It is true that neighborhoods can be "cleaned up" and open-air drug markets can be shut down. Drug users can be banished from sight, back into alleys, abandoned buildings, cheap motels, and ultimately, as gentrification takes hold, out of an area entirely. They do not just go away, however, "dope corners" reappear in even more blighted areas, and the whole phenomenon just becomes "someone else's problem".
"Demand Reduction" by deterrent is another unproven theory, and while the draconian penalties applied to possession of crack cocaine are cited as a possible cause for its decline in popularity, the use of heroin and methamphetamine has increased. When the consumption of a given drug declines, the disenchantment of its users with its effects, or a decrease in the quality of the product itself are the most likely explanations.
In the case of methamphetamine, efforts to control the profusion of small labs producing a questionable product in America succeeded to some extent. This created a market vacuum that was rapidly filled by super-labs in Mexico and China, resulting in an increase in the quality of meth on the American market. Meth consumption rises and falls with the quality of the product. Yet another "meth epidemic" was the result.
BY DEFINITION, INSANITY
Over 500 years ago the inquisition was burning Peruvians at the stake for chewing coca leaves. Sir Walter Raleigh and his crew were jailed for smoking tobacco. Neither of these drugs has disappeared, but some progress has been made in America against tobacco, and this is in no small part due to the ability to hold its purveyors accountable in the context of civil law.
Conversely, the local cocaine dealer cannot be taxed, sued, or forced to disclose the damaging effects of his product, and while he can be jailed, there is always someone ready to take his place. The "War on Drugs," has had a long enough trial period.
In the language of drug treatment, insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different result. The self-appointed moral authorities of the world are addicted to control, and their continual feeding of their addiction has had the same results, over and over again for hundreds of years.
PROVIDING A NEGATIVE EXAMPLE
All that the US Government, the DEA, and the symbiotic drug dealing/drug enforcement/drug treatment/ industries can speak of with authority is what has been proven ineffective and harmful. Drug policy in the United States can provide a shining negative example to the rest of the world, and the US needs to look to the examples set by other nations for fresh ideas.
If the United States is capable of creating a sane domestic drug policy, and if opium, coca, and marijuana gain the same legal status as coffee, tobacco and alcohol, the economic incentives to produce these crops in other nations could possibly be reduced.
However, the United States needs to address its own prohibition and poverty fueled violent crime rate, and the explosion of STDs, HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancies, and an economic disaster brought on by the addiction to wars and prison building. Until these issues can be constructively addressed, the US government will continue to lose credibility as a moral role model, and the bullying of nations experimenting with alternative approaches to drug and disease control by the US will increasingly be ridiculed, as it should be.
-
-Previously published at Helium.com, Pulitzer Center
-
-
-
