The War on Drugs

The time may have come to retreat from the front lines of the war on
drugs and regroup.

Statistics tell a story of defeat. In 1980, the United States spent $5
billion on the drug war and arrested 40,000 folks on drug charges,
most of them minor league, nonviolent offenses. Today, we spend about
$40 billion and arrest 450,000 people for drug-related offenses,
primarily marijuana possession.

(That, by the way, is more people than are arrested, for any reason,
in all of Europe, which has a larger population.)

It's true that the use of drugs by the general population is
declining. But the number of hard-core addicts, those who are the most
likely to commit drug-related, often violent crimes, has remained
fairly constant at 5 million. Drugs are still plentiful and cheap on
the streets of most American cities.

New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican no less, has been crusading
for some time now to legalize marijuana and lighten up on nonviolent
drug offenders. It's not a popular crusade. His approval rating has
plummeted since he started his campaign.

To be sure, his notion is radical, although not new at all. Legalizing
marijuana and reducing the seriousness of nonviolent drug charges are
not actions with much public appeal.

Beside the morality and character issues drug abuse raises, addiction
is a serious and troubling problem in the United States. Minor
offenses lead to major ones. Nipping the problem in the bud is not an
unreasonable goal, and a wholesale abandoning of the war against drugs
is unlikely politically and probably not a very good idea in any event.

Still, it would be a mistake to dismiss Johnson as a misguided zealot.
He didn't make up the numbers he uses to make his case. Johnson's
suggestion that we make like Richard Nixon, declare a victory and pull
out of the war is extreme, but no one can deny that the war does not
go well.

New tactics and strategies are needed. Jailing nonviolent offenders on
possession charges isn't cost effective. Johnson's point that we ought
to concentrate on those 5 million hardcore addicts who are responsible
for most of the serious drug-related crime makes sense, even if
winking at lesser offenders doesn't.

It seems likely that a big reason for the lack of success in the war
on drugs is that it has produced a sizable and entrenched bureaucracy
now in Washington. When that happens, too often the focus shifts from
solving the problem to bureaucratic self-preservation.

You would think that $40 billion ought to be able to buy some real
victories in the battles against drugs, and indeed, some have been
won. But they have proved largely illusionary. The people removed from
the drug scene just have too many colleagues waiting in the wings to
take their place.

The war on drugs is a righteous cause, but our soldiers appear to be
ill-equipped and poorly led in this battle.