The War On Drugs - What is it Good For?

“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

So sagely spoke President Abraham Lincoln more than 150 years ago. He was speaking about alcohol prohibition, of course, but one wonders what he’d make of the frayed but ever-tightening Gordian knots of prohibitionist legislation currently strangulating his once great nation (though doubtless he’d be absolutely flabbergasted that they’re not being tied with rope made from the criminally demonised hemp plant).
One wonders, also, what ‘Honest Abe’ would make of individuals like the stentorian Dr. David Murray, currently the ‘Chief Scientist’ (an ominous sounding title if ever there was one) at the White House Office of Drug Control Policy. In spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary, Murray insists that, “It’s the drugs that cause the problem – not the laws against the drugs!”
By any rational standards, looking at the prohibition-fuelled global chaos of 2008, this is obviously complete nonsense. 37 years since Richard Nixon first launched America’s ill-fated ‘War On Drugs’ – though perhaps a more accurate moniker would be ‘War on Some Drugs’ – those great injuries to the cause of temperance are now openly festering and gangrenous sores. The vigorously pursued policy of prohibition is currently costing the US taxpayer a staggering $600 per second. Furthermore, of a shamefully high prison population of more than 2.5 million, a quarter of those prisoners are incarcerated for non-violent drug offences. Land of the free?
Thankfully, not everyone in the US shares Dr. Murray’s blinkered view. According to Ethan Nadelmann, director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance: “[The War on Drugs]... is the longest, most costly and most disastrous war in American history. If you look solely at the number of people who’ve died of drug-related HIV/AIDS. If you look at the empowerment of organised crime and terrorist organisations by a black market – essentially the Al Capones times 50 spread around the world... that’s the consequence of the American drug war.”
Both Murray and Nadelmann were speaking to Irish journalist Michael Heney for the recent Prime Time special report, War Without End. Easily one of the best – and undoubtedly one of the most expensive - documentary programmes RTÉ has produced so far this century, Heney and a camera crew travelled to the US, South America, Equatorial Africa and other frontlines of the WoD to witness first hand the barbaric realities of the global drug prohibition.
The result was a truly damning report on the prohibitionist approach to suppressing an international drugs market worth more than $320billion annually. Between extra-judicial assassinations in Thailand, bloody civil war in Colombia, mass incarcerations in the United States and gangland murders on the streets of Ireland, the evidence clearly shows that not only has prohibition failed to solve the problem of drug abuse, it’s actually seriously exacerbated it.

INORDINATE RISKS
Despite billions of dollars invested in punitive law enforcement, illegal drugs are now cheaper, more easily available and more widely abused than at any time in human history. As highlighted in the recent Hot Press Drugs Issue, the dubious quality of many of these illegal – and therefore unregulated – drugs is only adding to the problem.
While it’s an American-led war, there are few countries unaffected. It’s roughly estimated that one billion of that $320 billion is spent here in Ireland, but the results of the most recent National Drugs Prevalence Survey, released on June 25, suggest that the true figure could be even higher.
The research, commissioned by the National Advisory Committee on Drugs, provided a regional breakdown of prevalence rates for use of all illegal drugs, tobacco, alcohol, sedatives and tranquillisers, anti-depressants and anabolic steroids.
The survey, carried out on a sample group of people aged between 15 and 64, shows the East coast has the highest amount of drug users with a figure of 38 per cent. The north western region has the lowest recorded level of drug users at 14 per cent, while the west coast saw the biggest jump in drug users from 12.5 per cent in 2002/2003 to 21 per cent in 2006/2007.
Unsurprisingly, there has been a significant increase in the use of cocaine, though cannabis remains the most commonly used drug. The sheer scale of civil disobedience is truly mind-boggling. However, you have to ask if a policy that criminalises 38 per cent of the East coast adult population is a viable one?
Paul O’Mahony certainly doesn’t think so. A leading criminologist and author of the recently published book The Irish War On Drugs (subtitled The Seductive Folly of Prohibition), O’Mahony featured as one of the few voices of reason in the Prime Time report. When contacted by Hot Press, he had this to say about the NDPS figures: “The recent figures show the continuing upward trend in the use of all types of drugs, but especially so-called ‘recreational’ drugs – and therefore underline the failure and futility of the current prohibitionist approach. The best way to achieve responsible and prudent attitudes to the use of drugs is to grant people what they take for granted anyway – responsibility for the management of their own bodies and consciousness. The incoherence and hypocrisy of the current selective system of prohibition undermines the state’s ability to inform and persuade young people.”
O’Mahony finished researching and writing his book last year. If anything, he maintains that the Irish situation has worsened since.
“The government supply control/demand control ‘balanced’ policy continues, but in many ways seems to be as ineffective as ever. The number of people on methadone maintenance has now increased to over 10,000 and, of course, the garda now make many large seizures of drugs, which receive considerable publicity.
“However, young people are still being recruited into IV use of opiates in Dublin, and, in alarmingly large numbers, across the country in small towns and cities which previously had no problem. The availability and price of drugs appears unaffected by all the seizures. This pattern is seen across Europe. Unfortunately, new IV users are still taking inordinate risks and many of those on methadone maintenance still use illicit drugs in unsafe ways. So the huge investment in harm reduction has not managed to eliminate or even reduce substantially drug-related health harms.
“This is not to say that the huge investment is without value. Many individuals have been helped, many lives have been stabilised and the amount of crime committed by drug users has declined. The harm reduction approach has probably lowered the proportion of IV opiate users who do themselves and others harm, but the attendant normalisation of opiate use has seen the spread of serious addictions and consequently led to a situation where the level of drug-related harms is actually maintained or increased.”
MAN-MADE EUPHORICS
As a staunch anti-prohibitionist, does O’Mahony see any possibility of legalisation on the international horizon?
“There is no obvious sign yet of a tipping point but there are reasons to think that it will come and that this could happen quite suddenly and surprisingly. The changes in attitudes to sex, including the legalisation of homosexuality, would have been unthinkable not long before they actually came to pass.
“There are a huge number of supporters of this kind of reform of prohibition though many are silenced or afraid to speak out. They include many drug users who do themselves little and others no harm – but they also include notable opinion-makers, judges, police chiefs etc.”
As O’Mahony predicts it, legalisation may even become a moot point because better and safer narcotics will eventually become available: “The future will soon bring man-made euphorics of a very superior sort – in terms of their targeted nature and lack of severe side-effects – and this will dramatically change the drugs landscape. The choice will be between moving society even closer to 1984 or the Brave New World where individuals are lobotomised robots at the service of the state – and pills are used to keep them there – or accepting and maintaining individual freedom and responsibility, which would include recognising the personal right to drug use, so long as others are not directly harmed.”
For the moment, we’re stuck with the drugs available. It’s obvious that if there is to be a sea change in international policy, it’ll have to happen at the UN level. However, judging from the dismissive and unenlightened attitudes of some of the officials interviewed for the Prime Time report – the likes of Antonio Maria Costa (executive director of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime) or Dr. Philip Emafo (chairman of the International Narcotics Control board) – that change may be a long time coming.
Then again, the Prime Time report ended with the words of Gustavo de Greiff, the former Colombian Prosecutor-General responsible for smashing some of the country’s biggest cocaine cartels in the 1990s: “I think that in the long term it [legalisation] will happen. It will happen because societies cannot be so irrational as to continue with a policy that is not working.”
Abraham Lincoln would undoubtedly agree.