FROM NIXON TO NOW

A Flawed Drug Policy Marches On

There's one thing you can say for the war on drugs: It's consistent. The
effort is tinged with the same hypocrisy, dishonesty and propaganda that
characterized President Richard Nixon's launch of it during the early
Seventies.

Earlier this year the National Archives released tapes Nixon made in the
Oval Office during 1971 and 1972. Transcripts highlight the prejudice,
ignorance and self-deception that precipitated a national tragedy. While
the president appointed a commission that called for decriminalizing the
possession and small-scale sale of marijuana, Nixon pushed for an "all-out
war, on all fronts," against pot smokers. Within a year marijuana arrests
had jumped threefold, to 420,700 from 100,000. And since then, more than
15 million people have been arrested in the U.S. for marijuana.

What was Nixon's big hang-up with weed? He saw it as a tool used by those
who opposed him. The president claimed that "radical demonstrators are all
on drugs." He told confidants that "every one of the bastards out for
legalizing marijuana is Jewish. I suppose it's because most of them are
psychiatrists." Nixon saw the drug war as part of a larger cultural war:
"Homosexuality, dope, immorality in general - these are the enemies of
strong societies. That's why the Communists and left-wingers are pushing
the stuff. They're trying to destroy us."

In his notes from the time, Nixon aide Bob Haldeman reported that the White
House saw tough drug laws as a way to keep the black community in
check. "The whole problem is the blacks," Haldeman wrote. "The key is to
devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to." The Nixon
legacy? More blacks in prison, and fewer voting. While blacks make up
approximately 15 percent of drug users, they represent 55 percent of drug
convictions. Thirteen percent have lost the right to vote because of
felony convictions, often for drug offenses. In Florida alone, and
estimated 204,600 black men cannot vote - enough to have easily turned the
presidential election, even allowing for quite a few dangling chads.

While speaking with entertainer and antidrug crusader Art Linkletter, Nixon
dismissed any comparison between the mood-altering effects of alcohol and
those of drugs. He asserted that while people smoke to get high, they
don't drink to get drunk but only to have fun.

That simple but absurd distinction has influenced domestic policy for 30
years. The feds are punitive on pot use but compassionate about alcohol
abuse. Critics of the drug war have called for an end to treating drug
users as criminals. They point to the cost of this jihad. The
government's response? Clever accounting. The drug war budget already
does not include the cost of military personnel working on drug
enforcement, such as the soldiers and civilian contractors employed in
Colombia by the U.S. Now the White House also will exclude the expense of
prosecuting and/or imprisoning offenders. According to drug czar John
Walters, these are indirect costs for his office.

It gets better. This year, for the first time, the cost of treating
alcoholics - people addicted to a substance that's legal in every state -
will be added to the budget. So much for Nixon's distinction between
tokers and tipplers. Why these Enron-like tricks? The easy answer is that
they allow President Bush to cut the federal drug budget from $19.2 billion
to $11.4 billion without any sacrifice. More important, Bush and Walters
can maintain that the split in the budget between enforcement and treatment
costs approaches 50-50 (the actual split is 70-30). This not only allows
the administration to claim the higher ground - it's compassionate
conservatism at work - but it also reflects a growing belief among the
public that incarceration is not the way to battle what is being recognized
as a public health crisis.

Unfortunately, it's all lies. The leaders of the drug war have become
comfortable with their ability to churn out propaganda. They can assert
with straight faces the $3 billion annual cost of incarcerating offenders
is not a cost of the war. This sort of dishonesty shows the drug warriors
realize they are losing support. According to one national survey, three
in four Americans believe the war is a losing cause. Voters in California
and Arizona have told authorities to provide treatment to offenders rather
than send them to prison. More reforms are sure to follow.