Drug Prohibition or Drug Regulation?
by Howard J. Wooldridge

War on Drugs. How is that working for us in America? Is it reducing crime? Is it reducing rates of death and disease? Is it effective in keeping drugs and drug dealers away from our children? These are important questions as this prohibition approach costs us taxpayers some 70 billion dollars this year.

As a police officer, I fought on the side of the 'good guys' for 18 years in the War on Drugs, giving me a lot of actual experience in the trenches. After much time, consternation and out-and-out frustration in not achieving a single, stated goal in the long term, I came to the conclusion that we must be doing something wrong. It seemed no matter how many dealers we took off the streets, new ones immediately popped up to take their places. The prices for drugs kept falling, indicating an oversupply. The purity kept increasing; heroin increased from 3.6% to near 50% purity between 1980 and 2007. The prison population kept increasing until over 70% of all inmates are there on some drug-related charge.

Why has my profession been unable to make a dent? It has not been for a lack of trying. Thousands of police officers have been shot and hundreds killed. We have arrested 36 million Americans for drug possession, use or sale. First, understand that drug dealers accept as a condition of employment death and long prison terms. We now know that there is an inexhaustible number of people who will risk death to make the huge profits that prohibition generates. A second major reason is that when someone buys an illegal drug from a dealer, nobody calls 911 to report the 'crime.' It is very difficult for us to catch suspects when the phone does not ring. Neither the buyer nor the seller sees themselves as a 'victim.' Meanwhile, terrorists and drug barons are amassing fortunes from drug sales and people continue to die on our streets. We have turned third world thugs into billionaires that can buy governments and launch terrorism around the world. Our prisons are filled with non-violent offenders while murderers, rapists and child molesters (not subject to mandatory minimums) get early release due to over-crowding. The only thing we have to show for this terrible policy is that today after 36 years and a trillion tax dollars spent, illegal drugs are cheaper, stronger and very easy for our kids to buy.

Drug gangs have spread like the plague out of the large cities and into medium and even small cities. Young teens join gangs to make 'easy,' big money selling drugs. 15 year olds are shot and killed every week because drug prohibition gives them this job option. A policy which many say is to protect kids actually causes hundreds of deaths a year and tens of thousands of destroyed young lives.

During alcohol prohibition at the beginning of the 20th century, rates of murder and police corruption in the United States rose to the highest levels in its history. The year we ended that prohibition those statistics fell to a low ebb where they remained until we declared the war on drugs 37 years later. Thanks to that war we have surpassed both those figures with the new prohibition.

The unintended consequences of this terrible war are needlessly destroying the lives of generations of America's youth. How many people do you know who have used an illegal drug, then put the drugs behind them and gone on to lead productive lives? US presidents, many members of our legislative bodies, tens of thousands of police officers have done exactly that. With imprisonment, those possibilities are eliminated. You can get over an addiction, but you will never get over a conviction.

We should be putting much more effort into education and treatment. The education has to be based in fact and not emotional scare tactics. The treatment needs to voluntary; forced treatment is not much different than some government's attempts at brainwashing. Published studies state that if substances were regulated and taxed, rather than prohibited, adequate monies could be raised for treatment programs and the glamour appeal of presently illicit drugs would be reduced.

Drug prohibition represents the very definition of a failed public policy. Will Rogers said, "If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging." Prohibitionists are well-intentioned but are blinded by ideology. However, I don't want to be too harsh. I once rode a horse and tilted at windmills!

Howard J. Wooldridge was for 18 years a police officer in Mid-Michigan, retiring as detective and is Education Specialist, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (www.leap.cc) Washington DC