New Strategies Necessary to Win the War on Drugs

If we aren’t willing to end the War on Drugs, can we at least agree to try some new tactics? We could let science and history inform our fight to keep Americans safe from harmful substances, to guide us in designing strategies to reach that worthy goal. That is our goal, right?  Isn’t the end game of this decades-long war supposed to be the safety and health of the citizenry? To what low point must we descend to admit that we are getting our asses whipped in this war? Drug use has remained relatively stable over the past several decades; wouldn’t drug use be going down if we were winning this multi-trillion dollar war?

Can’t we just agree, as science indicates, that a certain percentage of the population has a tendency toward addiction, and then admit that those people may be most helped by mental health professionals and not law enforcement professionals? Why don’t we just help the people who have addiction problems and leave the rest of the citizens alone to manage their own lives?

Then we will have to wrestle with the question of what to do with the addicts who can’t or won’t avail themselves of healthcare services. Shouldn’t the solution be dictated by the degree their addictive behavior affects other members of society? As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. As long as the horse isn’t kicking up a fuss and causing trouble shouldn’t he be left alone until he gets thirsty? We do it with alcohol addicts all the time. As long as they don’t put someone else in danger by driving or some other hazardous activity, we pretty much just let drunks alone to wallow in their own misery. We don’t jail them for the simple reason that they are addicted to alcohol, we wait until their behavior infringes on another person’s health or safety. Once again, isn’t the goal of this war to keep people safe?

Even if we agree that we should treat addicts instead of jailing them, you may wonder about the drug dealers who prey on the addicts. My solution to that would be to bring the production and distribution networks above board where they can have regulation and oversight. This is where we can learn from history, which teaches us that when alcohol was prohibited a violent black market rose up to fill the void that legal distributors and home brewers once filled. Who hasn’t heard of Al Capone? People didn’t stop drinking alcohol during prohibition. Rich people did it where they always did it: in their homes and private clubs. Poor people drank in speakeasies where they were more likely to be introduced to heroin and other drugs. Young men and women acted like young men and women and took prohibition as a challenge to try something forbidden.

The parallels of alcohol prohibition to the War on Drugs are so staggering that we must logically question what the prosecution of that “war” can teach us about the current “war”.   How, for instance, would ending marijuana prohibition and regulating its sale in storefronts be any different than it is for alcohol in liquor stores? When was the last time you stopped by a convenience store and found yourself caught in the crossfire between the Coors and the Budweiser salesmen? Did they have real guns, or were they using price tag labelers? Is there something inherently different about marijuana that would make a pot store more dangerous than a liquor store? Wouldn’t you agree that Americans are safer buying their Pinot Grigio or Old Kentucky Bourbon from the corner store instead of a guy selling homemade rot gut out of a van down by the river?

I challenge you, if you disagree with me, to either convince me there is a better way to protect citizens from harmful drugs than bringing it out in the daylight where addicts can get treatment and the other 90% of the people can take it or leave it, or sell me on the idea that we are winning the War on Drugs. Go

Photo from Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/20/marijuana-raids-are-more-deadly-than-the-drug-itself/?utm_term=.0bc9a3da67cf

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