Pubdate: Thu, 19 Apr 2012
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2012 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Bill King

SEEKING MIDDLE GROUND IN FIGHT AGAINST ILLEGAL DRUGS

That drug addiction is one of the great plagues of our times cannot be
denied. Hardly anyone in our country has not been touched by the
tragic consequences of this scourge. And that we, as a society, should
have policies in place to reduce addiction and mitigate the effects of
illegal drugs on individuals and society cannot be reasonably challenged.

However, as Einstein is famously said to have quipped, the definition
of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a
different result. For more than 40 years, we have been following the
strategy of attempting to control the supply of drugs by interdiction.
At best, the strategy has had mixed results and many make a compelling
argument that it has been a disaster. A doctor who has worked with
drug abusers for more than 40 years told me last week that the war on
drugs was one of our generation's greatest moral failures because it
had not substantially reduced addiction while doing incalculable
collateral damage to young people. And, of course, it has been
astronomically expensive.

The bulk of our efforts to reduce drug abuse are focused on
sanctioning users and attempting to interdict the supply. The latter
involves trying to capture drug shipments coming mostly from South and
Central America. However, by all accounts, we have been spectacularly
unsuccessful in doing so. While it is almost impossible to know what
percentage of drug shipments is interdicted, the U.S. Coast Guard
estimated in 1998 that it was about 10 percent.

Some people argue we just need to try harder. That means spending more
money. If we are currently intercepting about 10 percent of the drugs
and spending about $15 billion on the drug war, does that mean we
would have to increase the budget to $150 billion? Does anyone really
believe that we will do that, or that if we did, it would really dry
up the supply of drugs?

In contrast to the supply side of the drug equation, we pay much less
attention to the demand side. Experts estimate that about 90 percent
of anti-drug funding is devoted to interdiction and enforcement,
leaving only 10 percent for prevention and treatment. Yet most experts
also agree that prevention and treatment are more cost-effective in
actually reducing drug abuse.

The pathway to becoming a drug addict is fairly common; most become
addicted in their teens. If a person makes it to their mid-20s without
becoming an addict, it is less common for them to ever become one.
However, abuse of prescription drugs, especially pain killers, is
changing this pattern, to some extent.

Science shows that our brains are still developing critical judgment
functions in adolescence. Teens, and especially male teens, are far
more likely to engage in risky behaviors. Drug dealers concentrate
their marketing efforts on teens because they are more likely to
ignore the risks and become lifelong customers.

A British organization called the Transform Drug Policy Foundation has
published an analysis of alternatives to our current approach
(http://www.tdpf.org.uk/Transform_Drugs_Blueprint.pdf). It suggests
replacing the current criminalization of drugs with a comprehensive
regulatory scheme that still attempts to control drug use to some
extent, especially among adolescents. However, the manufacturing and
distribution system would be highly regulated, much like prescription
drugs are today. Such a regime would deny profits to the crime
syndicates, and it would ensure that drug supplies were pure and
unadulterated, which would dramatically reduce the number of deaths
from overdoses. But even this extremely reform-minded organization is
adamantly opposed to the complete laissez-faire legalization of all
drugs. They describe that alternative as drug anarchy.

And therein may lie the way forward. So often our drug policy debate
is reduced to the simple question of whether to legalize drugs or not.
But we need not choose from two polar extremes in crafting policies to
reduce drug abuse. It is not an either-or proposition.

Next week, I will suggest some principles and elements on which a new
drug policy might be based.
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MAP posted-by: Matt