NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY PLANK

Goal: The goal of American drug policy should be to discourage drug use
and abuse, not by demonstratively ineffective drugwar tactics that
tend to erode constitutional liberties, but by renewed confidence in the
capacity of families, schools and churches to instill within our children
the merit of selfdiscipline and sobriety.

Rationale: American antidrug policies have failed the objective
to save our children. Failed policies have placed undue reliance
upon the ability of lawenforcement, the military, federal agencies
and international compacts to protect our borders from illicit drug
imports, resulting in unacceptable levels of drug availability, use
and addiction.

While supported by increased drugwar spending that now approaches $16
billion annually, American antidrug policies have rejected immutable
economic laws that dominate within the blackmarket drug economy, and
drug profits derived from the sale of illicit drugs have compromised the
effectiveness of antidrug preventive and educational strategies. While
American policies seek to teach our children to "just say no" to drugs,
daily, the promise of untold riches inherent in a blackmarket drug
economy tempt many children to forsake their place in the classroom for a
place in the drug business. Likewise, drugwar supporters have misgauged
the power of addiction as a driving force for misconduct compared to the
weakness of deterrent threats of everharsher criminal penalties, larger
prisons and more police.

Drug war policies have ignored the plain truth that addiction is a costly
societal problem best addressed by the medical community, rather than by
sworn officers of the law. Policemen cannot arrest addiction, and drug
dealers should not be writing and filling prescriptions for addicts.

Drug war also has American values under siege. Drugfighting police
have used informantbased, antidrug policing strategies that unwittingly
teach our children a warped informants' version of "The Golden Rule"
sacrifice another to save yourself. Other American values fair no better as
drug profits corrupt members of criminal justice system and society as a
whole. The prioritization of drug crime has deprioritized violent crime
and overburdened the judicial branch of government. No less than alcohol
prohibition of the 1920s, drug prohibition of the 1990s has brought the law
itself into disrespect, a cancer that erodes America values and traditions.

Aside from the high cost of drug war policies to America's moral fabric,
the dollar cost of drug war is equally daunting. Drug war policies
adversely affect many American problems, each with added economic
cost. Americans are entitled to safe streets and neighborhoods, but drug
war profits fund the gangs and put guns into the hands of kids.
Incarceration of thieving drug addicts and nonviolent drug dealers cost
the criminal justice system huge amounts of money beyond the drugwar
budget itself. Similarly, healthcare costs are unnecessarily inflated as the
medical community is asked to treat the victims of driveby shootings and
crossfire mishaps and to care for injecting drug users and abstainers
who have contracted AIDS or HepatitisB by sharing dirty needles or
through innocent sexual contact.

Drug war adversely impacts taxes, deficits and trade balance. Yet, most
political leaders have shied away from the urgent need to fashion a new
American drug policy.

American drug policy must experiment with drugtolerant, medically
supervised, antidrug strategies that include the public funding of clean
needleexchange, drugmaintenance and drugtreatment programs. It
must experiment with programs that tend to take the profitability out of the
illicit drug business. It must insist that mandatory drugtesting, drug
searches and drugbased, civil forfeitures of property be limited to
instances where probable cause justifies the incursion of the state upon
individual rights. It must revest parents, teachers and clergymen with the
primary responsibility for preventing drug use and teaching children the
dangers of drug use, rather than relying upon commercialized, antidrug
messages that often are perceived by children as advertisements for drug
use. It must categorize the problems of drug use, abuse and addiction as
medical problems, and only incidentally as lawenforcement problems.

More generally, American drug policy must restore some measure of
tolerance and common sense, harnessing drug demagoguery. A better
drug policy will surely follow, once Americans discover that they have
misplaced their trust and confidence in punitive drug polices and
misjudged the capacity of military and lawenforcement forces to win the
hearts and minds of American children through fear and force.

James E. Gierach
The Drug Corner
essays.plank
8.27.97

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