Why America Needs to End the War On Drugs

In June of 1971, President Richard Nixon declared what would become the longest-lasting and most expensive conflict thus far in American history, that of the War On Drugs. Dramatically increasing the size and role of federal drug control agencies while pushing through policies like mandatory sentencing and no-knock warrants, the administration introduced one of the worst aspects of the Neoliberal era into the American mainstream, a legacy which lingers with us to this day.

According to drugpolicy.org, a top Nixon aide by the name of John Ehrlichman later admitted: "You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

After Nixon's resignation from the presidency  in 1974, there was a concerted effort to overturn and undo several of the worst impacts of the Drug War, with eleven states even decriminalizing marijuana use by 1977. Yet this trend wouldn't last, and by the early 1980s the Reagan administration had doubled down on Drug War policies of drug criminalization, increased prison populations and ramped-up policing. In 1980 there were approximately 50,000 people incarcerated for drug possession within the US, which was itself a moderate uptick from decades prior. By 1997 that number had risen to more than 400,000 people.

Throughout the late 80s, political and media hysteria over drug use in America led the percentage of citizen-polling listing drugs as the number-one issue faced by the nation to rise from around 6% on average in 1985 to a high of 64% in 1989. Drug use became one of the most intensely fixated-on issues in America's public consciousness, and at one of the quickest rates in our history. While the polling percentage would plummet to around 10% in the following years, where it largely remains today, tough-on-crime laws, minimum sentencing rules and other draconian drug-use measures enacted during the high-hysteria years of the late 80s and early 90s unfortunately remained. Thus, while the American people's focus has shifted, the War On Drugs has continued on our behalf, and we've been left with high incarceration rates, increased poverty and militarized policing ever since.

For roughly half a century now, America has been under the grip of an over-hyped, manipulative, racist, xenophobic and destructive regime of thought regarding the role of policing, criminal justice and the prison system. The War On Drugs is a major component of this incredibly flawed system. Black and Hispanic inmates make up a disproportionate percentage of those in jails and prisons for drug possession offenses, even when study after study shows white Americans use controlled substances at a very similar rate to minority groups. Since the early 2000s policing has become notably more militarized, with assault rifles, riot gear, armored vehicles and population-control measures such as water cannons and tear-gas becoming far more common among police departments over the last couple of decades. This, alongside slashed funds for social services which has led to law enforcement being forced to 'fill in the gap', has led to an inevitable increase in conflict between many communities and their police departments.

Combined with lack of investment in less affluent communities, tough-on-crime laws and the concerted over-policing of minority-heavy neighborhoods, this militarized Drug War has led to a devastating cycle of poverty, incarceration, homelessness, fatherlessness, gang violence, increased social conflict and general despair that is and has been entirely avoidable. Despite all we've invested into preventing drug imports and consumption, levels of use, abuse and availability have remained stubbornly resilient over the decades. In short, the War On Drugs has been a complete and abject failure, yet we have a long way to go in correcting for its many flaws. We have allowed this corrupt, destructive system to exist for several generations now, and it's well beyond time we tear it down and replace it with a structure far more humane, scientific and effective.

Fortunately, since the late 90s there has been a slow yet steady shift in the way most American's think about the War On Drugs, away from criminalization and towards public healthcare. Perhaps one of the best examples the US has to look towards is the nation of Portugal. Plagued with a higher-than-average rate of consistent drug users compared to other developed nations by the late 90s, the country decided to try a different, science-based approach to handling persistent abuse of controlled substances. In 2001 Portugal decriminalized all personal drug use, and instead invested heavily into rehabilitation, housing and mental health programs.

The result of these changes has not only been an overall reduction in drug use compared to its European counterparts, but fewer drug-related deaths, a drop in 'problematic' user numbers, a large increase in the numbers of people seeking treatment and rehabilitation, a sharp reduction in transmission rates of drug-use-related diseases and notably fewer drug-offenders in the criminal justice system have all accompanied this reform of the Portuguese system. Additionally, with a greater focus on trafficking and distribution of narcotics, the nation has found itself seizing more illicit drugs than before the decriminalization. In effect, everything the Drug War preached it'd be able to accomplish was in fact only possible once public policy turned in a radically different direction.

And so, this publication would advocate for the immediate implementation of similar reforms within the United States. While drug abuse will likely never be eradicated, there is a much better way to handle our reality than treating it as a criminal justice issue. This doesn't mean that crimes committed while under the influence of controlled substances should be allowed or ignored, but it does mean than we need to stop seeing the issue of use and addiction as a 'nail' that only the 'hammer' of the police and prison can fix.

Research and real-world results have shown focusing on drug use as a public-health issue holds many benefits over our current system. In combination with housing programs, better education, job-training and mental healthcare, we can empower millions of Americans to live better, more fulfilling lives, while adding to and keeping more contributing members of our economy and society at large. There are plenty of upsides and virtually no downsides to ending the War On Drugs, we just need the public and political will to do so.


References:

1) https://drugpolicy.org/issues/brief-history-drug-war

2) https://www.drugfoundation.org.nz/matters-of-substance/archive/august-2016/portugal/

3) https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/sentencing-reform/end-war-drugs

4) https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2021/09/24/biden-should-end-americas-longest-war-the-war-on-drugs/

5) https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/06/end-war-drugs-and-promote-policies-rooted-human-rights-un-experts

6) https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(00)04242-2/fulltext

7) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2718055

8) https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rights-reimagining-policing/how-police-and-communities-can-move-forward-together/

Location: California, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

America Should Dissolve the Presidency and Senate

Image
Prior to the presidential election of 2016, a majority of Americans reasonably presumed politics would continue more-or-less as usual. After decades of frustrating yet rather consistent Neoliberal politics stretching back to the Reagan Administration of the 80s, wherein both major political parties seemed more like different sides of the same policy coin rather than ideological opposites, discontented populist wings within both parties were clearly growing in prominence. Yet, left-leaning progressives and rightwing nationalists alike remained unable to capture the majority of the vote from their respective sides, let alone coax enough moderates and independents in the ideological middle to win the White House. That all changed, however, with the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. Since his ascension to the Oval Office, America's political discourse has been treading dangerously close to the edge of losing the democratic republic we hold dear. Sadly...
Read more

Every American Should Have Basic Needs Guaranteed

Image
The United States of America has long been a nation of free enterprise and personal freedoms, the land of opportunity and protector of huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Yet, America is also a nation founded largely upon stolen land, much of it built by enslaved peoples and exploited immigrant laborers, where industrialists, tech tycoons and wealthy folks of all shapes and sizes have wielded huge and corrupting levels of power and influence for most of our history. Greed and exploitation has defined America just as much as freedom and prosperity has, yet the powers-that-be overwhelmingly push to remind us of the latter traits over the former. In fact, if one points out the rampant corruption and greed inherent in our current system, or makes an effort to discuss our history in its truer form, they are often labeled 'un-American', 'unpatriotic', 'socialist', 'woke' and any number of other politicized slurs used over the years to dampen dissent and p...
Read more

Why America Needs Guaranteed Healthcare

Image
For over 100 years, the United States has had various grass-roots movements attempting to implement and expand universal health insurance coverage. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, campaigns backed by progressives and socialists to pass universal healthcare legislation were opposed and blocked not only by conservatives, but eventually their own allies in labor unions due to the union's collective fear of losing power over paid-benefits (and thus their usefulness) in an era before there were legal protections for organized labor. While many European nations were beginning to provide 'sickness insurance' and subsidizing mutual benefit societies which helped workers cover medical costs, America's struggle for any forward momentum on the subject led to the issue being handed over to individual states. The states in turn mostly handed the responsibility over to private insurance companies and non-profits, a practice they've perfected through the decades. Throughout...
Read more