DRUG PEACE FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM?

A Century Of Prohibition Has Not Worked

The federal budget for the drug war in the first year of the new millennium
is $17 billion.In 1972 when President Richard Nixon first called for a "war
against drugs," the federal drug-law enforcement budget was about $101
million.

It is difficult for most of us to comprehend what these numbers mean. But
the true magnitude of cost can be understood if we consider that in 1972,
the average monthly Social Security retirement check was $177. If Social
Security benefits had increased at the same rate as drug-war spending, the
monthly benefits would now be $30,444 a month. Similarly, the average 1972
salary of $114 per week would have soared to $19,608 a week.

What have we got for our money?

President Clinton assures us we are winning, as did his predecessors. Yet,
for good reason, people in law enforcement and local communities are
unconvinced. Although it appears that casual illegal drug use has declined
in recent years, regular use has not. And young people are increasingly
using drugs and at an earlier age.

Furthermore, the decline in casual drug use may be unrelated to the war on
drugs. Cigarette smoking, and consumption of hard liquor and high
cholesterol food, all as dangerous as illegal drug use, declined because of
greater awareness of health dangers, not because consumers were jailed or
because the government reduced the supply of these substances.

During the past decade, opium production has more than doubled in Southeast
Asia and cocaine production also increased. Eighty to 90 percent of illegal
drugs shipped to this country arrive undetected. Illegal drugs are cheaper
and more potent. The United States, indeed the world, is awash in illegal
drugs.

The vast profits resulting from prohibition a mark-up as great as 17,000
percent - have led to worldwide corruption of public officials and
widespread violence among drug traffickers and dealers that endangers whole
communities, cities, and nations. The United Nations reports that there is
a $500 billion international black market in drugs. In our own country,
drug-related overdose deaths and drug emergency room visits have increased.
Half of seniors in high school report using an illegal drug and 85 percent
of them say illegal drugs are easier to obtain than beer.

As we approach the year 2000, we should be mindful that the drug war
started about 100 years ago.Protestant missionaries in China and other
religious groups joined with temperance organizations in convincing
Congress that drugs were evil, and that drug users were dangerous, immoral
people.

On Dec. 17, 1914, the religious groups got their version of sin outlawed in
the Harrison Act. Until this federal law, the nation had viewed drug use as
a social and medical dilemma. Making possession of drugs a federal crime
was a radical change in policy. It certainly did not solve the drug
problem, but it did give birth to unanticipated social damage.

I was a policeman for 35 years of this century. As a beat officer in New
York's Harlem, and as police chief in Kansas City and San Jose, I caused
many drug users to be locked up. I have come to believe that jailing people
simply because they put certain chemicals into their bloodstream is a gross
misuse of police and criminal law. Jailing drug users does not lessen drug
use, and incarceration usually destroys the person's life and does immense
harm to that person's family and neighborhood.

Non-whites have borne the brunt of the punishment even though most drug use
is by whites. Alfred Blumstein, former president of the American Society of
Criminologists, described the drug war as "...an assault on the
Africa-American community." The current protests over racial profiling by
the police are a reflection of the damage that an ill-chosen law
enforcement war against drugs has on the ability of the police to win the
cooperation that they need to do their job.

Because drug transactions are consensual, the police do not have a victim,
witnesses and physical evidence that helps them solve crimes like murder,
assault, robbery, rape and burglary. And under the Fourth Amendment, the
police, with few exceptions, are not allowed to search people or their
homes without a warrant. Yet, last year, state and local police in the
United States made approximately 1,400,000 arrests for illegal possession
of drugs. Overwhelmingly, these were minor arrests and rarely did they
involve a court approved warrant.

The inescapable conclusion is that in hundreds of thousands of cases police
officers violated their oath to uphold the Constitution and often committed
perjury so that the evidence would be admitted. The practice is so
prevalent that the term "testilying" is frequently substituted in police
jargon for "testifying." The injury that unlawful searches and perjury by
the police does to the credibility of our justice system is immeasurable.

Just as damaging is the destruction of trust that follows exposure of
gangster cops who have robbed drug dealers, sold drugs and framed people in
the communities that they were sworn to protect.

The nation has been unable to face the failure of our drug policies and to
examine alternatives that would lessen dangerous drug use because we are
still captives of the false stereotypes of drugs and drug users created a
century ago by religious zealots.

The new millennium provides the opportunity for reflection and change.
Marijuana should be decriminalized. There is no record of anyone dying from
marijuana or committing a murder under its effects. Any number of
scientific studies have indicated that in some cases it may be an effective
medicine and it is certainly a less dangerous drug than alcohol. We would
eliminate almost 700,000 arrests a year which would not only save money but
also avoid ruining the lives of those arrested.

In addition, our country should revert to the pre-Harrison Act principle
that no one should be arrested if his/her only crime is putting certain
chemicals into their bloodstream. Treatment should be substituted for
arrests. As to the "harder" drugs, we should reject the inane demagogic
slogan of a "drug free America" and recognize that drugs are here and they
need to be dealt with on a humane and just basis.

Once we are beyond the emotional straight-jacket imposed by the Harrison
Act lobbyists, we can study how other countries minimize the harm of drugs.
The Swiss, for example, found during a five-year experiment that providing
heroin to addicts actually reduced heroin use and significantly reduced the
crime committed by the addicts. The Netherlands regulates and controls the
distribution of small amounts of hashish and marijuana and has a lower per
capita use of drugs and lower crime rates than the United States.

As long ago as 1936, August Vollmer, former police chief of Berkeley and
later professor of management at the University of California, Berkeley,
and the leading police expert of his time wrote: "Repression has driven
this vice underground and produced the narcotic smugglers and supply agents
who have grown wealthy. Drug addiction is not a police problem; it never
has and never can be solved by policemen. It is first and last a medical
problem ... ."

There is no panacea, but it is clear that continuing to do more of what has
not worked in the past century is not the way to start a new millennium. We
have paid a heavy price in wasted lives and money for not listening to
August Vollmer 63 years ago.