Pubdate: Thu, 06 Apr 2000
Source: Guardian Weekly, The (UK)
Copyright: Guardian Publications 2000
Contact:  75 Farringdon Road London U.K EC1M 3HQ
Fax: 44-171-242-0985
Website: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/GWeekly/
Page: 37
Author: Ethan Nadelmann

ADDICTED TO FAILURE, THE AMERICAN WAY

Ethan Nadelmann Believes Britain Should Look To Europe, Not The US, For A 
Solution To Drug Misuse

A piece of advice for British leaders in search of better drug policies: 
look east, look south, but don't look west. Where once the Dutch 
represented a lone voice for reform, now growing parts of Europe are 
embracing pragmatic harm-reduction strategies based upon common sense, 
science, public health and human rights.

I'm not sure why British officials keep turning to the United States for 
lessons in how to deal with drugs. My country, after all, is the one that 
incarcerates almost as many people for breaking the drug laws as Europe 
incarcerates for everything else. My country is the one that has allowed 
200,000 of its citizens to become infected with HIV rather than make 
sterile syringes more readily available. My country is the one so committed 
to "just say no" rhetoric and policies that it provides no realistic drug 
education or any real fallback strategy for the majority of teenagers who 
say yes to drugs.

It's not easy trying to end the drug war in the US. Punitive drug 
prohibition and a temperance ideology are deeply embedded in American laws, 
institutions and culture. From abroad, the drug war in the US must appear 
monolithic, broken only by the occasional personality calling for 
legalisation and the odd prominence of the medical marijuana issue. Viewed 
from close, a more nuanced analysis emerges.

Our drug tsar, retired general Barry McCaffrey, is a case in point. He's 
almost certainly the best drug tsar to date. Unlike the first drug tsar, 
William Bennett, McCaffrey prefers to leave the rhetoric of war and zero 
tolerance behind, speaking instead of the drug problem as a cancer in need 
of treatment. He has attacked the relentless jailing of petty drug 
offenders, spoken out against New York's draconian Rockefeller drug laws, 
and even called our prison system "America's internal gulag". He has 
defended methadone maintenance treatment, and he once tried to reduce the 
billions of dollars wasted on futile air and sea efforts to prevent drugs 
from entering the country.

Of course, McCaffrey has also mangled and mocked the truth on issues such 
as needle exchange, marijuana and harm-reduction policies. He has played a 
pivotal role in ensuring the government remains alone among advanced 
nations in the West in providing not a penny for needle-exchange programmes 
to reduce the spread of HIV/Aids.

His position on medical marijuana has been shameful - first mocking 
patients and doctors, then threatening them with prosecution and loss of 
licence, and now blocking the efforts of state and local authorities to 
establish responsible, regulated systems of distribution.

This is the drug tsar who has presided over a ballooning federal drug 
budget, now just under $20bn, that favours ineffective and punitive 
prohibition and enforcement efforts. McCaffrey is also notorious for his 
thin skin, which may explain why he has studiously avoided public debate.

As a reformer, I find McCaffrey's dissembling indefensible. But as a 
political analyst, I cannot help but be aware of the political forces that 
bear upon him and his office. Political power in the US increasingly lies 
in the hands of those who smoked marijuana when they were younger, but that 
generational shift has yet to influence policy. Far more important is the 
lingering influence of our rigid anti-drug ideology.

Most Americans have strong doubts about the drug war. They support 
treatment instead of incarceration for addicts. They think marijuana should 
be legally available for medical purposes. They are beginning to have 
doubts about the cost of jailing almost half-a-million of citizens for drug 
law violations. So why does the drug war keep growing?

Part of the answer lies in what might best be described as a "drug 
prohibition complex" composed of the hundreds of thousands of law 
enforcement officials, anti-drug organisations, drug testing companies and 
many others who benefit from this ever-growing edifice. Drug prohibition is 
big business in the US.

But the part of the answer that is harder for many people to grasp is the 
influence of what might be called the "John Birchers of the drug war". In 
the 1960s, when anti-communism still represented the national ideology, the 
John Birch Society was the most anti-communist of all.

The "John Birchers of the drug war" represent no more than 20% of public 
opinion today, but their political influence far exceeds that of the 
nation's leading scientists, scholars and other drug policy experts. 
Senators and congressmen take their calls, invite them to testify before 
official hearings and act on their advice. Directors of drug treatment and 
research agencies, fearful of the zealots' wrath, are quick to compromise 
their own scientific and intellectual integrity. So, too, is McCaffrey.

Tony Blair and others looking west for drug policy solutions need to be 
mindful of the US's temperance traditions and drug war politics. McCaffrey 
has tried hard to put a benign face on US drug policy, but Britons should 
not be deceived.

US drug warriors mock the Dutch, with their coffee shops, but ignore the 
fact that fewer Dutch use cannabis than do their American counterparts, and 
far fewer go on to use cocaine. Now Ecstasy use is rising rapidly in the 
US, and all the government offers are the "just say no" bromides of yesteryear.

Meanwhile signs of reform abound. The John Birchers may still be powerful, 
but they're gradually losing credibility. Marijuana is to them what alcohol 
was to temperance warriors of old. And just as the temperance advocates 
became increasingly shrill and silly as Prohibition stumbled along, so 
today's anti-drug extremists sound foolish to the parent who knows 
something about marijuana.

This year's presidential election campaign boasted two Democratic 
candidates, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, who admit to having smoked marijuana 
when they were younger. Note, too, that when Republican candidate George W 
Bush refused to deny he had used cocaine as a young man, more than 80% of 
the American public told pollsters they didn't care.

Last year two governors, Minnesota's Jesse Ventura and New Mexico's Gary 
Johnson, started calling for major reform of the drug laws. Johnson even 
used the forbidden "L" word, legalisation. And now, for the first time, a 
politician, Congressman Tom Campbell of California, is running for higher 
office on a platform that includes prescribing heroin to drug addicts.

The fact that these reform advocates include both Republicans and 
Independents bodes well for the non-partisan future of this struggle. 
Meanwhile, medical marijuana and other drug policy reform initiatives have 
triumphed at the ballot 11 out of 12 times since 1996.

Don't get me wrong. I don't see any Berlin wall of drug prohibition about 
to come tumbling down in the US. But beneath the surface, reformist 
sentiments are bubbling ever more vigorously. The consensus behind punitive 
prohibition is crumbling as Americans tire of drug war strategies and 
rhetoric and seek more sensible alternatives.

This is not the time for Britain to embrace what has failed so miserably in 
my country. Look away, Mr Blair, look away.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart