The War on Drugs

Many liberals are coming around to the view that the forty-plus-year “War on Drugs” initiated by the Nixon Administration in the 1970s has been a terrible failure and needs drastic transformation or an outright end.  Not only has it failed to reduce the incidence of drug use, but like the Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s it has resulted in a permanent underground economy dominated by violent criminal gangs involved in murder and corruption on a vast scale.  There are examples of successful programs in Europe that have legalized and strictly regulated recreational drugs and expanded compassionate rehab treatment for addicts who want to get clean.  The results seem to include the reduction of violence and death, generation of revenue, a reduction in the rates of usage and an increase in rates of rehabilitation and recovery.  Such a liberal program should be carefully studied for potential adoption in America.

For instance, Portugal decriminalized the possession and use of all drugs in 2001.  A person cited for drug intoxication has to go to a hearing in which they are offered treatment, but they are allowed to go home without it if they refuse.   A study found that in the years after personal possession was decriminalized, drug use among teens in Portugal declined 25 percent, heroin use declined 30 percent, rates of HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped 17 percent and the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.  The money saved from enforcement more than paid for the increased treatment costs.  Sweden offers a different model that combines strict enforcement against trafficking with light punishments but extensive counseling and rehabilitation for users.  Sweden has one of the lowest rates of drug use in Europe.    

In the United States, about $51 billion per year is spent trying to enforce the War on Drugs, including aid and combined operations with nations like Colombia.  About one and a half million are arrested for use and over 500,000 of these are sentenced to incarceration.  In 2012, 52 percent of inmates in federal prisons were there on drug convictions.  20 percent of African-American men spend time in jail at some point in their lives due to drug offenses.  In quite a few states people with these histories lose their right to vote.  Meanwhile, incidences of drug use have not improved.  According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the percentage of Americans over the age of 12 who had used an illicit drug in 2002 was 8.3 percent.  In 2012 it was 9.2 percent.  In 2007 the Institute found that 5.8 percent had used marijuana in the previous month.  In 2012 the percentage had grown to 7.3 percent. 

The point here is not to argue in any way that drug use or abuse is a good thing.  Addiction is responsible for enormous social disruption, many ruined lives, deaths, and negative health outcomes.  Even marijuana creates problems for many people.  The point instead  is to raise the question, as liberals do, about whether the way we are attacking the problem is effective and seems to be working.  The data would appear to indicate it is not.  Immense resources continue to be committed without perceptible improvement.  Meanwhile, approaches being tried in other countries show through hard data that they are making headway.  We do not seem to be meeting human needs well in the War on Drugs.  Research points the way toward better solutions.  Humble practicality seems to indicate there are more effective models we might follow.  In the War on Drugs, as with so many other issues, liberals are in tune with the common-sense saying, If you like what you’re getting keep doing what you’re doing. If you don’t like what you’re getting you need to change what you’re doing.