OUR INSANE WAR ON DRUGS

In Mexico the drug cartels bribe politicians and police officers while
slaughtering those whom they can't buy. Murders this year of gang
members, government officials and innocent bystanders number in the
thousands.
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In New York arrests were made of five University students selling
drugs out of their dorm rooms " to pay for college". Students at one
of the nation's elite universities selling drugs? What next?

Albert Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and
over again and expecting different results". That is what we have been
doing in our efforts to combat illicit drugs.

We've been fighting with the same failed methods for over thirty years
at a cost of trillions in salaries for the "enforcers" and trillions
more in crime and loss of human lives.

We've established an army of law enforcement officers and prison
guards. We've built new prisons to detain drug-related criminals and
many who are labeled criminals simply for using illicit drugs without
committing any other crime. We've passed laws to permit monitoring of
suspected drug dealers in ways which deprive them of Constitutional
protections. When they are arrested, we've confiscated their private
property before they have had a trial or a guilty verdict.

We have tried commercials aimed at young people warning of the dangers
of drug use. We've tried the D.A.R.E. program where officers come to
schools to counsel children. Neither commercials nor DARE nor similar
interventions aimed at young people have had any measurable success in
reducing drug experimentation and use.

Illicit drug sales in the U.S. are somewhere between $60 billion and
$100 billion a year. (No one knows for sure because drug dealers don't
report income.) Estimates have 15 percent to 20 percent of Americans
using illicit drugs. Over half of all high school students have
experimented with illegal drugs; 85 percent if alcohol is included.
The trend has been toward less use in the past few years, but the
numbers remain shocking.

We are not winning this "war" because it cannot be won unless the laws
governing economic behavior since the beginning of recorded history
somehow change. Where there is demand for a product, at the right
price a supplier will always appear. Making the product illegal only
raises its price.

In 1919 Congress prohibited the consumption of alcohol. (Alcohol is
more damaging in many respects than is marijuana.) The result was
consumption of impure contraband alcohol resulting in deaths and
injuries. Crime cartels quickly developed to respond to the demand for
high priced illegal liquor. Police and government officials were
bought off. People had the good sense to repeal Prohibition in 1933.

Fast forward to 2010. Congress has prohibited the use of mind altering
drugs for years with no success and at immeasurable cost. It should be
obvious by now that the demand for drugs cannot be completely
eliminated. Nor can the supply be cut off. How long must we persist in
our failed "war on drugs"? Are we insane as Einstein suggests? Will we
ever be willing to decriminalize and regulate these drugs the way we
do alcohol and tobacco?

The only way to eliminate the drug cartels and the vice and crime they
support is to make a "legal" supply available. In doing so we could
save thousands of lives each year and tens of billions of dollars of
enforcement expenses. We could eliminate half of our prison population
and the cost of confining them. Even local law enforcement would cost
less. With legalization and no one motivated to push drugs, their
usage may fall off as it did in the Netherlands.

What's needed is a fact-based public discussion of the problem free of
the hysteria and morality plays which accompany any mention of
decriminalization.

William Dixon is a graduate of Columbia University, New York Medical
College and the USF College of Business Administration. He was an
Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of Georgia before
entering private practice. He served 11 years in the Army as a surgeon
and as a Special Forces Officer, achieving the rank of Lieutenant
Colonel.