cannabisnews.com: America's Lonely Drug War





America's Lonely Drug War
Posted by FoM on December 15, 2001 at 09:18:05 PT
By Adam J. Smith
Source: Mother Jones
In America's cities, punishment remains the rule in the War on Drugs.  Last December 5th marked the 68th anniversary of the effective end of Prohibition, drawing to close this nation's "noble experiment" with criminalizing alcohol. So it seems ironic that it was also the day on which the United States Senate confirmed John P. Walters as the new director of the Office of National Drug Policy -- the nation's drug czar. 
Walters, who spent much of the 90s working in various positions at the federal office he will now lead, has a track record of opposing measures like syringe exchanges while supporting large-scale incarceration for drug users and military action to stop drug production in places like Colombia and Peru. His appointment is the clearest sign yet that the Bush administration is committed to a punishment-based approach to the problems caused by illegal drug, undeterred by a growing consensus both at home and abroad that the War on Drugs is as ill-conceived as the war on alcohol nearly seven decades ago. Over the past five years, Americans have voted in favor of nearly every significant state initiative to reform drug-policies, from legalizing medical marijuana in Arizona, to banning the seizure of assets of accused but unconvicted drug dealers in Oregon, to last year's Proposition 36 in California which mandates treatment instead of incarceration for drug users. In most cases, that public support came despite strong opposition from the federal government. Our allies in Europe have gone much further. The US has had no firmer friend in Europe than the United Kingdom. But even as the UK has enlisted wholeheartedly in the war on terror, it has taken steps towards declaring peace in the War on Drugs. In late October, Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that the British government will soon abandon the policy of arresting people for marijuana possession. Blunkett also indicated that the New Labour government is ready to discuss expanding the medically-supervised distribution of heroin to addicts, while some Labour members in Parliament have called for reducing the penalties for the manufacture, sale and possession of Ecstasy. "The drug war, in Western Europe at least, is essentially over," says Paul Flynn, a Labour member of Parliament since 1987 . "Our course is irreversibly moving toward legalized, regulated markets in so-called soft drugs, availability of drugs like opiates for those who are addicted through various health systems, and a more pragmatic approach to substance abuse generally throughout Europe." Far from being trendsetters in this regard, Britain trails every European Union nation other than Sweden in moving away form criminally-enforced prohibition, according to a survey by the European Non-Governmental Organizations Council on Drugs and Development, an umbrella group of advocacy organizations. Holland led the shift starting back in the 1970s, when it "normalized" the cannabis trade -- meaning that over the counter sales were tolerated, though not exactly legal. Dutch policymakers hoped that, by separating out the market for "soft" drugs like marijuana from that of "hard" drugs like cocaine and heroin, marijuana users would be less likely to come into contact with more addictive and dangerous substances. That approach seems to have yielded results. In its latest annual report on drug use, released last month, the European Union's European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction found that Britain and Ireland rank highest among EU nations in per capita use of cannabis, amphetamines and cocaine. Per capita usage in the Netherlands, the report indicates, is significantly lower. The incidence of intravenous and long-term regular use of opiates, cocaine or amphetamines is also two to three times higher in the UK than in The Netherlands, the report indicates. Due in part to the success of the Dutch model, most Western European countries have over the past five years begun to soften their approach to personal use of most drugs. Spain and Germany no longer arrest people for possession of "soft" drugs such as marijuana, and this year, Portugal essentially decriminalized drug possession altogether. More controversially, some EU countries are experimenting with programs under which registered addicts can receive legal, measured doses of heroin, along with other health and social services. Switzerland has established such programs as part of its overall health policy, and the Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Denmark are launching pilot programs. Several European countries are also testing the benefits of safe injection rooms, places where IV drug users can shoot up under some level of medical supervision. Although the data is still inconclusive, several studies suggest that these facilitites can help reduce the incidence of fatal overdoses and syringe sharing. In Frankfurt, for instance, where injection rooms have been open since 1994, city officials report that overdose fatalities declined from 147 in 1992 to 26 in 1999. There are now injection rooms operating in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. City officials in Vancouver, Canada are also considering opening an injection room. In the US, of course, things are different -- as Walters' nomination makes clear. "In Europe, the drug problem is viewed as a collection of consequences -- AIDS, crime, addiction -- which must be dealt with. Not so here, where we tend to look at drug use and intoxication as a moral issue," says Eric Sterling, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Criminal Justice Policy Foundation "We justify the most destructive and least effective of our drug policies as somehow sending an important message to our children." Indeed, the man set to become America's newest drug czar has consistently cited moral objections in opposing approaches favoring treatment. In 1996, he declared that he opposed syringe exchanges on moral grounds, ignoring data from major national and international health organizations -- including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS -- indicating that exchange programs reduce the spread of deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, without increasing drug use. Walters has also told Congress that he believes foreign drug interdiction programs are "cheap and effective," even though a 1994 federal Government Accounting Office study found that "the supply of illegal drugs reaching the United States via Central America continues virtually uninterrupted, despite years of US drug interdiction efforts." A study the same year by the RAND Corporation, a private research institute, showed that monies spent on treatment are twenty-three times more effective at lowering drug use than those spent on interdiction. In 1996 Walters, then the president of a private think tank, urged Congress to increase support for a Peruvian policy of shooting suspected drug planes out of the sky, rejecting experts' concerns that the practice would put innocent travellers at risk. Last April, US support for that program was withdrawn after the Peruvian military shot down a plane carrying an American missionary and her daughter -- but no drugs. Walters has also defended the practice of jailing drug offenders, rejecting arguments that too many Americans are imprisoned for simple drug possession and that drug sentences are too long as "among the great urban myths of our time." Walters clings to his beliefs despite the fact that the US has the highest incarceration rate of any country on earth. Thanks largely to the kinds of policies Walters would continue, the US holds more prisoners for drug crimes than are imprisoned in Western Europe for all crimes combined, according to the British Home Office and the US Bureau of Justice Statistics. By 1933, 14 years after its inception, it was clear that alcohol prohibition was a disaster. Crime and homicide rates had increased. Machine gun-toting gangsters had become counter-culture icons. Impure black market alcohol was causing blindess, disease and death. Governmental and police corruption was rampant. Children easily obtained alcohol, drinking out of hip flasks, the status symbol of the time. Nevertheless, to its champions, Prohibition was seen as indistinguishable from society's "message" that excessive drink was a bad and a dangerous thing. How could we stand firm against the sins of drunkenness, spousal and child abuse, violence and wasted promise, if our laws permitted the legal sale of such deadly stuff? What we needed, according to Prohibitionists, was to re-double our efforts. Those who sought to overturn Prohibition, the hardliners argued, were giving up on our nation, on our quest for an alcohol-free society, on our children. "We represent here to-day not only organizations of women, but, as a whole, we represent the home, the school, the church, and we stand firmly for no amendment to the eighteenth amendment ... but rather a strengthening," Mrs. Henry Peabody, President of the Women's National Committee for Law Enforcement, told the Senate Judiary Committee on Prohibition in 1926. "We stand for strict law enforcement. ... It is never the policy of a good mother or teacher to say the children are disobedient -- therefore let us give in to them and let them do as they like." How little things change. Last month, William Bennet, Walters' former boss at ONDCP, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal urging Walters' speedy confirmation and accusing the Clinton administration -- which oversaw a doubling of the drug war budget and record levels of arrests and incarceration -- of "all but giving up" on our children. It is time, said Bennet, not to "go soft" but to "push back." Today, around the world, in England, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Canada, a new consensus is emerging. It is one which sees substance abuse as a health issue, rather than a criminal justice issue. It seeks pragmatic solutions to the problems of addiction, crime and AIDS. Here at home, voters are making a statement at the ballot box that moral absolutism might be a fine opinion, but it makes lousy law. Walters and the Bush administration, however, have yet to get the message. What do you think? Note: With the confirmation of John Walters as the new drug czar, the US is committing itself to a punishment-based War on Drugs -- even as most of its allies are declaring cease-fires. Adam J. Smith, J.D., is currently writing a book about the impact of the drug war on youth.Source: Mother Jones (US) Author: Adam J. SmithPublished: December 14, 2001Copyright: 2001 Foundation for National Progress Website: http://motherjones.com/Contact: backtalk motherjones.com Related Articles:Drug War Retreat http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11564.shtmlUS Senate Confirms Walters as 'Drug Czar' http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11505.shtmlWhat's Bill Bennett Smoking?http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread11491.shtml
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Comment #6 posted by Lehder on December 17, 2001 at 06:54:18 PT
Rightwingers: a mentally ill but active minority
Do not make the mistake of believing that the rightwingers who ran US politics before September 11, and whose grip is now even tighter, constitute anything remotely resembling a monolithic entity. The right is comprised of an extremely disparate collection of groups that stretches on a continuum from Nobel laureate economists to neo-Nazi skinheads, from southern Democratic governors to the late, unlamented Timothy McVeigh. Most do not even agree with one another on basic matters of theology or philosophy. What they do agree on is a list of their enemies. With the recent addition of Osama bin Laden, this would include: the media, liberals, homosexuals,feminists, the Clintons, the Kennedys, bureaucrats, "one-worlders", secular humanists, atheists, abortionists, New Yorkers, big-government, the 1960s, Hollywood, professors, do-gooders and the media. To focus on national or even state politics is to miss the genius of the religious right. In direct contrast to, say, Ralph Nader, who prides himself on leading leftwing activists out of the Democratic party and into oblivion, the God squad has taken to heart Mao's dictum for guerrilla warfare. They swim with the fishes. They run candidates for their local school boards, town councils and otheroffices where hardly anybody shows up on election day. They can therefore take over these offices, and their local Republican Party organisations, with as little as 10% of the eligible vote.And as McCain learned, any Republican politician who crosses them will do so at the peril of his entire political future. 
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/archive/article/0,,4319110,00.html
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Comment #5 posted by Patrick on December 17, 2001 at 06:35:18 PT
dddd
Thanks for the words of encouragement. A couple of nights of decent sleep sure helped after hearing that Friday morning prseident led anti-rally. It's just that Zig heil rubs nerves raw especially when the announcement was I am to be the target. So far, no no-knock raids here yet! 
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Comment #4 posted by dddd on December 17, 2001 at 00:47:37 PT
Patrick
.....Your commentary rings true...I have the same feelings you expressed.....The federal government has spun out of control,and is now little less than an evil empire of greed,and corruption.It seems to get more disgusting each day...It no longer represents the People who are America......It has debilitated the Constitution,,,,,and debased the flag........It has turned into an orgy of corporate debauchery.....It is a beast that has almost no accoutability......It is like some disgusting party from hell,,goofing off with our tax money,,....the blank expression and beady eyes of the shrub,as he smirks,handing out big ol' cigars,and lighting them up with million dollar wads of cash.
..I think there's alot more pissed off citizens in this country than most people realize,or have been led to believe!....And I hope you wont be too hasty in your decision to relocate Patrick....the "terror war" appears to be attempting to go global,so chances are,that you might move to another country,and the countrys' government would change,and you would end up being treated as a suspicious immigrant,,rounded up,and brought in for interagation,and incarcerated..??? .besides,,If we have a Boston tea party" type thing here,,true Patriots like yourself need to be there....I think it's still better to hide,and lurk in the shadows here,than to jump ship...........dddd
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Comment #3 posted by FoM on December 15, 2001 at 11:22:53 PT
Patrick
Don't go away. Please stay. We have come too far to quit now. When we know we are right we know we are right. I don't want drugs legalized so I can do them or nor do I want anyone to do them but jailing people must end. Life is always an experiment and some people will mess around with drugs for a short time and never get caught and go on to do wonderful things. I am tired of young people thinking we don't do anything about the laws and they look at us with discust sometimes. Soon it will be their turn and I hope we've made the path a little bit easier for them because it's going to be really tough. Hang in there.
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Comment #2 posted by DdC on December 15, 2001 at 11:21:40 PT
UNIVERSAL D.E.A.th SOLDIER
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand yearsHe's a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill 
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for youAnd he's fighting for Canada, 
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians 
and he's fighting for Japan, 
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this wayAnd he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide 
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the wallsBut without him how would Hitler have 
condemned them at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body 
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go onHe's the universal soldier and he 
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.NOTES: I wrote "Universal Soldier" in the basement of The Purple Onion coffee house in Toronto in the early sixties. It's about individual responsibility for war and how the old feudal thinking kills us all. Donovan had a hit with it in 1965.
bsm
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Comment #1 posted by Patrick on December 15, 2001 at 10:45:35 PT
What do I think?
I think there is a civil war on the horizon in this country. A war between (s)elected officials who force their moral opinions into law as the Taliban did in Afghanistan against those who wish to remain free of federal intervention into our personal lives. As a nation, we are one step away from becoming The Germany of Hitler's era. As a veteran, I still feel strongly about the oath that I swore to uphold the Constitution. I swore to protect America from its enemies both foreign and domestic. Who or what is America anymore? Recently, my personal choice of intoxicant has caused the leadership in this country to declare others and myself terrorists. I am not a terrorist. I do not traffic drugs. I grow my own plant now and then for my own personal use. I am a working taxpaying-voting citizen. The current administration wants to lock me up and suck away your tax dollars to house me in a jail for minding my own business by relaxing at home with a joint and watching a Sunday afternoon football game from the comfort of my own home. The last time I was in so much as a fistfight was while I was under the influence of "alcohol" serving my country in the armed forces. Needless to say I do not drink to excess anymore. Call it maturity or call it finding cannabis along the way. Cannabis is less addictive to my system than coffee. Coffee remains legal and coffee drinkers are not terrorists. Cannabis is less addictive than tobacco. Cigarette smokers are not considered terrorists. Yet tobacco company products kill 400,000 people a year in a slow painful choking sorta way. Marlboro has not been declared a terrorist organization. I still have a beer and a snort of whisky at times and I can feel their effects on my body the next day. People can overdose on alcohol but not on cannabis. Alcohol drinkers have not been labeled terrorists by the highest office in the land and Jack Daniels has not labeled as terrorist financing tool.What do I think? I think the government has just declared war on a huge number of people that for the most part believed in and supported our system of government. That 3-branch government system you learned in civics class kiddies is no longer in effect. We are now living under the police state of George Bush and his press secretary Ari says; we better watch what we say. I respect the law until the law becomes tyranny. dddd suggested we throw a tea party in a previous post somewhere. Count me in.What do I think? Several months ago I was welcomed to this site by freedom fighter and FoM after I had declared that I was tired of hiding my cannabis enjoyment in the closet. In the light of recent of events, I am inclined to go back into the shadows from whence I came and evade the coming sweeps of military and police drug patrols that are just around the corner. I have successfully participated in this great experiment called America all my life. It is quite unsettling to now realize it is gone. I am currently searching for a new country and a new place I can call home. Perhaps Australia, Canada or Europe can use another hard working educated productive citizen that also likes an occasional puff.
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