Drug War Has Failed Miserably

Ezequiel Hernandez is dead, another victim, not of drugs, but of the War On
Drugs.

An innocent 18 year old boy, who everyone says was a good kid, who
was just tending his family's goats, has been shot by Marines given the job
of stopping the drug flow.

Most Americans have a good sense of the fact that the War On Drugs has
failed in its basic intent to curb the availability or the abuse of drugs.
Ezequiel's death is a tragic example of a less understood facet: the damage
done by the unintended consequences of our policy.

If the War On Drugs had to be justified like most endeavors, by a balance
sheet, it would have been terminated long ago. Its minuscule
accomplishments, if any, are dwarfed by a roll call of innocent victims.

The victims aren't just Ezequiel, or the thousands like him in a dozen
foreign countries. They also include:

The courageous law enforcement officers who have been killed in the
line of duty.

The thousands of inmates who rot in prisons for having merely
possessed drugs.

The women who contract HIV/AIDS from contact with someone they
may not even know is a drug user.

The millions of victims of crimes committed to get the money
needed to purchase drugs whose price has been inflated a hundredfold.

The victims of gangs whose activities are financed by those profits.

The list goes on and on and on.

And for what?

Of all addiction to drugs and alcohol, alcohol accounts for 80% of it.
Addiction rates for many drugs have been constant for at least 18 years.
If all heroin and cocaine disappeared, are we so naive as to think the
users then would become teetotalers or genteel sippers of the occasional
glass of wine?

So we are engaged in a monstrous effort [totally fruitless] to switch
20% of our addicts to an alcohol addiction that holds far more health
hazards and inflicts far more antisocial behavior on society.

But it is not just the absurdity of our policy or the myriad individual
tragedies that we must suffer. The very ethos of America traditions and
values that we have nurtured since our inception is being eroded.

In the name of the war on drugs, we have seen a warping of the
traditional balance sought by our Founding Fathers. Federal power, especially
coercive power, is on the rise.

The constitutional protections of individual liberty are being
diminished (the judicial system notes the "drug exception to the 4th
Amendment"). The formal separation of powers distorted by mandatory
minimum sentences and informally by law enforcement's encroachment on
the doctor/patient relationship. And then there is the racist impact
of unequal application of the law.

Ironically, the use of the criminal justice system, for what is
fundamentally a public health problem, has so overloaded our courts
that they no longer function effectively. And this pales beside the
havoc we have created in foreign countries.

Now dies Ezequiel, a victim of the passing of yet another tradition, the
prohibition on the use of the armed forces as a police force on domestic
soil.

I have proudly served as an officer in the Marines and assert that
they are as fine a group of fighting men this country can produce,
but their use in this manner is inappropriate. They have been trained
to kill a foreign enemy in time of war. Their misuse has resulted in the
killing of a treasured fellow citizen.

We have forfeited what should be priceless for empty promises of increased
security. Every individual has the capacity to resist the use of drugs. If
we persist in enlisting the police power of the state to save us from
ourselves, we will gain nothing; twice zero is still zero. But the costs
will be dear. There will be many more Ezequiels, many more weeping friends and
families.

Jerry Epstein is vice president of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas