Tuesday, November 27, 2001

War on drugs needs to be re-evaluated
Government, lawmakers are addicted to making impractical changes to policies
Erik Finkelstein is a columnist for The Daily Free Press at Boston University.

There are only so many wars this country can fight simultaneously. Our War on Terrorism is slowly meeting its objectives in Afghanistan, but if Bush has his way, it is long from over. In many ways, the long-term outlook for this war parallels that of another war this country has fought for the past 20 years: the War on Drugs. Hi-tech search and destroy missions, fanatical millionaires in remote countries and border-defense strategies all sound like elements of our new war, but are also reminiscent images of our very old War on Drugs.

It seems as if drugs are addictive on two levels — users are addicted to using and policy-makers are addicted to making policy. Today it seems that our government is equally addicted to the impractical drug policy this nation has futilely employed. For years, this country has spent billions to fight the foreign suppliers of drugs and even more money prosecuting drug crimes.

It is not hard to see the failure of such policies — no matter how many successful arrests or border seizures that police make, drug supplies in this nation will never cease because as long as the market exists, supplies will exist. For whatever reasons, moral or political, the leaders of this country are unable to grasp that fact.

Like a heroin user in the grips of an overwhelming addiction, our lawmakers cannot see reality. We all know the first step — admit you have a problem. As hard as this is for drug users, it is much harder for the lawmakers because to acknowledge the current problem begs the follow-up question — What’s next?

Today, as the government is forced to see its errors, its new task is to convince the American people that the ideas it tried so hard to cement into the public mind were misguided. As students in an open-minded environment, it may come as a surprise that the great majority of Americans still pledge faith in the drug war. In a nation that rarely trusts the government, the drug war seemed like a sure thing; drugs are bad, War on Drugs is good.

Over the years, this equation has become more complicated. During the crack wars of the ‘80s, drugs were viewed as the foundation for the destructive inner-city crime rates and the spread of a new disease called AIDS. To some extent this was true, so when crack abuse leveled off, both politicians and citizens viewed it as an achievement of tough laws and enforcement. However, after the initial drop, drug abuse has remained largely unchanged over the past decade. The nationwide D.A.R.E. program has failed, a fact even its past supporters will now admit. The prison system is strained and is not proving to be as effective as private rehabilitation. Therefore, the question today becomes one of cost-benefit analysis.

As military spending skyrockets and an economic recession looms, cutbacks will occur across the board. Should these cutbacks effect public funding for education or public funding for Special Forces firebombing coca plants in Colombia?

Moreover, at a time in which our domestic police are under pressure to maintain a sense of security, it makes sense to re-evaluate the manpower invested in the drug war. Do the citizens of this country want these forces battling terrorism or battling cocaine?

The signs are all here. The country must re-evaluate and scale down its War on Drugs. Its decade-long failure shows that the cost of funding the war simply outweighs any benefits it may produce. Clearly, the failure of these policies is not enough to bring about reform.

Public sentiment has been in line with the hard stance this government took on drugs, and now the government is in a position to rally the public behind a reversal of its previous stance. Diminishing the range of the drug war is a practical move in today’s political atmosphere. Financially, it would cut federal spending in several areas.

Aside from economics, a reduction in the drug war would allow our nation’s domestic resources to concentrate on more important issues of public safety and terrorism.
Drugs, like death and taxes, are things that just can’t be avoided. The drug war has tried to assert the no-tolerance policies that were once considered the best solution.

Today, these policies and the war that supported them have failed. As our nation tries to find stability while fighting a new war and bracing for a recession, the time is right to abort policies that fuel the misguided War on Drugs.

Erik Finkelstein is a columnist for The Daily Free Press at Boston University.
This column was distributed by U-Wire.