Drug War 101
Drug War 101
America's War at
Home
Who's in prison?
Who's in prison?
A Brief History
It is called The Drug War, and it has been America's longest war.
The federal government had no role in the health and drug trades until early this century, when labeling requirements were placed on patent medicines. Prohibition was repeatedly ruled unconstitutional until:
- 1919 The 18th Amendment banned commerce in
alcohol on a national level. The violent and corrupt
"Roaring Twenties" ensued.
- 1933 The people had had enough. The 21st
Amendment repealed the Volstead Act, ending
Constitutional authority for Prohibition.
- 1937 Prohibitionists disguised the Marihuana
Tax Act as a revenue bill and banned an entire plant
species through regulation enforcement. The narcotics
bureaucracy had found a gateway drug law.
- 1961 The UN adopted the Single Convention
Treaty on Narcotic Drugs, opening the way for more
stringent enforcement. The CIA went into Vietnam and
heroin began to flow into America from Asia.
- 1968 The U.S. signed the Treaty. In the grips
of the Vietnam War and the "generation gap," federal
policy continued to harden.
- 1969 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the
Marijuana Tax Act was unconstitutional. Drug control
authority was eventually written into a "scheduling" hoax
that extended prohibition enforcement. Under this system,
drugs are not officially 'prohibited'; they're 'illicit'.
But people still go to prison for using them.
- 1970 Congressman George Bush joined the
growing majority of office holders who opposed mandatory
minimum sentences "because they remove a great deal of
the court's discretion."
- 1972 President Richard Nixon appointed a
National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. The
panel, known as the Shafer Commission, called for
decriminalizing marijuana and a policy of control based
on medical risk, so Nixon denounced its report and
declared a"War on Drugs". Nixon's war faltered amid a
cloud of curruption when he resigned office during his
second term, while facing impeachment charges.
- 1978 President Jimmy Carter publicly advocated
decriminalizing up to an ounce of marihuana in his
statement to Congress on drug policy, but behind the
scenes moved to steer the Drug War back on course.
- 1980 Drug warrior Ronald Reagan assumed office
and brought the military industrial comples into the
battlefield. The CIA went to Central America and cocaine
began to flow back to our cities.
- 1984 Reagan announced: "You ain't seen nothin'
yet!" and promptly militarized the Drug War. Zero
tolerance became the stepping stone to widespread
implementation of urine testing. His 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse
Act went farther, adding property forfeiture law under
Nancy's rallying cry: "Just say no."
- Late 1980s Democrats and Republicans vied to
out do each other in criminalizing and punishing drug
users. As Vice President and later as President George
Bush supported the return of Mandatory Minimum prison
sentences. Physical evidence was replaced by sentencing
guidelines. No knock search warrants, hearsay evidence,
and high-tech surveillance systems extended the realm of
thought-crime into conspiracy laws.
- Early 1990s Baby Boom President Bill "I didn't
inhale" Clinton campaigned on MTV, stating "The
punishment should fit the crime." Once in office, he
reversed gear and pursued yet another round of
escalations in the Drug War, including, for the first
time ever, the death penalty for growing marihuana in the
1994 Federal Crime Bill.
- 1995 The 10 millionth marijuana arrest since
1965 occurred in Ohio when Tod McCormick, a medical
marijuana patient with a Dutch prescription, was pulled
over in an illegal roadside search. A national survey
found that 95% of police officers believed the US to be
losing the Drug War.
- 1996 More than 60% of federal prisoners are
locked up for drug offenses. While mandatory
minimum sentences require that drug offenders serve
full term sentences, mandatory release programs put
violent felons back out on the streets to reduce prison
crowding. Marijuana arrests are at an all time high, and
citizens of California and Arizona vote overwhelmingly to
legalize medical marijuana. Federal policy continues to
lose support when appointed officials threaten to arrest
doctors and patients.
- 1997 Business as usual. The Clinton
administration begins the year with an all-out assault on
doctors and patients for medical marijuana until a court
orders them to desist. Malicious prosecution continues.
The rate of incarceration for African American males hits
a new record high, as does federal spending on the failed
drug war. A new war is beginning to be waged on tobacco
users. The National Istitute on Health reports that
needle exchanges clearly save lives, and congress
instantly forbids it from relaxing the ban on clean
needles. Oregon legislators vote to recriminalize
cannabis use, and a voters' referendum is launched to
block it from taking effect.
- 1998 When confronted with scientific proof
that needle exchange reduces infectuous disease without
increasing drug use, Janet Reno and Drug Czar Gen. Barry
McCaffrey decide to ignore the results and continue the
ban. Clinton launches a multi-billion dollar propaganda
campaign that uses federal tax money to purchase
advertising time and space for the private sector's
leading advocate of prohibition, the PDFA (Partnership
for a Drug Free America). Congress takes time from its
investigations of Clinton to pass ever more repressive
legislation. Numerous new studies vindicate the medical
marijuana reform position, and voters in five states pass
initiatives at the ballot box to legalize it. Faced with
an overwhelming favorable vote, Congress directly
intervenes to block the vote count in Washington DC. At
the same time, Oregon voters overturn the state
legislature's attempt to reinstate criminal penalties for
marijuana, and Arizona voters vote to medicalize all
controlled substances (illegal drugs). California votes
its leading drug warrior, Dan Lungren, out of office by a
huge majority. Teenage use of all drugs levels off
nationally.
- 1999 Public revulsion at the hypocrisy of the federal
government is at a record high. Yet another drug warrior
is elected speaker of the house, and Congress fights in
court to suppress the count of the Washington DC popular
vote to legalize marijuana for medical use.
- None of this has had a substantial effect in reducing drug use or making the public more safe - only in reducing respect for human rights. The Drug War is an abject failure, and it is time for America to cut its losses and change political course to solve its problems.
Your Home Is Your Castle:
The Right to Privacy
The Right to Privacy
Privacy has long been considered an implied right of the Constitution, as described in the Fourth Amendment; but what this covers is vague and has been eroded dramatically by the Drug War.
Courts have ruled that chemical analysis of body fluids, and body cavity searches by police are not excessive. Government agents are allowed to pose as people's friends, rifle through their trash, monitor telephone and electrical bills, peer over fences, fly over homes, scan them with infrared sensors, heat detectors and even enhanced satellite surveillance photography to see what Americans are doing in their own backyards.
Is America Addicted to the Drug
War?
The Drug War grinds on as a monotonous, dehumanizing routine:
News media play up public fears to sell copy. Politicians sell themselves as being "tough on crime." Every year, they ban more activities, and pass longer prison sentences, more forfeiture laws, and higher enforcement budgets. The next year they repeat this same ritual. Well paid bureaucrats scrutinize the legal system for glimmers of compassion, discretion and freedom to close the "loopholes." Drug warriors write Anti-This Acts and Omnibus That Laws and forbid discussion of reform. Human rights violations and conflicts of interest within the prison and law enforcement industries are accepted as a regrettable aspect of doing war. Another record size property seizure; more mothers in prison; one marijuana arrest every 49 seconds with over 11 million busts served; the biggest law enforcement budgets in history, the most sweeping and intrusive police powers ever.
Our government shows advanced symptoms of being addicted to its own Drug War. Politicians habitually increase their drug law dosage. Constantly looking for a stronger fix, they spend the nation into debt without getting satisfaction. Our leaders refuse to admit the destructive consequences of their behavior. Drug enforcement agents abuse the public trust. The media reinforce the negative behavior while living in morbid denial of their own role, like a co-dependent partner.
Lost in the frenzy is a simple fact. Illicit drug users are people, too. Most casual drug users are peaceful and productive members of society until they become casualties of the Drug War.
The Price Tag
Over the course of his eight years in office, Reagan spent $22.6 billion on his revived Drug War. Another major escalation was pushed through under George Bush, who spent $42.5 billion in a single term. Under Clinton, spending has continued to increase, with $16 billion for one year alone allocated in the 1998 fiscal budget. Those figures show federal spending only, not counting all unfunded mandates passed onto states.
Spending at other levels of government adds up to approximately the same as the federal budget, so in 1998 you can expect to see well over $30 billion spent on the Drug War.
In 1999, the federal Drug War budget alone is expected to rise again to $17 billion. Are we better off by wasting ever more money on the Drug War? Where will it end?
$$$ The average cost of incarcerating a federal inmate is $23,000 per year. (FAMM, Coalition for Federal Sentencing Reform, March, 1997.)
$$$ Almost 60% of federal inmates &emdash; 55,624 people! &emdash; are drug offenders. Half of these are first time, non-violent offenders. (Bureau of Prisons, 1997.)
$$$ To feed, clothe, house and guard these 55,624 prisoners costs taxpayers $3.5 million per day, or $1.27 billion annually.
And There's Lots More!
$$$ Public assistance or welfare for children of inmates who have lost a breadwinner,
$$$ Foster care for children who have lost their parents,
$$$ Unnecessary and inaccurate urine testing of employees, damaging both morale and job productivity,
$$$ Medical costs to treat people for diseases spread by sharing dirty needles due to bans on needle exchange programs,
$$$ Homes, property, cars, and savings forfeited from families of inmates,
$$$ Money, property stolen to support expensive illegal drug habits,
$$$ Money diverted from the open market to the underground market,
$$$ Tax dollars and untaxed incomes lost to the black market economy of drugs,
$$$ Tax dollars lost by giving tax-exempt status to Drug War propagandists such as: PRIDE, PDFA (Partnership for a Drug-Free America), Drug Watch International, DARE, etc.,
$$$ Other criminal justice system costs,
$$$ Hidden law enforcement budgets,
$$$ Paid informants,
$$$ Court costs,
$$$ Attorney fees,
$$$ Personal hardships
Caught in the Quagmire of
Another Vietnam?
Another Vietnam?
The parallels between the Vietnam conflict and the Drug War are many. Some Drug War equipment is even leftover from Vietnam, such as night viewing equipment, the helicopters used for fly-over surveillance in marijuana eradication programs, etc.
Both wars have hidden political agendas and ambiguous military goals. And in both wars, government officials who disagree with the policy remain silent. Will it take 30 years for the equivalent of a Robert MacNamara to step forward and admit to knowing that the Drug War is terribly wrong?
|
|
The Human Rights & the Drug War exhibit is designed to be installed at a variety of sites and settings. If you can help arrange a future venue, please let us know, so we can schedule it. Thank You.
