Illegal drugs. A hot-button topic that gets a lot of attention but little discussion or debate. Is the war on drugs working? Or is it a complete legal and social failure? As an officer in the Denver, Colo., police department for 36 years, it was that work that cemented my opposition to our drug war.
Fighting against drug abuse is and has been an effort channeled for the most part through the criminal justice system, making it an approach — mostly punitive — that copies the early 20th century prohibition of alcohol. It is a set of policies that began nearly a century ago but escalated under the administration of Richard Nixon, who in 1971 declared the fight against drug abuse a "war."
But now illegal drugs are more prevalent than ever, available virtually everywhere in our country. From our schoolyards to the prison yards of our most secure penal institutions, drugs have spread to every corner of society, affecting rich and poor alike and in some way touching the lives of us all. Illegal drug use for most people is not a problem but constitutes a part time activity that differs little from those who consume the occasional beer or glass of wine.
Among our nation's poor, especially the homeless, the abuse of drugs is perceived by many to be the cause of their poverty. But studies indicate that more often than not drug abuse among the poor, especially the homeless, arises from efforts at self-medicating. A disproportionate number of our nation's homeless suffer from mental illnesses ranging from mild to extreme. Unlike those living in higher income brackets who choose "softer" drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, those living in poverty are more likely to use drugs such as crack and heroin.
Because of our nation's punitive, Prohibition-style approach to drug abuse, programs providing mental health and addiction treatment are unavailable except to those able to afford the many thousands of dollars these programs cost. Additionally, the illegal nature of these drugs acts as a deterrent for many who may wish to seek treatment but fear legal problems arising from the admission of drug use (a fear, by the way, which is very well founded).
Law enforcement efforts are mostly focused on small scale drug dealers and users. This focus arises because of the dependence of police narcotics units and interagency anti-drug task forces on federal funds obtained by local agencies through programs such as the Edward Byrne Justice Assistant Program — a program now threatened with a two-thirds reduction by Congress. These grant programs are driven by arrest and seizure numbers. The more arrests, the more drugs seized, the more money an agency receives.
Considering the drug war has raged on for decades, it would seem to be appropriate to ask the question: Where are the successes of this war, waged in our communities, with an estimated $1 trillion of our money? The answer is obvious. There are no successes to trumpet. Our nation's drug czar, John Walters, likes to proclaim the minor shifts in drug use patterns as success. But in reality these pattern shifts are all only spikes on a graph that occur over time as a drug's popularity waxes and wanes.
An important example of the drug war's failure is found in the amount of cocaine produced in Colombia (the source for the majority of the world's cocaine). We now seize more cocaine from Colombia than that country produced 30 years ago. Of course, the most glaring example of the war on drugs’ failure is found in the estimated $36 billion value of the marijuana produced in the U.S. Marijuana is now our nation's number one agricultural commodity, worth more than corn, wheat or soybeans.
For me, the most disturbing aspect of all of this failure is that there are examples of success we could follow — if only our criminal justice industry weren't addicted to our drug war's money and power. In Switzerland, the Swiss have been utilizing what they call Heroin Assisted Treatment (HAT). This program, in existence for more than a decade, has proven that treatment is the most effective tool in reducing the harms to both addicts and the society in which they live. By providing clinics where heroin addicts receive pharmaceutical grade heroin, with clean needles, health screening and social services, that nation's drug related crime has dropped drastically; addict health has increased (including the lowest incidence of new AIDS/HIV and hepatitis C cases in all of Europe); addict homelessness has been reduced, and addict employment has risen.
Addiction and drug abuse are medical issues best left — as the Swiss have proven with their HAT program — to medical professionals. Police need to be left to solving crime and protecting our communities' citizens. Drug legalization is called radical and subject to cries of alarm. But the facts show us that societies that strive to control drugs on a social and health oriented model have less drug use and fewer drug associated crime problems.
The time has come to treat addicts, not with jails and prison guards, but with doctors, medical services focused on health and with the promotion of community education. Access to health services and education are the best tools we have for reducing both poverty and drug abuse. Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish...
