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Addicted to Failure

By Ethan Nadelmann, The Guardian, March 29, 2000
Copyright 2000 Guardian Media Group (R)
In the wake of yesterday's report on UK drug laws, Ethan Nadelmann
explains why successive British governments have been wrong to look
to the US for a solution to drug misuse - and why we should now turn
our attention to Europe instead.

A piece of advice for British leaders in search of better drug policies:
look east, look south, but don't look west. Where once the Dutch
represented a lone voice for reform, now growing parts of Europe are
embracing pragmatic harm reduction strategies based upon common
sense, science, public health and human rights.

I'm not sure why British officials keep turning to the US for lessons in
how to deal with drugs. My country, after all, is the one that incarcerates
almost as many people for breaking the drug laws as Europe incarcerates
for everything else. My country is the one that has allowed 200,000 of its
citizens to become infected with the HIV virus rather than make sterile
syringes more readily available. My country is the one so committed to
"just say no" rhetoric and policies, that it provides no realistic drug education
or any real fallback strategy for the majority of teenagers who say yes to drugs.

It's not easy trying to end the drug war in the US. Punitive drug prohibition and
a temperance ideology almost as old as the nation itself are deeply embedded
in American laws, institutions and culture. It's our chronic national hysteria,
rejuvenated each time a "new" drug emerges, ripe for political posturing and
media mania.

From abroad, the drug war in the US must appear monolithic, broken only by
the occasional personality calling for legalisation and the odd prominence of the
medical marijuana issue. Viewed from close up, a more nuanced analysis emerges.

Our drug tsar, retired general Barry McCaffrey, is a case in point. He's almost
certainly the best drug tsar to date, even if that's not saying much, given his
competition. Unlike the first drug tsar, William Bennett, McCaffrey prefers to
leave the rhetoric of war and zero tolerance behind, speaking instead of the drug
problem as a cancer in need of treatment. He has attacked the relentless
incarceration of petty drug offenders, spoken out against New York's draconian
Rockefeller drug laws, and even called our prison system "America's internal
gulag." McCaffrey has defended methadone maintenance treatment, and he once tried
to reduce the billions of dollars wasted on futile air and sea efforts to prevent
drugs from entering the country.

Of course, this is the same drug tsar who has mangled and mocked the truth on
issues like needle exchange, marijuana and harm reduction policies inside and
outside the US. McCaffrey has played a pivotal role in ensuring that the US
government remains alone among advanced, industrialised nations in the west in
providing not a penny for needle-exchange programmes to reduce the spread
of HIV/Aids. His efforts to challenge the scientific consensus bring to mind the
cigarette companies' last, desperate claims to have found a new study
demonstrating that smoking does not cause cancer.

His position on medical marijuana has been shameful - first mocking patients
and doctors, then threatening them with prosecution and loss of licence, and
now blocking the efforts of state and local authorities to establish responsible,
regulated systems of distribution.

This is the drug tsar who has presided over a ballooning federal drug budget,
now just under $20bn, that favours ineffective and punitive prohibition and
enforcement efforts, as did Reagan and Bush.

McCaffrey is also notorious for his thin skin, which may explain why he has
studiously avoided any public debate with reformers. His insults and claims are
always lobbed from a distance. He is careful to withdraw from televised and
other public forums when he learns that patients, doctors, scientists and others
with a critical view have been invited to participate.

As a reformer, I find McCaffrey's dissembling indefensible. But as a political
analyst, I cannot help but be aware of the political forces that bear upon him and
his office.

Political power in the US increasingly lies in the hands of those who smoked
marijuana when they were younger, but that generational shift has yet to
influence policy. Far more important, and perhaps distinctly American, is
the lingering influence of our rigid anti-drug ideology.

Most Americans have strong doubts about the drug war. They support
treatment instead of incarceration for drug addicts. They think marijuana
should be legally available for medical purposes. They are beginning to
have doubts about the cost and meaning of incarcerating almost half a
million of their fellow citizens for drug law violations. So why does the
drug war not just persist but keep growing?

Part of the answer lies in what might best be described as a "drug prohibition
complex" - to take off on President Eisenhower's farewell warning of the
military-industrial complex - composed of the hundreds of thousands of
law enforcement officials, private prison corporations, anti-drug organisations,
drug testing companies and many others who benefit economically,
politically, emotionally and other wise from this ever growing edifice.
Drug prohibition is now big business in the US.

But the part of the answer that is harder for many people, especially
non-Americans, to grasp is the powerful influence of what might be called
the "John Birchers of the drug war". In the 1960s, when anti-communism
still represented the national ideology, the John Birch Society was the
most anti-communist of all, ever vigilant for any sign of moderation or détente.

The "John Birchers of the drug war" represent no more than 20% of public
opinion today, but their political influence far exceeds that of the nation's
leading scientists, scholars and other drug policy experts. Powerful senators and
congressmen take their calls, invite them to testify before official hearings,
ensure that their organisations are well funded, and act on their advice.
Directors of drug treatment and research agencies, fearful of the zealots' wrath,
are quick to compromise their own scientific and intellectual integrity. So, too,
is drug tsar McCaffrey.

Tony Blair and others looking west for drug policy solutions need to be mindful
of the US's temperance traditions and drug war politics. McCaffrey has tried
hard to put a benign face on US drug policy, but Britons should not be deceived.
US drug warriors mock the Dutch, with their coffee shops, but ignore the fact
that fewer Dutch of all ages use cannabis than do their American counterparts,
and far fewer go on to use cocaine. US officials avert their eyes from
Europe's heroin maintenance trials, saying it can't be done here, even as heroin
overdose fatalities rise in the US and decline in Switzerland. Now ecstasy use
is rising rapidly in the US, and all the government offers are the "just say no"
bromides of yesteryear.

Meanwhile, signs of reform abound in the US. The John Birchers may still be
powerful, but they're gradually losing credibility. Marijuana is to them what
alcohol was to temperance warriors of old. And just as the temperance advocates became increasingly shrill and silly as prohibition stumbled along, so today's
anti-drug extremists sound increasingly foolish to the parent who knows something
about marijuana.

The presidential election campaign this year boasted two Democratic candidates,
Al Gore and Bill Bradley, who admit to having smoked - and inhaled -
marijuana a number of times when they were younger. Note too that when
Republican candidate George W. Bush refused, last August, to deny that he had
used cocaine as a young man, over 80% of the American public told pollsters
they didn't care one way or another, and his popularity ratings actually
increased.

Twelve years ago, a brave new mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke, provoked
a firestorm of controversy at the height of the drug war when he demanded that
all options, including decriminalisation, be put on the table. Schmoke weathered
the onslaught, and was re-elected twice thereafter. Last summer, two
free-speaking governors, Minnesota's Jesse Ventura and New Mexico's Gary
Johnson, started calling for major reform of the drug laws. Johnson even used
the forbidden "L" word, legalisation. And now, for the first time, a politician,
congressman Tom Campbell, of California, is running for higher office on a platform
that includes prescribing heroin to drug addicts.

The fact that these reform advocates include both Republicans and Independents
bodes well for the non-partisan future of this struggle. Meanwhile, medical
marijuana and other drug policy reform initiatives have triumphed at the ballot
11 out of 12 times since 1996.

Don't get me wrong. I don't see any Berlin wall of drug prohibition about to come
tumbling down in the US. Each year more people are incarcerated for breaking
a drug law. Politicians still fear being blasted as "soft on crime" or "soft on
drugs". But beneath the surface, reformist sentiments are bubbling ever more
vigorously. The consensus behind punitive prohibition is crumbling as Americans
tire of drug war strategies and rhetoric and seek more sensible alternatives.

This is not the time for Britain to embrace what has failed so miserably in my
country.
Look away, Mr Blair, look away.