ADDICTED TO FAILURE

In the wake of yesterday's report on UK drug laws, Ethan Nadelmann explains
why successive British governments have been wrong to look to the US for a
solution to drug misuse - and why we should now turn our attention to
Europe instead

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 US 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 the HIV virus 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 almost as old as the nation itself
are deeply embedded in American laws, institutions and culture. It's our
chronic national hysteria, rejuvenated each time a "new" drug emerges, ripe
for political posturing and media mania.

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 up, 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, even if that's not saying
much, given his competition. 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 incarceration of petty drug offenders, spoken
out against New York's draconian Rockefeller drug laws, and even called our
prison system "America's internal gulag". McCaffrey 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, this is the same drug tsar who has mangled and mocked the truth
on issues like needle exchange, marijuana and harm reduction policies
inside and outside the US. McCaffrey has played a pivotal role in ensuring
that the US government remains alone among advanced, industrialised nations
in the west in providing not a penny for needle-exchange programmes to
reduce the spread of HIV/Aids. His efforts to challenge the scientific
consensus bring to mind the cigarette companies' last, desperate claims to
have found a new study demonstrating that smoking does not cause cancer.

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, as did Reagan and Bush.

McCaffrey is also notorious for his thin skin, which may explain why he has
studiously avoided any public debate with reformers. His insults and claims
are always lobbed from a distance. He is careful to withdraw from televised
and other public forums when he learns that patients, doctors, scientists
and others with a critical view have been invited to participate.

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, and perhaps distinctly
American, 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 drug addicts. They think marijuana
should be legally available for medical purposes. They are beginning to
have doubts about the cost and meaning of incarcerating almost half a
million of their fellow citizens for drug law violations. So why does the
drug war not just persist but keep growing?

Part of the answer lies in what might best be described as a "drug
prohibition complex" - to take off on President Eisenhower's farewell
warning of the military-industrial complex - composed of the hundreds of
thousands of law enforcement officials, private prison corporations,
anti-drug organisations, drug testing companies and many others who benefit
economically, politically, emotionally and other wise from this ever
growing edifice. Drug prohibition is now big business in the US.

But the part of the answer that is harder for many people, especially
non-Americans, to grasp is the powerful 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, ever vigilant for any sign of moderation or
detente.

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.
Powerful senators and congressmen take their calls, invite them to testify
before official hearings, ensure that their organisations are well funded,
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 drug tsar 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 of all ages use cannabis than do their
American counterparts, and far fewer go on to use cocaine. US officials
avert their eyes from Europe's heroin maintenance trials, saying it can't
be done here, even as heroin overdose fatalities rise in the US and decline
in Switzerland. 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 in the US. 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 increasingly foolish to the
parent who knows something about marijuana.

The presidential election campaign this year boasted two Democratic
candidates, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, who admit to having smoked - and
inhaled - marijuana a number of times when they were younger. Note too that
when Republican candidate George W. Bush refused, last August, to deny that
he had used cocaine as a young man, over 80% of the American public told
pollsters they didn't care one way or another, and his popularity ratings
actually increased.

Twelve years ago, a brave new mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke, provoked a
firestorm of controversy at the height of the drug war when he demanded
that all options, including decriminalisation, be put on the table. Schmoke
weathered the onslaught, and was re-elected twice thereafter. Last summer,
two free-speaking 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. Each year more people are incarcerated for
breaking a drug law. Politicians still fear being blasted as "soft on
crime" or "soft on drugs". 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.