Pubdate: Wed, 02 Jan 2002
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2002 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/homepage.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: Jefferson M. Fish
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Note: Jefferson M. Fish, a psychology professor and former department
chairman at St. John's University, is the editor of "Is Our Drug Policy
Effective? Are There Alternatives?" and "How to Legalize Drugs."

DIVERT DRUG-BUST MONEY TO WAR ON TERRORISM

NEW YORK CITY, terrorist target, is also New York State's prime target in
the war on drugs.

A majority of drug felons come from the city and are shipped off to fill
upstate prisons at more than $30,000 per prisoner per year. Arrests for
marijuana smoking have escalated from about 700 in 1992 under former (and
new) Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly to more than 50,000 last year.
Certainly with the city facing a budget crisis and the police department
trying to cut costs, it's time to re-examine this issue.

Our new war on terrorism reveals a major policy contradiction not just for
New York City, but for the United States. The war on drugs creates a
gigantic and vicious black market, whose profits fund terrorism in many
parts of the world from Colombia to Afghanistan. The more "successful" the
war on drugs, the more dangerous and profitable the drug trade becomes.

Yet no matter how "successful," the war can't be won, despite what our
politicians proclaim. After all, if we can't keep drugs from entering our
prisons, how can we can keep them from crossing our borders? As tax revenues
fall in a weak economy, the tens of billions of dollars devoted to the war
on drugs divert significant funds from the fight against terrorism, let
alone the normal costs of law enforcement.

Downsizing the war on drugs would both increase our resources available to
fight terrorism and decrease terrorists' resources.

The great majority of the ills ascribed to drugs - crime, corruption and
disease - are actually caused by drug prohibition and the black market it
creates. The Prohibition led to the same kind of social disaster with
gangland slayings and blindness and deaths from contaminated products sold
as whisky. In 1933, Prohibition was repealed, after lasting only 13 years,
for two primary reasons: A democracy would not long tolerate making illegal
a substance used by the majority, and the lack of money available during the
Depression made enforcement too costly.

It is important to note, given the obfuscation in the drug-policy debate,
that Prohibition was actually what we would now call decriminalization.
Individuals could always legally possess alcohol for their personal use. The
manufacture, sale, transportation, importation and exportation of alcohol
were crimes.

One way to free up resources for the war on terrorism would be to downsize
the war on drugs to the level of Prohibition. We should eliminate laws
against drug paraphernalia and the possession of small amounts of illegal
substances for personal use, and release all prisoners whose only crime was
that of possession of a small amount. To me, there's no difference between a
heroin addict and an alcoholic; both could profit from medical and social
services to ameliorate their self-destructive behavior.

In New York City, even without a change in federal laws, we could save
substantial resources if the police were directed to make enforcement of
laws against possession a low priority. The "quality of life" pot busts in
Washington Square, for example, only managed to change the venue to some
other neighborhood. It did nothing to reduce drug dealing overall.

We could dramatically shrink the black market for drugs by making marijuana
legal for adults, and taxing it, as we do with alcohol. More than 72 million
Americans have used marijuana, a substance that is less dangerous than
alcohol, as clinical research has shown repeatedly. There are about 700,000
marijuana arrests per year in the United States - roughly equal to all
arrests for violent crime. Imagine the waste in legal resources that
entails.

Already the Bush administration has been forced to shift some resources from
the drug war to terrorism. The U.S. Customs Service has made terrorism its
top priority, substantially reducing the resources devoted to drug
smuggling; the FBI has made a similar shift in its priorities. There is talk
of cutting drug-war funding for Colombia and diverting it to the war on
terrorism. On the other hand, the recent crackdown on medical marijuana in
California suggests that the Bush administration has not yet recognized the
inherent contradiction between the two policies.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman, presumably understands
markets. Let us hope that he recognizes this policy contradiction and the
need for a new approach that will strangle the black market for drugs and
choke off its funding for terrorism. Let us hope that his new police
commissioner, Ray Kelly, drops Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's irrational crusade
against marijuana smokers.

Holland, Portugal, Switzerland and other European countries have adopted a
saner public health policy - they have found that marginalizing drug users
is counterproductive. Indeed, these countries are not going along with the
United States' prohibitionist approach. It would not surprise me if the
moves in Europe toward harm reduction ultimately lead to changes in
international treaties regarding drug enforcement.

Here in New York City, as a new administration takes over City Hall, let's
rethink our past approach to drugs. Anti-drug warriors argue that the choice
is between our current policy and selling crack to our children in candy
stores. But there is a wide range of public health and civil liberties
options that shows the fallacy of this argument. It's time to move ahead. An
enlightened policy in New York wouldn't have to go too far to provide major
benefits. Implementing decriminalization along the lines of Prohibition
would enable us to put our scarce law enforcement resources where they could
do the most good.
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