How to Win the War on Drugs In 1994, John Ehrlichman, the Watergate co-conspirator, unlocked for me one of the great mysteries of modern American history: How did the United States entangle itself in a policy of drug prohibition that has yielded so much misery and so few good results? Americans have been criminalizing psychoactive substances since San Francisco's anti-opium law of 1875, but it was Ehrlichman's boss, Richard Nixon, who declared the first "war on drugs" and set the country on the wildly punitive and counterproductive path it still pursues. [continues 6943 words]
Down by the River By Charles Bowden, Simon & Schuster, 431 pages, $27 On the evening of Jan. 20, 1995, a suit salesman in El Paso, Texas, stepped out of a car and was shot dead by a thief with an Uzi who made off with his car. The victim was a cheerful, easygoing man of 27 who lived with his parents and was engaged to be married. The shooter was a 13-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico who was caught right away. The murder was about as ordinary a tragedy as could be imagined, of consequence to few save the friends and family of the two people involved. [continues 1118 words]
With all the attention being given to Bill Clinton's pardons on his last day in office, it is important to note that this authority is provided expressly in the Constitution, and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld it again and again. Presidents often explain their pardons in patriotic terms: James Madison pardoned Jean Lafitte and his fellow Barataria pirates, because they helped save New Orleans from the British in the War of 1812. (Lafitte returned to his trade after the war, preying mostly on Spanish ships.) Gerald Ford announced that he would pardon Richard Nixon for the good of the country: "My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic tranquillity but to use every means that I have to insure it." When George Herbert Walker Bush granted clemency for six defendants in Iran-Contra, he explained that "the common denominator of their motivation whether their actions were right or wrong was patriotism." Anticipating the widespread criticism that followed that Bush pardoned the men to avoid a trial in which his own role in Iran-Contra might be explored he tried to preemptively dismiss it. "No impartial person has seriously suggested that my own role in this matter is legally questionable," he wrote. [continues 141 words]
Maverick Mayor Rocky Anderson Calls The School Anti-Drug Program "An Absolute Fraud" ON JULY 11TH, SALT LAKE CITY MAYOR ROSS "ROCKY" Anderson cut off funding to D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), ending the city's thirteen-year association with the controversial drug-education program. The mayor, who summoned a high-ranking D.A.R.E. official to Utah for a last-chance opportunity to defend the program, says he was unmoved by the official's discussion of changes being made. At the meeting, which took place with the school superintendent, D.A.R.E. officers and other policemen, Anderson said, "I think your organization has been an absolute fraud on this people of this country. For you to continue taking precious drug-prevention dollars when we have such a serious and, in some instances, growing addiction problem is unconscionable." The official soon got up and left. "These people aren't used to being talked to like that," says Anderson. [continues 771 words]
This Month, Citizens Nationwide Petition For More Humane Policies THIS FALL, OPPONENTS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS take their case directly to the people: They have successfully placed initiatives on the ballot in five states to reduce the incarceration rate of nonviolent users. The most ambitious marijuana initiative is Alaska's, which would eliminate all pot-related penalties. In Colorado and Nevada, voters are expected to approve the legalization of marijuana use for medical reasons. This would bring the number of states with such laws to nine, including Maine, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Hawaii and California. In Massachusetts, three state districts will consider recommending that marijuana possession be reduced to a civil violation, like a traffic ticket, not a criminal one, as will voters in Mendocino County, California. Initiatives in Oregon, Massachusetts and Utah would reform their police departments' asset-forfeiture systems. October polls showed the Colorado and Nevada initiatives likely to pass, while the others face some difficulty. [continues 972 words]
Initiatives authorizing the medical use of marijuana passed in five states in the last election. (Another one would have passed in the District of Columbia, according to exit polls, but it was consigned to limbo by a blatantly antidemocratic amendment introduced by Representative Bob Barr forbidding federal funds to be spent tallying the vote.) On this subject the words of Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a leading authority on the drug (he is author of Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine) and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, are apropos: "As the number of people who have used marijuana medicinally grows, the discussion is turning from whether it is effective to how it should be made available. [continues 326 words]
