http://www.planetarymovement.org/go/newsflash/winning-the-war-on-drugs-by-steve-jonas/

Winning the war on drugs by Steve Jonas  
June 21, 2009

“Winning the War on Drugs?”  Is that you, Dr. Steve?  Isn’t that “War” just a
construct designed to achieve political and economic aims, while oppressing with it
one particular sector of the population?  How can it be “won?”

This column considers that conundrum in almost telegraphic form.  I have written at
length on it in the academic literature.  Interested readers are welcome to get in
touch with me for references.  The “War on Drugs” has never been such a thing.
>From its inauguration by Richard Nixon it has always been a War on Drug Users, for
the most part minority drug users at that, although some non-minorities have
occasionally been caught up in its tentacles.  The so-called War on Drugs was begun
shortly after the invention of the race-based “Southern Strategy” that has controlled
the fortunes of the GOP and unfortunately the country for most of the time since
Nixon installed it.

drugwar

The correctly labeled “War on Drug Users” has primarily been a racist
enterprise too.  It has been aimed at the users of one minor class of the Recreational
Mood Altering Drugs (RMADs), those that are currently “illicit” (as alcohol was
nationally between 1920 and 1933 and cigarettes were in 15 states at various times
during the 19th century.  Although the ratios have declined a bit in the last few
years, for most of its duration under the War on Drug Users, while approximately
75% of those in prison for drug-related offenses are non-white approximately 75% of
illicit-drug users are white.  Further, the War on Drug Users has been race-based in
terms of the neighborhoods in which it has been waged.  There was one major
previous true War on Drugs, Prohibition.  It was for the most part actually aimed at
the drug, ethyl alcohol, not at the users.

The commonly used RMADs are alcohol, nicotine in tobacco, the non-prescription use
of prescription drugs, and the illicits, primarily marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and fairly
recently, methamphetamine.  In terms of negative outcomes of RMAD use, for
example, tobacco kills about 430,000 people per year, alcohol between 60,000 and
100,000, depending upon how one counts, and the illicits kill about 20,000, half that
number as a result of drug-trade violence that would not exist absent the War on
Drug Users and some of the other half due to forced unsterile use of the drugs.
Tobacco and alcohol are not only the major drug killers but they are the “starter
drugs,” most often in childhood, for almost every problem-user of them in adult life
and almost every user of the illicits, regardless of age.

Logic has not ended the War on Drug Users.  Neither has the mainstream drug policy
reform movement which views RMAD use as the same false duality the Drug Warriors
do.  Logic did not end Prohibition either.  Over-riding policy concerns did: rampant
crime on the one hand and a major need for new tax revenues to deal with the
Depression on the other.  Major funding for the final Repeal campaign of the early
1930s came from a John D. Rockefeller-lead group of financiers who wanted to
prevent any increases in income tax levels that an incoming Democratic
Administration might enact.

drugwar

In dealing with the War on Drug Users the stars would seem to be aligned,
that is if the unitary-RMAD understanding of reality were to be adopted.  There is a
major series of problems that could be addressed by ending the War on Drug Users.
Legalizing the currently illicit would create a major new source of tax revenues.
Doing so would significantly reduce the prison population resulting in major
reductions in Federal, state and local spending on incarceration.  Doing so would
significantly unclog the courts, especially at the Federal level where they are so over-
burdened with drug cases that the waits for trials on much more important matters,
especially in the civil realm, can become interminable.  Obviously, there would be a
significant reduction in the demands on the law enforcement sector of government,
which could either save money or enable the diversion of resources to other
important areas, such as financial fraud, that do not always receive the attention they
deserve.

The Taliban would be largely defunded.  That the heroin trade is a major source of
their funding is the subject a new book that is currently featured on BuzzFlash.com:
Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda.  As well, of
course, the true Drug Wars that are killing thousands of Latin Americans, especially in
Mexico and Colombia, would be brought to a sudden, well-deserved end.  Finally, the
recognition of the unitary nature of RMAD use would enable for the first time a
comprehensive public health program to deal with all of the negative aspects of that
use, especially among children for whom it is the major licit drugs which are the
stepping stones both to later habitual, damaging use of them, and, currently, to the
use of the illicits.

As to the practical matter of how to implement the legalization of the illicits, it has
been said that the tobacco companies have been prepared for marijuana legalization,
up to and including the registration of trade names.  Heroin and cocaine could be
sold by Federal or state-operated stores, similar to the “package stores” that dispense
certain alcoholic beverages in such states as Vermont.  As for the synthetic RMADs,
and the non-prescription use of the prescription drugs (the latter of which has been
a much more serious problem than the use of heroin and cocaine combined), a
variety of approaches could be explored.  This all would have be combined with a
major public-health based anti- and safe-RMAD use program, combining tax policy,
controls on advertising, packaging, and marketing, and effective education programs
for both adults and children.  The result would be a much healthier nation.  Since
finding sources of new government revenues in the face of ever-increasing deficits
have become such a major concern and since certain major foreign policy aims could
be achieved so easily, now is the time to end the War on Drug Users, once and for
all.

sjo

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook
University (NY) and author/co-author/editor of 30 books.  In his book The New
Americanism (1992, available at www.amazon.com), Dr. Jonas presented his proposal
for that “new vision and mission” for the Democratic Party that so many, for so many
years, have been urging it to find. A new vision and mission were obviously needed
with increasing urgency as with increasing speed and determination the Georgites
were driving our nation towards frank theocratic fascism. In Barack Obama the
Democratic Party seems to have found an effective new voice to lead the nation back
to the re-establishment of Constitutional Democracy in 2009 and beyond. President
Obama represents a clear break with the policies of the Democratic Leadership
Council which, over the past 30 years, had driven the Democratic Party, and the
nation along with it, nearly into the ground. In 1992, Dr. Jonas found what he
considered to be the needed vision and mission in the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution.  He is hopeful that the Obama Administration has adopted it.

Dr. Jonas is also the author of The 15% Solution: A Political History of American
Fascism, 2001-2022. Under the pseudonym "Jonathan Westminster" this book was
originally published in 1996. It was republished with a New Introduction in 2004.
Under Georgite rule, major elements of the “fictional non-fiction” scenario of this
work of “future history” have, most unfortunately, become all too real.  Fortunately
the book’s scenario departs from the reality that the 2008 election has now delivered.
However, the similarities between, for example, Sarah Palin, who will hardly be
disappearing from the national political scene anytime soon, and the book’s fictional
first fascist President, Jefferson Davis Hague, are all too real. With continuing
Republican efforts to make things as bad as they can for the Obama Administration,
the threat of a fascist future for our nation has hardly disappeared.