ADDICTED TO FAILURE, THE AMERICAN WAY

Ethan Nadelmann Believes Britain Should Look To Europe, Not The US, For A
Solution To Drug Misuse

A piece of advice for British leaders in search of better drug policies:
look east, look south, but don't look west. Where once the Dutch
represented a lone voice for reform, now growing parts of Europe are
embracing pragmatic harm-reduction strategies based upon common sense,
science, public health and human rights.

I'm not sure why British officials keep turning to the United States for
lessons in how to deal with drugs. My country, after all, is the one that
incarcerates almost as many people for breaking the drug laws as Europe
incarcerates for everything else. My country is the one that has allowed
200,000 of its citizens to become infected with HIV rather than make
sterile syringes more readily available. My country is the one so committed
to "just say no" rhetoric and policies that it provides no realistic drug
education or any real fallback strategy for the majority of teenagers who
say yes to drugs.

It's not easy trying to end the drug war in the US. Punitive drug
prohibition and a temperance ideology are deeply embedded in American laws,
institutions and culture. From abroad, the drug war in the US must appear
monolithic, broken only by the occasional personality calling for
legalisation and the odd prominence of the medical marijuana issue. Viewed
from close, a more nuanced analysis emerges.

Our drug tsar, retired general Barry McCaffrey, is a case in point. He's
almost certainly the best drug tsar to date. Unlike the first drug tsar,
William Bennett, McCaffrey prefers to leave the rhetoric of war and zero
tolerance behind, speaking instead of the drug problem as a cancer in need
of treatment. He has attacked the relentless jailing of petty drug
offenders, spoken out against New York's draconian Rockefeller drug laws,
and even called our prison system "America's internal gulag". He has
defended methadone maintenance treatment, and he once tried to reduce the
billions of dollars wasted on futile air and sea efforts to prevent drugs
from entering the country.

Of course, McCaffrey has also mangled and mocked the truth on issues such
as needle exchange, marijuana and harm-reduction policies. He has played a
pivotal role in ensuring the government remains alone among advanced
nations in the West in providing not a penny for needle-exchange programmes
to reduce the spread of HIV/Aids.

His position on medical marijuana has been shameful - first mocking
patients and doctors, then threatening them with prosecution and loss of
licence, and now blocking the efforts of state and local authorities to
establish responsible, regulated systems of distribution.

This is the drug tsar who has presided over a ballooning federal drug
budget, now just under $20bn, that favours ineffective and punitive
prohibition and enforcement efforts. McCaffrey is also notorious for his
thin skin, which may explain why he has studiously avoided public debate.

As a reformer, I find McCaffrey's dissembling indefensible. But as a
political analyst, I cannot help but be aware of the political forces that
bear upon him and his office. Political power in the US increasingly lies
in the hands of those who smoked marijuana when they were younger, but that
generational shift has yet to influence policy. Far more important is the
lingering influence of our rigid anti-drug ideology.

Most Americans have strong doubts about the drug war. They support
treatment instead of incarceration for addicts. They think marijuana should
be legally available for medical purposes. They are beginning to have
doubts about the cost of jailing almost half-a-million of citizens for drug
law violations. So why does the drug war keep growing?

Part of the answer lies in what might best be described as a "drug
prohibition complex" composed of the hundreds of thousands of law
enforcement officials, anti-drug organisations, drug testing companies and
many others who benefit from this ever-growing edifice. Drug prohibition is
big business in the US.

But the part of the answer that is harder for many people to grasp is the
influence of what might be called the "John Birchers of the drug war". In
the 1960s, when anti-communism still represented the national ideology, the
John Birch Society was the most anti-communist of all.

The "John Birchers of the drug war" represent no more than 20% of public
opinion today, but their political influence far exceeds that of the
nation's leading scientists, scholars and other drug policy experts.
Senators and congressmen take their calls, invite them to testify before
official hearings and act on their advice. Directors of drug treatment and
research agencies, fearful of the zealots' wrath, are quick to compromise
their own scientific and intellectual integrity. So, too, is McCaffrey.

Tony Blair and others looking west for drug policy solutions need to be
mindful of the US's temperance traditions and drug war politics. McCaffrey
has tried hard to put a benign face on US drug policy, but Britons should
not be deceived.

US drug warriors mock the Dutch, with their coffee shops, but ignore the
fact that fewer Dutch use cannabis than do their American counterparts, and
far fewer go on to use cocaine. Now Ecstasy use is rising rapidly in the
US, and all the government offers are the "just say no" bromides of yesteryear.

Meanwhile signs of reform abound. The John Birchers may still be powerful,
but they're gradually losing credibility. Marijuana is to them what alcohol
was to temperance warriors of old. And just as the temperance advocates
became increasingly shrill and silly as Prohibition stumbled along, so
today's anti-drug extremists sound foolish to the parent who knows
something about marijuana.

This year's presidential election campaign boasted two Democratic
candidates, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, who admit to having smoked marijuana
when they were younger. Note, too, that when Republican candidate George W
Bush refused to deny he had used cocaine as a young man, more than 80% of
the American public told pollsters they didn't care.

Last year two governors, Minnesota's Jesse Ventura and New Mexico's Gary
Johnson, started calling for major reform of the drug laws. Johnson even
used the forbidden "L" word, legalisation. And now, for the first time, a
politician, Congressman Tom Campbell of California, is running for higher
office on a platform that includes prescribing heroin to drug addicts.

The fact that these reform advocates include both Republicans and
Independents bodes well for the non-partisan future of this struggle.
Meanwhile, medical marijuana and other drug policy reform initiatives have
triumphed at the ballot 11 out of 12 times since 1996.

Don't get me wrong. I don't see any Berlin wall of drug prohibition about
to come tumbling down in the US. But beneath the surface, reformist
sentiments are bubbling ever more vigorously. The consensus behind punitive
prohibition is crumbling as Americans tire of drug war strategies and
rhetoric and seek more sensible alternatives.

This is not the time for Britain to embrace what has failed so miserably in
my country. Look away, Mr Blair, look away.