Constitutional Law

Calls Increasing to End "War on Drugs"

In the wake of indications that President Obama may waive federal jurisdiction over marijuana laws, Sentencing Law and Policy notes increased calls for less investment in the 'war on drugs.'

An editorial in the most recent Economist had this take on the drug war:

Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN's perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with 'blow'). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to 'crack' or 'meth' are outside the law, with only their pushers to 'treat' them.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a bill from the last Congress that was recently reintroduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) would address the lopsided impact that federal sentencing laws have had on petty criminals.  Rather than enacting severe punishments for possession quantities maintained by kingpins, the Sentencing Commission reacted to the 1980's crack-fueled violence epidemic by requiring harsh punishments of all levels of crack possession.

This policy is said to have played a major role in African American incarceration rates being markedly higher than those for other Americans. The policy is also reported to contribute to the United States having the highest incarceration rate of any developed country.

Meanwhile, drug cartels thriving on the high price of distributing illegal drugs are waging an increasingly bloody war just across the U.S.-Mexico border. Concerned that the violence may spill over the border, President Obama sent Adm. Mike Mullen to confer with Mexican leaders on a plan for American funding to bolster Mexican law enforcement. Saying that the 'war on drugs … is threatening to turn Mexico in to [sic] a failed state,' Rolling Stone is calling for President Obama to end the Reagan-era policy.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on March 09, 2009 (boomark / email).