DRUG WAR WOES

We tend to forget as a country that our longest and most costly war
has been the war on drugs. Many people believe that this is a
long-failing battle, and I tend to agree.

This year, drug arrests are expected to exceed 1.8 million people, and
law enforcement made more arrests for drug abuse violations than any
other crime in the past two years.

In May, the head of the National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske,
said that he wanted to eliminate the idea of a "war on drugs" and
instead focus on treatment as opposed to incarceration in order to
reduce the drug problem.

This is an important step in the right direction, and I truly hope
that Kerlikowske makes effective changes towards this aim.

The war on drugs, besides failing to significantly reduce illicit drug
use, also exploits issues such as racism. According to drugpolicy.org,
African Americans comprise about 13 percent of total drug users, yet
they are 38 percent of the arrests for drug offenses and 59 percent of
the convicted offenders. Instead of alleviating drug problems, our
government is unjustly creating further racial rifts. Sadly, it is
impossible to talk about the war on drugs without talking about
racism. Our drug war repeatedly ignores class and race in its
policies, and therefore cannot alleviate many of the underlying
factors that contribute to rampant drug abuse.

With talks of nationwide decriminalization and legalization of
marijuana, it is absolutely insane that responsible adults are
sentenced to serve jail time for using a drug that has been mislabeled
as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no medicinal use. This is an
obvious flaw in the system, and responsible citizens utilizing the
drug for medicinal purposes should not be imprisoned due to the
mislabeling of the substance.

With Obama's election, a Web site called the Citizen's Briefing Book
allowed U.S. citizens to voice their opinions on the most important
issues in America. The top ideas were to be given to Obama at the
inauguration, and the most popular idea was "Ending Marijuana
Prohibition."

One main reason for the war on drugs is that we need to be protected
against certain substances because they are dangerous to our health
and are quite simply bad for us. However, with the legality of alcohol
and tobacco, this argument stands on shaky ground.

I agree with Kerlikowske that a total change in focus must be taken in
order for an effective drug policy to be enacted. By imprisoning mass
amounts of drug abusers, the war on drugs becomes a war on the people
instead of one for the people. Treatment should be a much higher
focus, as opposed to racist arrests that do nothing to truly eliminate
the real drug problems in many impoverished areas.

At the very least, the heart of the issue should be drugs and not war.