Tuesday, December 06, 2011
The New York Times had an article on Saturday about an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Like the name implies, this is a group of police officers, judges, prosecutors, prison guards and other members of law enforcement who advocate the legalization of at least marijuana, and apparently for some members, other drugs.
The quoted members cite the deaths of their colleagues as reasons they support legalization, and blame those losses on “failed drug policies.” At least one member was fired for telling another officer that if marijuana was legal all the killings in Mexico would cease. If only marijuana was legal, the organization believes, law enforcement could turn its attention away from the war on drugs, and back to the war on crime.
While I appreciate, and in many ways agree with, their fundamental premise—that the war on drugs has not achieved sufficient results—I disagree with their conclusion that the answer is to legalize drugs, or even just decriminalize marijuana. I don’t think the answer to the failed drug war is surrender; I believe we should try a different strategy.
One should only support the legalization of marijuana if you believe marijuana itself is so benign, or at least controllable, that widespread use will not cause serious societal problems. If you fundamentally believe marijuana should not be legalized, and there are many reasons to believe that which I have blogged about in the past, then a failed drug war is the worst reason to give in. I do not believe merely legalizing marijuana ends drug violence. Even legalizing all drugs would not, I don’t think, end the crime problem associated with drugs. Just as the end of prohibition did not mean the end of the mafia.
First, I do not equate the current drug laws with Prohibition. Alcohol had been legal, acceptable, and part of society for thousands of years. Marijuana has never been both legal and widely-used. No one really knows what would happen if it was legal because that is uncharted territory. Alcohol can be ingested, and most of the time is, to achieve a state far short of intoxication. A drink or two has little effect if done in a social setting. Marijuana, on the other hand, provides no purpose at all unless it causes the intoxicating effect. Whether or not this intoxication is “better” than alcohol intoxication is somewhat irrelevant to my point. One can drink without getting drunk or even buzzed; but marijuana is used for the specific purpose of achieving the desired effect of the drug.
However, that is really not what I want to blog about. I have thought for a long time that the way the war on drugs has been fought is a waste of money because it can never achieve success. The policy forever has been to go after dealers, thinking that if they arrest, prosecute, convict, and imprison dealers and seize their drugs and proceeds that the trafficking will stop. However, the trafficking continues, drug lords are billionaires, and people just keep dying. There is a simple reality which seems to evade those who formulate drug policy—as long as there is demand for drugs, there will suppliers of drugs.
The money we are spending on interdiction, and it is plenty, would be better spent on treatment and prevention. Drug cases have spawned lots of terrible case law, generated a lot of friction between police and prosecutors, and led to myriad statutory changes trying to gauge how, exactly, to handle drug offenders. Nothing really has worked, and the laws are still a moving target. I think current law enforcement tactics, like the West Metro Drug Task Force, for example, are a waste of money. I do not wish to debate here whether this group does a good job or knows what it is doing, because that begs the question. Throughout America there are thousands of excellent drug interdiction programs. Whether they do a good job or not, whether they intercept drugs and get convictions or not, the result has not been a reduction in drug use or drug crimes. What it has done is increase jail populations and taken many law enforcement resources away from crime prevention and prosecution in other areas.
The only answer in my mind, is to see what we can do to reduce drug usage. I believe that the money used for these types of operations would be better spent in having all these officers assigned to patrol and detective positions, where they would arrest, investigate and prosecute drug offenders anyway. The way it is now, dealers are arrested and even imprisoned, but the users are still out there demanding drugs, so new dealers step up immediately. (Of course many of the users are given immunity to help set up the dealers, a completely backward approach to supply and demand realities.) Were the police just doing their normal jobs they would arrest far more users, many of whom are dealers, too for all kinds of assorted offenses. The users’ prosecutions would lead to treatment and other intervention with the hopes of getting them ultimately to stop, or at least reduce, their drug usage.
Unfortunately, that is one area where government and social policy has spent very little time and money. I spent some time on the Drug Policy Task Force of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. We spent a lot of time on evaluating the criminal penalties for drug crimes. Of course we did not reduce, and in some cases we increased, the penalties for distribution; while reducing the penalties for simple possession. Some members of the group were from the treatment community and they worked hard on getting funds to help convicted defendants get treatment to stop their use of drugs. All of this done with a recognition that drug addicts will always relapse and once a person develops an addiction it stays with him the rest of his life.
But when I raised the idea of getting funds for prevention I was meant with silence and blank stares. The police officers in the room showed support, although only lukewarm, but the treatment providers fear prevention above all.
Crime prevention has worked well in many other areas. Car thefts, burglaries, even robberies and child abuse have been reduced where effective crime prevention methods have been employed. I don’t know what techniques, if any, have been developed to prevent initial drug use, but I believe the only solution to the drug problem lies there. I have no idea why people start using drugs. What is it exactly that causes both poverty-stricken teenagers and millionaire rock stars to get high? If someone could figure this out we would be well on our way to keeping people from addiction. Other addictive behaviors have been reduced. Cigarette smoking is down more than 50 percent from its peak, for example.
Without some successful strategy to reduce the demand for marijuana and other drugs (and legalizing marijuana without any other drugs does nothing for the bigger problem and causes all kinds of little problems) the killings will continue, the prisons will stay full, and the police and courts will spend way too much time trying to figure out whether the search of some dirtbag’s backpack that turned up a bindle of meth was legal.
The quoted members cite the deaths of their colleagues as reasons they support legalization, and blame those losses on “failed drug policies.” At least one member was fired for telling another officer that if marijuana was legal all the killings in Mexico would cease. If only marijuana was legal, the organization believes, law enforcement could turn its attention away from the war on drugs, and back to the war on crime.
While I appreciate, and in many ways agree with, their fundamental premise—that the war on drugs has not achieved sufficient results—I disagree with their conclusion that the answer is to legalize drugs, or even just decriminalize marijuana. I don’t think the answer to the failed drug war is surrender; I believe we should try a different strategy.
One should only support the legalization of marijuana if you believe marijuana itself is so benign, or at least controllable, that widespread use will not cause serious societal problems. If you fundamentally believe marijuana should not be legalized, and there are many reasons to believe that which I have blogged about in the past, then a failed drug war is the worst reason to give in. I do not believe merely legalizing marijuana ends drug violence. Even legalizing all drugs would not, I don’t think, end the crime problem associated with drugs. Just as the end of prohibition did not mean the end of the mafia.
First, I do not equate the current drug laws with Prohibition. Alcohol had been legal, acceptable, and part of society for thousands of years. Marijuana has never been both legal and widely-used. No one really knows what would happen if it was legal because that is uncharted territory. Alcohol can be ingested, and most of the time is, to achieve a state far short of intoxication. A drink or two has little effect if done in a social setting. Marijuana, on the other hand, provides no purpose at all unless it causes the intoxicating effect. Whether or not this intoxication is “better” than alcohol intoxication is somewhat irrelevant to my point. One can drink without getting drunk or even buzzed; but marijuana is used for the specific purpose of achieving the desired effect of the drug.
However, that is really not what I want to blog about. I have thought for a long time that the way the war on drugs has been fought is a waste of money because it can never achieve success. The policy forever has been to go after dealers, thinking that if they arrest, prosecute, convict, and imprison dealers and seize their drugs and proceeds that the trafficking will stop. However, the trafficking continues, drug lords are billionaires, and people just keep dying. There is a simple reality which seems to evade those who formulate drug policy—as long as there is demand for drugs, there will suppliers of drugs.
The money we are spending on interdiction, and it is plenty, would be better spent on treatment and prevention. Drug cases have spawned lots of terrible case law, generated a lot of friction between police and prosecutors, and led to myriad statutory changes trying to gauge how, exactly, to handle drug offenders. Nothing really has worked, and the laws are still a moving target. I think current law enforcement tactics, like the West Metro Drug Task Force, for example, are a waste of money. I do not wish to debate here whether this group does a good job or knows what it is doing, because that begs the question. Throughout America there are thousands of excellent drug interdiction programs. Whether they do a good job or not, whether they intercept drugs and get convictions or not, the result has not been a reduction in drug use or drug crimes. What it has done is increase jail populations and taken many law enforcement resources away from crime prevention and prosecution in other areas.
The only answer in my mind, is to see what we can do to reduce drug usage. I believe that the money used for these types of operations would be better spent in having all these officers assigned to patrol and detective positions, where they would arrest, investigate and prosecute drug offenders anyway. The way it is now, dealers are arrested and even imprisoned, but the users are still out there demanding drugs, so new dealers step up immediately. (Of course many of the users are given immunity to help set up the dealers, a completely backward approach to supply and demand realities.) Were the police just doing their normal jobs they would arrest far more users, many of whom are dealers, too for all kinds of assorted offenses. The users’ prosecutions would lead to treatment and other intervention with the hopes of getting them ultimately to stop, or at least reduce, their drug usage.
Unfortunately, that is one area where government and social policy has spent very little time and money. I spent some time on the Drug Policy Task Force of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. We spent a lot of time on evaluating the criminal penalties for drug crimes. Of course we did not reduce, and in some cases we increased, the penalties for distribution; while reducing the penalties for simple possession. Some members of the group were from the treatment community and they worked hard on getting funds to help convicted defendants get treatment to stop their use of drugs. All of this done with a recognition that drug addicts will always relapse and once a person develops an addiction it stays with him the rest of his life.
But when I raised the idea of getting funds for prevention I was meant with silence and blank stares. The police officers in the room showed support, although only lukewarm, but the treatment providers fear prevention above all.
Crime prevention has worked well in many other areas. Car thefts, burglaries, even robberies and child abuse have been reduced where effective crime prevention methods have been employed. I don’t know what techniques, if any, have been developed to prevent initial drug use, but I believe the only solution to the drug problem lies there. I have no idea why people start using drugs. What is it exactly that causes both poverty-stricken teenagers and millionaire rock stars to get high? If someone could figure this out we would be well on our way to keeping people from addiction. Other addictive behaviors have been reduced. Cigarette smoking is down more than 50 percent from its peak, for example.
Without some successful strategy to reduce the demand for marijuana and other drugs (and legalizing marijuana without any other drugs does nothing for the bigger problem and causes all kinds of little problems) the killings will continue, the prisons will stay full, and the police and courts will spend way too much time trying to figure out whether the search of some dirtbag’s backpack that turned up a bindle of meth was legal.
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