Debate Question on Drug Policy Brings Stale Responses

The increasing recognition of the crisis in drug policy led to a historic question during the first presidential debate Oct. 11.

Panelist Sander Vanocur, noting that Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley Jr. support drug legalization, asked the candidates whether the country should move in a new direction on drug policy given the high levels of drug-related crime in our society. If not legalization, Vanocur asked, then perhaps something in between the current system and that?

Of course, the candidates did not-want to talk about middle-level compromises, nor did they wish to indulge serious questioning of the status of the war on drugs. So they all announced their opposition to drug legalization and talked about drug issues that concerned them personally.

President Bush admitted that his drug war had failed to reduce the number of addicts. Bush praised Partnership for a Drug-Free America Chairman James Burke and the "many ... countries below" that are cooperating with U.S. military and DEA efforts.

Independent candidate H. Ross Perot worried aloud about the problem of crack babies, saying that each such baby costs "you and me" $125,000 and that each one is "permanently and genetically damaged." He claimed that "we don't have the will to stamp [drugs] out," equating the drug trade with "chemical warfare" of the type that prompted the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986.

Gov. Bill Clinton invoked the experience of his half-brother Roger, who is recovering after a period of intensive cocaine use. The Arkansas governor said that experience meant that "I know more about this, I think, than anybody else up here" and said that without the intervention of the criminal justice system he had no doubt his brother would be dead. Clinton said the country needed many more police, that there should be drug treatment available on demand, and that he supported "boot camps for first-time, non-violent offenders so they can get discipline and treatment and education."

While the current problems of prohibition-related violence and crime were recognized for the first time in a presidential debate, the candidates merely resorted to tired rhetoric that promised more of the same.

Earlier in the debate, Clinton referred to a book he read where the author defined "insanity" as "doing the same old thing over and over again and expecting a different result." But all tha candidates failed to see that this country's addiction to making war over drugs represents exactly this kind of behavior.