By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH – June 21, 2009
“Winning the War on Drugs?” Is that you, Dr. Steve? Isn’t that “War” just a construct designed to achieve
political and economic aims, while oppressing with it one particular sector of
the population? How can it be
“won?”
This column considers that conundrum in almost telegraphic
form. I have written at length on
it in the academic literature. Interested readers are welcome to get in touch with me for
references. The “War on Drugs” has
never been such a thing. From its
inauguration by Richard Nixon it has always been a War on Drug Users, for the
most part minority drug users at that, although some non-minorities have
occasionally been caught up in its tentacles. The so-called War on Drugs was begun shortly after the
invention of the race-based “Southern Strategy” that has controlled the
fortunes of the GOP and unfortunately the country for most of the time since
Nixon installed it.
The correctly labeled “War on Drug Users” has primarily been
a racist enterprise too. It has
been aimed at the users of one minor class of the Recreational Mood Altering
Drugs (RMADs), those that are currently “illicit” (as alcohol was nationally
between 1920 and 1933 and cigarettes were in 15 states at various times during
the 19th century. Although the
ratios have declined a bit in the last few years, for most of its duration
under the War on Drug Users, while approximately 75% of those in prison for
drug-related offenses are non-white approximately 75% of illicit-drug users are
white. Further, the War on Drug
Users has been race-based in terms of the neighborhoods in which it has been
waged. There was one major previous
true War on Drugs, Prohibition. It
was for the most part actually aimed at the drug, ethyl alcohol, not at the
users.
The commonly used RMADs are alcohol, nicotine in tobacco,
the non-prescription use of prescription drugs, and the illicits, primarily
marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and fairly recently, methamphetamine. In terms of negative outcomes of RMAD
use, for example, tobacco kills about 430,000 people per year, alcohol between
60,000 and 100,000, depending upon how one counts, and the illicits kill about
20,000, half that number as a result of drug-trade violence that would not exist
absent the War on Drug Users and some of the other half due to forced unsterile
use of the drugs. Tobacco and
alcohol are not only the major drug killers but they are the “starter drugs,”
most often in childhood, for almost every problem-user of them in adult life
and almost every user of the illicits, regardless of age.
Logic has not ended the War on Drug Users. Neither has the mainstream drug policy
reform movement which views RMAD use as the same false duality the Drug
Warriors do. Logic did not end
Prohibition either. Over-riding
policy concerns did: rampant crime on the one hand and a major need for new tax
revenues to deal with the Depression on the other. Major funding for the final Repeal campaign of the early
1930s came from a John D. Rockefeller-lead group of financiers who wanted to
prevent any increases in income tax levels that an incoming Democratic
Administration might enact.
In dealing with the War on Drug Users the stars would seem
to be aligned, that is if the unitary-RMAD understanding of reality were to be
adopted. There is a major series
of problems that could be addressed by ending the War on Drug Users. Legalizing the currently illicit would
create a major new source of tax revenues. Doing so would significantly reduce the prison population
resulting in major reductions in Federal, state and local spending on
incarceration. Doing so would
significantly unclog the courts, especially at the Federal level where they are
so over-burdened with drug cases that the waits for trials on much more
important matters, especially in the civil realm, can become interminable. Obviously, there would be a significant
reduction in the demands on the law enforcement sector of government, which
could either save money or enable the diversion of resources to other important
areas, such as financial fraud, that do not always receive the attention they
deserve.
The Taliban would be largely defunded. That the heroin trade is a major source
of their funding is the subject a new book that is currently featured on
BuzzFlash.com: Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al
Qaeda. As well, of course, the
true Drug Wars that are killing thousands of Latin Americans, especially in
Mexico and Colombia, would be brought to a sudden, well-deserved end. Finally, the recognition of the unitary
nature of RMAD use would enable for the first time a comprehensive public
health program to deal with all of the negative aspects of that use, especially
among children for whom it is the major licit drugs which are the stepping
stones both to later habitual, damaging use of them, and, currently, to the use
of the illicits.
As to the practical matter of how to implement the
legalization of the illicits, it has been said that the tobacco companies have
been prepared for marijuana legalization, up to and including the registration
of trade names. Heroin and cocaine
could be sold by Federal or state-operated stores, similar to the “package
stores” that dispense certain alcoholic beverages in such states as
Vermont. As for the synthetic
RMADs, and the non-prescription use of the prescription drugs (the latter of
which has been a much more serious problem than the use of heroin and cocaine
combined), a variety of approaches could be explored. This all would have be combined with a major public-health
based anti- and safe-RMAD use program, combining tax policy, controls on
advertising, packaging, and marketing, and effective education programs for
both adults and children. The
result would be a much healthier nation. Since finding sources of new government revenues in the face of
ever-increasing deficits have become such a major concern and since certain
major foreign policy aims could be achieved so easily, now is the time to end
the War on Drug Users, once and for all. 
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Please note: This column was previously published on The Planetary Movement on June 11,
2009, and is re-published here with permission.