A New Look at the Drug War

 

Rarely does a week go by that I do not get of information about crime and criminal justice, either through direct mailings or from e-mails or from the Internet.  The bulk of the information I have been receiving in recent years has to do with the Awar on drugs.@  Through this body of information I have arrived at some interesting conclusions about this Awar.@  One conclusion is that it is very beneficial to some groups, especially various businesses and the Adrug warriors@ - various law enforcement agencies being paid enormous sums of money to fight the Awar on drugs.@  (As an aside, fighting any Awar@ benefits a number of people, whether it be the Awar on poverty,@ Awar on gangs@ or the most recent Awar on terrorism.@  But this is for another article.)

The drug war has helped create and perpetuate a Aprison-industrial complex@ which in turn is the result of an economic system driven by a Afree market@ philosophy that places profits above people.  In this Afree market@ everyone is Afree@ to earn a buck anyway they can.  The fact that it may be illegal is often beside the point; the fact that it may be downright unethical is largely irrelevant.  One of the key aspects of a capitalist, Afree market@ economic system is that the production and distribution of Acommodities@ is the major goal.  Commodities create profits, pure and simple.  And the production and distribution of commodities are based upon the famous Alaw of supply and demand@ which dictates that where there is a demand for a commodity, someone willing to take the risks will engage in the act of supply.  And when the commodity has been considered a Avice@ and attempts are made to limit access to it by the criminal justice system, there appears to be even a greater demand.  Such has been the case with all sorts of Avices@ - prostitution, gambling, alcohol, drugs...you name it.  When we have made attempts to reduce either the supply or the demand of something that is desired through the law, we have always had drastic consequences and have always failed miserably.

What many do not seem to understand is that by making something illegal that is at the same time highly desired by the general public, we open up all sorts of opportunities for not just bribery (the usual scandalous variety where cops receive payoffs to look the other way, judges fix things if they get that far, etc.) but also a great deal of money made very legitimately via working in the criminal justice system.  Indeed, largely as a result of fighting the drug war, the Acriminal justice industrial complex@ (of which the prison is one part) has become a booming business.  Currently we taxpayers shell out in excess of $150 billion per year for the police, the courts and the correctional system - up from a paltry $30 billion 20 years ago.  Fighting the drug war is big business.  The same can be said with the Awar on gangs,@ as billions are being spent in this effort.

Now about the drug war. The fact is, we do not seem to be winning.  That is, we are not winning in the usual sense of the word: the drug problem is not getting any better, people are finding it easier and easier to obtain drugs, street prices of illegal drugs have dropped considerably, while hardly a dent has been made in the amount of drugs coming into the country.  But in another sense many are in fact Awinning@ - if we define Awinning@ as making huge profits, the expansion of drug war bureaucracies, etc.. Aside from the jobs created and the money made actually Afighting@ the war (e.g., lucrative contracts to build prisons, providing police cars and various technology to fight crime, drug testing, etc.), there is plenty of money to be made on the supply side. Consider some of these interesting facts that I have received lately:

 

?                   A UN report notes that drug trafficking is a $400 billion per year industry, equal to about 8% of the world's trade; one example: one kilo of raw opium in Pakistan averages $90, but sells for $290,000 in the U.S.; another example: there are about $7 billion in drug profits coming out of Columbia each year (legitimate exports are only slightly greater at $7.6 billion); Columbian cartels spend about $100 million on bribes to officials each year; 98% of Bolivia's foreign exchange earnings from goods and services came from the coca market in 1993; 

?                   The estimated economic costs of alcohol abuse is around $148 billion, compared to drug abuse costs of around $97 billion;  concerning this $97 billion, 60% of the costs are related to law enforcement and imprisonment - only 3% were from the victims of drug-related crime. 

?                   And speaking of costs: whereas in 1969 the Nixon administration spent $65 million on the drug war, in 1982 the Reagan administration spent $1.65 billion; in 1998 the Clinton administration requested $17.1 billion; the most recent data show that currently, the combined money going to drug war bureaucracies is about $34 billion (see how profitable this war is?).  

?                   Our government steadfastly continues to focus on the "supply-side" rather than the "demand-side" of the equation, with horrible results, such as the fact that interdiction efforts intercept only 10-15% of the heroin and 30% of the cocaine; U.S. expenditures to counter drug operations in Columbia came to $625 million between 1990 and 1998, yet during this time Columbia was able to pass Peru and Bolivian as the number one producer of coca.

 

There are, of course, many losers in this drug war.  Consider some of the following:

 

?                   Recent figures show that in the federal system 55% of all drug defendants are what we call low-level offenders, such as street dealers, while only 11% are classified as high-level dealers; as of November, about 1.4 million had been arrested (one every 20 seconds); about 120 are locked up every day on such charges. 

?                   The vast majority of those arrested, convicted and sentenced to prison are poor and black or Hispanic; for instance, while African-Americans are less likely to use illegal, drug arrest rates for this group tripled between 1979 and 1998, while for whites the rates increased by only 25% (FBI); total arrests for drugs was only 328,000 in 1973; 

?                   The rate of incarceration for African-Americans exceeds that for whites by a ratio of 8 to 1, while the odds of an African-American male born in 1991 going to prison in his lifetime is more than one in four (28.5%), compared to about one in twenty-five for white males. 

?                   A recent study found that while two percent of all adults have been disenfranchised because of a felony conviction (mostly drug convictions), about 13 percent of all black men have been! In six states the percentage of black men disenfranchised is 25 percent or more, going higher than 30 percent in Alabama and Florida. 

?                   During a three year period (1992-1995) out of around 2,400 persons charged in federal courts with crack cocaine violations, not a single one was white and all but eleven were African-American.

 

Then there are the numerous personal stories of those victimized by the drug war.  Especially noteworthy are those victimized in the state of California where voters overwhelmingly approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes.  The Adrug warriors@ (an appropriate term given to various law enforcement agencies hell-bent on carrying out their mandate, regardless of the wishes of the voters and the Bill of Rights) go after innocent people with zeal unmatched since Nazi SS troops.  Consider the following two cases:

 

?                   As reported by Review-Journal columnist Vin Suprynowicz (10/21/01), the drug warriors have gone after Dr. Eidelman and Dr. Mollie Fry with a vengeance, with one drug warrior posing as a Apatient@ in order to collect evidence against Eidelman and seizing (in the best style of Nazi SS troops) more than 5,000 records from Fry, despite California law (Prop. 215) telling these doctors they can prescribe marijuana for a variety of illnesses. 

?                   There is the case of Renee Boje (see previous commentary), a woman trying to help Todd McCormick, a marijuana activist (with cancer) who was renting a home in Beverly Hills at the time; about 60 DEA agents raided his house and eventually arrested Boje, who subsequently fled the country and is seeking asylum in Vancouver, Canada, trying to resist extradition to the U.S. (at present her case is still pending).

 

These are merely two cases, among millions in this country, of people (including thousands who no prior criminal record) languishing in our overcrowded jails and prisons (at least one-third of the rise in the prison population in the past 20 years can be explained by the Asuccess@ of the drug warriors), while the U.S. has surpassed all other countries in the rate of incarceration (over 2 million behind bars presently) over 700 (per 100,000 population), triple what it was 30 years ago.