Drugs can’t be stopped, but the damage can be controlled

By Jon Black

America’s drug policy simply isn’t working.

Despite legal penalties, public service announcements and educational programs such as D.A.R.E., teenage drug use in 1997 increased for the fifth straight year.

Drug use is rising, yet the same solutions to the problem are being presented: Mandatory penalties for drug-related crimes, spending more money on education and prevention, and forcing addicts to enter rehabilitation.

These solutions have all failed to stop drug use, yet non-traditional solutions aren’t even considered. Mention decriminalization and you are branded a drug-addict liberal who seeks to legalize drugs for your personal consumption.

Drug policy reform doesn’t mean the local grocery store will start to sell packs of joints in checkout lines and crack cocaine in the aisle next to baby food. Physicians, for example, could prescribe the drugs for addicts or for medicinal purposes. If we could change the channels of distribution, much of the crime associated with drug use could be controlled as well.

There is a growing realization in the United States that our the “get tough” stance hasn’t solved our problems. Drug use among high school seniors has almost doubled since 1992, according to some surveys. The “war on drugs” heralded by the Bush and Reagan administration stopped less than one percent of the drugs being imported into the United States. Why is the government so ineffectual when trying to control the drug trade?

The answer goes back to the 1920s. Despite the enormous popular support for Prohibition when it first went into effect, the public quickly realized that the social evils of alcohol consumption were far less destructive than the crime that prohibition brought with it. It was during the ‘20s that gansters like Al Capone and “Babyface” Nelson set up the base of power on which organized crime still functions today.

Similiarly, drugs have given traffickers the opportunity to set up a network of crime of their own. Combatting this menace has become a huge assignment for federal and local law enforcement organizations. More than 60 percent of the federal prison population is jailed because of drug-related charges.

The majority of these inmates were arrested for the sale of marijuana. Of all illict drugs, marijuana is by far the most popular — an estimated one in three Americans has tried this drug at some time in their lives. Recently, the states of California and Arizona voted to legalize this drug for medicinal purposes, yet federal government leaders vowed to fight this legislation. Obviously, it is the will of the people that marijuana be used medicinally, but the government is unwilling to listen to suggestions that drug policy is being reformed in the wrong way.

The federal government will continue to fail until the public shows that they want a solution that works, not just the same old pretense of reform.

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