Pubdate: Tue, 01 Aug 2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191
Fax: (619) 293-1440
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author: Ethan A. Nadelmann
Note: Nadelmann is executive director of The Lindesmith Center/Drug Policy 
Foundation, one of the principal conveners of the Shadow Conventions.
Cited: http://www.drugpolicy.org

WAR ON DRUGS

A New Measure To Define Success Or Failure

Today, the Shadow Convention in Philadelphia will focus on one issue we 
know won't be discussed at the Republican and Democratic conventions: the 
nation's failed drug war.

In fact, if we're lucky, the presidential candidates will say as little as 
possible about drugs during this year's campaign. And if they do say 
anything, we can predict what it will be: lots of talk about getting 
tougher on drugs, and on the countries where drugs are produced, and on the 
people who buy and sell them, and perhaps a little lip service to the need 
for more "treatment" -- so long as it's tough.

My feeling is: give us a break! We've been hearing this talk for decades, 
yet most illegal drugs are cheaper and more available than they've been in 
decades, if not ever. Marijuana, LSD and heroin, cocaine and then crack 
cocaine, now methamphetamine, Ecstasy and the "date rape" drugs -- one 
after another, with more to come. They say there are two things you can 
count on in life: death and taxes. Let me add two more: that human beings 
will use drugs, and that politicians will promise to get tough on them.

Most drug warriors don't try too hard to define success or failure in the 
drug war. Better to keep one's options open. If drug seizures are up, pile 
'em up and call a press conference. If drug production in Bolivia or Peru 
is down this year, declare victory (and forget that production's soaring in 
Colombia). If drug arrests are up, that must be good -- after all, the law 
is the law. If they're down, that must be good too. Maybe fewer people are 
using drugs -- or maybe not? It's all a political shell game, with lookouts 
watching warily for any rational thinkers who might spill the beans.

But there is one criteria that keeps popping up year after year. It's the 
number of Americans, especially teen-agers, who confess to a pollster that 
they used one drug or another in the last week, or month, or year.

It is on this basis that drug warriors often point to the 1980s as a time 
in which the drug war really worked. The number of illicit drug users 
peaked around 1980, then fell more than 50 percent over the next two years.

During the 1996 presidential campaign, Republican challenger Bob Dole made 
much of the recent rise in teen-agers' use of illicit drugs, contrasting it 
with the sharp drop during the Reagan and Bush administrations. President 
Clinton's response was tepid, in part because he accepted the notion that 
teen drug use is the principal measure of drug policy's success or failure; 
at best, he could point out that the level was still barely half what it 
had been in 1980. Now GOP candidate George W. Bush is trying out the same 
line of attack on his Democratic challenger, Al Gore, who responds every 
bit as tepidly as his current boss did.

But there's another way to view the past two decades of drug policy. 
Consider that in 1980, no one had ever heard of the cheap, smokable form of 
cocaine called crack, or drug-related HIV infection or AIDS. By the 1990s, 
both had reached epidemic proportions in American cities.

In 1980, the federal budget for drug control was about $1 billion, and 
state and local budgets were perhaps two or three times that. Now the 
federal drug control budget has ballooned to almost $20 billion, two-thirds 
of it for law enforcement agencies, and state and local expenditures on 
drug enforcement are even greater.

On any day in 1980, approximately 50,000 people were behind bars for 
violating a drug law. Now the number is approaching 500,000. That's more 
than Europe (with a bigger population than the United States) incarcerates 
for everything.

What's needed today is a new bottom line for evaluating the success or 
failure of our drug policies -- one that focuses on reducing the death, 
disease, crime and suffering associated with both drugs and our 
prohibitionist policies.

Sure it's interesting, and not unimportant, to know whether the number of 
teen-agers smoking marijuana went up or down last year. But what's more 
important is whether drug-related deaths went up or down; whether overdose 
fatalities went up or down; whether new HIV and hepatitis infections went 
up or down; whether new incarcerations of nonviolent drug offenders went up 
or down; whether we spent more or less money on prisons instead of education.

Let me state the proposition even more bluntly: if marijuana or Ecstasy use 
goes up next year, but overdose deaths drop, new HIV infections drop, and 
the number of nonviolent drug offenders incarcerated drop -- that's 
progress. And if marijuana or Ecstasy use go down next year, but total 
drug-related death, disease, crime and suffering go up -- that's failure. 
Of course we'd prefer that all of these dropped, but given a choice, there 
are priorities and there is a bottom line.

There are now millions of Americans with a mother or father, brother or 
sister, or son or, daughter behind bars on a drug charge. Millions more 
have lost family members to drug-related HIV/AIDS, or an overdose, or drug 
(i.e., prohibition) related violence, or been arrested for marijuana 
possession, or had their property seized by overzealous police agencies, or 
otherwise been victimized by the drug war.

When the Shadow Convention (at the Annenberg Center) focuses on drug policy 
today, it will be to give voice to these Americans. And to impress on our 
political leadership the need for a new bottom line -- one based upon 
common sense, science, public health and human rights.

Nadelmann is executive director of The Lindesmith Center/Drug Policy 
Foundation (www.drugpolicy.org), one of the principal conveners of the 
Shadow Conventions.
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