Toward a Saner Drug Policy

One of the key characteristics of the Change we really need is that it doesn’t start where the failed approaches of the past have brought us. Instead of thinking, “How can we modify the way we do things to make our situation better?”, we need to ask, “What do we want our situation to be, and what is the best way to get there?” Then we can look at the difference between how we’ve been doing things and how we need to do things, and figure out whether minor modifications will work, or whether we really need Change.

Current drug policy is an excellent example of government trying to solve problems not by thinking about what will work, but by looking for ways to modify what doesn’t work.

Our current policy (and this concept covers all the interrelated — and occasionally conflicting — policies of the different levels of government in the US, as well as the policies in place in most other countries and in agreements between countries) is not only ineffective, it is counterproductive, and in several ways:
• First, efforts to halt drug use and drug trafficking require huge amounts of manpower and extensive outlays for hardware, much of it high-tech.
• Second, the more “successful” our current anti-drug programs are, the more crowded our prisons become, and, as a result, the less effective they are at promoting rehabilitation.
• Third, the more “successful” these programs are, the harder it is for suppliers to get drugs to users, and therefore the higher the prices must be for the drugs. This results in increased efforts to provide supply, which in turn encourages increases in the cultivation of the plants that provide some of the drugs, and the manufacture of those drugs that aren’t biologically-based.
• Fourth, as drugs get harder to get and prices rise, the drug user’s need for funds increases, and more criminal activity becomes necessary in order to obtain those funds.
• Fifth, as anti-drug techniques improve, drug users and drug traffickers are pushed farther underground, and development of new techniques becomes necessary. The new techniques must be more sophisticated, and as they become more sophisticated the cost of their development grows exponentially.
• Sixth, if efforts at interdiction of drugs become more successful, the supply is lessened, and replacement supply is needed by traffickers. This means more encouragement for opium farmers in Afghanistan, and consequently growing profits making their way to terrorists.

Is that a long enough list of the impact of current policy?

And what happens to the users under this system? Are they being cared for? Helped to kick their habits? No. As noted above, in order to maintain their supply, they have to meet the traffickers halfway, which means going underground, avoiding notice, keeping a distance from authority. This makes helping them all but impossible.

So let’s start over by asking the basic question, “What do we want our situation to be, and what is the best way to get there?”

We really want to do several things. We want to help users kick the habit. We want to reduce crime and the costs of crime. We want to make things tougher on terrorists. We want to have better information about where our problem populations are.

How can we do all of these things if we don’t form armies of police and send them around the world?

The basic answer is pretty simple, really. Decriminalize drugs.

If the government dispenses drugs to users in government facilities, what happens?
• First, the cost of drugs plummets because the government authorizes their legal production by private business concerns.
• Second, the users don’t need to turn to criminals to get their drugs. Why should they, when the drugs are far cheaper from the government?
• Third, without a market, criminal production and trafficking dries up.
• Fourth, the need for law enforcement to police the criminals is dramatically reduced.
• Third, the amount of crime committed in order to get funds to buy drugs drops dramatically, reducing both the costs of law enforcement and the need for prison construction.
• Fifth, the terrorists lose a prime revenue source, and efforts to discourage poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, not to mention the trafficking of the opium worldwide, become far less necessary.
• Sixth, in order to get their drugs, the users must make themselves known, so we can work with them and help them.
• Seventh, the facilities where users get their drugs do not have to offer long term care; they just have to be medical facilities where users can come, take their drugs, be monitored until they are capable of behaving appropriately outside the facility, then let out. One reason we have tried to lock people into such centers in the past is that we hope to get them “cured” before they are released. If not cured, they may start buying drugs again, and indulging in anti-social behavior such as committing crimes in order to get the money to buy drugs. But our new system allows them access to the drugs without anti-social behavior, and ensures that they will come back to the facility if they need drugs, not go elsewhere. But getting this government help won’t be a free ride. It will involve working with specialists who can try to help these people get off drugs, or find appropriate situations in which to live if they can’t.

The cost of decriminalizing but monitoring drug use will be a drop in the bucket compared to the costs of current policy, but the social benefits for all concerned will be tremendous.

A quick look at the effectiveness of Prohibition gives us a comparison, though the repeal of Prohibition failed to supply us with an effective method for controlling the use of alcohol. During Prohibition we had extensive illegal activity prompting widespread disdain of the law (a bad situation to get into in its own right!), intensive criminal activity spilling over into violence against the citizenry at large, and heavy costs associated with efforts at enforcement.

Most of the Prohibition-related problems declined significantly once Prohibition was repealed. We now have regulation of sales, and we have acceptable control over distribution, and the major profits reaped by serious criminals have generally disappeared. These improvements have led to healthy social and financial improvements for the government. On the other hand, deaths and costs due to drunk driving, impaired decision-making leading to crime and injury, and incredible health expenses related to alcohol abuse, among other difficulties, still remain to be addressed effectively.

The nature of drinking as a social activity complicates the effort to come up with a more satisfactory solution to the problems drinking causes, but that is not the case with drug use, and shouldn’t discourage us from addressing the problems associated with drug use now. All we need is a little creativity in how we design, locate, and operate our drug-use establishments, systems, and regulations.

This means Change for our policy on drugs. Our Standard Operating Procedure has proved inadequate. Tinkering with it won’t help. We need to start over from scratch. Figuring out the details of how to decriminalize drug use is an excellent place to begin.