The War on Drugs and the National Psychology of Post-1960s America

This morning I finished reading Dan Baum's 1996 book Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure. As a long time student of American history, I rarely feel much outrage. I shake my head. I sigh. I wonder why Americans make terrible decisions. Sometimes I laugh to keep from crying. But I don't feel true outrage very often.

Reading about the war on drugs outraged me.

While reading Baum's book, I kept thinking about issues of national psychology. What causes Americans to make policy decisions based upon a widespread belief/fear/outrage over some issue, despite the fact of any evidence to back up the scaremongering? Why do we feel the need to demonize groups of people for some reason?

I don't have any answers for these questions, but the war on drugs tapped into the national crisis surrounding the 1960s. The war on drugs is basically a front in the larger culture war. The rebellion of the 1960s, the counterculture, civil rights, feminism, and the anti-Vietnam protests scared a huge number of Americans. The culture wars that I think are finally winding down are still battles over the legacy of the 1960s. Conservatives reacted to the 1960s by fighting a decades long war to punish the transgressors.

Baum does a great job of building this context, particularly concerning race. The war on drugs was really a war against black people. It was more than that of course, but politicians combined with the media to whip up scares about "crime" and "deviancy," that was really about black people. Perhaps the waning of the culture wars partially reflects the aging and dying of the whites who were so offended by civil rights.

Nonetheless, looking at these issues in the context of larger problems in America by no means tampered my outrage. The sheer stupidity of the politicians pushing the war on the drugs, the mendacity of its leaders, and the greed of the agencies involved is shocking. The number of evil people who show up in this story was quite surprising: everyone from Antonin Scalia to Rudy Giuliani to Al From. No one comes across worse than Bill Bennett, that hypocritical gasbag and self-proclaimed moral compass of America who never met an empty moral platitude he didn't like. RICO and civil forfeiture laws meant that law agencies created funding opportunities for themselves by seizing property of even innocent people without the slightest fear of exposure or censor. Courts were set up to process young black people into jail. Democrats caved to fears of being soft on crime; Joe Biden looks especially bad, for he used the supposed spectre of drugs to give him a campaign issue, make him seem tough, and advance his political career.

Meanwhile, the white public of the United States cheered this on every step of the way. The few voices of reason who tried to compile and present evidence about the actual effects of drugs on society were ignored and marginalized. I'm wondering if, along with civil rights, the key to understanding these events is the reaction to Vietnam. One of the most interesting points Baum makes is that as soon as we fight the first Gulf War, coverage of the war on drugs declines precipitously. George H.W. Bush viewed that war as America finally overcoming Vietnam. While I've always thought this was absurd, maybe Bush was onto something he didn't quite understand. Maybe the war on drugs was a way to fight and win against undesirable people here at home. Frustrated with Vietnam, we turned on the hippies and the black people here at home, people we thought deserved the blame for our foreign policy failures. With an actual military victory over an obscure nation of brown people, did Americans no longer see the need to fight against domestic enemies with such vigor?

Of course, the victory in Kuwait did not end the culture wars. While the war on drugs lost its momentum, it still has the institutional power to continue its policies without abatement. The nation then turned to other grave threats, like gays and immigrants.... And then of course terrorism, the wet dream of Republicans who want to eviscerate the Constitution.

With the repudiation of Republican policies and much of the culture war, I wonder what the future is for all aspects of that war--immigration policy, the gay rights movement, and most certainly the war on drugs. I've been talking recently about the new space for real discussions of decriminalization; for the first time since the Carter administration, politicians can talk about these issues without sacrificing their political careers. The rise of social libertarianism among young people and their growing acceptance of marijuana across the political spectrum places the future of the war on drugs in doubt. Even if my optimism is justified though, the work we need to do to roll back the drug war's damage is massive. We'll face major resistance, particularly from police departments and pieces of the federal government that rely on civil forfeiture money to fund its operations. If the DEA can't fight marijuana, what is the purpose of their existence and their huge budget?

I'd be happy to go into a lot more detail on particular issues if people are interested, for I could go on a long time about the incredibly stupid and damaging drug policies the American people have bought into over the last 40 years. But I'll stop for now.

Space for Discussing Decriminalization

Perhaps the most fascinating single trend in politics over the past month is the sudden space to have legitimate discussions about decriminalizing drugs. The utter failure of the war on drugs has been clear for 20 years. Drug use has not declined. Prison populations have skyrocketed. Drug gangs have grown. Drug farms infect our national forests and national parks. Etc. Lots of people have talked about this for a long time now.

But over the past month, the forums for decriminalization proponents have grown drastically. It's clearly for two reasons. First, the violence in Mexico spreading into the U.S. Second, the economic cost of the war on drugs and the potential to tax drugs. I wonder if this is a blip or whether we have reached a point of no return where support for ending the war on drugs will continue to grow and become more mainstream.

For instance, here's Jack Cafferty talking about the stupidity of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, Virginia Senator Jim Webb is exploring decriminalization through his fight to reform the prison system. While he won't use the word "decriminalization," Webb is open to any option suggested by his recommended bipartisan commission on how to end the expensive imprisonment of people for nonviolent offenses, the majority of whom are in on drug charges. As Webb says, "There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice." Not only is a moderate U.S. senator pushing this cause, but he even had a forum in last Sunday's Parade magazine of all places. What's more, some conservatives are also supporting Webb's commission.

The anti-drug warriors are clearly on the offensive, at least for the time being. Much of this is because their arguments are bankrupt. Examine the comments to Cafferty's piece. The anti-drug people say things like:

I disagree with making drugs legal. I don't want to see rapists running around with unlimited amounts of GHB, nor do i want to see babies that are addcted to cocaine at birth! While legalizing drugs would solve some problems, it would create many more.

Or

Tell this to my brother who died of a heroin overdose.

OK, but how does making drugs legal change either of these scenarios? If the war on drugs had stopped anyone from taking drugs, then you'd have an argument. But it's made virtually no difference whatsoever on that front. I don't like cocaine-addicted babies or dead brothers anymore than you do, but that's already happening.

Ultimately, I think the fate of this debate will reflect where the culture war is at. Is the culture war over? Have the culture warriors lost for good? A real debate about legalization or decriminalization will test their ability to rile up their people for a new cause. I know they can lobby enough people to keep gay marriage illegal in California, but just barely. I really wonder if there's enough people in this country committed to the drug war to keep hard-core prohibition and prosecution of violators with long prison sentences the default policy in this country for much longer.

Angry Mexico

Mexico is angry at the U.S. As well they should be:

Mexico’s economy is being dragged down by the recession to the north. American addicts have turned Mexico into a drug superhighway, and its police and soldiers are under assault from American guns. Nafta promised 15 years ago that Mexican trucks would be allowed on American roads, but Congress said they were unsafe.

Not to mention the other failures of NAFTA, as Trend mentioned yesterday. And the border wall.

Now, Mexico has a lot of problems of its own. An unresponsive government unwilling or unable to deal with poverty and a corrupt police force top the list. But before we tell Mexico to look into the mirror for their problems, maybe we should do the same. If Mexico is being unreasonable in blaming the U.S., aren't we just as guilty? We took what we wanted from NAFTA and reneged upon what we decided we didn't like. It is our drug demands and our unthinking belief that drugs should be illegal that is fueling the violence in Mexico and increasingly in the U.S. It is our loose gun laws that facilitate the violence. It is our border wall that makes people more desperate in smuggling both themselves and drugs into the United States.

There is an obvious step the United States could take to help solve all of these problems: decriminalize marijuana. While cocaine and heroin are big problems too, a lot of this trade and violence revolves around weed. I think it's increasingly clear that decriminalization is going to happen in the next 2 decades, given polling number demographics on the issue and the increasing acceptance of the drug into mainstream America. Doing so, or at least beginning to take the first steps, would make our borders much safer, save both Mexican and American lives, and probably improve relations with our southern neighbor.

Smoking our way out of the red...

You may have heard that the California Assemblyman Tom Ammiano has introduced the increasingly infamous AB 390, a measure that would legalize, regulate, and tax the production, wholesale, and retail of marijuana. His contention is that the taxes alone would generate over a billion dollars per year in revenue.

Part of the tax revenue would go to bullshit "awareness" and prevention campaigns (you remember the ones from school, right? A school assembly where some asshat comes to tell you "Just Say No" and all it does is make you want to sneak behind the bleachers and smoke a bowl during chemistry? I'm being fairly glib here, but I really hate wasted resources, however well-intentioned, be it anti-drug campaigns, those insufferable tobacco "Truth" ads, sensitivity / sexual harrassment training seminars, etc.), but the real savings would come from no longer incarcerating non-violent marijuana crimes. Particularly wise is striking the following from the California Health and Safety Code:

11359. Every person who possesses for sale any marijuana, except as otherwise provided by law, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison.

With AB 390, this is gone. In 2007 alone, California had 16,000 felony arrests for marijuana, and marijuana-related offenses are responsible for upwards of 34% of California's prison population (at $30,000 a head per year, that's a chunk of change). Talk about some savings, and a better use of law enforcement man hours.

Under the Bush Administration and the reign of some of the most extremist attorneys general in memory, this idea would have surely been met with some heavy-handed federal opposition. Riding the heels of AG Holder's announcement that medical marijuana laws would be left to the states to enforce, perhaps we could hope that the Obama administration would allow a state to implement something like AB 390.

The Times, They Are A-Changin'

God, I hate using such a cliche for a post title, but it's pretty apt for a couple of issues. It's worth reminding ourselves from time to time that things are getting better.

Dustin Lance Black's Oscar acceptance speech for his screenplay of Milk is a good example. He said:

When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas, to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life; it gave me the hope that one day I could live my life openly as who I am and that maybe even I could fall in love and one day get married. […] Most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he’d want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value. And that no matter what everyone tells you, God does love you, and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours.

This is really important to remember. Milk was killed 30 years ago. Look at far gay rights has come since then. In another 30 years, I have every faith that we will see, at the minimum, federally protected domestic partner benefits, many openly gay politicians, and 15-20 states with gay marriage. This is really incredible and a wonderful thing.

On a related issue, recent polls suggest a dramatic shift toward the legalization of marijuana. The stupidity of the drug war is mind-numbing. Given that a huge number of Americans under the age of 40 have and do smoke pot, I have been wondering when we would see a strong movement toward legalization. I think that NORML has possibly retarded this effort somewhat by stigmatizing the use of the drug as something a bunch of hippies do, when of course it is much larger than that. Medical marijuana is a great issue and obviously should be legal, but that it is serving as a clear front for people who just want to get high on the streets doesn't help. Nonetheless, two recent polls have shows that around 1/2 of Americans believe marijuana should be legal. Both polls show at least a plurality. This is an important step in ending the stupidity of marijuana criminality.

So like with gay rights, I think that in another 20 to 30 years, you are going to see real positive changes, including decriminalization of marijuana, at least in many states. No doubt the DEA will fight like hell to stop this, and they probably will have success at first. At present, there are no major politicians willing to openly support legalization. But these numbers don't lie and there is absolutely no reason that pro-legalization numbers won't grow. Young people are strong believers in social libertarianism and whether it is gay rights, drugs, tattoos, or any number of other issues, they want the government to let people do what they want if it is not hurting anybody.

Drug Policy and Afghanistan

Eric Martin reports that the Bush administration has kind of sort of won in their poppy eradication campaign in Afghanistan. What, you say. The Bush administration did something right??? Yes, indeed. Afghani farmers have found another cash crop that can they can survive on instead of opium.

Marijuana.

Awesome.

Of course, the Bush administration and its allies will start eradicating the pot as soon as they can. Because they don't actually care about those farmers. That they will become even more impoverished if they grow chickpeas or whatever means nothing to them. Nor does effective drug policy within the United States that might cut the demand for drugs. I suppose the US could create a policy that would give these farmers subsidies to not grow drugs that would make up the income, something like an Agricultural Adjustment Act for the world. But that makes way too much sense for the United States and its war on some classes of people who make or do drugs.

Turning Afghanistan Into Colombia

I highly recommend Peter Bergan and Sameer Lalwani's article, "The War on Poppies" about the failure of U.S. opium eradication efforts in Afghanistan.

It's clear that we have learned no lessons from 40 years of failure in Colombia. We could have made a real difference in Afghanistan after we overthrew the Taliban. We chose not to so we could go after Saddam Hussein. In the following years, Afghanistan has remained unstable, the condition of women has barely improved outside Kabul, and the Taliban remain a powerful force in the countryside.

If you are an Afghan farmer, what are you supposed to do other than grow opium? Are they supposed to care that the heroin market in the West is insatiable? Why should they? Particularly when the United States does not develop a realistic alternative for them. Plus, drug eradication efforts have never proved successful. Has the U.S. stopped marijuana farms in southern Oregon and northern California from decades of aerial surveillance? Have even made the slightest indentation in crystal meth? What has our coca eradication policies done to Colombia and the other Andean nations? And now the war on poppies is bringing increased violence to the Afghan countryside and binding closer ties between the Taliban and local farmers.

Bergen and Lalwani write,

"What's more, our policy is not effective. Though the U.S. spends about the same amount on counter-narcotics activities in Afghanistan annually as all Afghan poppy farmers combined take home in a year, our policies have not prevented record-setting poppy crops from springing up with every succeeding year, nor have they prevented Afghanistan from becoming a quasi-narcostate where corruption is rampant. Last week's U.N. report said Afghanistan continues to be the center of the world's heroin trade, accounting for 93% of global opium production. It noted a 17% spike in poppy cultivation in the last year, on the heels of a record 59% rise the year before.

The U.S. government, in short, is deeply committed to an unsuccessful drug policy that helps its enemies. The Taliban derives not only substantial financial benefits from the opium trade, according to U.S. military officials in Afghanistan, but wins political benefits from its supportive stance on poppy growing, masterfully exploiting situations in which U.S.-sponsored eradication forces are pitted against poor farmers."

Good job America!

What could we do differently? How could the United States actually cut into opium production in an effective manner. To start with Bergan and Lalwani suggest

The State Department strategy misses the forest for the trees. The priority of the United States and NATO should be first to thwart the Taliban insurgency while bettering the lives of typical Afghans through significant economic and reconstruction efforts to win hearts and minds. Doing nothing on the poppy front would do more to achieve this goal than the counterproductive eradication path the U.S. currently pursues. The U.S. should adopt a "first do no harm" policy that temporarily suspends eradication while implementing a promising portfolio of new initiatives to build up alternatives for farmers.

To begin with, the U.S. needs to invest in building up the legitimate Afghan economy. Though poppy fetches much higher prices than most other crops, subsidies, price supports and seeds for alternative crops should be offered to offset that price gap. Because other crops often face pitfalls such as the absence of distributors, domestic demand or consistent prices abroad, the international community should help Kabul set up an agency, modeled on the Canadian Wheat Board, that would purchase crops from farmers at consistent prices, and market and distribute them internationally. The U.S. and other NATO countries should open their markets and extend trade preferences to Afghan agricultural products and handicrafts.

They suggest several other possible solutions as well. Read the whole thing.

Plan Colombia: Another Example of Failed U.S. Foreign Policy

Jens Erik Gould thoroughly eviscerates the U.S. anti-cocaine campaign in Colombia in the new edition of The American Prospect. What a disaster. Has the U.S. done anything right in the War on Drugs? It has helped perpetuate the civil war in Colombia? It has militarized the Andes. It has completely failed to stop supplies from entering the country or depressing consumption. It has helped create massive corruption and violence in the nations where the cocaine is smuggled through to the U.S. Wow--this is almost as successful as the war in Iraq!!!

How successful is Plan Colombia, intended to dampen production by destroying coca from the air? Well, according to Gould, cocaine prices fell from $200 to $140 a gram between 2003 and 2006 while purity rose from about 60 to 70%. Hmmm...not so good. The real people Plan Colombia affects are poor coca farmers. They find their fields destroyed and their ability to survive compromised. Gould points out that Plan Colombia has actually increased farmers' dependence on coca because the herbicide used kills food crops as well.

For those of you who protest that the U.S. needs to destroy drug supplies before the reach our borders, let me ask a couple of questions. First, what in the world are these farmers supposed to do? Do you have any good ideas? If the U.S. government wants to subsidize their products to the prices they would get for the coca, great. I would support that. But it is impossible to combine the War on Drugs and neoliberalism and expect any other outcome than this. Sure, maybe these farmers can grow cassava. Think they can make as much on that as coca? Didn't think so. Second, the U.S. hasn't even begun to develop real programs to dampen consumption of these products. I don't even think they should considering it is a giant waste of money. You can convince some people to not use drugs but you can't convince all people. Look at cigarettes. Smoking rates declined a good bit thanks to all the anti-smoking ads. But they haven't declined lately, especially among young people. There's no reason to think that anti-drug ads for any other drugs will do any better.

And hey--at least all this money will keep Colombia solid as the last remaining U.S. ally in South America!