The president has declared that he is committed to an all-out war on drugs promising to provide money to local law enforcement, build more jails and interdict and eradicate drugs before they reach our shores. He also promised to provide treatment to those who needed it

These were not only the promises of President Bush but also the promises of President Nixon in 1969. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the modern war on drugs. Successive drug wars have been fought by each president. Even President Carter, who often is described as a weakling, took the aggressive action of spraying herbicides on marijuana and heroin growing in Mexico. The development of national strategies is also not new. President Reagan developed national strategies each year he was in office. The Bush administration has not created any dramatic new policy; it has merely tinkered at the fringes of the policies of the past

There are many lessons we could learn from our two-decade-old drug war. Perhaps the greatest weakness of Mr. Bush and National Drug Control Policy Director William Bennett is their failure to examine and learn from the history of the war on drugs. Unfortunately, the administration plan seemsn to ignore the successes of the past and builds on its failures.          

A Prison State Will Not Make a Drug-Free Society             

The Bush-Bennett Plan places its greatest emphasis on prisons, promising an 85 percent expansion of federal prison capacity. During the Reagan war on drugs the number of people incarcerated made it greatest jump in modem history.

No one claims that the doubling of our prison population in 8 1/2 years has made our streets safer or reduced the adverse health effects of drug abuse. Even Mr. Bennett's report acknowledges that emergency room mentions of drug abuse increased by 121 percent from 1985-1988. The current national drug control strategy does not explain why increased incarcerations will work this time.

Six months ago Mr. Bennett dramatically announced that Washington, D.C., would be the "test case" to see whether the nation could control drugs and crime. The capital city presents strong evidence that incarceration will not solve the drug problem. In the last few years, the District of Columbia has arrested over 40,000 people for drug offenses, its judges have given some of the longest sentences in America, and its prisons are bulging. Indeed, incarceration has become the norm for some segments of the population. Currently, 20 percent of black males ages 18-29 are either in prison or under government supervision. Yet, the city is breaking last year's record-setting homicide rate, and drug abuse has not decreased.

For some reason, the Bush administration plan follows the 'D.C. model" of more arrests and more incarcerations even though it is not safe to walk on the streets of the capital, and drug abuse is more dangerous than ever before. The administration's proposal to spend millions of dollars to increase rates of incarceration should not be implemented until it is able to explain why the spiraling increase in incarceration over the last two decades has failed.

Eradicating One Crop Creates Another

The Bush-Bennett Plan, acknowledging the failure of the Reagan administration's interdiction program, places great emphasis on eradication, or what is now called the "Andean strategy." Once again, this has been tried repeatedly during the last two decades of drug war. It has not only failed, it has created new problems.

The most aggressive eradication program was the spraying of herbicides on marijuana growing in Mexico in the mid-70s. After spending millions of dollars on helicopters, manpower and equipment, the herbicide spraying program merely created a more diverse marijuana supply.

The U.S. marijuana crop is the direct result of eradication programs in Mexico. Marijuana has been a leading cash crop in the United States throughout the 1980s. According to Mr. Bennett's report, the U.S. crop now accounts for 25 percent of the domestic market. Indeed, America has become an exporter of marijuana.

In addition to expanding the U.S. crop, the eradication program spurred marijuana production in other Latin American countries producing the drug lords who are now behind the cocaine and crack markets. Even, Mexico, according to Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence estimates, remained a major producer as the second largest exporter of marijuana to the United States last year.   

Eradication of cocaine is going to be even more difficult. The, hardy coca bush cannot be eradicated by herbicides; it must be done manually. Coca growers have laughed at U.S. efforts to cut the coca bushes without uprooting them. It has saved the farmers many hours of work in pruning the plants. To be successful the plants must be uprooted. Only a small percentage of land available for coca cultivation is currently being used. According to Dr. Lester Grinspoon of Harvard Medical School, the hardy coca plant will grow in many other countries, especially in areas that have warm winters. "The Andean strategy is stupid in terms of botany," Dr. Grinspoon said at a recent Drug Policy Foundation press conference at the National Press Club. When the economic and cultural realities of Latin America are considered along with the past record of eradication programs, it is absurd to waste resources on eradication.

Unable to Seal Off Borders

In 1969, President Nixon launched Operation Intercept, which militarized the Mexican border. One of every three cars entering the country from Mexico was searched for illegal drugs, chiefly marijuana. As a result, the pot market in Southern California temporarily dried up. But users began experimenting with other drugs, among them amphetamines, which quickly became a widely used drug.

In response to the border searches, smugglers switched from cars and trucks to boats and planes, thus expanding the drug war to sea and air. The marijuana market grew as well.

The Reagan administration focused its interdiction efforts in South Florida. High-tech military surveillance aircraft were recruited in the war on drugs. Colombia's traffickers quickly realized that marijuana was too bulky to ship undetected. But they also discovered that cocaine could be transported in briefcases, suitcases, even within human bodies. These methods of moving cocaine easily penetrated the government's high-tech net, resulting in cocaine becoming cheaper and more plentiful.

Interdiction has become less and less cost effective. The General Accounting Office recently reported that the Navy and Coast Guard spent a combined $40 million in 1988 and seized only 17 ships. The Air Force, meanwhile, used AWACS surveillance, at a cost of $8 million in 1987-88, to arrest 26 suspected smugglers.

Coercion Fails to Convince Users

Twenty years after the drug war was first declared we are seemingly returning to the original strategy. The original war on drugs focused on going after the users; today, it is called "user accountability."

When President Nixon declared the war on drugs, it was a felony in virtually every state to possess any amount of marijuana. During the 1970s, American police arrested one person every two minutes for marijuana offenses. Nevertheless, marijuana use tripled, and the drug warriors changed the strategy to going after traffickers. Now the Bush administration is returning to the original plan.

William Bennett has yet a new strategy: deny driver's licenses to drug offenders. Felony convictions did not work for the Nixon drug war. What evidence does Mr. Bennett have that indicates denying a driver's license will work for President Bush? Does he believe that people who break the law selling drugs, when facing arrest and incarceration, will be concerned about losing their driver's license?

The other break from the past is widespread testing of bodily fluids for evidence of drug use. The fact that our free society is willing to resort to this type of strategy demonstrates the desperation of the failed drug prohibition. Drug testing requires mass searches of individuals almost always without any suspicion of drug use. That was exactly the type of government invasion of privacy our forefathers fought the American Revolution to prevent. As a result of our failed drug policies, we are destroying the freedoms that make this country special in human history.

Successes in the War on Drugs

Over the last two decades of drug wars there have been three notable successes from which we could learn a great deal and create a successful national strategy.

At the beginning of the drug war, the great drug scare was glue sniffing. This was actually seen as a very serious threat to our society. There were reports throughout the United States of young people sniffing glue, getting high and killing their brain cells.

Today glue sniffing is no longer a drug problem. This great threat has disappeared. We succeeded without eradicating glue at its source, without interdicting it and without mass incarcerations. We did not take away the driver's licenses of convicted glue sniffers. Indeed, glue remains legal and widely available throughout the United States, but is no longer a drug problem.

Another surprising success has been the decriminalization of marijuana. By 1978, 11 states encompassing one-third of the population had decriminalized marijuana, and over 30 othollstates had made a first offense punishable without incarceration and without a criminal record. Since 1978, there has been a dramatic decline in marijuana use among all age groups including our adolescents. Relaxing law enforcement did not result in increased use. While it is impossible to say what caused the dramatic decline in marijuana use, it is fair to say that relaxing the laws did not prevent the decline. Not only does Mr. Bennett ignore this success, but his report incorrectly claims that this change increased marijuana use and urges states to adopt harsher sanctions.

The other success is perhaps the most startling because it involves a legal drug, tobacco. At the beginning of the modern drug war, 40 percent of the U.S. population was regularly using tobacco; today regular use is down to 29 percent. Almost half of all living American adults who have ever smoked tobacco have quit. This has also been accomplished without mass incarcerations, eradication programs and without any reduction in tobacco availability.

Tobacco is particularly interesting because not only is it legal, but its farmers are subsidized by the government, and the drug is available in vending machines or over-the-counter throughout the United States. According to the Surgeon General, tobacco is as addictive as cocaine and heroin. Even with mass availability of a highly addictive drug we have seen a dramatic drop in use.

Learning the Lessons of the Past

The lessons of these victories and failures of the last 20 years is that law enforcement is not all that important in controlling drug abuse. Our only successes have been in areas where we have reduced law enforcement and encouraged social controls to come to the fore. Not only do these experiences demonstrate the failure of law enforcement, they demonstrate that law enforcement actually makes matters worse. Relying on criminal laws creates the "forbidden fruit" glamorization of illegality, the huge black market profits, the widespread corruption of public officials and the empowerment of wealthy, violent drug criminals.

If history teaches us that we can avoid all of these negative consequences and still reduce drug abuse, should not we at least try it? Does it not make more sense to build on the successes of the last two decades rather than building on the failures?

Drug Czar William Bennett can be criticized for many reasons including minimizing the effects of prejudice, poverty and poor education as root causes of drug abuse. He proposes massive expenditures for law enforcement without explaining where the funds will come from. He can also be criticized for advocating a policy of rhetoric over reason. However, the greatest criticism of Mr. Bennett may be that he is ignoring all of the drug war defeats of the past 20 years and is planning more of the same.

Kevin B. Zeese, "Ignoring the Lessons of Drug Wars Past," The Drug Policy Letter, September/October 1989, p3.