http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14kristof.html


OP-ED COLUMNIST
Drugs Won the War


By Nicholas D. Kristof
Published: June 13, 2009
This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's start of the war on
drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.
"We've spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs," Norm Stamper, a
former police chief of Seattle, told me. "What do we have to show for it? Drugs are
more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It's a dismal
failure."
For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state
liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production
and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.
Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:
First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The
United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average.
In part, that's because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly
from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate
was roughly the same as that of other countries.
Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason
many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises
prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the
Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored
the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health
campaign against tobacco.
Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found
that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug
prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and
imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only
14 percent get treatment.)
I've seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill,
Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr.
Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of
harmful drugs, we can do better.
Mr. Stamper is active in Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, an
organization of police officers, prosecutors, judges and citizens who favor a dramatic
liberalization of American drug laws. He said he gradually became disillusioned with
the drug war, beginning in 1967 when he was a young beat officer in San Diego.
"I had arrested a 19-year-old, in his own home, for possession of marijuana," he
recalled. "I literally broke down the door, on the basis of probable cause. I took him
to jail on a felony charge." The arrest and related paperwork took several hours, and
Mr. Stamper suddenly had an "aha!" moment: "I could be doing real police work."
It's now broadly acknowledged that the drug war approach has failed. President
Obama's new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to
banish the war on drugs phraseology, while shifting more toward treatment over
imprisonment.
The stakes are huge, the uncertainties great, and there's a genuine risk that
liberalizing drug laws might lead to an increase in use and in addiction. But the
evidence suggests that such a risk is small. After all, cocaine was used at only one-
fifth of current levels when it was legal in the United States before 1914. And those
states that have decriminalized marijuana possession have not seen surging
consumption.
"I don't see any big downside to marijuana decriminalization," said Peter Reuter, a
professor of criminology at the University of Maryland who has been skeptical of some
of the arguments of the legalization camp. At most, he said, there would be only a
modest increase in usage.
Moving forward, we need to be less ideological and more empirical in figuring out
what works in combating America's drug problem. One approach would be for a
state or two to experiment with legalization of marijuana, allowing it to be sold by
licensed pharmacists, while measuring the impact on usage and crime.
I'm not the only one who is rethinking these issues. Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has
sponsored legislation to create a presidential commission to examine various elements
of the criminal justice system, including drug policy. So far 28 senators have co-
sponsored the legislation, and Mr. Webb says that Mr. Obama has been supportive of
the idea as well.
"Our nation's broken drug policies are just one reason why we must re-examine the
entire criminal justice system," Mr. Webb says. That's a brave position for a politician,
and it's the kind of leadership that we need as we grope toward a more effective
strategy against narcotics in America.
I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join
me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/opinion/l18kristof.html


LETTERS
Time to End Prohibition for Drugs?


Published: June 17, 2009
To the Editor:

Tim Gough

As a former prosecutor who did his time in the war on drugs (Brooklyn in the golden
age of crack, late '80s, early '90s), I agree wholeheartedly with Nicholas D. Kristof's
views that the war on drugs is over ("Drugs Won the War," column, June 14).
In addition to Mr. Kristof's three main points, let me add two of my own. First,
abandoning the war on drugs will provide a tremendous opportunity to appropriately
intervene in the lives of people who are abusing drugs. Forcing an addict to register
with the government and be subject to attempts to influence his or her behavior in
exchange for access to the drug of choice is appropriate; kicking in the door and
arresting the person are inappropriate.
Second, the military is becoming increasingly entangled in the war on drugs, a law
enforcement role that is entirely inappropriate. Our brave fighting men and women
should be protecting us from real threats, not burning poppy fields and arresting
drug lords in Afghanistan.
Tinkering around the edges will not do it, and I do not favor state-by-state
experiments. The federal government declared the war on drugs, and the federal
government should now declare victory (or defeat, it doesn't matter), and end the
war. Radical reform is needed now.
As Michael Douglas, portraying the drug czar, so wisely said in the movie "Traffic,"
the war on drugs is a war on ourselves and our families.
Michael G. Brautigam
Cincinnati, June 14, 2009

*
To the Editor:
As every physician knows, alcohol is a very addictive drug that truly destroys lives.
Death and disease from alcohol and alcohol withdrawal are daily occurrences on a
vast scale. In my medical practice, I have never seen someone get sick or die from
marijuana, nor go into withdrawal.
It utterly defies common sense to legalize alcohol but not marijuana. The war on
drugs is nonsensical. It only serves to generate enormous cash profits to criminals
and wastes precious resources - our money and the lives of law enforcement officials.
Ari Weitzner
New York, June 14, 2009

*
To the Editor:
Drugs have not "won the war." With a comprehensive anti-drug strategy in place,
involving foreign policy, enforcement, education, treatment, prevention and media,
America's overall drug use has declined almost by half in the past three decades -
from 14.1 percent of the population in 1979 to 8.3 percent now who used drugs in
the past month. In addition, cocaine use, including crack - the source of much of the
former record-high violent crime numbers - is down 70 percent. Want to go back?
Legalization would be a catastrophe. Nicholas D. Kristof uses the analogy of legal
alcohol. But there are an estimated 15 million alcoholics in this country and 5 million
drug addicts; do we want the 5 to become 15?
Parents, police and the American people know that taking away the incentive of the
normative power of the law would increase drug use and related car crashes, school
dropouts and work absences. That is why the law has remained in place.
Hospital emergency rooms would be flooded, and crime would return to the crisis
levels of the 1970s and '80s, when drug use was at its highest. Domestic violence and
date rape would be substantially higher. The majority of arrestees in 10 major
American cities recently tested positive for illegal drugs, a remarkable indicator of a
link between drugs and crime.
The new director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, R. Gil Kerlikowske, and
another recent drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, are both correct that we must
remove the phrase "war on drugs" and fight drugs like a cancer, which can be
managed and treated.
Robert Weiner
Washington, June 14, 2009
The writer was spokesman for the White House National Drug Policy Office from 1995
to 2001.

*
To the Editor:
Nicholas D. Kristof has it exactly right. When alcohol prohibition ended, the violent
bootleggers had the financial rug pulled out from under them. We need to do the
same to the Mexican cartels and the Taliban today.
Sam Ehrlichman
Maplewood, N.J., June 14, 2009

*
To the Editor:
Nicholas D. Kristof makes clear the price paid for the wrongheaded "war on drugs."
He notes Norm Stamper's experience as a young police officer in San Diego in 1967
thinking that he could be "doing real police work" rather than breaking down the
doors of marijuana users.
I would argue that the failed war on drugs is worse than useless; it has undermined
the rule of law. In 1967 I was a young college student encountering the drug culture
on an East Coast campus. I had the experience of having my friends arrested and
getting midnight calls to bail them out. At that time it was even illegal, where I lived,
merely to be in the presence of someone smoking pot.
I remember saying to myself that America was busy criminalizing its youth for no
good reason. Making common practice a criminal offense undermines respect for the
law.
The stupidity was obvious to me as a teenager, and to Norm Stamper as a young cop
40 years ago. Where has our political and law enforcement leadership been all this
time?
Richard Poeton
Seattle, June 14, 2009

*
To the Editor:
Thanks to Nicholas D. Kristof for saying again what so many have said for years
about the war on drugs. Given the evidence that the war on drugs is a futile, tragic
disaster, one can only paraphrase what Winston Churchill said about democracy:
Decriminalization of drugs is the worst idea, except for all the others.
Lawrence Shainberg
Truro, Mass., June 14, 2009
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