Posted on 08/28/2003 11:29:21 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
In the 1980s, not many people could plausibly claim stronger anti-drug credentials than Nancy Reagan. But Forest Tennant could.
"It's great for the Reagans to get up and say, 'Let's do something about the drug problem,' but I don't know who's going to do it," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1986.
"Only true professional people like myself can do very much with the drug problem."
The remark was characteristically haughty, but Tennant had the training, experience, and reputation to back it up. A physician and researcher with a doctorate in public health, he operated a chain of drug treatment clinics in California and was widely cited and consulted as an expert on drug abuse and addiction.
Tennant has published hundreds of scientific articles, testified in high-profile trials, and advised the NFL, NASCAR, the California Highway Patrol, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The Times described him as "riding at the forefront of the current wave of anti-drug sentiment."
So when the folks at the Hoover Institution who produce the PBS show "Uncommon Knowledge" were looking for someone to debate drug policy with me, Tennant must have seemed like a natural choice. Imagine their surprise when he ended up agreeing that the war on drugs has been a disastrous mistake.
To be sure, Tennant is not completely comfortable with the idea of treating all psychoactive substances the way we treat alcohol. Among other things, he worries about underage access and legal liability issues.
But Tennant concedes that only a small percentage of drug users become addicted, that the drug laws are not very effective at preventing abuse, and that any increase in addiction that follows the repeal of prohibition is apt to be small. Equally important, he has come to realize after decades of dealing with addiction that the war on drugs imposes tremendous costs in exchange for its dubious benefits.
Tennant says the September 11 attacks had a big impact on his thinking about drug policy. He recognized that the connection between drugs and terrorism, cited by the government to justify the war on drugs, was actually a consequence of prohibition, which makes the drug trade a highly lucrative business and delivers it into the hands of criminals. "We've got to take the profit out of it," he says.
Tennant is also troubled by the impact that U.S. drug policy has on countries such as Colombia, where it empowers thugs and guerrillas, sows violence, undermines law and order, and wreaks havoc on the economy. And he believes the war on drugs has fostered systemic corruption in the United States. "We need to try something different," he says.
As a first step, Tennant would like to see states experiment with various approaches to drug policy, including decriminalization of marijuana, a drug he considers much less dangerous than the government claims. He thinks it plausible that in 15 years Americans will be able to purchase pot legally.
This is the same man who made waves in the 1980s by promoting a home eye test kit to help parents detect and deter drug use by their children. Parents were supposed to administer the test every few days, beginning when their kids were about 7. No one could have accused Forest Tennant of being soft on drugs.
Tennant is by no means the only former drug warrior who has become a critic of current policy. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), founded last year, includes more than 400 current and former police officers, judges, federal agents, prosecutors, and parole, probation, and corrections officers. The group is headed by Jack Cole, a 26-year veteran of the New Jersey State Police who worked in narcotics enforcement for 14 years.
"After three decades of fueling the U.S. war on drugs with over half a trillion tax dollars and increasingly punitive policies," says LEAP, "illicit drugs are easier to get, cheaper, and more potent than they were 30 years ago. While our court system is choked with ever-increasing drug prosecutions, our quadrupled prison population has made building prisons this nation's fastest growing industry. . . . Meanwhile people are dying in our streets and drug barons grow richer than ever before. We must change these policies."
As an attorney quoted in a recent Seattle Weekly article about LEAP observed, "The news story is not that the war on drugs has failed. It's who's saying it now."
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
I saw this article on Reason Online and came to post it. And noticed that it's already posted, but didn't seem to draw much commentary. Too bad, because it is a powerful article. I particularly liked this paragraph:
Tennant is by no means the only former drug warrior who has become a critic of current policy. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), founded last year, includes more than 400 current and former police officers, judges, federal agents, prosecutors, and parole, probation, and corrections officers. The group is headed by Jack Cole, a 26-year veteran of the New Jersey State Police who worked in narcotics enforcement for 14 years.
These guys are in the best possible position to judge the Drug War. Many of them are risking their careers to take this position. Yet they feel strongly enough to do it anyway.
Come on drug warriors. Tell us how all of these law enforcement people against the Drug War are really hippie libertarians who want to get high.
I have to admit that, at first, I thought he was in favor of legalizing drugs so that he could open up even more clinics to handle the increase in addiction. But, I've come to the conclusion that he's taken this stance against the government's role in curbing drugs for other reasons -- he doesn't like the government.
" Methadone clinics in California are the target of a probe by the California Department of Justice and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that officials allege has uncovered a pattern of poor management and overbilling."
"Many of the clinics targeted by the probe are parts of large chains owned by Robert B. Kahn, the president of the California Organization of Methadone Providers, and Dr. Forest S. Tennant Jr., the former director of drug testing for the National Football League."
"Federal agents are focusing their case on clinics owned by Tennant, who operates twenty-nine facilities. In March, Tennant reached a settlement with the government and paid $625,000 to settle allegations that some of his clinics violated record-keeping requirements. The DEA also claims that at least 95,000 milligrams of methadone, the equivalent of 1,580 60-milligram doses were unaccounted for at Tennant's clinics."
"According to Joycelyn Wood, executive vice president of the National Alliance of Methadone Advocates (NAMA), both Kahn and Tennant are notorious for running mismanaged clinics. Wood told NewsBriefs, "Tennant is a maverick ... I wouldn't be surprised if all of [his] clinics are mismanaged. I would hope the state would step in and take them over, their patients would be better off."
Maybe I've been way out of touch, but that's a surprising position.
Anybody got any links to some supporting data on rates of addition that credibly show only a small percent of users become addicted?
or rates of subtraction, multiplication, etc... (sheesh!)
All the evidence you've posted supports the converse of that argument - that the government doesn't like him. Did all of this happen before or after he started publicly criticizing the drug war?
Well, I don't know if Mr. Masters is a hippie, but he is a Libertarian.
" A group of law enforcement officials -- including Colorado Libertarian Sheriff Bill Masters -- have joined together to build a new organization that hopes to rally public support to end the War on Drugs. The non-profit organization, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), opened its Medford, Massachusetts headquarters on July 14."
-- lp.org (Libertarian Party web site, which I'm sure you recognized right away)
Also, LEAP "suggests that the government ought to distribute free maintenance doses of drugs to those who want them, thereby taking the profit motive out of the business".
Well, as long as it's the government distributing free drugs to those who want them and not my tax dollars, that's OK then. Wait a minute .....
According to the link I provided, this happened in 1997.
This is old news for the DEA to just now start investigating, it has been going on for thirty years. Scheesh !
The price of Methadone is artifically inflated, then given to drug addicts for free. Then they sell or trade it on the street for larger quantities of the real thing. Methadone is treated as a controlled substance for all except drug addicts that are in the programs. The gubmint morons could not have picked a worse strategy to reduce Heroin use, but it all makes perfect sense in the bureacratic mind since the only issue that matters is control.
A company I worked at in CA 20 years ago had a heroin user. He was a weekend user and showed up in time for work everyday. That ended when he got into the methedone program. He was selling the stuff during lunch break, or trading it for the real thing. It took $12,000 worth of stolen goods plus the cost of an investigation to fire him.
Exactly. It's all about the money. And the cig ban in prisons is a perfect small scale model of the set-up.
Back before the cig ban, inmates could have cigs delivered from the outside.
Now, as a friend of mine who recently got out after doing 90 days in a local Georgia jail informed me, Basic brand filtered cigs, which cost $20.00 a carton on the outside, cost $15.00 a CIGon the outside. So a carton of $20.00 cigs smuggled in the jail would bring $ 3,000.
Who profits from the expanded value of the black market? Probably the same people that created it.
Fair enough. And you've concluded that he changed his mind over being fined for a record keeping violation, but waited 4-1/2 years to say anything?
True, but my understanding is that he wasn't a Libertarian until he grew to oppose the War on Drugs. Then he joined the LP because it offered the closest political position to his own, not only because of the Drug War but also because of the LP's stance on guns (strong 2nd Amendment support).
Yep, that's my conclusion.
But he claims it was 9-11 that did it. Uh-huh. Since that was only 2 years ago instead of 4-1/2, I suppose you agree with his explanation.
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