February 27, 2008 News+Opinion » Will Moredock

The War on Drugs is insane, but there's no end in sight 

Prohibition Is the Problem

by Will Moredock
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"The Drug War has arguably been the single most devastating, dysfunctional social policy since slavery." —Norm Stamper, Retired Chief of Police, Seattle

In the long history of human folly and futility, America's War on Drugs has surely earned a special place of honor.

Not satisfied that America was fighting a no-win war in Vietnam, in 1971 President Richard Nixon declared a War on Drugs, creating the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention. Nearly 40 years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, we are still fighting that war, with no end in sight. And the casualties keep piling up. The first, of course, was truth, as Aeschylus reminded us long ago. Other casualties have been our civil liberties and our trust in our government and leaders.

Another casualty came to my attention recently when I opened my e-mail to find a message from Skip Johnson, announcing that South Carolinians for Drug Law Reform was shutting down.

Johnson is a retired newspaperman, so he loves a good fight and he knows a few things about tilting at windmills. "My hero is Don Quixote and my saint is St. Jude," he said last week with a wry chuckle.

He and Sharon Fratepietro organized SCDLR in Charleston four years ago — though that may be overstating it. There was never any membership roll or dues. Meetings were somewhat irregular.

"The problem was that people didn't want to put their name on a list as being a member," Johnson said. "They said, 'What if my boss finds out? What if my wife finds out?' That's the kind of fear we were dealing with."

SCDLR may be out of business, but Johnson's still hard at work. He can cite dates, names, and statistics in his soliloquy against America's disastrous drug policies.

"The first thing you need to understand," he said, "is that the drug war is a war against black people. Black people are 13 percent of the nation's population, but they represent approximately 25 percent of all drug arrests, 50 percent of all drug convictions, and 75 percent of all drug incarcerations."

States with large black populations have used drug laws to control and disenfranchise their black populations, Johnson said. "Look at what happened in Florida in 2000. More than 20,000 black people in Florida were disenfranchised from voting because of drug convictions, most of them for possession and distribution of marijuana. These 20,000 nonviolent citizens were denied the right to vote. If they had been allowed to vote, George Bush would not have carried Florida and would not be president today ... That's how the drug laws are used in this country."

The War on Drugs has spawned a huge prison-industrial complex, Johnson said. Companies that build and run prisons lobby for longer sentences and support legislators who support their agenda. It is a vicious cycle that corrupts the democratic process, enriches a special interest industry with public money, and incarcerates millions of non-violent people in this country. Today, Charleston County is preparing to spend millions of dollars on a new jail to house its burgeoning inmate population. Johnson believes that the jail will be overcrowded on the day it opens.

America calls itself the Land of the Free, yet its drug laws have made this country the largest jailer in the world. At the end of 2006, 7 million people — one in every 32 U.S. adults — were behind bars, on probation or on parole, according to the Justice Department. Of that total, 2.2 million were incarcerated. About half of those inmates were serving time on drug-related charges. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million behind bars, though China has over four times the population of the U.S.

Conservatives wail that Americans are surrendering our freedom to economic and environmental regulation. Yet, I have rarely heard them complain about the War on Drugs, about the doors that are kicked down, the citizens harassed and arrested, the property seized, the constitutional protections infringed in the name of protecting us from drugs.

Johnson does not regret his battle for enlightened drug laws in South Carolina. He still speaks at civic clubs and has spoken out against building the new county jail. He testified before state Senate subcommittees in favor of a needle exchange program and medical marijuana. Of course, our beloved state has neither today and is not likely to in the near future.

Ultimately, the solution to the "drug problem" is to legalize them all and control their sale and use, as we do tobacco and alcohol, Johnson said. That will take the profit out of drugs and with it the romance of the "gangsta" culture.

"Prohibition is the problem," he said. "It didn't work with alcohol, and it is not working today. I don't know why people can't see the logic of it."

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He’s barreled off in H.G. Wools’ Slime Machine to that distant age in the far future where Mankind has devolved into two radically divergent species: the Hoi-Polloi and the Moredocks. But don’t worry: he’ll be back again last week! (I hope)

Posted by Séamus on March 10, 2008 at 4:39 PM | Report this comment

Who are you and what have you done with that bitch Moredock?

Posted by ogre on March 10, 2008 at 12:52 PM | Report this comment

One critical argument or assertion is yet outstanding, i.e., has not been articulated. This argument is: there exists the undeniable personal responsibility of every free, conscious entity on this planet, to serve as the watcher at the gate: “to safeguard the sanctity of my own brain.” Ultimately it is I who must decide, as far as I am able, whether I will allow any alien substance to assume control of my brain and the behavior which derives from my brain’s activities. Admittedly such an assertion is “mature” and derives necessarily from experience. Not every kid on the block will tune in to such a notion. But its moral and experiential imperatives derive from, and are supported by the teachings of many an orthodox religion: that we as ‘imperfect man’ must strive to be holy, like God, who is holy. The War on Drugs is also based on our relinquishing control to the Government. The ultimate foundation of The War is not only a desperate appeal to the protection of Law and Order against crime and lawlessness. The War derives also, on a deeper level, from the impassioned exhalation of many a citizen: “There ought to be a law against it.” In The War we see a specter of the ultimate Liberal attitude: unquestioning faith in Big Government. The Liberals assume that Big Government has to be benign and caring by nature; there ought to be a Law against many an undesirable thing, and we trust the Government to run things in our personal lapse and absence. We expect the Government to assume our personal responsibility for our lives and outcomes, while we sit at home watching Saturday Night Live, drinking our glass of beer blindly behind closed blinds. The Germans thought then just as many of us do now, and were willing to allow anything to preserve holy “law and order.” That is one good reason why Corporal Hitler, appointed by Kanzler Hindenburg in 1933, gained the upper hand. Herr Hitler commented (or words to this effect): “How fortunate it is for leaders that the common people do not think.” This was an extreme example, but the lesson remains: we must monitor and improve ourselves as INDIVIDUALS, raise our children with guidelines of virtue and ‘biochemical caution,’ and not surrender that responsibility entirely to Big Government.

Posted by Séamus on March 8, 2008 at 9:07 PM | Report this comment

Will, I was quite pleased to read another of your columns that I enjoyed, the last being written by your cybernetic twin on the subject of pro sports' fan clubs. Well done, although I'm disappointed to see the dissolution of the local organization working on the legal means to changing the drug culture in the US. I'm not and never have been a user of anything illegal, but I strongly support a major course change in light of the massive failure in the war on drugs. JoeBlow, the idea of decriminalization, legalization, and regulation is to take the production, marketing, and distribution power and money away from violent criminals and out into transparent business. The realities of drug addiction and its human costs are not debatable, but the same argument could be used just as effectively with immensely more victims against over eating. It all comes down to personal responsibility for your choices. The attitude of "my brother can't control himself, why don't they arrest him for his own good" is a dangerous one indeed. The interesting conundrum arises when one examines the rising regulation and restriction around tobacco use due to the immense burden its users have placed on public healthcare. I love the smoking ban as much as the next selfish non-smoker, to be honest. However to legalize new substances that are certainly dangerous to users (cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine) would present a regulatory challenge like few other new products ever. The best argument, though, is that the current system is an abject failure. If someone proposed the idea with a cost/benefit analysis for drug control policy to any non-mouth-breathing American taxpayer today as a new program, they'd be booed out of any assembly hall in the country. Prohibition failed long ago because the market demanded the product, the public was uninterested in supporting its enforcement, and people were dying while criminals became tycoons. What is the difference today? Brown people (and foreigners, ha!) are dying and those with the desire for change don't vote... those that do vote buy into the tailored, fear-based sales pitch.

Posted by factoryconnection on March 5, 2008 at 2:06 PM | Report this comment

Dare we forget our"friends" in the legal departments that seem to think its ALL about getting the bigger fish. Not every case can be judged the same but if we opt out to "cut a deal" in order to gain a larger player, the small guy gets a walk and with no doubt heads for his supplier to inform. If the big guys dont have a line to feed, they themselves would soon fall. the very best General in the world would be nothing with out a few good troops.The fight to keep this nightmare off our streets and out of our homes can not progress unless everyone does thier part.Back to the old days when you could cut a switch and tan some hides without been arrested. It all starts at home but we have got to find higher-ups that will hold the coals on the offenders.

Posted by Littlemike42 on March 4, 2008 at 1:02 PM | Report this comment

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