- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. His definition fits America’s war on drugs, a multi-billion dollar, four-decade exercise in futility.
The war on drugs has helped turn the United States into the country with the world’s largest prison population. (Noteworthy statistic: The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population and around 25 percent of the world’s prisoners). Keen demand for illicit drugs in America, the world’s biggest market, helped spawn global criminal enterprises that use extreme violence in the pursuit of equally extreme profits.
Over the years, the war on drugs has spurred repeated calls from social scientists and economists (including three Nobel prize winners) to seriously rethink a strategy that ignores the laws of supply and demand.
Under the headline “The Failed War on Drugs,” Washington’s respected, middle-of-the-road Brookings Institution said in a November report that drug use had not declined significantly over the years and that “falling retail drug prices reflect the failure of efforts to reduce the supply of drugs.”
Cocaine production in South America stands at historic highs, the report noted.
Like other think tanks, Brookings stopped short of recommending a radical departure from past policies with a proven track record of failure such as spending billions on crop eradication in Latin America and Asia while allotting paltry sums in comparison to rehabilitating addicts.
Enter Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization started in 2002 by police officers, judges, narcotics agents, prison wardens and others with first-hand experience of implementing policies that echo the prohibition of alcohol. Prohibition, now widely regarded a dismal and costly failure of social engineering, came to an end 75 years ago this week.
As LEAP sees it, the best way to fight drug crime and violence is to legalize drugs and regulate them the same way alcohol and tobacco is now regulated. “We repealed prohibition once and we can do it again,” one of the group’s co-founders, Terry Nelson, told a Washington news conference on December 2. “We cannot arrest our way out of this problem.”
FROM AL CAPONE TO DRUG CARTELS
“In the 20s and 30s, we had Al Capone and his gangsters getting rich and shooting up our streets,” said Nelson, who spent a 32-year government career fighting drugs in the U.S. and Latin America. “Today we have criminal gangs, cartels, Taliban and al-Qaeda profiting from the prohibition of drug sales and wreaking havoc all over the world. The correlation is obvious.”
The before-and-after sequence is so obvious that the U.S. Congress passed a resolution in September noting that the 1933 repeal of alcohol prohibition had replaced a “dramatic increase” in organized crime with “a transparent and accountable system of distribution and sales” that generated billions of dollars in tax revenues and boosted the sick economy.
That’s where advocates of drug legalization want to go now, and some of them hope that the similarities between today’s deep economic crisis and the Great Depression will result in a more receptive audience for their pro-legalization arguments among lawmakers and government leaders.
The budgetary impact of legalizing drugs would be enormous, according to a study prepared to coincide with the 75th anniversary of prohibition’s end by Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron. He estimates that legalizing drugs would inject $76.8 billion a year into the U.S. economy — $44.1 billion through savings on law enforcement and at least $32.7 billion in tax revenues from regulated sales.
Miron published a similar study in 2005 looking only at the budgetary effect of legalizing marijuana, the most widely used illicit drug in the United States. That study was endorsed by more than 500 economists, including Nobel laureates Milton Friedman of Stanford University, George Akerlof of the University of California and Vernon Smith of George Mason University.
“We urge…the country to commence an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition,” the economists said in an open letter to President George W. Bush, congress, governors and state legislators. “At a minimum, this debate will force advocates of current policy to show that prohibition has benefits sufficient to justify the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues and numerous ancillary consequences that result from marijuana prohibition.”
The advocates of current policy, led by outgoing President George W. Bush’s drug czar, John Walters, never took up the challenge to discuss cost-benefit equations. His Office of National Drug Control Policy has focused, with the single-minded determination of a moral crusader, on doing the same thing over and over again.
But the United States is not alone in pursuing drug strategies that are based more on wishful thinking than on sober analysis. If you put faith in declarations by the United Nations, a “drug-free world” is an attainable goal and the war on drugs all but over.
In 1998, a special session of the U.N. General Assembly forecast that the illicit cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy would be eliminated or significantly reduced by the year 2008, a deadline that also applied to “significant and measurable results in the field of demand reduction.”
The clock is ticking towards midnight, December 31, 2008.
— You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com. For more columns by Bernd Debusmann, click here. —
Want to debate? Send in your written submissions to debate@thomsonreuters.com.
Why should pot be illegal? Because the only companies poised to grow, package and sell it are the tobacco companies. Look at how they bastardized tobacco by adding so many additives and chemicals that American cigarettes have been banned in many countries. If Marlboro is allowed to sell joints we will end up with marijuana that is addictive and cancerous.
I'll take mine home-grown, thank you.
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We have had the “never even sniffed a poppy petal” posts, so I will give the other side.
Between the ages of 12 and 25 there was NOTHING I would not put into my body. And I am not exagerating, from fermaldahyde, to horse tranqualizers, to unknown pills some greasy guy is selling for a couple bucks. The last time I sat down and made a list, there was well over 100 chemicals that I had used for recreation.
Now, I am in my mid 30s. I am very gainfully employed in a highly competative industry (sorry I have to keep this vague, but I would imagine you can understand why). I have been happily married for 10 years and have a very healthy and happy family of five.
How did I get from spending 20 minutes on my hands and knees picking through carpet one fiber at a time looking for the crack rock I was *sure* my bozo friend had dropped to where I am now? It certainly wasn’t the war on drugs. If anything, when the affect of the baby-blue hair wared off, that ‘war’ was a great way to ‘flip off the man.’
No, it was mainly education. I came from a HORRIBLE upbringing. It wasn’t that. It was the education. I had been busted before, and when I stopped partying, there were no legal problems at all for a couple years. It certainly wasn’t that. Pure and simple, I will state it again: it was the education.
And growing up. Come on, kids regularly drive in a manner that is objectively ‘death defying’ all the while utterly ignorant to what a 2000 lbs. body of mass can do at 55mph, let alone 80. Kids do not have the perspectives and contexts that adults have. You could maybe educate them a little…crazy talk, I know…but you certainly are never going to ’scare’ them straight.
And a couple other notes. I still use MJ on a regular basis. In fact, both my wife and psychologist told me to pick it back up after 1 year of utter misery and wasted time on anti-depressants and legal mood alterers. Not saying this proves anything other than I am VERY successful, JUST as healthy as my non-user friends, and I have a familty that is FAR more stable, functional and harmonic than pretty much any of my straight friends. I guess I want to combat two perceptions: those who use are not less than you, they simply have different motivations and priorities than you. And, usage is not mutually exclusive to a happy life.
NOT saying usage = happy life. That is **just** as silly as usage = utter complete and forever misery.
And, for the final record: after my 100+ list of chemicals, including most of the ‘bad boys’ (opiates, coke and its dirivatives, etc, etc.)…without exception and without a doubt my absolute worst and most horrific experiences each-and-every time involved alcohol. It is the SINGLE common denominator of the ‘bad memories’.
Also, I wish I had done H 100 more and never picked up a cigarette. You want to talk about an addiction??? Nothing…and I mean NOTHING, even crystal Meth…has been even kinda close as difficult to kick as plain old cigarettes.
My problem with legalizing drugs is that does it also allow addicts taking them either by prescription or buying them over the counter to have jobs that require clear thinking. The school bus driver, the heart surgeon, the classroom teacher, the plumber, the pharmacist? The list goes on.
Yes, perhaps they take prescription drugs that make them less aware, but it is easier to change a prescription than to cure an addict. And don’t tell me making alcohol legal prevented problems and crime or binge drinking by college students.
Rather than an overall legalizing of drugs, I believe it might be done in small steps by beginning with marijuana, and prohibiting anyone using it from working at any job that involves public safety or having a driver’s license. That may make people who think they might begin to use drugs for recreation think twice.
And what do we do with setting an age for supplying narcotic drugs to children? Does anyone really believe there still won’t be illegal drug use from legal drugs? Legal medical prescriptions are used illegally.
Also, where does crack and meth come into the picture? Will it be readily available to addicts? How nice to have a new industry to pay taxes?
Come on. I want to hear your arguments for making drugs legal. You might convince me.
With approx. only 11-percent of Americans supporting the ‘War on Drugs’, it is an ONDCP/DEA-created & perpetuated Myth — in most cases — that an elected official would be “punished” (voted out of office) by his or her constituents for supporting rationale drug policy changes. Truth is, I cannot think of a single politician who has been hurt by supporting either medical cannabis or even general legalization of all drugs.
And it is even a bigger myth that U.S. elected officials’ reputations are “hurt” by supporting Medical Cannabis, which has solid public and solid medical support; but many of our elected officials are simply ignorant or conveniently ignore the widespread medical and public support. But it is no surprise The People are light-years ahead of their representatives in the Science and Medical Dep’t.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle — like VP-elect Joe Biden and Gov. Schwarzenegger — need to stop perpetuating lies and stop creating & protecting bureaucracies that are paid to lie (ODNCP/DEA/CASA, ETC…); because they are hurting — not helping — their constituents. Obfuscating and concealing vital medical information is WRONG and can only have negative consequences. The tide is changing: politicians will soon be held accountable for the lies they have created and perpetuated.
We don’t want OUR tax dollars funding lies!! Get it?? Leave the propaganda to China & North Korea.
Of course addiction is a health issue, and of course we cannot arrest ourselves out of our “drug problem.” The question is how long will we have to wait before our elected officials “catch up” in the Science & Medicine Dep’t, and “wake up” to the Will of their People?
It is true the analisys of this article, specialy for Colombia,and now for a climbing-violence Mexico. I hope one day we revenue taxes from drug comerce instead spending them in this stupid usless fight against guerrillas, and narcos. Latin América needs the US to change its policy on ilegal drugs.
Absolutely disagreed with author! War on all illegal narcotic is the utlimate nessecity. The real problem related to the methodology and its implementation. Unfortunately various agencies of the federal governnment are fat bulls, stupid enough not acting with perfect impunity toward the narcotrafickers. There shall be no warnings to the criminals but just shooting them off the existence, and distruction all their bases everywhere in the world, even if the invasion in such countries as Colombia or Peru is necessary. Enough is enough: US government shall distroy the sources of illegal narcitics in any part of the world with absolute impunity!
Ok James enough with Colombia. All South America produces drugs, yes you have Colombia but right there you have Peru, Bolivia just to name a few.
Now, why is it that americans believe the producers are the problem? shouldn’t the consumer be blamed as well?
If drugs were legal the business wouldn’t be profitable (simply put) for the drug lords. Drugs should be legal, to each his/her own. Everyone should be ableto decide if they want to be alcoholics, drug addcits or whatever, but please STOP YOUR RANT AGAINS COLOMBIA. Colombians suffer a lot b/c of this war, and we are not talking about money but human lives.
No way should a multi-billion dollar industry be on the streets… Drugs need to be de-criminalized, regulated, and taxed. More money needs to be dedicated to rehab, education, and higher-quality drugs. The profit needs to be taken out of the hands of cut-throat criminals, and the actual product needs to be removed from the hands of scientists and/or quasi-chemists who are manufacturing slaughter-house grade drugs in makeshift labs. The prison system needs to be reformed and human beings shouldn’t be locked up in a hole for 20 plus years because they’re an addict. The problem is never addressed while following this format. The war on drugs is a product of Nixon era politics, and in light of the recent tapes that have been declassified it is safe to assume that the best interests of the people were not first and foremost with old tricky dickey. We have a chance to clean up the ghettos and get our city’s murder rates to drop!!! The stigma of an addict can be dissolved and society can learn to embrace all aspects of life.
As long as ‘the war on drugs’ - like ‘the war on terrorism’ - serves as cover for political and military actions that could not be slipped past the public otherwise, these ‘wars’ are going to go on. What would the White House do in Colombia if it were not for this giant lie: “We are fighting the bad guys, the drug dealers.”
Decades of massive political killing and torture have gone down there under the label of ‘War on drugs’. Union leaders and innocent farmers are suddenly ‘drug dealers’ and ‘terrorists’…
Inside the US as well as around the world, the US ruling elite uses the quaint notions of ‘goodness’, ‘evil’, ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, etc., like fairy ideas from a children’s book, where the little ‘good’ hero could never do wrong - because he is ‘good’ by definition, always up against ‘bad, bad terrorist guys’, who are ‘evil’ and ‘do drugs’, or whatever. The little hero is the US soldier, policeman, diplomat, businessman, etc., and all those who don’t act obediently to them are ‘bad’.
As long as we ( the rest of the world and domestic consumers of propaganda ) buy this crap, we’ll have ‘wars’ of any kind; politically convenient, imaginary figments that pray on our judgemental ‘goodness’ and thereby serve as cover for domination policies.
If I did not believe in love, I would be a terrorist.
PS: I dislike drugs.
Leap has a refreshing view on a new policy for our future and the war on drugs. We must change our views because to continue on this path is insanity as said in the above article. I personally believe in what Leap and all its members, including myself, are fighting for. I think if others would just simply listen to what Leap has to say they would at least understand that a change is what we need.
From Policy Analysis No. 157, the CATO Institute, written by Mark Clayton in 1991: “National prohibition of alcohol (1920-33)–the \”noble experiment\”–was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America. The results of that experiment clearly indicate that it was a miserable failure on all counts. The evidence affirms sound economic theory, which predicts that prohibition of mutually beneficial exchanges is doomed to failure.”
Mr. Debusmann is absolutely correct regarding the now obvious lunacy and harmful counterproductiviy of the war on drugs. But legalizing and regulating marijuana specifically would and should have an even greater benefit to our country and planet.
Hemp as a crop is the only one capable of becoming America’s biomass energy standard for the present and future. It can be grown for crude biomass fuels on energy farms, for textiles, for oil and high protein foods and for pharmaceutical grade extract medicine. It doesn\’t reguire dangerous pesticides like cotton yet yields a superior fabric. Paper can be made from hemp without the sulfer acid and other chemicals that mills need for wood.
There are nearly 25,000 different uses for hemp ranging from nutritious food sources to plastics to fire-resistant building composites to paints and varnishes.
Hemp can play a major role in shifting our world away from deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels. Scientists agree that the single most effective way to halt the greenhouse effect is to stop burning fossil fuels. And the one and only way to reduce the growing blanket of C02 that is warming the earth is by growing more plants to absorb the C02.
Hemp is a weed that will grow in every state except Alaska.
Pardn the pun, but its high time Congress repeals or amends the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.
Legalizing all drugs is not a solution. Legalizing some drugs is.
Despite lies told to the contrary, marijuana has been proven not to have any negative effects, either short term or long term. It is not addictive, it is very cheap to grow, and as a depressant, it does not lead to crime or to “smoking and driving”, the latest lie told by the jaytotalers (as opposed to teetotalers). Canada provides a perfect example for the US - a western, civilized country with a similar culture and legal system, yet the legalization of possession has not resulted in any increase in crime; instead, being openly able to possess has actually reduced some amount of convictions.
Legalizing marijuana, and repealing all convictions stemming from its possession and use, would have numerous positive benefits. It would remove a large number of people from prisons and reduce the social stigma that a conviction puts on a person (especially for a non-violent crime). It would also give a legal outlet for those who actually want to use drugs. The myth of marijuana being a “gateway drug” has always been false, but it may turn out to be true in reverse - a gateway from illegal drug habits (methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine, etc.) back to legal and non-harmful drugs like marijuana.
There is only one reason I can think of for continuing to keep drugs illegal: to use drugs and other “offenses” (e.g. being part of certain protest groups makes one a “terrorist” to the current “administration”) to create a criminal class, to cause the majority of American citizens to have criminal records. Without wanting to sound like a “conspiracy theorist” crackpot, I have to wonder if that is some political groups’ goal, to turn the majority into a criminal class that is not allowed to vote.
For the record, I hate the stench of marijuana, it smells like horse feces. I also can’t stand the users, many of whom are “party” types.
I agree: the policy has failed, and it is unlikely to be discontinued in the near term. Though I do anticipate the legalization of marijuana when the government realizes that it can charge tax on marijuana, much like the tax on alcohol, and will therefore be eager to gain the revenue from that commerce.
Finally,a sane article on the war on drugs,yes,I never used drugs myself,but my view is that those who use them are sick,not criminals,thank you for the article!
Alberto
As a teacher who likes to play devil’s advocate, occasionally I ask classes to write paragraphs in class on whether marijuana or (as a separate exercise) all “recreational” drugs should be legalized. After a lot of laughter and discussion I invariably find very few students willing to legalize. Later, after the paragraphs are turned in, I ask students how free our country is when we’re not free to eat, drink, or smoke anything we please.
I doubt my question changes anybody’s mind but there’s always a long silence when I ask it.
Anyone who wants to actually do something to help end this insanity - just like we ended alcohol prohibition - should visit http://www.WeCanDoItAgain.com
There is no doubt even as confirmed by the General Accounting Office and the United Nations that the over $6 billion to Colombia has done little more than line the pockets of corrupt politicians. History has also shown that Colombia does not make progress until denied the money that continues their corruption. As noted by the author a distribution of money more toward rehabilitating addicts.
Excellent blog. The figures that Miron comes up with should alone make people think about regulation and control rather than prohibition. However there are plenty of other reasons too -
Prohibition diverts what should be a health problem into a criminal justice problem which creates more health issues than it could ever solve - HIV/AIDS, HVC, etc etc;
It criminalises huge sections of society in Western countries;
It distracts the world from dealing with development issues within the developing world;
It creates huge funding opportunities for organized crime and terrorists;
It encourages corruption throughout the world;
The list could go…..
Transform Drug Policy Foundation (www.tdpf.org.uk) is in the process of producing a book on the future of drug control.
We are heartened by what we call ‘climate change’ here in the UK - more and more people from the so-called establishment are speaking out about the failures of prohibition. Just as alcohol prohibition ended, so will drug prohibition.
As proven by the record high (pun unavoidable) quantities of opium imported into the U.S. following the War in Afghanistan, narcotics will continue to flow through this country, no matter the approach. And the current approach certainly isn’t one that has the public’s best interest at heart. The question remains on what is the most intelligent way to deal with it. The government should not jail and punish people for what they do to their own bodies, common sense dictates this is a health issue. As for the providers: it is society’s need that dictates the role of the dealer. Americans need to ask themselves if they want the profit on the streets or legally taxed, regulated and helping our faltering economic system. Remember: under our current prohibition, our streets will continue to be increasingly dangerous, covered in young blood, all the while our public is ever hungry for their chemical escape, and the profit stays on the streets. This system is perpetuated by the poor education system and health care system in the U.S., while building up the prison industry and targeting the lower income communities for criminal charges that have no bearing on the actual importation of our narcotics. I ask everyone to seriously work on reforming this system, if by doing nothing other than at least talking about these points, which seem to be common sense. I’m James Austin and I can be contacted at humancarbon@gmail.com
It is tempting but not entirely fitting to draw parallels between the repeal of prohibition at a time of deep economic trouble and efforts to end prohibition for all drugs now, at a time of economic trouble almost as bad. There are differences. The prohibition lasted 12 years, 10 months and 19 days (compared with almost 40 years of the so-called drug war)and it ended because there was widespread popular disenchantment with it, and corresponding pressure on lawmakers. Finance did play a big role because both Democrats and Republicans were attracted by the prospect of boosting the budget with alcohol excise taxes. In other words, there was political will AND financial necessity.
Where is the political will now? Where are the members of the Congress willing to speak up speak up in favour of ending the drug war and taking the profit out of the illegal drug business by making it legal? There’s only one prominent Congressman, Barney Frank, who is outspoken on the issue. But even the bill he introduced on marijuana this summer provides for decriminalization rather than legalization. No federal penalties “for the personal use of marijuana for responsible adults.” That’s a good thing, but falls far short of legalizing all drugs.
Unless there is constant and heavy pressure on their representatives from constituents around the country, nothing will happen. Once representatives fear they will be voted out of office unless they move on legalization, things will start to move. But it is difficult to see that in the near future.
Logic, common sense and hard data such as in Professor Miron’s report will simply fall on deaf ears.
That law enforcement is standing up to denounce drug war policies as nonsensical is a very strong indictment. The prohibition impulse always seems to give rise to repressed and puritanical McCarthyites, like Rep. Mark Souder and Harry Anslinger. That these policies are boostered by such little Napoleons should alone give us pause.