There is no doubt that a drug war does indeed exist, but what should you think of it? People in chemical dependency counseling and addiction physiology will have mixed feelings about this. What are your views on the drug war?
“John Rentoul’s column in the Independent on Sunday this week was uncharacteristically unpersuasive. His text was Mencken’s aphorism that “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong” and Mr Rentoul suggested the Cardoso Commission’s report on drug legalisation is an example of this approach. Well, perhaps. But I think “neat, plausible, and wrong” actually better characterises the Drug Warriors mania for prohibition. To which one might add “ineffective” too.
Most advocates* of decriminalisation or legalisation (as Rentoul says, two different approaches) concede that these alternatives will not eradicate all of the problems associated with drug use but argue instead that they will make it easier to deal with the consequences of drug use. (Of course there’s a philosophical objection to prohibition too and to the criminalisation of often-victimless behaviour but that’s a different argument again.) Credit to JR, however, for admitting in a subsequent blogpost that his assertion that “For all the vogue for “experiments” with decriminalisation, it is notable that nowhere in the world has conducted such an experiment successfully” is incorrect. Portugal relaxed its drug laws and, lo, does not appear to have become a land of drug-crazed zombies. However, he then says that these “are limited decriminalisations rather than the legalisation that is widely canvassed as the solution to a “war on drugs” that no one is actually fighting.” Or, as he put it in his column: Of course, the rhetoric of the “war on drugs” is simple, and not very helpful. Terrible things have happened in Colombia in its name. But it is not, and has not been for some time, the policy of either the British government or the Obama administration. In a pooled interview in 2009, President Obama, when asked directly, ” Are we still engaged in a war on drugs?” answered indirectly, “My attitude is we do have to treat this as a public health problem and we have to have significant enforcement.”Oh really? President Obama may have said this but his Justice Department is still fighting a War on Drugs. So is his Drug Enforcement Administration. So is the FBI. So are police forces across the United States. And so are the Mexican drug cartels that are building heir own armoured trucks. The 35,000 people killed in the Mexican drug wars in recent years might also say there really is a drug war. Meanwhile, there were 800,000 thousand marijuana arrests in the United States last year and President Obama’s forces continue to raid medical marijuana establishments even in states where the medicinal use of the plant has been approved by voters. More than half a million Americans are currently incarcerated because of the War on Drugs. For a war that no-one’s fighting there sure seem to be an awful lot of casualties. The British situation is neither as grotesque nor as shameful as the American approach but there’s a Drug War here as well. In 2004/5 there were 85,000 drug arrests in England and Wales and there’s been a sharp increase in the number of drug arrests since 1995. Granted, this represents a tiny percentage of drug users but it’s not a tiny number either. In 2004 drug users represented 6.4% of arrests in England and Wales, 10.3% of those sentenced and a whopping 16.2% of the prison population. One third of the nearly 8,000 people incarcerated on drug offences in 2004 were jailed simply for possessing illegal drugs. In total, the cost of enforcing the Misuse of Drugs Act was estimated to cost £24bn in 2004/5. That’s quite a lot of money. That being so the question isn’t “Is there a War on Drugs?” but “Can we afford it?”. Morally, I’d say we can’t but there are other, more practical concerns too. The Drug War has been fought for 40 years and in that time has had little impact on the supply, price or appeal of drugs. Perhaps an alternative approach would not work either but I think we can say with some certainty that there is a Drug War and that it is neat, plausible and wrong. In every respect.” *Or at least most of those I know. Alex Massie
Spectator
June 7, 2011 Source:http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/7007174
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