Experts: Is drug war worth the fight?

E-llusion

E-llusion

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Bill Masters says he took the drug war seriously.
Masters, the sheriff of the San Miguel County, Colo., since 1979, has done all he could to rid his community of illegal substances.

But a number of years ago Masters began to notice a problem.

"The drugs just got worse and worse," he said.

During his time in law enforcement, Masters has become an advocate for the repeal of drug laws.

He was part of a seven-person panel Thursday night at Western Michigan University's Bernhard Center that debated the validity of the country's war on drugs. The event drew about 200 people.

Law enforcement should " arrest people for their crimes, not what they put in their bodies," Masters said during the two-hour event, which was part of WMU's Peace Week celebration.

Views from both sides were heard Thursday, including members of law enforcement and criminal justice officials from Michigan and Kalamazoo who support the war on drugs.

Lt. Bill Ford, commander of the Michigan State Police Southwest Enforcement Team, said the amount of illegal substances now being circulated on America's streets is "out of control" and their availability has increased over the years.

"You're wrong if you think legalizing drugs will help that," Ford said.

Audience members tended to give more support to the views put forth by panel members who spoke against drug prohibition, including Sanho Tree, a fellow for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

Tree said the country's war on drugs has done nothing to stop the flow of illegal drugs in the country, and instead, has made the substances more profitable.

"Prohibition doesn't mean you control drugs. It means you lose the ability to control drugs," said Tree. He said that about a quarter of the 8 million people in the country currently serving prison sentences were convicted of some sort of drug crime.

About half of those 2 million drug offenders were first-time, nonviolent criminals, he said.

"We have to be effective rather than tough," Tree said.

The Rev. Edwin C. Sanders II, the senior minister and founder of the Metropolitan Interdenominational Church in Nashville, Tenn., has outreach programs in areas such as substance abuse. Sanders said racism and racial profiling are prevalent in the justice system and the country's fight against illegal substances.

He said blacks make up the majority of those currently serving time in the nation's prisons and those convicted of drug offenses.

"Something is wrong with that," Sanders said. "It has everything to do with race."

Ford and his counterparts on the panel -- Kalamazoo County Prosecutor James Gregart and Kalamazoo County Circuit Court Judge Philip D. Schaefer -- agreed that there is a disproportionate number of minorities currently circulating in and out of the criminal justice system.

However, Gregart and Schaefer said the county's drug court has been a positive initiative that offers rehabilitation for substance abusers rather than time behind bars.

"There is a social cost that we pay for using substances," Gregart said. "There is a social price, an economic price, for legalizing substances. The question is, are we willing to pay that price?" he said.

While their views differed, the seven panelists agreed that those in the audience could take the initiative to promote the changes they feel are needed for the nation's drug enforcement policy.

Masters recommended that citizens speak to lawmakers and "demand that they change the tools we work with."

"Don't put that on us," Masters said. "Make legislators make the change."

Ford agreed.

"I'm going to remember this night for a long time," Ford said. "But I hope 25 years from now your kids aren't in this room complaining about this because you didn't do anything about it."
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Experts: Is drug war worth the fight?
Friday, September 24, 2004
[email protected] 388-7784

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cynical :D...this kind of debate is a waste of time...on the one hand..bush and ashcroft will win the election..and the sensenbrenner act will be passed even before then..and will remain in place even if bush miraculously loses...

on the other hand..drug prohibition is a power trip..as such..the "war on drugs" is not meant to be won.. it is meant to be continuous (to cop a phrase from michael moore)...this point is completely lost on liberal intellectuals who only argue the specifics...
 
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while i agree that this kind of debate is not exactly a key engine of change, it is important that "liberal intellectuals" do continue to "argue the specifics", in that drug laws will only change when they become massive vote losers, and this can only happen when people understand how much damage the current drug laws do, and this is a small part of that.
 
nobody could care less about the specifics...if the LIs want anyone to "understand how much damage the current drug laws do"..then they must address the psychosexual power aspects of prohibition..which you may choose to call the "damage"..but which the majority views as the opposite...
 
You're wrong if you think only "liberal intellectuals" want drugs legalized. Most "liberals" aren't intellectual, anyways. Low- and medium-grade college professors, writers, and celebrities aren't exactly intelligent. That is, unless you mean true liberals...as in liberty, like libertarian. Not "socialized healthcare and expanded government" liberals. They want to complain about how much money the drug war costs, yet spend more money on other shit. They want to complain about how crimes due to drug use put to many people in prison, but they don't want to put anybody in prison...they give child rapists 60 day sentences (yes, it happened a few months ago here in the US). Punish people for crimes no matter their race and be very harsh. Legalize drugs, but if you do something stupid because you're too fucked up (yes it can happen we'll admit that...won't we?) then you will go to jail for a long time. Most conservatives don't know anything about drugs in the first place, and neither do most "liberals". They just speak rhetoric. These guys know nothing about the actual drugs and are debating about ideology and not pharmokenetics. Doctors should be debating this matter, not judges and police officers.

It has nothing to do with psychosexual powers. Sex is a drug itself. The fact is people want to feel good and certain chemicals work, some are illegal for no reason and cause more trouble than it's worth being illegal. I mean, does anyone honestly think cocaine is so great that all the crime that takes place over it should happen? No. Does anybody think that cocaine is so great we should have it illegal and spend billions to keep it so? No. There's no reason for there to be crimes over drugs and there's no reason for drugs to be illegal.
 
I never said it wasn't. We know why prohibtion is here...getting rid of it is the focus now, not whining about people with power abusing it in 1914 and 1936 (Harrison Narcotics Tax/Marijuana Illegalization).
 
everyone in govt since then has been abusing that power.. the masses share in the power trip by identifying with the prohibitionist cause...and the facts alone wont make ppl choose to give up that power...
 
It's definately issues like this that turn many people like myself away from politics. It simply turns my stomach to actually look at the logic of the drug war. If you ask any politician to give you straight-forward answer, i guarantee youre not going to get anything worth while.

Our country isn't ran by intelligence, but instead the ignorance of traditionalism. This is exactly why cocaine is c-II instead of c-I. The government saw the people doing it were higher class and it ran from there.
 
Cocaine is still used for medical purposes. So is methamphetamine, amphetamine, and morphine. There is oxycodone, so why have diamorphine? That's the reason why cocaine is CII instead of CI. Drug scheduling was done in 1971, before the cocaine boom in this country...when amphetamines and barbiturates were the newest scourge.
 
All I have to say is that every law enforcement official I have ever met has been in favor of decriminalizing small-time possession. And every law enforcement official I have ever met says it would be more cost efficient to put drug offenders through rehab than to put them in jail. This confuses me. It seems like most of them disagree with how things are being run, but nothing is changing. I keep reading article after article about how prohibition is bad, but nothing is changing. Who is it that's keeping all this bull shit in place? It's not JUST Bush, it's not JUST ashcroft, it's not JUST Sensenbrenner.... What is the mechanism really keeping all these stupid laws in place?
 
A weird country

From the point of view of somebody who lives in an industrialized nation that isn't the USA, the country has some strange contradictions in attitude.
Such as; The 4th amendment of the US constitution is there to protect the private lives of individuals. The 1st amendment ensures free speech to each US citizen. So how come, if personal liberty is such a foundation of the US, that in the privacy of your own home, you aren't allowed to do what you want with your body (the persuit of happiness bit), as long as it doesn't interfere with anybody else's life in a severely negative way.

In the UK, we don't have a freedom of information act (wonder if Tony forgot about that part of the Labour party's manifesto), the right to free speech is something that people endure all sorts of shit for, and then it's very easily lost (the miners strike, anyone), yet in the UK, LOTS of politicians (both left and right) admit to having tried cannabis, Chief Constables advocate doing away with criminal prosecution for drug possession offences, and to the horror of the DEA, we've downgraded cannabis to the least serious class of controlled drugs. It even looks like the various police forces are going to be told to ignore anybody growing cannabis for their own use to allieviate a medical condition.

The only difference in terms of approach that I can see is that in the US, right wing, bible bashing Christian fundamentalists have way too much influence over political decisions. It's so hypocritical, because take any country that has politics and religion (read islamic) just as closely intertwined, and the US tends to view them with at least distrust, and in some cases outright hostility.

Don't get me wrong; the UK is just as warped in other ways (my grandparents were Irish - for some, still an issue in Britain - and as such I have two passports, and in certain conditions, the "Her Britannic Majesty requests..." one never gets to see the light of day (for islamic terrorists - blinded by the same religion/politics hatred bullshit as others - being British is 3rd choice of people to hate/terrorize/execute after Americans and Israelis).

What is it about the people with fundamentalist beliefs (of any faith) that they want power over other peoples lives to tell them what to do? Remove the religion aspect, and most psychologists would see people like that as having psychological pathologies of the most serious kind.

If there is a god,(s)he must be wondering how it all went so horribly wrong
 
It isn't the "right wing fundimentalist christians" keeping the drug laws in place, it's the *soccer mom's*.

Yes, the same soccer mom's with a script for valium believe that if their kid has tried marijuana they will end up a heroin junkie with holes in their brain... Until we can find some way to reach the soccer mom, perhaps with the reality that "These are your kids, do you want your kids in jail for long periods of time?" ... change isn't going to happen.
 
Excellent post fastandbulbous. :)

I honestly don't understand why politicians here in the US feel so strongly driven to placate the religious fundamentalists. In recent times, it only began to take hold with the degree of intensity that it has when Ronald Reagan was first elected as president in 1980. Reagan spoke and acted as though the vast majority of the American public were composed of these religious nut cases. And that has been more of less the "official" stance of our "republican party" ever sense.

It is actually a bit more complicated than just having started with Reagan. Before then, christian fundamentalists with strong political leanings, and the desire to become involved in and manipulate such "party politics" became more and more common place. An infiltration, if you will, of religo-political power gathering, and direct religo-political funding (in many ways they bought the support that they couldn't obtain otherwise). And your spot on regarding them being of the same "collective mental illness" as Islamists or religo-political activists of the Middle East.

The fact that these christian fundamentalist types have come as far as they have demonstrates the flaws in the American system of government. The founders could have never foreseen the degree of wealth that one such group could use to gain so much control over the political process here. I just hope that the world will some day be able to forgive us for our allowing such incredible mismanagement, and the way that this mismanagement has extended out and effected other nations. :(




In terms of the overall discussion regarding the War on Drugs, this has been discussed endlessly here. There is really only one reason that keeps the WOD going, and that is funding, and in a very real sense we can call all of the funding "drug money."

On the one hand, high profit margins are resulting from black market products (which keeps the hand of the market alive and well).

On the other hand there is selective product demonization and its resulting laws and regulation (which by its very existence produces the black market). This results in funding acquired from tax revenues, and paid by a general populous who accept the rational produced by the courts. These revenues are then used to sustain and expand: courts and court costs, produce more prisons and prison personnel (for the ever expanding prison population), fund law enforcement activities at the Federal, States and local levels, funding for studies to demonstrate and justify the judicial rulings and regulations (such as NIDA), etc.

From the standpoint of the black market, it is an industry. And from the enforcement standpoint it is just as much an industry.

For all the talk of power, or prestige, what the whole thing boils down to is that it is an industry. And one who's existence so many count on for their livelihood, from the top down, and from the black market and enforcement and regulation market. Everyone is making a killing on existence of the drug laws, and the only one paying for it (both by funding it, and by incurring legal problems) is the citizen in the middle.

Neither power nor prestige keeps the wheels of this machine turning, it is the massive funding which does.
 
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Yup. It has nothing to do with religion, though. It has more to do with racism when the main three laws that resulted in this whole fiasco are looked at.
 
I honestly don't understand why politicians here in the US feel so strongly driven to placate the religious fundamentalists.
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Oh, it's worse than that. The drug warriors aren't trying to placate the religious nuts. The actually BELIEVE. The believe that without the drug war, we would have a society drowning under drug abuse and addiction. It's a sort of religion in it's own, praying to a philosophical god that there's no objective evidence for but who's existence is fervently believed in anyway. The drug warriors BELIEVE that if we legalize heroin we'll become a nation awash in heroin addicts. The drug warriors BELIEVE that legalizing pot will mean most of the nation will become degenerate unemployed potheads. Never mind that a child in the US is twice as likely to grow up to be a pot smoker as a child in the Netherlands.

Nobody's given them the numbers. Nobody's questioned the existence of their god. We complain about the injustice of the drug war, but that argument will never win out so long as they believe that the drug war is a necessary and effective evil.

Legalization does not significantly increase levels of drug use. That's the winning argument, and at least in the case of pot we have the numbers to back it up.

There is really only one reason that keeps the WOD going, and that is funding, and in a very real sense we can call all of the funding "drug money."
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No. The drug war endures because our leaders believe it is the only choice we have to protect our society from rampant drug problems. They've horribly wrong, but they are sincere. I know how easy it is to believe conspiracies that paint the other side as deliberately evil, but that's not the case. The politician putting a pot grower in prison for 20 years does so because he thinks it's the only thing he can do. Some do it out of sincere personal conviction, others do it in spite of minor reservations because it's what their constituents believe should be done. Never forget that Hitler and Pol Pot were doing what they thought was best for society; the greatest of evils are often committed with good intentions.
 
You just put into word the feelings and thoughts I was unable to. You're absolutely correct, just like Tom Ripley said "Well, whatever you do, however terrible, however hurtful, it all makes sense, doesn't it, in your head. You never meet anybody that thinks they're a bad person.
". Same goes for anti-durg warriors. They don't know any better, they've never seen any better (unless they're over 100 years old) and they've never heard any better. What's to make them believe drug legalization will really work? Some second-rate journalist or politician that gets a two minute spot on the news? No. Until somebody who can be trusted crusades for the pro-drug legalization argument, nothing is going to happen. I mean, like, not a former drug addict, drug smuggler, or drug user. Somebody like the President.
 
They've horribly wrong, but they are sincere.
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You're telling me the government actually believes the propaganda it puts out about marijuana, and that drug warriors don't intentionally distort the truth in order to justify continuation of the drug war (i.e. their jobs). I find both hard to believe.
 
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