free to use drugs without police violating their privacy),

regulated distribution (strictly controlled sale of designated drugs to adults, similar to laws already in

place in some states for distributing alcohol), and in place of punishment for drug users, dealers, and

abusers we could have rehabilitation programs and medicalization. Rehabilitation programs could be

enforced (mandatory) or voluntary, and medicalization would help prevent prescription drug abuse by

allowing a steady stream of prescription meds to patients (not enough for them to get a high or overdose

from, and not depriving it from them so they would suffer withdrawal symptoms.) Medicalization would

also allow doctors to exchange dirty, used needles for clean ones, helping to stop the spread of many

diseases that are spread through dirty used needles including HIV, AIDS, and hepatitis C. In the state of

Connecticut in 1992, needles were sold in drugstores. The policy “resulted in a 40 percent decrease in

needle sharing among injecting drug users, at no cost to taxpayers.” (Bender 26). On the flipside of this

was The Harrison Act and the Supreme Court decision in the case of Webb v. United States which made it

illegal for doctors to dispense prescription drugs to those suffering from narcotic withdrawal, and as a

result, the addicts had to turn to the criminal underworld to get their fix. Had there been a steady stream

of prescription medicine, or even better, some sort of rehab or recovery program available to help these

addicts, they would not have had to turn to shady dealers for help with their problem. (U.S. Supreme

Court Center).

Many European countries have adopted systems similar to the ones mentioned above, and they

have been successful (Gray). Europeans succeed at controlling drug abuse because they treat the use of

soft drugs as a civil liberty rather than a menacing threat to society. They also try to help and support

people who are addicted to hard drugs, rather than lock them up for years and shame them into thinking

they are evil felons. Some would argue that not everything that works overseas would work in our nation.

I would agree, save for the fact that we HAD a very effective law with an emphasis on prevention rather

than punishment, all the way back in 1906.

The most successful law dealing with drugs in U.S. history was the Pure Food and Drug Act. By

requiring companies that had used drugs in their products (mainly “medicines” and “miracle cure-alls”) to

explicitly label their ingredients and their ingredients’ strength on their containers, and by having

government-run educational programs explaining to people the dangers of narcotics in various substances,

substantial and permanent declines in the sales of such products occurred (Gray). The act accomplished

its goal of significantly reducing drug abuse by neither prohibiting the sale of drugs nor demonizing the

users of the products.

So how can we apply the theories of successful drug laws over seas, and previous, more

successful U.S. policies here in today’s “tough on drugs” culture? My personal solution for the problem

would consist of two key parts, and are obvious, common elements in all of the previously mentioned

solutions.

Part one: adopt a system that rehabilitates and helps drug addicts rather than locking them away.

Do you really think a drug addict is going to come out of a long jail sentence feeling clean as a whistle?

We need to help drug addicts recover in much the same way that we try to help the insane, the alcohol

abusers, the anorexic, and many others. Part two: educate and inform. The more people we have

spreading the word about the harm that serious drug addiction can lead to, the more we can prevent drug

abuse. This is especially true for children in middle and high school, but the message can be spread to

adults as well.

Prevention through education and positive recovery for addicts is the key to success. America has

never been and will never be drug free, but if we can change our policies to more effective, positive ones,

we can save some lives and try to change minds without unnecessarily and harshly sentencing ordinary

citizens for desiring their personal freedom, something that we as Americans should cherish above all

else.
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Works Cited

Belenko, Steven R.. Drugs and Drug Policy in America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Bender, David L.. The War On Drugs: Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc, 1998.
(Nadelmann p. 26)

Bromberg, Walter. "Marihuana Intoxication - AClinical Study of Cannabis Sativa Intoxication."

"Crime in the United States, 2007." fbi.gov. U.S. Department of Justice. 28 Oct 2008
<http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/arrests/index.html >.

"Eating at Fast-food Restaurants More than Twice Per Week is Associated with More Weight Gain and
Insulin Resistance in Otherwise Healthy Young Adults ." Nih.gov. 30 Dec. 2004. National Institutes of
Health. 28 Oct 2008
<http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/dec2004/nhlbi-30.htm>.

Gray, Judge James P.. Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial
Indictment of the War on Drugs. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2001.

Grinspood, Lester. Marihuana Reconsidered. Oakland, CA: Quick American Archives, 1977.

“History of Alcohol Prohibition” Schaffer Library of Drug Policy. 28 Oct 2008.

Lichtblau, Eric and Josh Meyer. "Sentences Shorter in Federal Drug Cases." Los Angeles Times 25 April
1993 28 Oct 2008
<http://articles.latimes.com/2000/mar/13/local/me-8348>.

Mokdad, Ali H. "Actual Causes of Death in the United States 2000."

National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse , "Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding."U.S.

“One in Every 31 U.S. Adults Was in a Prison of Jail or on Probation or Parole at the End of Last Year”
05 Dec. 2007. Bureau of Justice Statistics . 28 Oct 2008
<http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/press/p06ppus06pr.htm>.

Pinkerton, James P. "A War for Some, a Lark for Others." Los Angeles Times
(2000):

"WEBB V. UNITED STATES." U.S. Supreme Court Center. Justia.com. 28 Oct 2008
<http://supreme.justia.com/us/249/96/case.html>.