Only a few years ago, the voices of those opposed to the war on drugs were not being heard. Today, reformers are more united and respected, and they are beginning to have real impact on the political system. What has changed?

The growth in the drug policy reform movement's size and impact has coincided with the growth of the Drug Policy Foundation. Since 1986, the Foundation has served as the largest organization representing reform ideas and serving as a vehicle for the wide variety of drug reform interests. The Foundation can take some credit for the progress nationwide, but the shift toward sanity is truly the result of hard work by a large number of individuals. It has been a long time coming.

While there is still a long way to go, the ground is becoming more fertile for reformers due to the drug war's glaring failures. The anti-drug crusade tries to attack crime and violence, international drug production and trafficking, drug abuse and addiction, AIDS and numerous other related issues, but it consistently meets disappointment no matter how much treasure is poured into the effort. President George Bush's much-ballyhooed drug war is the perfect case in point — despite spending over $45 billion in his four-year term, Bush will go down in history as the president with the worst record on crime and drugs in this century. His drug war stands as proof that across-the-board, militaristic prohibition cannot work.

A majority of Americans still consider radical and destructive such drug policy reform ideas as decriminalization or legalization, but a sizeable minority is ready to consider these options. On medium-level reform issues like needle exchange and medical marijuana, it is likely that a majority supports the reform positions. Thus reformers are working from a position of often-unrecognized strength.

The question is increasingly how to convert the power of reform ideas and the large reform constituency into a positive force for change. Hence, this year's timely conference theme, "Strategies for Change."

Strategies Vary for Different Fronts

Strategies for drug reform vary according to specific issues. Some issues, for instance, require continued dedication and work in the academic and scientific communities. Years of misinformation, propaganda and selectively published research supporting prohibitionist assumptions need to be constantly corrected. In time, the objective middle ground will be established, but only through the ongoing efforts of people committed to the truth in the drug field.

Other reform issues will require expanded public education efforts, for many of the same reasons that the academic community needs a dose of rationality. The current state of drug disinformation would shock most reformers. Consider the 1990 national poll that found a substantial majority of adult Americans believe heroin makes users violent and psychotic. Of course, the drug is in reality a potent relaxant and analgesic. On countless other issues, the American public has been misled by high-profile scare campaigns. Much needs to be done to create a climate suitable for rational drug policy reform.

Perhaps most excitingly, an increasing number of issues lend themselves to political activity at the state, local and federal levels of government. This window of opportunity is the most historic development in nearly eight decades of drug prohibition.

We have watched with pleasure as grassroots citizen groups with several different drug reform concerns have grown up and begun to challenge elected officials head-on. These groups represent the real potential of the reform movement. They offer a number of possible models for interested citizens to follow in developing the most effective reform organizations for their cities, counties and states. Their experiences also offer guidance to those who would organize political efforts at the federal level.

The next 10 years and beyond are bound to be an inspiring and important time for drug policy reformers. An unprecedented — and long overdue — movement is finally sprouting wings and beginning to lead the way toward sensible, peaceful drug policy change.

While the drug war may well collapse of its own weight, it is not something that modern-day reformers can take for granted. Despite its many failures, the war seems to be expanded every year without regard to reality. This cycle must be broken. Drug policy cannot remain a taboo issue — it is time to begin a process of rational analysis, calm deliberation and compassionate reform.

For the movement, winning on some of the smaller-scale reform issues will be an uphill task. Moving on to a grander scale will be exponentially more difficult. Many of us today cannot conceive ofhow large the reform movement will have to get in order to achieve its fundamental objectives.

But only a little over six years ago, we might never have believed that the Drug Policy Foundation would grow so quickly from a post office box to its current form as a relatively large organization directing public education efforts in the realms of television, conferences, publications and media outreach. If the rate of the Foundation's growth is a reliable measure of the drug reform issue's increasing strength — and we believe it is — then it may be time to imagine a future where the loyal opposition becomes a diverse and sizeable force indeed.

State of the Drug Policy Foundation

When we began the Foundation in 1986 our goal was to open up the debate on drug policy so that people who opposed the drug war would be treated respectfully in public discussion. While that goal has not been completely achieved, we have made great progress toward it. Now, a wide variety of people have spoken publicly for various forms of decriminalization and other reforms. It seems the rate at which respectable people and public officials have been "coming out" for reform has actually increased in just the last year. Thus, while work remains to be done in this area, we believe it is now time to work toward making actual changes in policy.

We have already seen that our work has had an impact on drug policy. For example, in the area of AIDS prevention, it was the Drug Policy Foundation that first brought the idea of needle exchange to the public policy debate in the United States. In 1987, we held a forum in a meeting room of the U.S. Congress debating the issue which featured Allan Parry, a needle exchange pioneer from Liverpool, England. We have consistently focused attention on the issue through our annual achievement awards, litigation, television shows and publications.

Today, needle exchange is becoming a reality in many parts of the United States. State and local governments are addressing the issue in positive ways and leading private foundations, particularly the American Foundation for AIDS Research, are funding needle exchange programs and research. Even the president's own National Commission on AIDS has endorsed needle exchange. While the Bush administration, in particular drug czar Bob Martinez, continues to work to block these programs, needle exchange is overcoming political opposition and is being tried throughout the United States.

The Drug Policy Foundation began a new effort working toward change in drug policy with the publication of our first annual National Drug Reform Strategy in January 1992. One of the purposes of the Reform Strategy, which is reprinted in the first chapter of this volume, was to lay out specific and immediate proposals for reform. In this way political leaders and others would begin to see what the reform movement stands for and what it is working toward. The feedback we have received has been very encouraging — the strategy's brief, coherent arguments for specific policy changes have helped show that the drugreform agenda is fundamentally sensible, while the current state of affairs is not.

A similar Foundation report was The Andean Strategy Reconsidered. This report was released when President Bush met with leaders from the Andean nations in San Antonio, Texas, in March 1992, for the second so-called "drug summit." It reviews the failures of the Bush administration's Andean Initiative and recommends concrete changes in our nation's approach to international drug control. This report is reprinted in Chapter 10 of this volume.

In addition to putting forward clear alternatives to our present national strategy, the Foundation has increased efforts to provide a thorough critique of the current strategy. We have done this in a variety of ways, including newspaper op-ed columns, television productions and the publication of reports on current strategies. The consistent goal of these efforts is to show that the reform perspective on drug policy is rational, respectable and relevant. So far, we have received overwhelmingly positive responses— some of the columns have even forced leading drug warriors to defend their positions publicly, a duty they have often escaped in the past.

Another example of the Foundation's efforts to set the record straight was a report on the overall costs and effectiveness of the Bush administration's drug control efforts. The report, The Bush Drug War Record, was released on Sept. 5, 1992, the third anniversary of Mr. Bush's first address to the nation from the Oval Office. In that speech, which featured President Bush holding up a bag of crack he said was seized across the street from the White House, ushered in the Bush version of the war on drugs. The Foundation report concluded that while Mr. Bush spent as much on the drug war in four years as every president from Nixon to Reagan combined, it had done little to make our society safer or healthier. Dozens of editorials critical of the Bush drug war appeared in newspapers nationwide, many of them citing the Drug Policy Foundation report's information to make their case.

About This Book

This volume is composed primarily of the papers presented at the Drug Policy Foundation's Sixth International Conference on Drug Policy Reform held in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 11-14, 1992. The conference and this book are major parts of a continuing effort by the Foundation to provide a forum for individuals who challenge our nation's drug policies. The papers in this volume demonstrate the diversity of issues surrounding the conference theme of "Strategies for Change."

The conference theme developed out of a sense that it was time for citizens concerned with the effects of our failed drug policy to take a new step toward working to develop and implement new drug policies. This is the beginning of a new stage in the drug policy reform movement.

One of the new chapter topics in this year's volume is the chapter on activism. It shares the ideas and experiences of people who have been working on the front lines of reform and provides important guidance for other would-be activists. Another new section discusses women's issues and perspectives on the drug war and reform. And in the wake of this spring's riots in Los Angeles, several writers offer perspectives on the impact of the drug war on the nation's simmering urban crisis. In addition to all of these new topics, the conference book contains chapters relating to many traditional reform issues: marijuana, treatment, international issues, AIDS, history and the law.

Within this volume, there are a few articles with which we disagree. It has been a practice of the Foundation to welcome such articles because of our commitment to seeing a vigorous and open debate on all the issues at hand. We consider it a compliment that writers such as these, who either oppose reformers or merely wish to criticize their arguments and tactics, feel comfortable writing for this Drug Policy Foundation publication. They know they will be working on a level playing field of a type that is unavailable anywhere else.

We hope this book proves useful both to reformers and to interested people who wish to understand the breadth of opinions and ideas involved in the opposition to the war against drugs. As readers will undoubtedly see, reform advocates are people of good conscience who are concerned about the problems of drug abuse and addiction, but who are capable also of seeing the harm caused unnecessarily by our nation's martial approach to drugs and drug users. These are the types of people the Drug Policy Foundation has always sought to attract and encourage.

Change and the Election Year

This book was prepared before the end of this year's political campaigns. While we do not know how the election will turn out, it is obvious from the campaign that change is in the air. A record number of new people will join the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in 1993. If Gov. Bill Clinton is elected president, a new administration will take power resulting in new top-level executive agency appointments. If President Bush is re-elected he will also be making changes in his administration. Either way, there are significant opportunities for the reform movement to begin to develop.

While the drug issue was not part of the presidential campaign, we note the fact that in the first presidential debate on Oct. 11, one of the few social policy questions asked was on drug policy. The ques tion, asked by television journalist Sander Vanocur, mentioned two leading drug legalization advocates, William F. Buckley Jr. and Milton Friedman, and asked whether there were some policy options between the current approach and legalization that were appropriate now to help to control crime.

This historic question was a sign that the failure of current policy is becoming evident to many Americans. For this we can credit, in part, the persistence of the drug reform message in a variety of new forums. It should be a goal of reformers to move this debate to the next logical step, making it impossible for congressional and even presidential candidates in future elections to avoid discussing the drug war's failures and the viable alternatives to it.

Soon the debate on drug policy reform will become a significant part of the political landscape. This conference, "Strategies for Change," is another step in that direction.

Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the work of the excellent, professional staff of The Drug Policy Foundation. Kendra Wright, director of marketing, and Karen Gusman, assistant conference director, deserve particular credit as they led the effort in preparing this book. Most of the foundation staff pitched in, including Patricia Westwater, Stuart Sugg, Kennington Wall, Dave Fratello and Rob Stewart.

We are lucky that these people are humble enough to allow our name's to be placed before them on this text. We have no doubt that they all have brilliant careers ahead of them and will be leaders in this field.

Arnold S. Trebach
Kevin B. Zeese
Washington, D.C.
November 1992