CALL OFF THE GLOBAL DRUG WAR

Atlanta

IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the
Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and
profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more
effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission
includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries,
a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights
leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard
Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug
effort, and in particular America's "war on drugs," which was
declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of
opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis
8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to
substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do
no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international
effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than
nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy
from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the
country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of
marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also
cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no
threat to society, and summarized by saying: "Penalties against
possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual
than the use of the drug itself."

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s
President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced
drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts,
toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the
dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign
cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of
cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in
drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human
rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.

The commission's facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends
that governments be encouraged to experiment "with models of legal
regulation of drugs ... that are designed to undermine the power of
organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their
citizens." For effective examples, they can look to policies that
have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.

But they probably won't turn to the United States for advice. Drug
policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other
democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison
populations. At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000
people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number
was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every
100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and
seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either
in prison or on probation or parole -- more than 3 percent of all
American adults!

Some of this increase has been caused by mandatory minimum sentencing
and "three strikes you're out" laws. But about three-quarters of new
admissions to state prisons are for nonviolent crimes. And the single
greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs,
with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses
increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of
millions of young people and their families (disproportionately
minorities), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets.
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in
1980, 10 percent of his state's budget went to higher education and 3
percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and
only 7.5 percent to higher education.

Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay
for the war on drugs will help to bring about a reform of America's
drug policies. At least the recommendations of the Global Commission
will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right.

A few years ago I worked side by side for four months with a group of
prison inmates, who were learning the building trade, to renovate
some public buildings in my hometown of Plains, Ga. They were
intelligent and dedicated young men, each preparing for a productive
life after the completion of his sentence. More than half of them
were in prison for drug-related crimes, and would have been better
off in college or trade school.

To help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug
policies more humane and more effective, the American government
should support and enact the reforms laid out by the Global
Commission on Drug Policy.