Things have certainly changed since The French Connection days
Remember the 1971 movie “The French Connection”? That was a true story about what was then the largest heroin bust made in the US. Remember the car that had the heroin hidden in the rocker panels? There were about 40 kilos hidden in that car. 40 kilos, about 88 pounds… the largest quantity of the drug ever imported into the country at one time!
That same year another movie focused on heroin was released. “Panic in Needle Park” told of a couple of addicts desperately trying to find their next fix during a shortage on the streets. That big bust in the French Connection caused a shortage of heroin in New York City and, presumably across the country.
These movies informed the public about heroin. They had heard mentions of the drug of course. Billie Holiday had died from it. In these films they saw both the horrible consequences of addiction to an illegal drug. The squalor and filth in which these addicts lived lives focused almost solely on scoring their next shot of heroin. They also saw the Mafiosi that lived the high life importing the drug , and they saw the dedicated cops who worked hard to catch them and save society from narcotics addiction.
America’s drug prohibition was ready for a big boost after these films came out. Narcotics enforcement grew in police departments all over the country. From a tiny department with a handful of officers the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (later to become the Drug Enforcement Administration) grew to over 1,500 agents and budget of some $43 million. President Nixon declared a “War on Drugs”.
Since 1971 government’s anti-drug spending has increased by leaps and bounds. The DEA’s current budget is well over 2 Billion dollars. We got tough on those we caught too. The sentences given to the smugglers in the French Connection case averaged about 3 years for each of them. Since then big heroin “kingpins” draw 20+ year sentences with many getting sent up for life.
So how has that worked? These days they measure the heroin bust in tons, not kilos. Before the war on drugs started heroin use was quite rare. A few jazz musicians, the odd writer perhaps. Now it’s found in every town in America and in their high schools. So prohibition of heroin hasn’t worked so well at reducing heroin use but maybe it benefitted society in other ways? Let’s take a look.
- Prisons? - We imprison a higher percentage of our population than any other country on the planet… more than South Africa did at the height of Apartheid, more than China under Mao, and it’s largely driven by the war on drugs. I guess that hasn’t been a success … unless you consider over-crowded prisons a sign of success.
- Deaths from illegal drugs?- Quite common in the U.S. compared to countries with harm-reduction strategies like Portugal but then since we have no regulation users don’t have any way of discovering either the content or the strength of what they’re injecting so we’re not saving lives here.
- HIV and Hepatitis C ? - We’re slowly starting to make some progress on this score as most states now allow for the sale of syringes without a prescription. Syringe exchanges and safe injection sites are still considered controversial so they must be fought for over and over in every locality.
- Foreign Policy ?- We’re still squeezing the proverbial balloon south of the border and claiming success as heroin production grows. Up here this year, down over there, the opposite of the year before…blah, blah, blah. ..of course there was practically no heroin produced at all in South America back in the 60’s before the war on drugs but we don’t like to mention that.
- Price ? - Back in 1981 heroin was available for around $2000 per gram… in 2003 the average retail price for a gram was about $350. Over the same period average purity went from about 10% up to over 30%. Let me see… heroin is now available at three times the potency for one sixth the price… No, that was hardly a resounding success.
Well it seems pretty obvious that prohibition of heroin, like that of alcohol, has not been helpful. Now that this policy has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, ruined millions of lives, destroyed entire neighborhoods, filled our prisons, and spread death and disease we need to drop it. America needs to start the serious discussion on how we should legalize and regulate it. Should it be sold like alcohol is today? Probably not. Perhaps regulated and sold by prescription much like morphine? Sounds reasonable to me. That’s the discussion we need to have if we are to stop this insane hemorrhaging of blood and money that is drug prohibition.
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