Global Study: Drug Prohibition Is A Failure

Well I think the War on Drugs is in its last days. Not because it has been a dismal failure (it has) or that it has exacerbated the drug problem at a very high nominal and social cost. I think the US government will have to place illegal drug interdiction at a lower priority primarily because it will not have the resources to continue it.

The only copy of National Review I ever paid money for was an issue printed in 1996 (I think, could have been earlier). It was dedicated to how and why the War on Drugs is a failure and why it should be abandoned and replaced with more pragmatic policy. The late William F. Buckley was primarily concerned with the abuses of civil rights that result from the current policy, especially illegal search and seizure. Other contributors discussed economic and political dimensions, and offered approaches that would achieve the goal of reducing overall illicit drug use and abuse without the enormous cost we see today.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair

Like military expenditures, this is a big, high-cost and wasteful suite of government programs that conservatives seem to love and liberal politicians don't dare criticize. The policy has been in place for decades and thus has created an enormous sector that is dependent on continuing the current approach of interdiction and imprisonment. This parasitic constituency is sometimes referred to as the law enforcement-prison-industrial-complex. Like its military counterpart, it is difficult to pare down because it is so very profitable for the political and corporate elite. Life in America is more violent and dangerous as a result. Plus this has created a virtual apartheid as very high numbers of Black, Hispanic and poor Americans are institutionalized during what should be their most productive years. They are often rendered socially and economically dysfunctional for life as a prison record makes them ineligible for gainful employment. It is a sad and tragic example of perhaps the worst public policy of the past 30 or 40 years that has enormous monetary and opportunity costs.

The last president who supported more realistic and pragmatic solutions to the drug problem by the way was Richard Nixon. The nation has been going in the wrong direction on this really since the mid-1970s.