When It Comes to Treatment, the White House Should Put Its Money Where Its Mouth Is In Baltimore last week, new U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske made the case for expansion of drug courts to treat rather than imprison addicts and called for drugs to be considered a "public health crisis." Why, then, is the Obama administration proposing to spend an even higher percentage of its anti-drug resources on law enforcement than the administration of George W. Bush? Nowhere are these issues more resonant than in Baltimore. Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, a star of HBO's The Wire and a native of the city, said that her mother stole clothes off of her body for drug money and locked her in a closet. Darius Harmon, an 18-year-old learning-disabled boy from Baltimore, was killed in April by the Black Guerrilla Family gang because he was not good at selling drugs. Despite recent progress, the Drug Enforcement Administration in March found that Baltimore still has more drug-related crime than any other city in the nation. [continues 585 words]
To the Editor: Drugs have not "won the war." With a comprehensive anti-drug strategy in place, involving foreign policy, enforcement, education, treatment, prevention and media, America's overall drug use has declined almost by half in the past three decades -- from 14.1 percent of the population in 1979 to 8.3 percent now who used drugs in the past month. In addition, cocaine use, including crack -- the source of much of the former record-high violent crime numbers -- is down 70 percent. Want to go back? [continues 207 words]
In "The Lost War," his Outlook article on the international drug trade, Misha Glenny writes that "the 'War on Drugs' is defeating the 'war on terror.'" What he fails to note, however, is that while we still have a lot to accomplish, the national effort against drugs is working on its own terms. With a comprehensive anti-drug strategy in place, involving foreign policy, enforcement, education, treatment and prevention, overall drug use in the United States has declined by roughly half in the past 25 years -- from about 13 percent of the population in 1980 to just over 6 percent of the population in 2005. Cocaine use, including crack, is down 70 percent. Do we want to go back? [continues 350 words]
Nora D. Volkow neglected the key element in her Aug. 19 op-ed -- funding. There is good reason that this brilliant Bush administration appointee would make her accurate point that surging rates of violent crime can be cut with drug treatment but neglect the part about funding such programs: During this administration, the anti-drug budget has been reduced from $19.2 billion in 2001 to $12.7 billion for fiscal 2007, a decline of about a third. Robert S. Weiner Accokeek The writer was director of public affairs for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy from 1995 to 2001. [end]
This month the FBI reported the highest one-year increase in violent crime rates in 15 years -- back to the frightening situation which challenged the Clinton administration in its first year. Memphis' violent crime rate jumped 25 percent between 2004 and 2005, with the number of reported murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults growing from 10,093 to 12,630. But the FBI's analysis of its crime figures and media reports neglected the clear connection between drugs and crime. The current administration's overall anti-drug budget has been slashed by over one-third from $19.2 billion in 2001 to $12.7 billion for 2007. This reduced budget for the federal government's comprehensive drug-fighting initiatives -- including education, prevention and treatment programs as well as enforcement efforts -- is a genuine threat to our national security. [continues 704 words]
Legalization would be a catastrophe. Mr. Melloan uses the analogy of legal alcohol. Great, there are 15 million alcoholics in this country and 5 million drug addicts; do we want the five to become 15? Parents know that taking away the incentive of the normative power of the law would increase drug use and related car crashes, school dropouts and work absences. Hospital emergency rooms would be flooded, and crime would return to the crisis levels of the 1970s and '80s, when drug use was at its highest. Domestic violence and date rape would be substantially higher. Sixty per cent of arrestees in 30 cities each of the last five years tested positive for illegal drugs: a remarkable indicator of a link between drugs and crime. [continues 92 words]
Washington -- Methamphetamine has made its way into Virginia. The illicit drug, which is easily and cheaply produced by consumer products, has spread quickly and created a national crisis. In a survey by the National Associa-tion of Counties released this month, 58 percent of the 500 law-enforcement agencies sur-veyed in 45 states cited meth as their greatest drug problem, easily sur-passing all other drugs. According to the highly respected National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2003 meth lured 12.3 million Americans aged 12 and older to try it. As former U.S. Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey has said, "Methamphetamine is one of the worst drug menaces ever to threaten America, associated with paranoia, stroke, heart attack, and permanent brain damage, leaving a trail of crime and death." [continues 636 words]
Both during and since the recent meeting of President Bush and Afghani President Hamid Karzai, the administration has danced around the critical issue of Afghanistan's growing drug crisis and its impact on the terror threat. The late April arrest of Hajji Bashir Noorzai, whom the Drug Enforcement Administration called the ''Pablo Escobar of heroin trafficking in Asia'' for providing heroin money financing Osama bin Laden, proved once again the connection between Afghan drugs and terrorism. Noorzai even used al Qaeda operatives to transport the heroin out of Afghanistan. [continues 677 words]
A Nation Addicted To Profits From Cocaine With new federal statistics showing that one of every six teens still abuses illegal drugs on at least a monthly basis, perhaps we need an additional approach to end this decades-long crisis. While President Bush and Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe praised progress and expressed a commitment to continue to fight narco-terrorism, they did not provide additional resources to combat the poverty that fuels the drug trade and violence in the first place in the No. 1 drug supplier to America. [continues 598 words]
Just as the administration's Iraqi mission has been damaged by the scandal of prisoner abuse and other failures, the policy in Afghanistan has been undercut by the rebirth of the Afghani poppy, the main ingredient in heroin. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage admitted during a hearing last month that last year was the ''biggest year ever -- for poppy cultivation and growth in Afghanistan. So you would be wrong if you don't hold us responsible.'' The future looks even worse: A U.N. report says that two out of every three Afghan farmers plan to increase their poppy crop in 2004. [continues 548 words]
Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich recently signed legislation into law allowing patients using medical marijuana, if taken to trial, to raise an "affirmative defense of medical necessity." Now, as long as the patient successfully shows that his or her use of marijuana is for medical purposes, the maximum fine allowed would be a mere $100. Canada has also changed its marijuana policy, with the courts allowing "medical" use, the government's creating an Office of Cannabis Medical Access and punishing possession of small amounts of marijuana with a lesser fine, similar to a traffic ticket. [continues 681 words]
The assertion in your May 14 article by the current drug czar, John P. Walters, that the anti-drug ad campaign has "flopped" is absurd. We have the data showing the tests that proved that the ads produced in the previous administration worked -- teens were 13% less likely to use drugs after seeing "Frying Pan," for example. If the current Drug Office isn't still testing their new ads, look within thyself . . . or go back to the ones we did that worked. [continues 436 words]
The May 3 front-page story "Europe Moves Drug War From Prisons to Clinics" failed to show the negative effect of liberalization of drug policies in the countries cited. For each of the past three years, Europe has imported and consumed more than 200 tons of Colombian cocaine -- better than double the annual totals before 1999 and the new decriminalization movement. President Bush has stated that Europe is a major importer of heroin from Afghanistan. As U.S. consumption of cocaine has decreased by two-thirds in the past two decades, Europe has become the new market. The Netherlands is now the top source of the Ecstasy reaching America's children. So we are paying a price for Europe's "harm reduction." [continues 395 words]
A Sept. 22 editorial called on the government to do more in the way of tracking the assets of terrorists, but it missed a key point: drug money. The editorial mentioned how the Clinton administration successfully went after the Cali drug cartel's assets in the 1990s. But these days terrorism and drug trafficking around the world are linked. The attorney general has missed the same point when he has declared that the drug laws are better than the terrorism laws. Actually, he can use the drug laws to prosecute and track the terrorists. [continues 163 words]
A JAN. 4 NEWS story, which criticized Barry McCaffrey and the national drug policy, omitted the record of real results as laid out in the National Drug Strategy Report cited by reporter John Donnelly ("US report details losses in drug fight," Page A1, Jan. 4). Over the past two years, 12-to-17-year-olds' drug use fell 21 percent (according to the respected Household Survey) and 34 percent over the past three years (according to the Pride Survey of more than 100,000 youths). [continues 176 words]
The Sun-Times article ["The failed war on drugs," Part 1 of a six-part series, Jan. 7] criticizing Office of National Drug Control Policy Director Barry McCaffrey and national drug policy omitted the record of real results. In the past two years, 12- to 17-year-olds' drug use fell 21 percent (according to the respected Household Survey), and 34 percent in the past three years (according to the Pride Survey of 100,000 youths). The number of drug-related murders dropped to the lowest point in more than a decade, and workplace drug use has fallen to an 11-year low. [continues 201 words]
Jan. 4 article criticizing Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and national drug policy, omitted the record of real results as laid out in the National Drug Strategy Report cited in the article. Over the past two years, drug use among 12- to 17-year-olds fell 21 percent (according to the respected Household Survey) and 34 percent over the past three years (according to the Pride Survey of more than 100,000 youths). In addition, the number of drug-related murders dropped to the lowest point in over a decade, and workplace drug use has fallen to an 11-year low. Our efforts cut coca cultivation in Peru by 66 percent and Bolivia by 55 percent since 1995, and Andean coca cultivation is down nearly 20 percent overall. [continues 182 words]
