Reject Notion That We're Winning War on Drugs

Conservatives never cease to fascinate me, given their professed devotion to “freedom, free enterprise, and limited government” and their ardent support of policies that violate that principle.

One of the most prominent examples is the drug war. In fact, if you’re ever wondering whether a person is a conservative or a libertarian, a good litmus-test question is, How do you feel about the war on drugs? The conservative will respond, “Even though I believe in freedom, free enterprise, and limited government, we’ve got to continue waging the war on drugs.” The libertarian will respond, “End it. It is an immoral and destructive violation of the principles of freedom, free enterprise, and limited government.”

The most recent example of conservative drug-war nonsense is an article entitled “Winning the Drug War,” by Jonathan V. Last in the current issue of The Weekly Standard, one of the premier conservative publications in the country.

In his article, Last cites statistics showing that drug usage among certain groups of Americans has diminished and that supplies of certain drugs have decreased. He says that all this is evidence that the war on drugs is finally succeeding and that we just need to keep waging it for some indeterminate time into the future, when presumably U.S. officials will finally be able to declare “victory.”

Of course, we’ve heard this type of “positive” drug-war nonsense for the past several decades, at least since Richard Nixon declared war on drugs back in the 1970s. What conservatives never tell us is how final “victory” will ultimately be measured. Like all other drug warriors for the past several decades, Last doesn’t say, “The statistics are so good that the drug war has now been won and therefore we can now end it,” but rather, “Victory is right around the corner. The statistics are getting better. Let’s keep going.”

Last failed to mention what is happening to the people of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where drug lords compete violently to export illegal drugs into the United States to reap the financial benefits of exorbitant black-market prices and profits that the drug war has produced.

Recently, drug gangs fired high-powered weapons and a grenade into the newsroom of La Manana, killing Jaime Orozco Tey, a 40-year-old father of three.

Several other journalists have been killed in retaliation for their stories on the drug war, and newspapers are now self-censoring in fear of the drug lords. There are also political killings in Nuevo Laredo arising out of the drug war, including the city's mayor after he had served the grand total of nine hours in office.

According to the New York Times, “In Nuevo Laredo, the federal police say average citizens live in terror of drug dealers. Drug-related killings have become commonplace.” The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says that the U.S.-Mexico border region is now one of the world’s most dangerous places for reporters.

Not surprisingly, Last did not mention these statistics in his “We’re winning the drug war” article.

During Prohibition, there were undoubtedly people such as Last claiming, “Booze consumption is down. We’re winning the war on booze. Al Capone is in jail. We’ve got to keep on waging the war on booze until we can declare final victory.”

Fortunately, Americans living at that time finally saw through such nonsense, especially given the massive Prohibition-related violent crime that the war on booze had spawned. They were right to finally legalize the manufacture and sale of alcohol and treat alcohol consumption as a social issue, not a criminal-justice problem.

Both conservatives and liberals have waged their war on drugs for decades, and they have reaped nothing but drug gangs, drug lords, robberies, thefts, muggings, murders, dirty needles, overcrowded prisons, decimated families, record drug busts, government corruption, infringements on civil liberties, violations of financial privacy, massive federal spending, and, of course, ever-glowing statistics reflecting drug-war “progress.”

Americans would be wise to reject, once and for all, the war on drugs, and cast drug prohibition, like booze prohibition, into the ashcan of history.

I am speaking here with 12 years as an undercover narcotic officer and 5 years a State Trooper working accidents.

I was trained ( a very long school ) to recognize persons using narcotics, including marijuana...

Nice statement, but it is stillnot based on facts. Your first error is including marijuana as a narcotic. It is an intoxicant. The most common definition of narcotic is :

An addictive drug, such as opium, that reduces pain, alters mood and behavior, and usually induces sleep or stupor. Natural and synthetic narcotics are used in medicine to control pain.

Marijuana use may become a habit, but there is no addiction. Twinkies are just as dangerous.

I have EXPERIENCED firsthand the effects, and can handle any motor skill test you wish to apply. I am not alone. I have even more doubts about your credibility, after your statements.

You stated your credentials, so obviously, you have a stake in this argument. Then you go on to give a recitation of your training which qualifies you to evaluate. How do you perform those "hours of evaluation" on the side of the road?

You say "the fact remains marijuana usage is for morons and has no place in our society. " I understand your bias, but your people skills are typical to LEO's. I don't qualify as a moron. I own four businesses, four homes in four states, and employ 19 people directly. How many "morons" can say the same? I'd easily win any bet that you can't.

And, no, I do not deal drugs, and never have. I am a casual user of marijuana> I don't smoke at home, nor keep any around here. There are too many storm troppers waiting with glee, for their adrenaline rush. I understand it's as good a high as any...

I also like a good cigar with brandy after dinner. I enjoy my life. Most of my friends are business owners, as well, and many like to toke. I also probably contribute more to charity each year than you make.

When you really learn something about the subject, write back. Your experience is with those people who continually get in trouble, and rarely do you find anybody breaking in somewhere to get their fix for a joint. Most of us FReepers certainly don't fit that bill. You may be surprised to learn that some of us actually know how to think for ourselves.

I am not a doctor, and neither are you. Your "qualifications" don't impress me. I am well aware with the Law Enforcement community and it's ideas, since one of my sons is a townie sergeant. You do sound like a good parrot, though!

"Most drugs do not come from Mexico. A bigger share of them come from Mexico then any other individual country, but not most. It's around 30% from what I read. (of things like Cocane and Heroin)."

What have you been reading? Most drugs in this country do come from Mexico or at least through that country. From what I've read, and from what I see, most of the pot in this country is coming from there too. Thousands of pounds a year of Mexican brickweed are pulled off the highway in the county where I work. The public defender office where I work gets most all of these drug mule cases. The Mexicans are bringing up almost all the meth, what they don't cook up in western states in super labs producing 10 to 100 or more pounds per batch. They run the cocaine markets in this country even though the coke originates in South America. They smuggle it in and distribute it at the wholesale levels.

I have personally handled several hundred pounds worth of cocaine cases and almost every single one of the people I was appointed to represent that had been caught carrying several pounds of the stuff was Mexican. Not all that have been busted here transporting large quantities have been Mexicans, but most all of them have been, and whenever it's come out who these people have been working with, it always seems to be Mexican organized crime. I'm talking about cocaine "mule" cases involving several pounds or more. I have one right now who was "allegedly" caught with close to 120 pounds and we've had bigger cases than that. With the weed it's pretty much the same thing except the weight of the loads tends to be a lot higher and we get a lot more pot mule cases than those involving meth or cocaine. Even when the guys caught with it aren't Mexicans, you can tell the pot is from Mexico. It's that standard green to brownish green stuff with seeds that has been compressed into bricks. They're generally picking it up in Arizona, New Mexico, California, or Texas. It's coming from places like Tuscon where there are stash houses everywhere storing tons and tons of weed to be transported to the rest of the country.

I've read government estimates putting the percentage of Mexican weed on our markets at 85% or better. Local narcotics officers and DEA I end up dealing with in this are would probably concur with that estimate. It may not be that high but the percentage of Mexican weed on our markets is way up there. It's dirt cheap in Mexico and still pretty darned cheap up here, cheaper than commercial grade marijuana has been in more than twenty years. People paying more than $50 to $80 an ounce are getting ripped off. Mexican organized crime dominates the drug trade in drugs like cocaine, marijuana, meth, and heroin, the biggies, and maybe even some of the others out there. If you think otherwise, do a little more research.

Very excellant post. I wouldn't have had that much patience.

Thanks. This is one of those issues where conservatives/Republicans have a knee-jerk emotional reaction that defies facts, that is no different than how many "liberals" view welfare, gun-control, etc.

Part of the problem is that most conservatives approach the WOD as a matter of simple law enforcement. It is much more complicated than that.

In order for laws or social programs to work, they must take into account a basic understanding of human nature.

The reason communism fails every time and capitalism prevails is that one ignores human nature, the other relies on it. The war on drugs attempts to buck not just human nature, but an successful economic system that rests on it.

I started out believing the WOD was winnable. But the more research you do, the more you realize it isn't. And the harder we try to win treating it only as a law-enforcement problem, the more of the costitution we are going to shred in the process.

When I weigh the evils of drugs in one hand against the damage to our constitution in the other, I choose the constitution. A free, republican form of government is a fragile thing that must be protected, even if it means a certain percentage of the population get high and do stupid things.

If my neighbor wants to get high on pot, I'd rather he grow it for free in his back yard that have to pay top dollar to drug dealer so that he has to break into my house and steal my stuff to feed his habit.

As for my kids, I'll educate my kids on the dangers of drugs just as I educate them on all the other dangers of life. Just like I teach them not to smoke cigarettes, or drink and drive, or any other stupid thing that will dimish them.

The two main things I want to leave my kids is the idea they are responsible for their own actions, and a free country to live in.

The war on drugs has been used as an excuse (often well-meaning) to assualty every one of our rights, particularly our second, fourth and fourteenth amendment rights.

Almost all of the current problems related with the WOD can be traced to its beginning in the 60's under Nixon (a president I have much admiration for). He created a monster with a knee-jerk reaction to the hippie/anti-war movement. It has been feeding on itself ever since.

"I honestly don't know what to do about drugs. Drugs and the death penalty, I can't give a strong answer either way. I don't pretend to have all the answers, nor do I think one needs to take a definite side on every idea and every position and every concept in the history of man. But when comparing the War on Murder, the War on Rape, and the War on Drugs, one doesn't fit, one isn't the same as the others."

The War on Drugs is different too in that the standard lock up as many people as possible approach is not nearly as effective as it is with other types of crime. If we get some serial killer or serial rapist off the streets, we've really done something. We're protecting his future victims. Most drug users fool around with the stuff for a while and then grow out of that phase in their lives without hurting anyone. We aren't protecting future victims imprisoning a drug user for being involved with drugs unless he happens to be one of the few who will go off the deep end and cause a lot of problems. We aren't doing much even when we put someone in prison for selling drugs because those who would have bought from him will just buy from someone else. There is a never ending supply of people willing to sell you drugs. Filling our prisons with these people helps a little in that with this shotgun approach we do take some people off the streets who are a real threat, but we've now filled our prisons so much with so many who aren't that big of a threat that we are having to start letting them all out earlier and earlier to make room for the new people sentenced to prison. I would think maybe it would be a better idea to focus on putting those we know for a fact are out there raping and killing and stealing in and keep them in longer. That would be benefit us all more and be a much better use of our limited resources.

Another thing we should consider is that the deterrent effect of laws with harsh punishments isn't nearly as powerful when it comes to drugs. Nationally, better than two out of three murders will be solved. I don't know the statistics on rapes, but probably a very high percentage of them will result in the culprit getting caught. Contrast that to drug crimes where the vast majority go unprosecuted. How many pot smokings or meth or coke or heroin snortings or shooting ups result in an arrest? One in several thousand. People know that the chance that they will get caught fooling around with drugs is minuscule. Those who do drugs all tend to feel like as long as they are a little careful there is almost no risk of getting caught. Law enforcement will never even know they've done the drugs. There won't be victims and witnesses who weren't involved to pressure the police to solve the crime. They can sneak off to the backroom with their buddies and get high and the only people who will know about it will be others taking the same risks who tend to keep their mouthes shut about it.

The same applies to those selling the drugs. They have fairly good reason to believe they won't get caught. The risk of getting caught may be higher than for simple use of drugs, but it is still much lower than with most other crimes, and most of the people selling drugs at the retail level at least tend to be addicts anyway who won't be deterred because the most important thing in the world to them is getting high again. It's those selling at the retail levels who take the greatest risks, even though most will get away with it. They are the ones we are filling our prisons with though because that small percentage of people caught selling drugs adds up to a lot of folks to have to warehouse in our prisons. The farther up the ladder you go in the distribution networks though the more you find people who are extremely careful to keep a good bit of distance between them and the drugs they are trafficking in. They keep a buffer zone between them and the drugs of people who will take the fall if the police get involved. They make tons of money and their greatest risks come not so much from law enforcement but from the competition or those who would rip them off, kill them, whatever. If they aren't deterred by the risks inherent in working with organized crime in a black market industry, they won't be deterred by the slight chance of getting caught and getting sent to prison.

People seem to think that the answer is always to raise the punishments and lock more people up with longer and longer sentences. The thinking behind this is that the longer the sentences, the more people will be deterred from breaking the law. What people aren't taking into account with this line of thinking is that the level of deterrent effect of a law is directly proportional to the level of risk of getting caught perceived by the person contemplating breaking the law. If people don't think there is any real chance of getting caught, they aren't going to be too worried about how severe the remotely possible punishment could be.

Personally, I'm not for legalizing all drugs, although I would legalize marijuana and regulate it similar to alcohol. With the rest of this stuff though we need to get it through our heads that drugs have always been here and they always will be here. We will never "win" the war on drugs. We can't make the drugs go away entirely. The best we can really hope to do is keep the prices up so high that relatively few people will try them, and not so many of those who do try them will be able to afford to do them frequently enough to become addicted before they are able to grow up and leave the stuff alone. If we can do that, and try to get a handle on the few users/addicts cause us the most problems, we'll be accomplishing about all we can accomplish.

The way to keep price up, is to shrink the supply and make it more expensive for those distributing the drugs to operate. We do that by disrupting production, seizing huge quantities of drugs that do get produced, and shutting down major smuggling routes. Instead of rewarding law enforcement for busting and imprisoning as many people as possible, which leads to us imprisoning hundreds of thousands of inconsequential minor players at great expense to us all with little return on our investment, we should be funding and patting those on the back who seize the really huge loads of drugs, shut down tunnels under our borders and other smuggling routes, locate and shut down the big drug factories in all parts of the world, and so on.

You know I was reading that there are really only about nine factories in the world that supply almost all of the pseudoephedrine diverted for use in meth "superlabs" that produce the lion's share of the meth consumed in this country. We should be and are to some extent focusing on forcing these factories to account for where their product goes, and exerting extreme pressure on major meth manufacturing countries like Mexico to limit and control their pseudophedrine imports. We could put a big dent in the meth supply that way. I know the controls on pseudoephedrine at the consumer level are putting a big dent in the number of little tweaker labs in my area. If we can put the hurt on the superlabs that produce most of the meth consumed in this country, supply will go down, average meth purity will go down, and fewer people will become addicted to that drug. It seems from my vantage point working in the criminal justice system that we seem to focusing most all of our energy and money on busting all these little guys with tiny amounts of dope and locking a lot of them up for a long time. We're spinning our wheels with that, wasting billions of dollars. The only good that comes from that is that some of these hundreds of thousands we lock up are actually really bad guys and we're getting them off the streets for a little while and away from the rest of us. It's an extremely inefficient way of achieving that end though to lock up more people than any other country in the world in total and on a per capita basis to achieve it. Our crime rates and drug use rates are still among the highest in the world. If we'd just get smart with our criminal justice and drug policies we could achieve so much more.

I don't know all the answers either, but what we are doing doesn't seem to be working worth a flip from where I'm sitting. I think that in the future when people look back in history at our present version of the war on drugs, they'll think we were pretty stupid. Hindsight is 20/20 though. It will be interesting to see how things unfold.

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