The following are excerpts from The Nation, dated September 20, 1999. The author, Michael Massing, recently won the Washington Monthly’s Political Book Award for 1998, with the release of "The Fix". Massing is also an adjunct professor at the Columbia School of Journalism. Presented here without permission.

The Drug War

Where do we go from here?

 

 

Michael Massing, Columbia School of Journalism

 

...Despite growing dissatisfaction with the drug war among the general public, progress toward change has been minimal, and the inability of liberals to propose a persuasive alternative helps explain why.

 

On the left, three schools of drug reform prevail. Each has something to offer but, by itself, is an inadequate guide to change. The most sensational is the CIA-trafficking school. Actually, this is less a school than a tendency, limited to certain sectors of the left, but it has absorbed much intellectual energy over the years...

 

According to this perspective, America’s drug problem cannot be fully understood without examining the CIA’s periodic alliances with drug-running groups abroad, from Hmong tribesmen in Laos to the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan to the Contras in Nicaragua...

 

In the most eye-popping version of this theory, advanced by Gary Webb [author of Dark Alliance] traffickers linked to the CIA-backed Contras are said to have supplied cocaine to major dealers in South Central Los Angeles, thus helping to set off the nation’s crack epidemic...

 

Adherence to the CIA-trafficking school leads one into some strange policy terrain. In focusing so strongly on the intelligence agency, this school seems implicitly to accept the idea that Washington could actually do something about the flow of drugs into the United States if it really wanted to. If only the CIA would fight the traffickers, rather than shield them, it’s implied, we could reduce the availability, and abuse, of drugs in this country. Yet, after thirty years of waging war on drugs, it should be apparent that with or without the CIA’s help, the United States is incapable of stemming the flow of drugs into this country. The CIA-trafficking school unwittingly bolsters the idea that the true source of America’s problem lies outside our borders, and that the solution consists in cracking down on producers, processors and smugglers. In an odd way, then, this school actually reinforces the logic underlying the drug war.

 

By now, it should be clear that America’s drug problem is home-grown, and that any effort to combat it must be centered here. In particular, we must confront the real source of our problem — the demand for drugs. On this point, many liberals subscribe to the "root causes" school. This holds that the problem of drug abuse inAmerica reflects deeper ills in our society, such as poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination and urban neglect. To combat abuse, we must first address these underlying causes — through policies to promote full employment, increase the minimum wage, provide universal health insurance, end housing segregation and create opportunities for disadvantaged youths.

 

In focusing attention on the link between poverty and drug abuse, the root-causes school provides a valuable service. Studies indicate that drug addiction in the United States is disproportionally concentrated among the unemployed and undereducated...

 

Certainly such a standard would seem to rule out the third main school of left/liberal drug reform — legalization. On the surface, drug legalization has undeniable appeal. If drugs were legalized, the vast criminal networks that distribute them, and that generate so much violence, would disappear. Prison space would be reserved for the truly dangerous, black motorists would no longer be stopped routinely on the New Jersey Turnpike, relations with countries like Mexico and Colombia would improve and Americans would no longer be hounded for the substances they decide to consume — a matter of personal choice.

 

Yet legalizing drugs would entail some serious risks, the most obvious being an increase in abuse. While legalizers tend to cite drug prohibition as the source of all evil when it comes to drugs, drugs themselves can cause extensive harm. Heroin, cocaine, crack and methamphetimines are highly toxic substances, and those addicted to them engage in all kinds of destructive behavior, from preying on family members to assaulting strangers to abusing children. In all, there are an estimated 4 million hard-core drug users in the United States. associated with drugs...Though making up only 20 percent of all drug users nationwide (the rest being occasional users), this group accounts for two-thirds to three-quarters of all the drugs consumed here. They also account for most for the crime, medical emergencies and other harmful consequences chronic users could well increase...

 

By now, the risks of legalization have become so evident that even onetime supporters no longer advocate it. Instead, they have embraced a variant of legalization called harm reduction. Not always easy to define, harm reduction generally holds that the primary goal of drug policy should not be to eliminate drug use but rather to reduce the harm that drugs cause. Those who can be persuaded to stop using drugs should be; those who can’t should be encouraged to use their drugs more safely. To that end, harm reductionists favor expanding the availability of methadone, setting up needle-exchange programs, opening safe-injection rooms for heroin users and establishing heroin-maintenance programs that provide addicts with a daily dose of the drug.

 

There is much to admire in harm reduction. Its encouragement of tolerance for drug addicts provides a welcome alternative to the narrow moralism of the drug war...harm reduction — by recognizing that chronic users are at the core of the nation’s drug problem and that they constitute a public-health rather than law-enforcement problem — can help point the way toward a more rational drug policy. The key is to develop a policy that is as tough on drug abuse as it is on the drug war.

 

In formulating such a policy, a good starting point is a 1994 RAND study that sought to compare the effectiveness of four different types of drug control: source-control programs (attacking the drug trade abroad), interdiction (stopping drugs at the border), domestic law enforcement (arresting and imprisoning buyers and sellers) and drug treatment. How much additional money, RAND asked, would the government have to spend on each approach to reduce the national cocaine consumption by one percent? RAND devised a model of the national cocaine market, then fed into it more that seventy variables, from seizure date to survey responses. The results were striking: Treatment was found to be seven times more cost-effective than law enforcement, ten times more effective than interdiction and twenty-three times more effective than attacking drugs at their source...

 

To be effective, though, treatment must be available immediately. Telling addicts who want help to come back the next day or week is a sure way to lose them. Unfortunately, in most communities, help is rarely available immediately... In New York State alone, it is estimated that every year 100,000 people who would take advantage of drug or alcohol treatment if it were available are unable to get into a program.

"...Treatment was found to be seven times more cost-effective than law enforcement, ten times more effective than interdiction and twenty-three times more effective than attacking drugs at their source..."