Abstract

We are trapped in a no-win war on drugs — a moral crusade of zero tolerance that fails to account for facts of life and has created problems of overflowing prisons and movement toward a police state. The value of benefits/cost for legal drugs is 2104, but for illegal drugs, only 0.06. Solutions include attacking career criminality, increasing research on the physiology of addictions, legalization of all but synthetic drugs, and taxation of drugs based on their mind-altering power.

Both President George Bush and our Drug Czar William Bennett have called for stronger efforts against "the evil of illegal drugs." Mr. Bennett's National Drug Control Strategy states drugs are "a moral problem and should be resisted" (his emphasis).

The war on drugs resembles a crusade and has three strengths: righteousness which is formidable; instant support because if a person does not join, he may be suspected of irresolution; and a complex of offices under Drug Czar Bennett plus large contributions of resources from The Department of Defense (DoD), The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Coast Guard, the Border Patrol, and other Federal agencies.

Strategic Weakness and Trap of the War on Drugs Crusade

The strategic weakness is focus on the force of law to establish the absolute of zero tolerance for illegal drugs. But some people continue to use drugs as some people smoke and some drinkers drive. None of those acts are excused, no more than suicide or murder. The question is whether zero tolerance is the most effective way to handle them.

The war on drugs insists that users, pushers, and producers of drugs quit doing what they are doing. The users have the options of penalties, if caught, or quitting what they want to do. Producers and pushers have the options of penalties, if caught, or abandoning riches.

The trap of the zero tolerance, all-out crusade of the war on drugs requires confiscation of commercial boats, yachts, cars, and titles to leases for public housing apartments whether or not the owners are personally involved in drugs. Our Supreme Court has approved warrantless searches and denial of any possible bail before trial of anybody who a judge believes to be dangerous. A flood of cases has backlogged the courts. Our jails and prisons are jam-packed. We release prisoners before their required time to make room for the new prisoners. The war on drugs has collided with costs too great and time too short to build enough jails and prisons. It's a no-win war. Even if the supply of illegal drugs were stopped, users could switch to laboratory synthetics such as PCP and LSD which are more dangerous than natural drugs.

What to do?

A basic problem is that some drugs are illegal, but many are legal. Tobacco, alcohol, and prescribed medications such as morphine, codeine, and other narcotics are legal. Both legal and illegal drugs attract users, some of whom become addicted. That complicates the problem and suggests we need not only moral but additional forces to build an effective strategy.

A strategic problem is how to judge the value of a drug policy. For that purpose, consider a ratio of expected benefits divided by direct costs to the taxpayer. The ratio will help to judge whether the policy will benefit people and be economically prudent.

The larger the number of the ratio of

benefits for people

direct cost to taxpayers

the better the bargain for the taxpayer.

Legal Drugs

For alcohol, tobacco, and prescription narcotics, the ratio is:

Sensory benefits for adults plus $10 billion in revenue 

About $202 million on research and treatment of addicts. To be conservative, count only adult use of a legal drug. Assume adults are 20 years and older and that each use of a drug is 'worth' $1.00. Assume 70 percent of adults have one drink per day and 30 percent smoke a pack of cigarettes per day. The 'worth' of sensory benefits from legal drugs is $415 billion. That plus $10 billion from taxes on alcohol, and tobacco equals $425 billion. The number for the benefits/cost ratio is 2104. That implies for an investment of one taxpayer dollar, our policy on legal drugs returns a cultural value of more than $2,100, a preeminent bargain.

Illegal Drugs

The benefits include the net income from disposition of' seized and forfeited property of people associated with drug activities. In 1988, according to an 18 June 1990 letter from the United States Marshals' office, the net income was $580.8 million. The benefits/cost ratio is:

Sensory benefits for adults plus $581 million

Taxpayers' $10 billion for the war on drugs.

For sensory benefits, assume the same 'worth' of $1 for one use per day. The National Institute on Drug Abuse pays for and supervises the National Household Surveys on Drug Abuse. Our 1988 use of amphetamines was 4 percent, cocaine 1.3 percent, crack 0.2 percent, heroin 1.0 percent, marijuana 5.9 percent, and PCP 0.2 percent. And Mr. Bennett says we now are achieving lower drug rates. The total 'worth' of the uses of illegal drugs in 1988 was $21.4 million. That plus $581 million divided by $10 billion equals 0.06.

The finding of 0.06 suggests our policy on illegal drugs is heading us toward bankruptcy. The 0.06 implies that for every direct tax dollar spent for our policy on illegal drugs, we receive only six cents. In other words, for an adult to have one dollar's 'worth' of sensory benefit from an illegal drug, taxpayers pay $16.67, a corrupting 'bargain.'

Operational Problems

An operational problem is how to get addicts off the hook. The need for research is glaring. An entire industry of hundreds of private organizations and medical and lay clinics compete for smokers, drinkers, users of drugs, and overeaters who want to quit but can't. But quit rates are not high. The point is our need is great for better knowledge in order to do a better job in treating addictions. To learn much more about the physiology of addictions would lead to more effective treatments, a reduced demand for drugs, and lower crime rates.

Another operational problem is how to stop our revolving prison door for career criminals. A felon released from prison often is in, a blind alley. As a former convict and stranger to marketing such skills as he has, his chance of going straight are not good. To broaden current efforts to teach prisoners how to apply for a job and work for a living would lead to more former prisoners going straight, a reduced demand for drugs, and lower crime rates.

Discussion

On use of illegal drugs, the small percentages above of drug users do not support the charge that we are being overwhelmed by the drugs problem. Moreover, relevant to the charge that legalization would produce an explosion in use of illegal drugs, in the Netherlands, the nation with the closest approach to controlled access to drugs, less than 2 percent of the population uses marijuana and less than 0.2 percent uses hard drugs. Furthermore, a poll of the United States by Targeting Systems released at the National Press Club in February found that, if cocaine were made legal only 0.9 percent said they would try cocaine and only 4.2 percent said they would try marijuana. Those figures do not support the claim that legal access to drugs would cause skyrocketing rates of their use.

If a surge in use of legalized drugs were to occur (as happened with alcohol after the 21st Amendment.), once the novelty wears off the major use would not be by addicts but by people who would use selected drugs in moderation. After all, many people use alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. Many work, raise families, and pay taxes, without becoming addicted. As stated in the National Institute of Drug Abuse's Etiology of Drug Abuse, 1987, "The majority of drug users do not become chronic drug abusers."

The majority of our population is afraid to legalize drugs. Many visualize the specter of Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde who ravages our culture to support his addiction. Our leaders' crusade reinforces those fears and provides ground for exempting legalization of synthetics, among the most dangerous of drugs. Synthetic drugs tend to produce sporadic extremes of violence and psychoses. If laboratory synthetics were kept illegal, our anti-drug land, sea, and air forces could be reduced. Bootleg drugs would face a superior market of legal drugs, as alcohol today provides over bootleg booze. An exemption to legalization of synthetic drugs may be in order.

A word about the indirect cultural costs that dwarf the direct taxpayer costs of $10 billion for our war on drugs. The costs of deaths, injuries, illnesses, and children blighted by smokers, drivers under the influence (DUI), and addicts total perhaps as much as $240 billion. $52 billion is due to smoking alone, according to our Secretary of Health and Human Services. The point is that a zero tolerance crusade against a single part of the problem is a small, no-win nibble. Smoking, DUIs, and addictions are health problems. They deserve a joint moral and benefits/ cost attack.

Conclusion

Morality and economics, together, tend to drive behavior. That the 21st Amendment wiped out the gang wars, enrichment of bootleggers, and use of moonshine of uncontrolled quality is used as an argument for legalizing drugs. That may be a fair claim. The taxpayer benefits/cost ratios show a "bottom line" of 2104 for legal, but 0.06 for illegal drugs. Those findings add to the rationale for legalization of natural drugs.

To Enhance the Effectiveness of the War on Drugs

1. To reduce career criminality, educate addicts and nonviolent criminals on the pros and cons of going straight. For all prisoners, provide literacy tests and reading skills plus job interview and job-skills. Expand programs of intermediate punishments such as victim-restitution, electronic surveillance, house arrest, community service, intensive probation supervision, work furlough, and community detention.

2. To reduce the number of addicts, expand the present Federal program of research on the physiology of addictions (and on family-coping skills if a study published in The American Psychologist, May 1990, is duplicated and confirmed.

The University of California, Berkeley, found in a long-term study of 101 youths from age 3 through 18, that frequent users of illegal drugs had parents who tended to be critical, pressuring, and unresponsive to their children's needs).

3. Draft legislation to legalize, control the quality of, and tax in accordance with their mind-altering power all drugs except synthetics. As we tax alcohol by its proof, so 'proof' of a drug could be its relation in mind-altering strength to morphine or other standard.

Summary
We need to learn more about how to remedy addictions and to teach prisoners how to work for a living. The contrast between the benefits/cost ratios of 2104 for legal and 0.06 for illegal drugs suggests that we legalize, control, and tax drugs to enable both morality and the, taxpayers to win.

In overview, we need to study how our society is doing itself in. Our handling of drugs is an example of short-sighted problem solving. Similarly, our bent for muscling our foreign trade and giving lip-service to our ecology and national debt problems show it's time for examination of how we define our objectives and select the most effective alternatives for achieving them.

For their criticisms, I thank Eric Barnes, Rodney Cron, Patricia Dawes, Aileen Foreshew, Jerome Frank, Michelle Funk, Philip Gage, Thomas Harrell, Linda Heflin, Chris Herron, Bob Holliday, Brad, Gay, and Kay Hosmer, Bill and Eleanor Jones, Larry Laurion, Daniel McElheny, Raymond and Margaret Parrott, and Basil Vlavianos.

Clark Hosmer, Ph.D., Colonel USAF Ret., 39 Longwood Drive, Shalimar, Fla. 32579. (904) 651-1739.