MEASURING SUCCESS IN WAR ON DRUGS

If there's a common cause we all can rally around, surely it is this:
Government shouldn't pump tax dollars into ineffective programs. It's
a theme shared - at least in speeches and writing - among all
political parties and their leaders, who constantly make pledges to
end wasteful spending and be good stewards of taxpayers' money.

Consider these:

"Federal programs should receive taxpayer dollars only when they prove
they achieve results.... No program, however worthy its goal and
high-minded its name, is entitled to continue perpetually unless it
can demonstrate it is actually effective in solving problems." That
was the introduction of President George W. Bush's plan for rating
federal programs in his 2004 budget.

"We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don't have
consequences; as if waste doesn't matter; as if the hard-earned tax
dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money; as
if we can ignore this challenge for another generation. We can't."
That was President Barack Obama, announcing his 2011 budget proposal.

And yet there are words and there are deeds. Neither president, for
example, did much to curb the spending that has supported this
nation's flawed war on illegal drugs.

As The Associated Press reported last week, the federal government has
funneled $1 trillion into boosting drug-control efforts, including
$571 billion to arrest and imprison 37 million nonviolent drug
offenders, since this war began 40 years ago. Even so, the number of
drug users in the United States during that time nearly doubled, and
drug overdoses climbed steadily, exceeding 20,000 last year.

Treatment and prevention programs, which studies repeatedly have shown
to be more effective than jail time, have been consistently
underfunded.

If this is success, it's hard to tell by the costs, either in lives or
money. And while the social prize of decriminalization is unknown,
that's not stopping states from heading that way, in part because the
financial and social costs of the war are so clear.

Fourteen states have legalized marijuana for medicinal use. In the
fall, California voters will decide whether to decriminalize pot, and
regulate and tax it, for recreational use. The move could raise
revenue even as it reduces costs in the state's criminal justice system.

In Virginia, a proposal to legalize marijuana for medical purposes
failed this year. But another bill, one that would allow a defendant
to be tried on a misdemeanor drug charge without an attorney if no
jail time is at stake, did pass. The bill, reasonably enough, was
pitched as a way to save tax dollars during tight economic times.

Nevertheless, the federal government appears as committed as ever to
war on drugs. Obama's budget proposal includes $10 billion for drug
enforcement and interdiction, including the continuation of Bush's
2008 Merida Initiative. The $1.4 billion plan is designed to help
fight drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico, the source of
the bulk of drugs used by Americans.

"President Obama's newly released drug war budget is essentially the
same as Bush's, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal
justice system as to treatment and prevention," Bill Piper, of the
nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance, told the AP.

And so it goes: Words followed by deeds. Pumping money into projects
and programs with little evidence of success. Unless, of course,
success is to be measured through more laws, more police, more
prisons, more taxes and - naturally - more spending.