Constitutional Law

Ground Shifting Under Nation's War on Drugs

by Alex Kreit, assistant professor of law and director of Center for Law and Social Justice at Thomas Jefferson School of Las in San Diego, Calif. Kreit is author of a recent ACS Issue Brief, 'Toward a Public Health Approach to Drug Policy.'

As Congress considers a new chief to lead the Office of National Drug Control policy, the nation faces a crucial moment over its policy on confronting illegal drug use.

Now is the time to look at the nation's so-called war on drugs, conclude it not working and fashion a new course.

Nearly 40 years after President Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act into law and subsequently declared a 'war on drugs,' it is difficult to describe our drug policy as anything other than a failure. 

Approximately half of high school seniors have used an illegal drug by the time they graduate, more kids say it is easier for them to buy marijuana than alcohol, and a 2008 World Health Organization (WHO) study of 17 countries found that the United States had the highest rates of illegal drug use. Indeed, the WHO found that the percentage of people who have used marijuana in America is more than double that in the Netherlands – 42.4 percent to 19.8 percent where it is openly bought and sold in coffee shops.

Meanwhile, our punitive approach to drug policy has been a leading cause of the explosion in our prison population. In the last 20 years alone, the national prison population has nearly tripled, giving the United States the world's highest reported incarceration rate. And, of the 2.3 million Americans in prison, approximately one quarter are there because of a drug offense. 

Public opinion polls reveal that a growing number of Americans are catching on to the failed drug laws and believe it's time for a new approach. State lawmakers are also re-thinking a punitive approach to drug policy. New York Gov. David A. Paterson and legislators last week reached agreement on ditching the state rigid drug laws in favor of policy aimed at prevention and treatment.

Perhaps the clearest example that the politics of drug policy have changed, however, may be President Obama's own campaign. In a videotaped 2004 statement, Obama called the war on drugs 'an utter failure' and said he supported decriminalizing marijuana. In 1992, that clip would have been an insurmountable roadblock in his path to the presidency, but in 2008 it wasn't even a speed bump.

To be sure, support for the more controversial measures advocated by some drug policy reform advocates remains relatively low. However, a substantial and growing majority of voters today favor commonsense reforms that would have been politically untenable during the height of drug war politics in the 1980s, such as legalizing medical marijuana or expanding treatment-based drug court programs.

So, as Congress prepares to consider President Obama's nomination of Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy, political leaders would be wise to take a second look at drug policy and catch up with their constituents who want to drop the 'war' rhetoric and move toward a public health approach to drug abuse.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on March 31, 2009 (boomark / email).