The Failure of the Drug War

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Americas war against recreational drugs is an example of good intentions gone wrong. While this country squanders over billions of dollars annually on the efforts to stop illegal drugs, trafficking and use continue. It has been said that trying to stop drugs is like trying to stop the rain, still, the war continues and was a prominent issue.

Over half of the prisoners in jail are there for drug crimes. This causes overcrowding which results in the early release of dangerous, violent criminals. It is illogical from a societal view and inhumane to individuals who are marked as criminals for life for the activity that causes no harm to others. Those who are addicted receive little or no therapeutic help in prison. Instead of imprisoning people that need help, rehabilitation programs are a much more effective method to treat the problem but a rehabilitation system will not succeed if drugs continue to be illegal. Drug abusers will hardly seek help from the same government that tosses them in jail for the same thing.

The hypocrisy of the drug war is apparent. All illegal drugs combined account for about 4,500 deaths in this country per year while tobacco is responsible for the deaths of 400,000 people annually and alcohol ends 80,000 peoples lives every year. (Fu, 2006) Legislators will not ban smoking because they indicate regulation regarding what adults do in privacy including what they can put into their bodies is unconstitutional and an infringement on personal liberties. Everyone can differentiate the distinction between a person that takes in an occasional alcoholic beverage and one who commits crimes while drunk. Why cant this simplistic reasoning be applied to drug users? Our code of law is founded upon a principle of presumptive rationality. Rational adults should be allowed to make personal choices as long as those actions cause no harm to others. The U.S. government is unequivocally unjustified in choosing this particular personal freedom to ignore at such a colossal cost to society (Fu, 2006).

The results of the King/Mauer study indicated that at least half of the drug-related arrests taking place in the United States, at least half of them are made for marijuana possession by predominantly low-level users whose cases rarely result in a felony conviction. The threat of imprisonment is not sufficient to keep citizens from partaking in the drug, nor is it effective in ensuring the drug is not available on the street. This complete lack of any kind of tolerance for the casual marijuana user and its effects on funding, relations with the populace, and inability to accomplish its objective in the United States can be contrasted with the more relaxed legal structure adopted in other countries such as England and Holland. While marijuana remains illegal in the UK, it is no longer mandatory that casual users of the drug must be arrested when caught. Instead, an arrest can be detained until exacerbating circumstances arise, such as the use of the drug in the presence of minors. This move was made, according to Home Secretary David Blunkett, to free up police resources to fight hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine. (King/Mauer, 2005)

The costs of prohibition go far beyond the mere funding of legal authorities and transportation for search and seizures. Economists who are actively involved in the drug policy in some way found three key issues upon which a very general consensus could be found. First, most economists found the current policy to be somewhat ineffective, very ineffective, or harmful. Second, most economists agree that the current policy should be changed. Third, most economists agree that the policy should be changed in the general direction of liberalization. Disagreement is generally based on the direction and degree of liberalization. (Thornton, 2002) Other costs include additional drug-related crime that is the result of users attempting to gain enough money to fulfill their demand in response to artificially high prices thanks to the lack of supply. Public health problems like HIV and Hepatitis C are all exacerbated by zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean needles. (Drug Policy Alliance, 2006).

People who are at most casual users of drugs are arrested and incarcerated for mere possession charges, actions that do not take more drugs off the streets, or encourage more people to stop using the drugs. At the same time, arresting possessors of drugs creates an encumbrance on society as tax dollars go to support these people no longer free to hold a job outside prison walls and bringing more children into the welfare system, contributing to their subsequent failure and dependence on society. Initial conceptions of the drug-crime relationship were drawn from studies of criminality that involved alcoholics and those addicted to narcotics. These studies substantiated the perception that violent crimes are associated more so with alcohol use, whereas other drug use is associated with crimes involving property to secure money for drugs. Many studies that include drug-related crime do not give weight to the fact that a substantial proportion of inmates convicted of property crimes were under the influence of alcohol (in addition to another drug) at the time of the offense. (White/Gorman, 2000) These and other issues demonstrate the lack of complete and uniform definitions regarding drug-related crime.

The entire basis behind drug prohibitions in the war on drugs is in limiting the supply. The premise holds that by limiting the supply to make it virtually impossible to acquire, the demand for such products will automatically dissolve. Prohibition strategies that focus on blocking the supply lines have proven to be ineffective. However, the efforts that have been expended have made bringing these substances into the country high-risk ventures. The high risk enables distributors to charge more for their products based on the risk involved in delivery, which makes it an attractive proposition for organized crime. Those interested in working in the drug trade take risks not only in terms of running against the law but also in terms of running against other criminally minded distributors, who are not regulated or controlled by any governing body and therefore have only themselves to answer to. The strategies involved by these individuals do not follow the typical rules of conducting business. Instead, they rely on violence and corruption. Thanks to the laws restricting the flow of these substances, they also have access to practically unlimited funds that make it possible for them to purchase their way through the legal system. (Slater, 2006).

Although the issue of what to do about dangerous, possibly addicting drugs such as heroin and cocaine have long been issues within many countries, the approaches taken to stem the tide have had widely varying results. Particularly, the prohibition approach taken by countries such as the United States has led to an astronomical increase in the rates of crime and numbers of incarcerated individuals as a result while having little to no impact upon the actual availability and usage rates within the countrys borders. The statistics regarding the numbers of individuals currently using drugs at least as a recreational activity remain stable even as drug busts and numbers of people incarcerated for drug possession continue to rise, indicating greater quantities of drugs being smuggled into the country and greater degrees of organization within the crime syndicates that accomplish this. Rather than dissolving the demand for these substances, the attempted block on supplies not only fails to adequately block trafficking, but it leads to greater degrees of violence and corruption by ensuring this industry remains in the hands of criminals.

Work Cited

Drug Policy Alliance. England. Drug Policy Around the World. (2006). Web.

Fu, Edward. Should Drugs be Legalized? Drug Policy News. Drug Policy Alliance. (2006). Web.

King, Ryan S. & Mauer, Marc. The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs in the 1990s. Washington D.C.: The Sentencing Project. (2005).

Slater, Michael. New Anti-Drug Program Shows Phenomenal Success by Focusing on Positives. Medical News Today. Sussex: MediLexicon International. (2006).

Thornton, Mark. Prohibition vs. Legalization: Do Economists Reach a Conclusion on Drug Policy? Paper presented to Southern Economic Association Convention. New Orleans, LA. (2002).

White, Helene Raskin & Gorman, D.M. Dynamics of the Drug-Crime Relationship. The Nature of Crime: Continuity and Change. Washington D.C.: National Criminal Justice Reference Service, p. 196. (2000).

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The Failure of the Drug War

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