28 grams of crack cocaine can earn you a $28,000 per year prison sentence. A growing consensus of policy makers and activists hope to see that changed.
U.S. President Richard Nixon is credited as the first person to declare a “war on drugs”, stating in a 1971 press conference that the abuse of drugs was “public enemy number one”. Unfortunately, America’s War on Drugs has proven to be much like Vietnam, the other war of Nixon’s presidency: long, destructive, only moderately successful, and often suffering from an unclear sense of purpose. The following year, 1972, Nixon became embroiled in the Watergate scandal, thus insuring that he – not drugs – would become public enemy number one.
Today, America’s prisons are overflowing with those convicted of drug-related offenses. While some are hardened criminals at the center of massive drug rings, others are serving a mandatory sentence of five years for being found in possession of just 28 grams (about one ounce) of crack cocaine. Outside the U.S., Americans’ drug habits fuel violence in Mexico and around the world that is claiming thousands of lives. While it may not be clear what “winning” the War on Drugs would look like, it is obvious that we are far from that point.
Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a change in federal government policy toward drug-related offenses, particularly with regard to mandatory minimum sentences. An article on TIME‘s website today, written by Maya Rhodan, notes the large amount of bipartisan support that Holder’s speech has drawn, with both liberal groups favoring marijuana legalization and conservative anti-tax advocates like Grover Norquist seeing eye-to-eye.
Liberals are most concerned about a cycle of imprisonment that ends up putting so many Americans – a large percentage of whom are ethnic minorities – behind bars for years on end and yet has not stopped the flow of drugs throughout America’s neighborhoods. For a country that claims to be “the land of the free”, the U.S. prison population is extremely high. Despite having 5% of the world’s population, we also have 25% of its prisoners. In 2008, we had 2.3 million prisoners for the highest total in the world, far ahead of China’s 1.6 million.
Conservatives are concerned that Americans are having to foot the bill for all of those prisoners, some of whom pose little danger to society. The average annual cost for prisoner care is $28,000, according to the TIME article. That angers people like Norquist and his group Americans for Tax Reform. Another conservative activist, Richard Viguerie, recently wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times on this very issue titled “A Conservative Case for Prison Reform”.
Conservatives should recognize that the entire criminal justice system is another government spending program fraught with the issues that plague all government programs. Criminal justice should be subject to the same level of skepticism and scrutiny that we apply to any other government program.
If there is bipartisan support for measures like the ones Holder is suggesting, then why did it take so long for the Obama administration to support this approach? Rhodan notes in her TIME article that “27 states have now experimented with reforms, ranging from reclassifying some offenses as misdemeanors rather than felonies to providing better substance-abuse and mental-health treatment.” She also notes that all but three of these states saw a subsequent drop in their overall crime rate.
Personally, I am in favor of the proposed changes to the federal system, and I think that the states should keep experimenting to see what policies produce the best results for their communities. Sure, the humanitarian argument appeals to me, as does the desire to reduce an ever-expanding portion of the federal budget. But what has convinced me most of all is the fact that the way we have been doing things is just not working. If we ever want to win the War on Drugs, or at least make enough progress to achieve a truce, we’re going to have to do something different. Let’s see if the federal government is actually able to get its act together on this. (And thus hope was killed anew….)
While in The Netherlands I saw how their society handled ‘soft’ drugs and that has changed my mind about regulation. I am not convinced what works in The Netherlands would work in the US, but a new method of regulating drugs should be considered. One aspect that might carry over is the Dutch pragmatism – what we cannot stop should become regulated and taxed.
Re: Steven P.
(With respect…) Regulate and tax cocaine, et all?
No, no no, never! Horrible idea. Thank you, anyway for trying.
Rather, I like the idea of the states modeling different approaches to see what works.
Ah, we have tired of this war on drugs and have lost focus; however, surrender is not a good option. It is too easy for the US to identify and try to fix problems overseas, while failing to see the mote in our own eye.
On a related historical note, I believe that the US drug plague is one more contagion brought home from Vietnam, an unintended consequence, indeed. Alas, I have lived nearly half my life “before Vietnam” during a mostly drug-free US, before we learned of the joys of cocaine. T’is sad. We had booze, but had no knowledge of heroin derivatives outside of the operating room. Rarely, a physician would become addicted to his own stores. But, the populace would shake their heads and misunderstand.
Our image, in those days, was merely of far eastern “opium dens” filled with elderly Chinese men sitting cross-legged in a circle amid a dark, smoke filled room.