Pubdate: Tue, 24 Jul 2012
Source: Daily Review (Towanda, PA)
Copyright: 2012 The Daily Review
Contact:  http://www.thedailyreview.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1015

THE DRUG WAR RECEDES?

Chris Christie is not a wimp, a hippie or a countercultural icon. 
He's not known for taking time out from budget negotiations to smoke 
dope, or for his sympathy for drug dealers.

Yet he is a soft-liner on the war on drugs.

That the combative New Jersey governor and Republican rock star - 
just tapped to keynote the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla. - vocally 
dissents from drug-war orthodoxy is another sign that the tectonic 
plates of the drug debate are shifting.

Perhaps our appetite for spending billions and incarcerating 
millions, in the service of pieties immune to rational analysis, is 
not limitless after all.

In a speech at the Brookings Institution, Christie called the war on 
drugs "well intentioned," but "a failure." He just signed a law to 
mandate treatment rather than jail time for nonviolent drug 
offenders. The Democratic rising star in New Jersey, Newark Mayor 
Cory Booker, recently condemned the drug war in strikingly similar 
terms as "big overgrown government at its worst." In Jersey, the drug 
war is getting it from both barrels and both parties.

Exhaustion is finally setting in with the enormous human and fiscal 
costs of attempting to eradicate the ineradicable. People have always 
used intoxicants, and always will, in ways ancient and new. The Good 
Book tells that no sooner had Noah planted a vineyard than "he drank 
of the wine, and was drunken." After all the countless resources 
expended trying to keep illegal drugs from entering the United 
States, The New York Times reported the other day, abuse of 
indigenous prescription drugs is the nation's biggest drug problem. 
In 2008, it accounted for the lion's share of overdose deaths.

The definition of a victory in the drug war is usually when a drug 
declines in popularity of its own accord.

A new drug tends to go through a natural epidemic cycle.

New users pick it up and spread the word about the good times.

Then, it loses its allure as its ravages become plain in the wrecked 
lives of the hooked.

The metrics say we are "winning" the fight against cocaine.

Today, there are only 1.5 million users a month, a drop from nearly 6 
million in the heyday of the 1980s. But cocaine's price hasn't 
changed much; its prestige has. "When cocaine stopped being the drug 
of investment bankers and started becoming the drug of $5 whores, it 
became less fashionable," says UCLA professor Mark Kleiman, co-author 
of "Drugs and Drug Policy."

The war on drugs overseas, a U.S. foreign-policy priority for 
decades, has only shifted around trafficking routes.

Mark Schneider of the International Crisis Group notes how - in the 
"mercury effect" - pressure against the cartels in Colombia squeezed 
the action into Mexico, where it is now being displaced again, to 
Central America and the Caribbean. No wonder that at the Summit of 
the Americas in April, Latin American leaders expressed 
disenchantment with the entire enterprise.

No one crafting American laws from scratch purely on a basis of 
public health would make marijuana illegal while alcohol - much more 
damaging to society - is legal.

Slowly, the prohibition on marijuana is giving way. Medical marijuana 
is legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Colorado, Oregon 
and Washington state will consider ballot measures to legalize the 
drug in November. The current regime makes criminals of millions of 
casual users, but legalization - even in one state, according to 
experts Beau Kilmer and Jonathan Caulkins - could collapse the price 
nationally and lead to more widespread use.

Every alternative has its pitfalls.

The mandatory treatment now being implemented in New Jersey, although 
better than a jail sentence, is often less effective than advertised. 
But we are exiting the era when a focus on the harmful effects of 
illegal drugs excludes all consideration of the harmful effects of 
their hard-fisted prohibition. The debate is becoming less 
susceptible to cheap rhetorical bullying.

If Chris Christie, arguably the toughest Republican in the country, 
is open to new approaches, there's hope for everyone else.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom