Pubdate: Tue, 25 Jun 2013
Source: Daily Toreador, The (Texas Tech, TX Edu)
Copyright: 2013sDaily Toreado
Contact: http://www.dailytoreador.com/home/lettertotheeditor/
Website: http://www.dailytoreador.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3949
Author: Jonathan Silva

US NEEDS NEW POLICY TO WIN WAR ON DRUGS

For the past few decades, the U.S. has been in a seemingly
never-ending war on drugs. However, only recently has it gained
national attention with the rise in violence in drug cartel controlled
countries and in America, where the prison system is filled with more
and more drug offenders.

Although this war has been waged for almost a century, the modern war
began in 1971 when former President Richard Nixon officially declared
war on drugs. Since then, we've seen an all-out offensive to eradicate
drugs, but all to no avail.

Drugs still fill the streets and are easier to get, drug abusers fill
the courts and prison systems, and hundreds of innocent civilians
sadly fall victim to violent cartel territory disputes today.

The U.S. government continues to criminalize drug use and spends
billions of dollars every year in hopes of finally eradicating drugs
in America. This focus on law enforcement to win the war, however, is
counterproductive and doing more bad than good.

In 2010, the U.S. federal government spent more than $15 billion
dollars on the "War on Drugs," according to Office of National Drug
Control Policy. According to Jeffrey A. Miron & Kathrine Waldock in
"The Budgetary Impact of Drug Prohibition," in addition to the $25
billion state and local governments spend independently, the total
price tag is at more than $40 billion these two amounts are combined.
But in all this effort, only about 10 percent of illicit drugs get
captured or confiscated according to Drug Enforcement Administration
estimates. That's an incredibly low success rate for that high of a
budget; $40 billion for a payoff of only 10 percent is not a smart
investment.

Not only that, but according to statistics released by the Federal
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2.3 million drug offenders are behind
bars, which gives the U.S. the largest prison population in the world.
If one thought the cost of the direct war on drugs was phenomenal,
consider the cost in operating the prison system that holds more than
2.3 million people. With this amount of people behind bars, as
reported by The New York Times article "A Country of Inmates" in
November 2011, it costs Americans $228 billion dollars every year to
keep these folks behind bars. The crazy part about that is about half
of these prisoners are incarcerated for drug related offenses, not
violence.

Imagine what we could do with half of those costs if these
incarcerations didn't exist. That's $114 billion dollars we could put
to communities, hiring teachers or strengthening our infrastructure.
This is all foolish spending by the federal government, and I'm not
the only one who thinks this. In a poll taken in January by the
Huffington Post, 53 percent of Americans said the "War on Drugs" has
not been worth the costs while 19 percent say it has been.

We are already way over our heads with more than $16 trillion of
national debt reported by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as of
June 2013. We shouldn't be carelessly throwing money into a failing
war.

So why is this war on drugs going nowhere? This is due to the U.S.
policy on drugs and how the federal government is fighting this war:
The criminalization of drugs in the U.S. with the criminalization of
drugs in the U.S., we see a chain reaction of effects that has led to
this war on drugs.

The biggest problem today is drug cartels' ability to push drugs into
the U.S. It's the basics of supply and demand. When the U.S. made
drugs illegal in America, the supply of drugs in our country fell
drastically because we were no longer able to produce the supply
needed to satisfy the needs of its users. With a high demand still
existent, the supply had to come from somewhere else -- more precisely
the drug cartels south of the border. Criminalize anything and you'll
soon make a black market for it.

In the early 1920s when prohibition was in effect, the high demand for
alcohol gave rise to organized crime and gangsters who were able to
supply alcohol to the public. This boost was exactly what the mafia
and crime lords like Al Capone needed to secure power and their
abilities to operate at the scale they did. Fast forward to today and
we see the exact same thing happening with the rise in drug cartel
power and territory. So, if criminalizing drugs makes a high demand,
then legalization should decrease the demand.

If Americans were able to grow their own marijuana here in the U.S.,
for example, it would curve the high demand for foreign supply coming
from drug cartels abroad. That is exactly where the cartels would be
hit hardest -- right in the wallets. Without the high demand for their
product, drug cartels could not afford to operate on the grand scale
they do, and it would make the fight against them that much easier.

Imagine the Mexican government, or any government, that could now
effectively fight drug cartels when they are no longer able to pay off
police and bribe public officials into corruption. Legalization of
marijuana in the U.S. is an option that could yield some success. I
say this because marijuana is not a conventional "hard" drug. Unlike
synthetic drugs such as cocaine or heroin, which can prove deadly from
one use, marijuana causes lower chances of fatality as compared to
other drugs and actually has some use as a medical treatment. Dr.
Stephen Sidney, an associate director of clinical research with the
Kaiser Permanente Health Plan who has studied the effects of marijuana
use on life span, said in an article for Medical News Today, "I don't
think it [marijuana] contributes very much to people dying. It's not
in the league of alcohol or tobacco." Comparable to tobacco or
alcohol, which are both legal, marijuana has the same potential to
serve a productive ! role in American society if it is equally
regulated and taxed like the latter two.

Other policies that don't quite help in the war include the focus of
law enforcement instead of treatment. Drugs are bad for health and
lead to negative lifestyle habits, but the consequences for having
drugs does more harm to a person than the drug itself.

Former President Jimmy Carter once said in his letter to Congress Aug.
2, 1977, "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more
damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."

I couldn't agree more. Propaganda from the federal government claims
drugs destroy people's lives, but what they fail to mention is that it
is the justice system that destroys people's lives. Looking at the FBI
Uniform Crime Reports from 1970-2011, 50 percent of all drug related
crimes involve marijuana, and of those crimes 43 percent are for
simple possession charges.

The current drug policies are too harsh and focus too much attention
on the criminal standpoint. The U.S. could improve on this issue by
lessening the penalties for possession charges and other drug related
offenses. We can't afford to send these people behind bars and raise
the already enormous tab on operating the prison system. In fear of
sending us into another war on terror failure, the U.S. needs to
reconsider its current drug polices in favor of those which focus more
on lessening the demand for drugs in America.
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