War on Drugs

The “War on Drugs” is a prohibition campaign undertaken by the United States government with the assistance of participating countries, intended to reduce the illegal drug trade—to curb supply and diminish demand for certain psychoactive substances deemed harmful by the government. This initiative includes a set of laws and policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of targeted substances.

History

In its broadest sense, the War on Drugs could be considered to have started in 1880, when the U.S. and China completed an agreement (see Opium wars and Lin Zexu) that prohibited the shipment of opium between the two countries. The United States alcohol prohibition from 1920-1933 is the most widely known historical period of drug prohibition. The term itself, however, was coined in 1971 by Richard Nixon to describe a new set of initiatives designed to enhance drug prohibition.

The first recorded instance of the United States enacting a ban on the domestic distribution of drugs is the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914. This act was presented and passed as a method of regulating the production and distribution of opiate-containing substances under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, but a section of the act was later interpreted by law enforcement officials for the purpose of prosecuting doctors who prescribe opiates to addicts.

In 1925 United States supported regulation of cannabis as a drug in the International Opium Convention.

Alcohol prohibition in the U.S. first appeared under numerous provincial bans and was eventually codified under a federal constitutional amendment in 1919, having been approved by 36 of the 48 U.S. states. The amendment remains the only major act of prohibition to be repealed, having been struck down by a later constitutional amendment in 1933.

In 1937, congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. Presented as a $1 nuisance tax on the distribution of marijuana, this act required anyone distributing the drug to maintain and submit a detailed account of his or her transactions, including inspections, affidavits, and private information regarding the parties involved. This law, however, was something of a “Catch-22″, as obtaining a tax stamp required individuals to first present their goods, which was an action tantamount to confession. No marijuana tax stamps were ever produced. This act was passed by Congress on the basis of testimony and public perception that marijuana caused insanity, criminality, and death.

The 1951 Boggs Act increased penalties fourfold; five years later, the 1956 Daniel Act increased penalties by a factor of eight over those specified in the Boggs Act. Although by this time there was adequate testimony to refute the claim that marijuana caused insanity, criminality, or death, the rationalizations for these laws shifted in focus to the proposition that marijuana use led to the use of heroin, creating the gateway drug theory.

Nixon’s modern-day War on Drugs began in 1969. He characterized the abuse of illicit substances as “public enemy number one in the United States” at a press conference given on June 17th, 1971 , although the Shafer Commission recommended legalizing possession and sale of small amounts of marijuana . Under Nixon, the U.S. Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. This legislation is the foundation on which the modern drug war exists. Responsibility for enforcement of this new law was given to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and then in 1973 to the newly formed Drug Enforcement Administration.

In 1988, towards the close of the Reagan administration, the Office of National Drug Control Policy was created for central coordination of drug-related legislative, security, diplomatic, research and health policy throughout the government. In recognition of his central role, the director of ONDCP is commonly known as the Drug Czar. The position was raised to cabinet-level status by Bill Clinton in 1993.

Cost

The U.S. government estimates the cost of the War on Drugs by calculating the funds used in attempting to control the supply of illegal drugs, in paying government employees involved in waging the war on crack, and to satisfy rehabilitation costs. This total was estimated by the U.S. government’s cost report on drug control to be roughly $12 billion in 2005. Additionally, in a separate report, the U.S. government reports that the cost of incarcerating drug law offenders was $30.1 billion — $9.1 billion for police protection, $4.5 billion for legal adjudication, and $11.0 billion for state and federal corrections. In total, roughly $45.5 billion was spent in 2005 for these factors. The socioeconomic costs, as well as the individual costs (i.e., the personal disadvantages in income and career), caused by the incarceration of millions of people are not included in this number. Nor are the many real wars fought in the name of the “War on Drugs” included.

In 1998 the total cost of drug abuse in America was estimated at $143.4 billion. This number, however, includes indirect costs and includes some costs of drug policy enforcement, and so is not directly comparable.

Effects

Drug use has increased in all categories since prohibition. Since 1937, the use of marijuana, once an activity seemingly limited to Mexican immigrants and jazz musicians, has become one undertaken by up to 50% of the youth of the United States. Between 1972 and 1988 the use of cocaine increased more than fivefold. The usage patterns of the current two most prevalent drugs, methamphetamine and ecstasy, have shown similar gains.

It was, however, successful in reducing the amount of marijuana being illegally imported into the country. As an unintended consequence of the War, drug smugglers turned to cocaine, which was easier to move and gave a much higher profit margin for the weight and volume of their product. It also gave incentive to U.S. marijuana growers who moved to meet the demand by increasing domestic marijuana production and improving its quality.

A number of economically-depressed Colombian farmers in several remote areas of their country began to turn to what became a new, illicit cash crop for its high resale value and cheap manufacturing process. Local coca cultivation, however, remained comparatively rare in Colombia until the mid-1990s. Drug traffickers originally imported most coca base from traditional producers in Peru and Bolivia for processing in Colombia, continuing to do so until eradication efforts in those countries resulted in a “balloon effect”.

 

 

Despite the Reagan administration’s high-profile public pronouncements, secretly, many senior officials of the Reagan administration illegally trained and armed the Nicaraguan Contras, which they funded by the shipment of large quantities of cocaine into the United States using U.S. government aircraft and U.S. military facilities. Funding for the Contras was also obtained through the illegal sale of weaponry to Iran. When this practice was discovered and condemned in the media, it was referred to as the Iran-Contra affair, but the large cocaine shipments into the US to fund the Administration’s illegal foreign policy agenda were much less known.

Another milestone occurred in 1996, when 56% of California voters voted for Proposition 215, legalizing the growing and use of marijuana for medical purposes. This created significant legal and policy tensions between the federal and state governments. Courts have since decided that neither this nor any similar acts will protect users from federal prosecution.

Regardless of public opinion, marijuana could be the single most targeted drug in the drug war. It constitutes almost half of all drug arrests, and between 1990-2002, out of the overall drug arrests, 82% of the increase was for marijuana. In this same time period, New York experienced an increase of 2.640% for marijuana possession arrests.

As of 2006, marijuana has become the United States of America’s biggest cash crop.

United States domestic policy

 

Operation Mallorca, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 2005 (US Department of Justice press release)

For U.S. public policy purposes, drug abuse is any personal use of a drug contrary to law. The definition includes otherwise-legal pharmaceuticals if they are obtained by illegal means or used for non-medicinal purposes. This differs from what mental health professionals classify as drug abuse per the DSM-IV, which is defined as more problematic drug misuse, both of which are different from drug use.

In 1994, it was reported that the War on Drugs results in the incarceration of one million Americans each year. Of the related drug arrests, about 225,000 are for simple possession of marijuana, the fourth most common cause of arrest in the United States. In the 1980s, while the number of arrests for all crimes was rising 28%, the number of arrests for drug offenses rose 126%. The United States has a higher proportion of its population incarcerated than any other country in the world for which reliable statistics are available, reaching a total of 2.2 million inmates in the U.S. in 2005. The U.S. Dept. of Justice, reporting on the effects of state initiatives, has stated that, from 1990 through 2000, “the increasing number of drug offenses accounted for 27% of the total growth among black inmates, 7% of the total growth among Hispanic inmates, and 15% of the growth among white inmates.”

United States foreign policy

The United States has also initiated a number of military actions as part of its War on Drugs, such as the 1989 invasion of Panama codenamed Operation Just Cause involving 25,000 American troops. The U.S. alleged that Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of government of Panama, was involved in drug trafficking in Panama. As part of Plan Colombia, the U.S. has funded coca eradication through private contractors such as DynCorp and helped train the Colombian armed forces to eradicate coca and fight left-wing guerrillas such as the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and right-wing paramilitaries such as the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), both of which have been accused of participating in the illegal drug trade in their areas of influence.

In 2000, the Clinton administration initially waived all but one of the human rights conditions attached to Plan Colombia, considering such aid as crucial to national security at the time. Subsequently, the U.S. government certified that the Colombian government had taken steps to improve respect for human rights and to prosecute abusers among its security forces. The U.S. has later denied aid to individual Colombian military units accused of such abuses, such as the Palanquero Air Force base and the Army’s XVII Brigade. Opponents of aid given to the Colombian military as part of the War on Drugs argue that the U.S. and Colombian governments primarily focus on fighting the guerrillas, devoting less attention to the paramilitaries although these have a greater degree of participation in the illicit drug industry. Critics argue that Human Rights Watch, congressional committees and other entities have documented the existence of connections between members of the Colombian military and the AUC, and that Colombian military personnel have committed human rights abuses which would make them ineligible for U.S. aid under current laws.

In January 2007, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales met in Mexico with his counterpart Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza to discuss ways to stem growing drug-related violence in Mexican border towns associated with the illegal drug trade to America. More than 2,000 Mexicans died in gangland-style killings in 2006, prompting a petition by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open new offices in Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and Nogales. The requested expansion would bring the total number of Mexican offices to 11 and increase the number of DEA agents from 81 to nearly 100.

U.S. government alleged involvement in cocaine trafficking

A lawsuit filed in 1986 by two journalists represented by the Christic Institute, alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other parties were engaged in criminal acts, including financing the purchase of arms with the proceeds of cocaine sales.

Senator John Kerry’s 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links, which was released on April 20, 1989, concluded that members of the U.S. State Department “who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking…and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers.” The report went on to say that “the Contra drug links included…payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.”

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb published reports in the San Jose Mercury News, and later in his book Dark Alliance, detailing how Contras had distributed crack cocaine into Los Angeles to fund weapons purchases. These reports were initially attacked by various other newspapers, which attempted to debunk the link, citing official reports that apparently cleared the CIA.

The Wall Street Journal reported on January 29, 1997 on activities at the Mena, Arkansas airport allegedly involved then-governor Bill Clinton in a coverup of illegal drug-trading activity. The Wall Street Journal article goes on to state:

One of the most successful drug informants in U.S. history, smuggler Barry Seal, based his air operation at Mena. At the height of his career he was importing as much as 1,000 pounds of cocaine per month, and had a personal fortune estimated at more than $50 million. After becoming an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, he worked at least once with the CIA, in a Sandinista drug sting. One of his planes–with an Arkansas pilot at the wheel and Eugene Hasenfus in the cargo bay–was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of Contra supplies.

In 1998, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz published a two-volume report that substantiated many of Webb’s claims, and described how 50 contras and contra-related entities involved in the drug trade had been protected from law enforcement activity by the Reagan-Bush administration, and documented a cover-up of evidence relating to these activities. The report also showed that the National Security Council was aware of these activities. A report later that same year by the Justice Department Inspector General also came to similar conclusions.

U.S.-sponsored heroin production and smuggling

In the 1980s, top U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials believed that they would never be able to justify a multibillion-dollar budget from the U.S. government to fund the Afghanistani Muslim radicals, the mujahideen, in their fight against the Soviet army, which had occupied Afghanistan. As a result, the CIA decided to generate funds through the poppy-rich Afghan soil and heroin production and smuggling to finance the Afghan war creating the notorious Pashtun Mafia. Ayub Afridi, a radical Pashtun Muslim leader and drug baron, was the kingpin of this plan.

Criticism

Legality

In his essay The Drug War and the Constitution, Libertarian philosopher Paul Hager makes the case that the War on Drugs in the United States is an illegal form of prohibition, which violates the principles of a limited government embodied in the Constitution. Alcohol prohibition required amending the Constitution, because this was not a power granted to the federal government. Hager asserts if this is true, then marijuana prohibition should likewise require a Constitutional amendment.

Federalist argument

In her dissent in Gonzales v. Raich, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor argued that drug prohibition is an improper usurpation of the power to regulate interstate commerce, and the power to prohibit should be reserved by the states. In the same case, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a stronger dissent expressing the similar idea.

Substantive due process

There is the argument that the War on Drugs in United States violates the implicit rights within the substantive due process doctrine, that the drug laws achieve no reasonable state interest while arbitrarily restrict a person’s liberty under the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendment. One proponent of this notion is attorney Warren Redlich.

The substantive due process is sometimes used in medical marijuana cases. NORML once wrote in an amicus brief on United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative that the right to use medical marijuana to save one’s life is within the rights established by the substantive due process. However, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas did not accept the argument and ruled against the medical marijuana dispensaries.

Some opponents of the substantive due process doctrine who support the War on Drugs have also noted that the doctrine can potentially lead to the invalidation of drug laws.

Efficacy

Richard Davenport-Hines, in his book The Pursuit of Oblivion (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), criticized the efficacy of the War on Drugs by pointing out:

10-15% of illicit heroin and 30% of illicit cocaine is intercepted. Drug traffickers have gross profit margins of up to 300%. At least 75% of illicit drug shipments would have to be intercepted before the traffickers’ profits were hurt.

Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru from 1990-2000, described U.S. foreign drug policy as “failed” on grounds that “for 10 years, there has been a considerable sum invested by the Peruvian government and another sum on the part of the American government, and this has not led to a reduction in the supply of coca leaf offered for sale. Rather, in the 10 years from 1980 to 1990, it grew 10-fold.”

Critics often note that during alcohol prohibition, alcohol use initially fell but began to increase as early as 1922. It has been extrapolated that even if prohibition hadn’t been repealed in 1933, alcohol consumption would have quickly surpassed pre-prohibition levels. They argue that the War on Drugs uses similar measures and is no more effective. In the six years from 2000-2006, the USA spent $4.7 billion on Plan Colombia, an effort to eradicate coca production in Colombia. The main result of this effort was to shift coca production into more remote areas and force other forms of adaptation. The overall acreage cultivated for coca in Colombia at the end of the six years was found to be the same, after the U.S. Drug Czar’s office announced a change in measuring methodology in 2005 and included new areas in its surveys. Cultivation in the neighboring countries of Peru and Bolivia actually increased.

Similar lack of efficacy is observed in other countries pursuing similar policies. In 1994, 28.5% of Canadians reported having consumed illicit drugs in their life; by 2004, that figure had risen to 45%. 73% of the $368 million spent by the Canadian government on targeting illicit drugs in 2004-2005 went toward law enforcement rather than treatment, prevention or harm reduction.

Children involved in the illegal drug trade

The U.S. government’s most recent 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that nationwide over 800,000 adolescents ages 12-17 sold illegal drugs during the 12 months preceding the survey. The 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that nationwide 25.4% of students had been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug by someone on school property. The prevalence of having been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug on school property ranged from 15.5% to 38.7% across state CDC surveys (median: 26.1%) and from 20.3% to 40.0% across local surveys (median: 29.4%).

Despite over $7 billion spent annually towards arresting and prosecuting nearly 800,000 people across the country for marijuana offenses in 2005 (FBI Uniform Crime Reports), the federally-funded Monitoring the Future Survey reports about 85% of high school seniors find marijuana “easy to obtain.” That figure has remained virtually unchanged since 1975, never dropping below 82.7% in three decades of national surveys.

Hindrance to legitimate research

The scientific community has criticized U.S. drug policy as being “outdated,” and a hindrance to legitimate medical and scientific research efforts. For example, the U.S. government’s classification of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug (having no medicinal value) is contradicted by the journal Nature Medicine:

“the endocannabinoid system has an important role in nearly every important paradigm of pain, in memory, in neurodegeneration and in inflammation;” although this quote refers to endogenous cannabinoids (cannabinoids made from the body itself and not taken in from the outside of the body), research on cannabinoids from secondary sources such as the cannabis plant has shown them to have legitimate medical uses.

Racial inequities in prosecution

The social consequences of the drug war have been widely criticized by such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union as being racially biased against minorities and disproportionately responsible for the exploding United States prison population. According to a report commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, and released in March 2006 by the Justice Policy Institute, America’s “Drug-Free Zones” are ineffective at keeping youths away from drugs, and instead create strong racial disparities in the judicial system.

Environmental consequences

Environmental consequences of the drug war, resulting from US-backed aerial fumigation of drug-growing operations in third world countries, have been criticized as detrimental to some of the world’s most fragile ecosystems; the same aerial fumigation practices are further credited with causing health problems in local populations.

Impact on growers

The US’s coca eradication policy has been criticised for its negative impact on the livelihood of coca growers in South America. In many areas of South America the coca leaf has traditionally been chewed and used in tea and for religious and medicinal purposes by locals. For this reason many insist that the illegality of traditional coca cultivation is unjust. In many areas the US government and military has forced the eradication of coca without providing for any meaningful alternate crop for farmers. The status of coca and coca growers has become an intense political issue in several countries, particularly in Bolivia, where the president, Evo Morales, a former coca growers’ union leader, has promised to legalise the traditional cultivation and use of coca.

In Afghanistan, the implementation of costly poppy eradication policies by the international community, and in particular the United States since their military intervention in 2001, have led to poverty and discontent on the part of the rural community, especially in the south of the country where alternative development policies have not been put in place to replace livelihoods lost through eradication. Furthermore, poppy cultivation has dramatically increased since 2003 as has support for anti-government elements. Although alternative policies such as controlled opium licensing have been suggested and are supported by many in Afghanistan and abroad, government leaders have still to move away from harmful eradication schemes.

Propaganda cover for paramilitary operations

The phrase “War on Drugs” has been condemned as being propaganda to justify military or paramilitary operations under the guise of a noble cause; in particular, Noam Chomsky points out that the term is an example of synecdoche referring to operations against suspected producers, traders and/or users of certain substances. This form of language is similar to that used in other initiatives such as Lyndon B. Johnson’s “war on poverty” and George W. Bush’s “War on Terrorism”. The word “war” is used to invoke a state of emergency, although the target of the war isn’t anything against which standard military tactics are effective.

Government’s war against the people

In their book Multitude, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri oppose the view that the use of the term “war” is only metaphorical: they analyse the War on Drugs as part of a global war of a biopolitical nature. Like the War on Terrorism, the War on Drugs is a true war, waged by the US government against its own people.

War on drugs as cyclic creation of a permanent underclass

Since illegal drug use has been blamed for feeding the growth of the underclass, this has caused prohibitionists to call for further increases in certain drug-crime penalties, even though some of these disrupt opportunities for drug users to advance in society in socially acceptable ways. It has been argued by Blumenson and Nilsen that this causes a vicious cycle: since penalties for drug crimes among youth almost always involve semi-permanent removal from opportunities for education, and later involve creation of criminal records which make employment far more difficult, that the “war on drugs” has in fact resulted in the creation of a permanent underclass of people who have few education or job opportunities, often as a result of being punished for drug offenses which in turn have resulted from attempts to earn a living in spite of having no education or job opportunities.