BIG BROTHER: AMERICAS REAL DEPENDENCE PROBLEM

As reported in the UK Observer, the British government has decided to
abandon the costly and futile hunt for cannabis smugglers and dealers.
Perhaps taking its cue from the Brits, a county in northern California has
legalised the growing of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Though this
decision will no doubt be challenged by state and federal governments, who
prompted by a self-serving pharmaceutical lobby frown upon such frivolous
practices as selfmedication, it represents a tiny crack in the solid wall
of official obfuscation.

According to the latest census, there are now about 280 million legal
residents in the US, a mere 1 per cent of whom are gainfully employed in
farming, fishing and forestry. Coincidentally, this is about the same
number of Americans - 2.3 million - currently incarcerated in federal or
state prisons, by far the largest 'criminal class' of any industrialised
society. The majority of these prisoners are so-called minorities, who
collectively make up more than one-third of the population. And almost half
of these alleged miscreants are non-violent drug offenders, victims of
mandatory sentencing laws. To their credit, many judges took early
retirement rather than allowing themselves to be stripped of their judicial
discretion.

The so-called 'War on Drugs' has now been waged for almost 30 years - twice
as long as Prohibition, the failed attempt at dissuading denizens of the
Land of the Free from imbibing alcohol. When this disastrous experiment was
finally abandoned in 1933, it had created a subculture of bootleggers and
Mafiosi, whose descendants control powerful crime syndicates in major US
cities. But Uncle Sam does not get a cut of the profits from growing pot or
smuggling coke, so has no incentive to legalise them.

Attesting to the failure of the self-defeating war on drugs is the fact
that, while its budget has increased twenty-fold, from $75 million in 1973
to $1.5 billion last year, the number of drug addicts has doubled, and US
taxpayers have shelled out a total of $185 billion to no avail. As any
student of economics knows, if the demand for a product is constant, but
the supply is curtailed, the price of the product will rise. Elementary,
you say? Of course - but try to get that through the heads of all the
Watsons in Washington, who are more concerned with moralistic
grand-standing then with the law of supply and demand. For a member of
Congress to suggest that marijuana should be legalised - like the much more
lethal tobacco plant - would be political suicide.

No, much safer to vote for ever bigger drugbusting budgets in a futile
attempt at intercepting the avalanche of drugs streaming across the Mexican
border and the Caribbean - even though it is estimated that only 11-12 per
cent is confiscated. Besides, thousands of law enforcement officers now
depend for their livelihood on this misappropriation of tax dollars,
orchestrated by a presidential appointee with the impressive, if
unofficial, title 'Drug Czar'. It was recently reported that several
competing law enforcement agencies, in their quest for bigger budgets and
drug busts, employed drug-dealing snitches to report on competing gangs in
exchange for lenient treatment, should they ever themselves be caught in
flagrante delecto.

To suggest that you can cure Americans' drug addiction by incarcerating
them is analogous to locking up diabetics to deprive them of sugar. But
perhaps the most insidious aspect of this sordid saga is that it is
counter-productive, Those who grow, process, and deliver the drugs to
eagerly awaiting customers norte de la fronte are not greatly affected by
interceptions; they just raise their price accordingly. But for the
addicts, the higher street price increases the necessity to steal or commit
other crimes.

In addition to breeding crime at home, the War on Drugs contributes to
corruption and civil unrest in drug-producing and trafficking countries
such as Colombia, Peru and Mexico. One of president Clinton's last
executive acts was granting the Colombian government a 'loan' of $1.3
billion, with which to continue its decades long fight against the FARC,
the insurgent political party which now occupies an estimated quarter of
the country's territory, and which finances its purchase of high-tech
weapons with drug money.

On a positive note, both California's and New Mexico's legislatures are now
considering substituting treatment of addiction for incarceration. As the
governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, phrased it: 'We need to address the
problem of drug abuse... as a public health issue rather than a criminal
justice issue. The 'Drug War' should... be replaced by a common sense
humanitarian approach! Not only is this approach more effective; it is also
cheaper. By reducing the demand, supply-side economics soon take care of
the rest of the Keynesian equation: the artificially inflated prices
collapse, and profits dry up.

Hopefully some day all Americans will face up to the truth: the solution to
their drug problem lies within the US borders - not beyond them. if the
same amount of money and effort had been expended on fighting terrorism or
environmental pollution, as is now being spent on a futile attempt at
preventing people from polluting themselves, all of society would have
benefited.