LAW ENFORCEMENT APPROACH TO ILLEGAL DRUGS WASTES LIVES, MONEY

* Author's note: In writing the following, I offer my own thoughts.
I do not represent the official view of any agency with which I am
affiliated, except perhaps by accident. The Harrison Narcotic Act of
1914 and Richard Nixon's declaration of the "War on Drugs" around
1970 have set us on a path that has little hope of a pretty ending.
We are on a strange path indeed.

The drug war is replete with oddities. Fore most among them is that
the U.S. is funding both sides of it. The Mexican cartels are funded
primarily (but not exclusively) by profit from the sales of illegal
drugs in the U.S. The Mexican counter-drug effort is substantially
(but not exclusively) funded by U.S. tax dollars. And, of course,
the U.S. counter-drug effort is funded primarily by U.S. tax dollars.

Most estimates put the annual cost of the "War on Drugs" in excess
of $40 billion. Annual drug law violation arrests have more than
tripled since 1980.

The cost is not limited to dollars and arrests and is not limited to
the U.S. Mexico City is now the No. 1 locus of kidnappings for
ransom, worldwide; Phoenix, Ariz., with 366 kidnapping-for-ransom
reports last year, and probably twice that number unreported, ranks second.

Mexican cartels have extended their tendrils into more than 200 U.S.
cities, from Atlanta to Anchorage. Mexico experienced more than
5,400 drug-related homicides in 2008. That's a lot of drug-related
homicides for a nation with about a third the population of the U.S.

Even back in 2006, Mexico's per capita intentional homicide rate was
twice that of the U.S. This year's toll, at least in Mexico, will be
higher. In the U.S., drug-related homicides are common and likely to
increase as well.

From the data above and many more, it's hard to see us as winning
this war. Perhaps by labeling it a war, we planted the seeds of our
own defeat.

There is another oddity about the drug war. Since its beginning, the
primary means of fighting the drug war has been the use of police
agencies. However, most police chiefs will tell you that you can't
enforce your way out of a drug problem. No matter how extensive the
resources applied, law enforcement as the primary tool just does not work.

In private conversations, some chiefs will tell you they think law
enforcement helps suppress what would otherwise be a bigger problem,
while other chiefs think law enforcement is the wrong tool for the
job. Because the primary tool we have used for the past 35 years has
been law enforcement, we have chewed up huge amounts of resources
that could have been used more productively elsewhere. In addition,
as a result of our focus on law enforcement to "fight the drug war,"
many people have died needlessly.

There is a third oddity about the drug war. It turns out that in
focusing on illegal drugs, we have probably exercised tunnel vision
- -- and, in part, targeted the wrong problem. The increase in
unintentional drug overdose deaths observed in the past few years
has primarily come from inappropriate use of prescription drugs.
Overdose deaths are mostly due to use of prescription drugs, not
illicit drugs. Based on the available data, why do we focus so much
on the cartels and so little on physicians, pharmacists, and drug companies?

It's not merely that we are hitting the least dangerous target in
terms of risk to users. It's that by doing so we create the problem
we fear. We increase the price of drugs by making them more
difficult to acquire. We decrease our control of the drug
marketplace by labeling certain drugs illegal. By moving those
drugs outside the constraints of the licit drug marketplace, we
encourage the violence that we observe.

Clearly, the drug war paradigm has maintained and perhaps increased
the problems it was intended to solve. As Thomas Kuhn told us many
years ago in his classic work, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (1962), the demonstrated inadequacy of a paradigm does
not necessarily mean that it will be supplanted by a better
paradigm, even if one is readily available. Resistance to change is
among the most powerful of human traits.

For the nonce, it is safe to conclude that what we are doing now has
not led to the outcomes we say we want.

Are there alternatives to the drug war? Yes. At the same time we've
been fighting this "war," we've also been taking baby steps in more
productive directions.

Drug courts, a very low budget item, have proven to be effective.
Sadly, they receive very little funding. The drug court in my area
runs on an essentially volunteer basis, under the leadership of the
Circuit Court judge and in cooperation with the police department,
the commonwealth's attorney, the probation/parole folks, and other
criminal justice actors.

Why do they volunteer their time? They know that the drug court
works. They also know that running many drug defendants through the
criminal justice system is an expensive exercise in futility. And
every year these volunteers wonder whether they can continue to run
the drug court on top of everything they are mandated to do.

Drug treatment outside of court settings, if done well, also is more
effective and less expensive than prosecuting users. However,
funding for treatment, as with drug courts, is at starvation rates,
destabilizing treatment systems.

The Obama administration is starting to send signals that things are
changing. One of the first was the nomination of Gil Kerlikowske, a
drug war pragmatist, to become the "drug czar." As police chief of
Seattle, he encouraged treatment programs and de-emphasized arrest
of marijuana users. Another signal is the recent declaration by
Attorney General Eric Holder that the federal government will no
longer prosecute people who run medical marijuana outlets that are
consistent with state law, as in California.

The paradigm has not yet shifted, but it is starting to do some
serious wobbling.