Constitutional Law

Time For New Approach To Drug Policy, Prof. Says

With senators readying to consider President Obama's pick to lead the nation's drug control office, a new ACS Issue Brief author urges lawmakers and the administration to advance vastly different policies to combat illegal drug use. Alex Kreit, a professor and director of the Center for Law and Social Justice at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, after studying decades of research on the nation's drug policies concludes that 'our punitive approach to drug policy has been a leading cause of the explosion in our prison population.' During the last 20 years, Kreit writes, '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.'

In 'Toward a Public Health Approach to Drug Policy,' Kreit says the nation's war on drugs, which has been undergirded by a 'vigorous enforcement of uncompromising criminal justice measures' has not only resulted in overcrowding prisons, but has done nothing to curb illegal drug use. Kreit urges the Obama administration and Gil Kerlikowske (right), the former Seattle police chief, who has been nominated to head the Office of National Drug Policy to start shifting resources to supporting treatment and prevention measures.

Kreit concludes in part:

As Congress prepares to consider President Obama's nomination of Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to head the ONDCP, now is the ideal time to come to grips with the fact that adopting a ‘war' strategy to address a public health problem has not worked. After 40 years, there is a rapidly growing consensus among policy analysts, foreign leaders, and the public that our war on drugs had been a failure.

 

Obama nominated Kerlikowske on March 16; the Senate Judiciary Committee has not yet set a date for a hearing on his nomination.

Kreit's Issue Brief is available here.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on March 20, 2009 (boomark / email).