We’ve just barely passed the halfway point of Obama’s first hundred days, and his presidency still has that new administration smell. One side effect of this is the fact that a host of old issues have become newsworthy again. Last week, a trial balloon went up in the discussion of integrating gays fully into the military; on Monday, the administration revisited the Bush administration’s de facto ban on stem cell research; and with the naming of Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as his new Drug Czar (as well as demoting the post from cabinet level, where it’d been during the Bush years), the President has signaled his willingness to bring some fresh thinking to drug policy.
The New York Times notes, and many who are advocating for sensible drug policy hope, that this may mean a shift in emphasis from arrests and prosecution to treating the drug issue, and all the baggage appended to it, as a public health crisis. While some concern has been voiced about the choice of Kerlikowske–those in favor of legalization, or at least of liberalization, are a bit wary of a cop in the post–a closer examination of his record could be cause for relief rather than alarm. Kerlikowske gave a wide berth to his officers in Seattle, leaving treatment and education programs as options for drug offenders rather than just prison time. In a further wrinkle (one that, I expect, the GOP will make no small use of), the soon-to-be-Czar’s experience with drugs is close to home; the fact that his stepson has a history with substance abuse might well lead to a more nuanced and thoughtful approach to this issue than we’ve seen up to this point.
Even the mainstream media have chimed in, raising the specter of legalization. They’ve argued that legalization may be the only way to end a “war” that is costly, pointless, and nearly as damaging to the fabric of our society as the scourge it aims to combat. Consider this recent example from an article calling for legalization as a means to stop the War on Drugs:
[A drug-free world] is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenangers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.
Whence came this bit of heresy? High Times? The Nation? Try again. The not-exactly-liberal Economist ran this in the leader of a special section on the current state of the War on Drugs. And this is where things get interesting.
This isn’t the first time the Economist has jumped into this particular fray; nearly twenty years ago, the paper made a similar, and similarly strong, case for legalization. It’s all the stronger for the fact that they make no attempts to ignore or soft-peddle the effects of drug use; rather, legalization is the “least bad” option. This acknowledges the problem that drugs both licit (booze, tobacco) and illicit (pot, heroin, cocaine, meth, et al.) have become, but also allows for a way forward in dealing with that problem that doesn’t amount to sweeping it under a carpet of illegality.
The first article in the series deals with narcotraffic in Mexico. This isn’t a new problem–Mexican product, and dealers, have been edging out their Colombian counterparts for years now–but thanks to the media attention being paid to the recent spate of murders and kidnappings south of the border (not to mention a recent State Department travel advisory), it’s taken on a new visibility and urgency.
Another article chronicles the effects of liberalization versus those of more stringent drug policy. The surprising finding here is that the levels of use remain more or less consistent under a lax policy (like that found in the environs of Amsterdam, or in Norway) as they do under the kind of robust antidrug environment found in the US, UK, or Sweden.
A further irony is laid out in the study’s final article, which examines the past and present state of drug education in the United States. As with the similarly ineffective abstinence-only programs that have actually contributed to a rise in teen pregnancy and STD’s, an abstinence-only approach to drug education doesn’t work. Both approaches are underpinned by the same failed hope, and the same faulty reasoning. Taken together, they look like this: If we don’t tell kids about condoms, pot, what-have-you, and just tell them it’s bad for them, they’ll know to just say “no.” And if, heaven forbid, we give them the information with which to make informed decisions–rather than leaving it to movies or the gossip they hear in the hallways–they will immediately become sex-addled junkies. Problem is, it’s not until we start to move away from ideology and cant that we can start to move toward an effective drug policy, and effective education–aimed not only at addressing the addicts we’ve already got, but also at preventing adding more people to their ranks.
And it’s high time, pardon the pun, that something was done. Especially something different; the traditional means of dealing with the issue have been woefully inadequate, and those who rail the loudest against legalization have yet to propose or implement anything even remotely effective in its place. Closer to home, we get television advertising touting variations on the same “Just Say No” message that was hopelessly naive when Nancy Reagan first uttered the words in the mid-80′s; farther afield, narcotics underpins whole economies, and threatens the fabric of other societies than our own with consequences still more dire than what’s happening here. Drug use is up in the US and Europe. Production, meantime, resembles a game of whack-a-mole, being eradicated in one area only to crop up someplace else almost as quickly. Legalization is not the only solution–I’ll be exploring another in this space shortly–but, as the Economist points out, it’s the best possible pick from a menu of lousy options.
Further reading:
The leader to the Economist’s special section is here, and the article focusing on the current state of the drug war in Mexico is here. The original article calling for legalization in 1989 may be found here. The print edition contains the other content to which I’ve referred. Finally, the New York Times article on Obama’s pick for drug czar may be found here.