The police recently raided this house in Columbia, Missouri. A large group of police officers with nothing better to do stormed into action, kicking down the door to protect the community from a guy who likes to smoke a bit of dope. The most poignant thing we learn is that this evil marijuana-user loved his dog, a point he passionately made after he learned that the storm-trooper cops shot it, and all for what?
And keep in mind that this is how the drug police act when they know that there is a video camera running. Make no mistake that these cops were on their best behavior -- this was a sanitized version of a raid.
As I've argued many times, it's time to put an end to our pointless and violent "war on drugs." There are many better ways to deal with the urge of some adults to get high using substances other than prescription drugs and alcohol. It's time to just say no to the "war on drugs."
I'm fully aware that we need brave police to protect us from violence and to solve crimes that have hurt people. I admire those brave police officers. We need sophisticated law enforcement to storm the ledger books of Wall Street Banks, and we don't have nearly enough of them. But this kind of "police protection" is pointless. It doesn't stop drug use--it only makes drug use violent. This use of police is as pointless as the practice of having traffic cops park behind bushes and waiting to nab people going 38 in a 35. This post is not pro-police or anti-police. It is anti-this type of activity by police.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced a revised approach to "confronting the complex challenge of drug use and its consequences," putting more resources into drug prevention and treatment.
The new drug control strategy boosts community-based anti-drug programs, encourages health care providers to screen for drug problems before addiction sets in and expands treatment beyond specialty centers to mainstream health care facilities.
The Obama administration has taken important steps to undo some of the damage of past administrations' drug policies. The Justice Department has played an important role in trying to reduce the absurdly harsh, and racially discriminatory, crack/powder mandatory minimum drug laws; Congress is likely to approve a major reform this year. DOJ also changed course on medical marijuana, letting state governments know that federal authorities would defer to their efforts to legally regulate medical marijuana under state law. And they approved the repeal of the ban on federal funding of syringe exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS, thereby indicating that science would at last be allowed to trump politics and prejudice even in the domain of drug policy.
The new strategy goes further. It calls for reforming federal policies that prohibit people with criminal convictions and in recovery from accessing housing, employment, student loans and driver's licenses. It also endorses a variety of harm reduction strategies (even as it remains allergic to using the actual language of "harm reduction"), endorsing specific initiatives to reduce fatal overdoses, better integration of drug treatment into ordinary medical care, and alternatives to incarceration for people struggling with addiction. All of this diverges from the drug policies of the Reagan, Clinton and two Bush administrations.
Nadelmann also criticizes the the budget numbers because they point to a continued waging of the "drug war": "64% of their budget - virtually the same as under the Bush Administration and its predecessors - focuses on largely futile interdiction efforts as well as arresting, prosecuting and incarcerating extraordinary numbers of people"
LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) also criticizes the budget numbers for the same reason as Nadelmann:
The drug czar is saying all the right things about ending the 'war on drugs' and enacting a long-overdue balanced strategy focused on a public health approach," said Neill Franklin, a former Baltimore cop and incoming executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). "Unfortunately the reality of the budget numbers don't match up to the rhetoric. Two-thirds of the budget is dedicated to the same old 'war on drugs' approach and only a third goes to public health strategies. My experience policing the beat tells me that it's certainly time for a new approach, but unfortunately this administration is failing to provide the necessary leadership to actually make it happen instead of just talking about it.
The strategy devotes 64 percent of the budget to traditional supply reduction strategies like enforcement and interdiction while reserving only 36 percent for demand reduction approaches like treatment and prevention.
StoptheDrugWar joins the chorus, arguing that the budget allocation needs to match the new rhetoric:
President Obama's first National Drug Control Strategy offers real, meaningful, exciting change," [Matthew Robinson, professor of Government and Justice Studies at Appalachian State University and coauthor (with Renee Scherlen) of "Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis of Claims Made by the ONDCP"] summed up. "Whether this change amounts to 'change we can believe in' will be debated by drug policy reformers. For those who support demand side measures, many will embrace the 2010 Strategy and call for even greater funding for prevention and treatment. For those who support harm reduction measures such as needled exchange, methadone maintenance and so forth, there will be celebration. Yet, for those who support real alternatives to federal drug control policy such as legalization or decriminalization, all will be disappointed. And even if Obama officials will not refer to its drug control policies as a 'war on drugs,' they still amount to just that.
In the past, I've cited many reasons and sources that paint the "drug war" as ineffective and immoral. See, especially LEAP's videos here. Also see the powerful arguments raised by conservative Judge James Gray. Gray has commented that "the most harmful thing about marijuana is jail."In this post, I refer to John Richardson's shocking statistics: The amount we spend every year on the "drug war" is enough to pay for universal health care. The insanity goes on and on.
I am buoyed by the recent change in federal rhetoric, however. I am glad that many people (a large proportion of whom are in favor of the use of street drugs) are finding the courage to speak out against the status quo. I would hope that this is the beginning to the end to a failed policy that is based on shrill ideology that results in needless violence and stigmatization and the arrests of almost 800,000 people every year for marijuana charges.
In my opinion, one of the most direct and courageous statements on the "drug war" was made by travel guru Rick Steves:
February 1, 2010 issue of Missouri Lawyers Weekly (available only to subscribers online) reports on a new "Enlightened Sentencing Program" sponsored by a nonprofit meditation organization. The MLW article advises that several St. Louis area judges have been impressed with the program. For example, Judge David Mason
Ordered more than 200 people through the program. Of those offenders, he said that he has had to revoke probation only four times, a 2% rate. Mason's definition of recidivism is if the probationer commits a new crime in the first three years. Missouri Department of Corrections statistics show a statewide average of 28% of prisoners are locked up again within three years after either violating parole or committing another crime.
Presumably, Judge Mason's statistics are not compiled in a double-blind way--he might be unconsciously skewing the sample by choosing a select sub-group of convicts for the program. On the other hand, this stark difference in statistics does sound promising; it seems like this is the kind of approach that might make more sense than throwing people in expensive prisons where they are subjected to constant humiliation and violence. I think I know what would make me less likely to cope on the outside, and it's not having someone slam my head against the metal bars of a prison cell.
Judge Mason suggests that Missouri should invest in a pilot meditation program, and then it could see the results among probationers and potential tax savings. "People tend to be afraid to go out in front on the issue," the judge said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than a lot of stuff we waste money on."
Mexico has been wracked by murders connected to the drug trade. Last year, it suffered more than 6,500 drug-related killings, triple the number in 2007. And 2010 looks worse. As of mid-March, more than 2,000 people have died in drug-related homicides – which puts Mexico on pace for more than 10,000 such deaths this year. That's more than one every hour.
This video by LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) is well worth watching, especially by those who claim to support the "War on Drugs." The many hundreds of law enforcement officials who belong to LEAP agree that what we have is not a "War on Drugs," but prohibition, rampant social destruction and corruption.
But won't people start using a lot more drugs if they are legalized? Not likely, based on the "Holland effect": Legalizing marijuana in The Netherlands has lessened its appeal: Per-capita consumption is only half what it is in the United States. "They have succeeded in making marijuana boring," according to James Gray, an Orange County Superior Court judge for 20 years.
Check out the 12-minute mark of the above video for shocking statistics on institutionalized racism.
As one of the police officers states, legalization is not about promoting drugs. It's about stopping the violence. Once we legalize, then we can go about our work to discourage the destructive use of drugs, just like we did with cigarettes. 50% percent of adult smokers have given up that habit in the past ten years thanks to education. We cut the use of nicotine in half without telling our police to kick down doors and slap handcuffs onto smokers.
Judge Gray indicates that ending the "war on drugs" is the "single most important thing we could do" to improve our urban neighborhoods.
What is the war on drugs? According to one of the speakers in the above video, it's "sixty nine billion dollars per year down the rat hole." I agree. The "War on Drugs" should be renamed the "Inject Violence Into Neighborhoods Project." It is immoral and senseless. And finally, there is good reason to believe that the momentum has changed (based on many things, including Denver's legalization of marijuana). Large numbers of Americans are starting to question this insane "War."
Judge Gray makes the point that legalizing marijuana is NOT condoning it. In the following talk (Oct 28, 2009), he gives a long litany of additional reasons for regulating and controlling marijuana. The biggest reason for legalizing is the the present system endangers children:
For much more important information, see the home page of LEAP.
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