DRUG WAR LOST: STOP THE WASTE

Editor's note: The writer of this column wishes not to be named, as
expressing one's personal beliefs against government policy can
severely hinder a future career with many government agencies.

The "War on Drugs" was born under the Nixon administration in 1969.
It truly took off during Reagan and Bush (Sr.). Since then this
campaign has seen about as much success as the United States' War on
Terror. The government has been successful in: spending billions upon
billions of tax dollars, incarcerating non-violent offenders and
perhaps one of the greatest heists in history. The War on Drugs has
been a gift that keeps on giving to those who control it and
manipulate it for their own purposes. For the less advantaged it can
be viewed as an attack on the people, creating and sustaining a new
lower class.

So far in 2010, $11 billion has already been spent according to the
ONDCP. That breaks down to about $5 billion on a federal level and $6
billion on that of the state. A little more than an eighth of that
goes straight into federal prisons, while about $2 billion are spent
on state and local prisons. It costs about $30,000 a year to house in
inmate with the average five-year sentence, making it about $150,000
per prisoner per year.

This would be a small price to pay if it was actually effective.
However, drug use in America is as prevalent now as it was then.
National surveys performed by the DEA state about 40 million people
use drugs yearly. In 2007 it was estimated that 6,000 people a day
would try marijuana for the first time.

Since the early 1980s the number of people in America's prison system
has spiked dramatically, so much so that our prison systems have been
overcrowding and lacking funds. The government has even toyed with
concept of the privatization of prisons, which is a whole different
issue (conflict of interest, perhaps?).

According to the Uniform Crime Report, someone is arrested for
violating a drug law every 17 seconds. Some 411,180 people have been
arrested this year alone, of those 194,900 for cannabis violations.
The U.S. Department of Justice believes the number of arrests for
drug violations in 2010 is expected to exceed the 2007 number of
1,841,182. Not alarming considering that since 1995, the U.S. prison
population has grown an average of 43,266 inmates per year.

With one of the largest ratios of imprisoned people in the world, the
flaw in the system should be painfully obvious. A less obvious but
now prominent theme in African-American culture is the Drug War's biased eye.

A Washington Post Staff writer wrote a piece entitled "Whites Use
Drugs, More Blacks Imprisoned." He states that although blacks make
up a smaller percentage of drug users than whites, they are arrested
at 13 times the rate. So much so that blacks make up 62 percent of
drug offenders in prison. Activists argue that this discrimination
impedes any possible success, or access to education for the lower
class. Criminal records permanently scar and stigmatize ex-addicts,
making it extremely difficult if not impossible to find legitimate
jobs; creating a perpetuating cycle.

A New York Times article written by Catherine Rampell discussing a
study proving how areas with higher unemployment rates tend to have
higher rates of drug use (coincidence, or completely logical?) These
impoverished areas could be lacking good health care and with the use
of synthetic drugs, such as Ritalin or Vicodin rising, the use of
cheaper illicit drugs should not be too surprising.

What is surprising is how few people point out the real problem. Like
an old mobster movie, the corrupt officials have been lurking in the
shadows. Consider this a mere flashlight's glimpse into a rabbit hole.

In 1986 the CIA was caught with its hands in the cookie jar. Reagan
was secretly trying to negotiate a deal with Iran: weapons in
exchange for hostages. The real blow came when Oliver North, a
then-White House aide, wrote a memo explaining plans to use profit
from the arms deal to aid the Contra in Nicaragua. The event became
known as the Iran Contra Affair. Attorney General Edwin Meese III
reported that $10 million to $30 million were diverted to the
Contras. Robert McFarlane was convicted along with North and other
key players. Although there has been no evidence to link the two,
McFarlane brought to Congress that Reagan directly ordered the entire
operation in 1984.

The CIA has been known to get their hands dirty too. Project Watch
Tower was an operation in Latin America, in which the CIA used set
beacon towers from Columbia through Panama to fly undetected moving
cocaine through the borders. After being implicated for the murder of
his wife Private Bill Tyree opened suit against the U.S. Army and the
CIA. In his case he alleged FEMA was illegitimately funded through
"Black Ops" using documentation to support his claims.

Tyree is serving a life sentence right now, but there are many people
who believe he was framed for speaking out against Watchtower. Is it
possible that the "War on Drugs" cannot be won when people are being
arrested by their own drug dealers? What if the system is broken on purpose?

Portugal won their war on drugs when they abolished all criminal
penalties for personal possession of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and
meth. They are replacing prison time with therapy and rehabilitation.
Prohibition did not work with alcohol here, and as Portugal is
finding out control is always better then prohibition.

The Times article "Did Decriminalization Work?" Maia Szalavitz writes
that along with the decline in older teens using drugs, "the number
of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction
rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization. Perhaps it is
time we pull out and relieve the victims of our Drug Wars.