The War on Drugs

In June of 1971 President Nixon declares the War on Drugs and drug abuse in the United States “Public Enemy #1”. Let’s observe some history leading up to this declaration. Drugs have been around for a long time in fact many currently illegal drugs, such as marijuana, opium, coca, and psychedelics have been used for thousands of years for both medical and spiritual purposes and only somewhat recently in the United States have they become illegal. Often it has had everything to do with who was associated with these drugs that lead to the criminalization of them. Let’s take a look: The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at Chinese immigrants, the first anti-cocaine laws, in the South in the early 1900s, were directed at black men and the first anti-marijuana laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the 1910s and 20s, were directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans. In late 1960s recreational drug use becomes fashionable among young, white, middle class Americans. The social stigmatization previously associated with drugs lessens as their use becomes more main stream. Drug use becomes representative of protest and social rebellion in the era's atmosphere of political unrest. In 1970, hippies were smoking pot and dropping acid. Soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin. Embattled President Richard M. Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win. "This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people," Nixon said as he signed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. The following year, he said: "Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive." His first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it's $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation. But has this prohibition worked?

 In 1925, H. L. Mencken wrote an impassioned plea: "Prohibition has not only failed in its promises but actually created additional serious and disturbing social problems throughout society. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic but more. There is not less crime, but more. ... The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished." Also, prison populations have soared from about 40,000 people in U.S. jails and prisons for drug crimes in 1980, compared with more than 500,000 today. Excessively long prison sentences and locking up people for small drug offenses contribute greatly to this ballooning of the prison population. It also represents racial discrimination and targeting disguised as drug policy. People of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than white people -- yet from 1980 to 2007, blacks were arrested for drug law violations at rates 2.8 to 5.5 times higher than white arrest rates and after over a trillion dollars spent since its inception the flow of drugs over our borders has not decreased one iota and the U.S. now has the largest prison population in the world, with about 2.3 million behind bars. More than half a million of those people are incarcerated for a drug law violation. Viewing both sides of the isle, Democrats have less strict beliefs on the sentencing for drug related crimes and are much more tolerant. However, medical drugs are another matter and they want these drugs highly regulated. While Republicans believe recreational drugs are absolutely forbidden. On the other hand, Republicans would allow you to prescribe and buy medical drugs without constraint as the drug industry is quite profitable.

The more effective prohibition is at raising costs, the greater are drug industry revenues. So, more effective prohibition means that drug sellers have more money to buy guns, pay bribes, fund the dealers, and even research and develop new technologies in drug delivery and smuggling systems, like cocaine submarines. It’s hard to beat an enemy that gets stronger the more you strike against them. At the recent Association of Private Enterprise Education conference, David Henderson from the Naval Postgraduate School outs the myriad of ways in which the government promises to make us safer and in fact imperils our safety and security, “The drug war is an obvious example. In the name of making us safer and protecting us from drugs, we are actually put in greater danger. Without meaning to, the drug warriors have turned American cities into war zones and eroded the very freedoms we hold dear. Freedom of contract has been abridged in the name of keeping us “safe” from drugs. Private property is less secure because it can be seized if it is implicated in a drug crime, this also flushes the doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty” out the window. The drug war has also been used as a pretext for clamping down on immigration. Not surprisingly, the drug war has turned some of our neighborhoods into war zones. We are warehousing productive young people in prisons at an alarming rate all in the name of a war that cannot be won.” Albert Einstein is reported to have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By this definition, the drug war is insane. We are no safer, and we are certainly less free because of concerted efforts to wage war on drugs. It’s time to stop the insanity and end prohibition.