Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
St. Louis Today reports:
American taxpayers would save more than $46 billion if drug addicts now in prison were instead treated, according to a study released Friday at a national convention of drug court professionals.Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a former U.S. drug czar, and actress Melanie Griffith joined experts in calling on lawmakers to increase funding for such courts.
"This is not a war on drugs," McCaffrey said. "This is a problem for our families in America. In order to turn drugs around in this country, we're going to have to treat those 1.5 million people who are addicted."
I prefer total legalization of all illegal drugs, but that simply isn't going to happen in this country. At the very least, though, we have got to do away with prison terms for drug possession. It's bankrupting the states, who have to pay an average of around $35,000 a year to house hundreds of thousands of inmates every year who are there on drug possession charges alone. Worse, it's destroying lives and families.
A guy gets arrested for drug possession, regardless of what the drug is, and often sees mandatory minimum sentences for prison time (how about 25 to life for .03 grams of meth?). Now he's got a felony on his record, he spends a year or two in prison and that makes him very difficult to employ. In many cases, a family is torn apart by this as a member goes to prison. And the person convicted is now faced with time in a brutal prison that, if he wasn't a violent person when he went in, will certainly make him one by the time he comes out.
It's insanity, an absolutely ass backwards public policy that causes far more harm to society than any good it could possibly do.
Politics
Comments
You must be one of those elitists, using facts and data and stuff to back up sound arguments against emotional and ineffective policies that are based on wishful thinking and people's perceptions of "sin."
When have our pandering pols ever made intelligent public policy regarding sex and drugs? A subset of our populace has a warped sense of right and wrong, and we end up with an endless and expensive war on something that doesn't fix, and typically worsens a problem. So teen pregnancy rises because of abstinence only "education," and two generations of "criminals" are created by pig-headed anti-drug laws. Both of these major public policies run entirely contrary to what the evidence demonstrates, and yet our fine fellow countrymen continue to vote for the ignoramuses who invent these moronic policies.
Why is it political suicide to stand in front of a group of voters and say, "We've lost the fake war on drugs. We need to decriminalize drugs, stop jailing people for possessing them, purge criminal records for simple possession, and spend a lot less money than it costs to incarcerate and interdict on treatment for the addicted. Drug abuse is a public health issue, not a law and order issue."
Until such time as someone can get elected who says that we are stuck with this crap.
Posted by: bybelknap, FCD | June 5, 2008 9:57 AM
Well, unless you're actually looking to create a permanent underclass to feed to the prison-industrial complex whilst ramping up a paramilitary approach to policing...
And don't forget the joy of felony disenfranchisement!
Posted by: Dunc | June 5, 2008 9:59 AM
Maybe I missed something but did General MacCaffery propose this approach when he was the drug czar?
Posted by: SLC | June 5, 2008 10:02 AM
Yeah, and compare that with Sodom and Gomorrah of drug tolerance (the Netherlands). The Dutch have less addicts, less drug related crime, etc.....
Posted by: Kim van der Linde | June 5, 2008 10:02 AM
bybelknap, lets face it. The war on drugs is nothing to do with drugs, but everything with population control. As long as blacks get disproportional arrested, prosecuted and convicted for drug possession, while whites can go to rehab, this is not going to change.
Posted by: Kim van der Linde | June 5, 2008 10:07 AM
Of course treatment is better than incarceration. Why do you think all those rich and powerful people bend over backwards to get their own kids into treatment, even while they craft and support laws that deny that option to their poorer cousins?
Posted by: Raging Bee | June 5, 2008 10:42 AM
SLC's comment above is pertinent. I too seem to recall McCaffrey's being Clinton's "pro-drug war" general and token claim to being "tuff on drugs".
Well, maybe better late than never.
Posted by: doug l | June 5, 2008 11:22 AM
Treat currently illegal drugs like we treat nicotine and alcohol: discourage their use, inform the public about the harm they cause, restrict consumption in public, restrict the ages of purchasers, fund plans to deal with addiction and harm and then let the public make up their minds. This simple step cut out the violent gangs, stopped people going blind on questionable merchandise, and promoted responsible use.
If you cut out the religious BS from the anti-drug (anti-drug-user really) campaigns, you'd have nothing left.
I'm reminded of the 1920s - 1950s where methamphetamine was an extremely popular drug taken by all levels of American people. Billions of pills were consumed legally and without the hysterical consequences (meth=death!!!!!!) that everyone hypes today. People are generally responsible, so quit nannying us - it may sound well meaning, but it hurts us all.
Posted by: Adrian | June 5, 2008 11:26 AM
Yeah, I didn't really want to start going into the racist nature of the WoD. But it is certainly part and parcel of it. It is indeed a population control device - a pernicious and evil one. But if I am many like me are not the only ones to recognize it for what it is, how have we allowed it to happen and continue to happen? How can we change it? Despite the "progressive" stance of the presumptive Dem candidate, I don't think there is any change in the wind on this one.
Posted by: bybelknap, FCD | June 5, 2008 11:41 AM
You mean that easing people out of their addictions with the help of trained professionals and attempting to get at the root of their habits is more effective than authoritarian and arbitrary punishment? Who would have ever guessed!
Seriously, though, it's good to see at least one former flunky in the War on Drugs TM finally see the light.
I, along with Ed, favor the legalization of all currently illicit drugs.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | June 5, 2008 11:44 AM
Kim, last time I looked into the stats, the rate of drug addiction in the Netherlands was about the same as in the US. It's higher for some drugs, lower for others. (I have spoken to Dutch people who think drug abuse is a major problem in their country).
But the conclusion is still the same -- throwing millions of people in prison for drug possession is expensive, an utter waste of taxpayers' money and people's lives, and doesn't solve anything.
It's unconscionable that America has by far the highest proportion of it's population in prison of any western nation. Yet how many of the presidential candidates have even mentioned this problem, let alone proposed doing something to solve it? Democrats are too cowed by the risk of being accused of being "soft on crime", and Republicans cannot bring themselves to admit that America's "incarceration state" is actually more expensive than the "welfare state" in many European nation.
Obviously a President John McCain will not do anything to resolve this problem. There is a chance that President Barak Obama would, given his background and life experience, but I'm not holding my breath. What he can't do, sadly, is campaign on this issue. Even a veiled mention wanting to take a new approach on the "war on drugs" would result in mass hysteria from the right as they attempted (probably successfully) to tar him as the next Michael Dukakis.
Posted by: tacitus | June 5, 2008 11:45 AM
While I agree that the current incarceration regime is all but useless, court-mandated treatment model is likely a white elephant. Research on the efficacy of Drug Courts, where incarceration is supposed to result only if treatment fails, is being conducted or funded by organizations that have already made a committment to the model. Relaible data is rare, since most local courts don't have adequate tracking systems in place, and most research efforts don't count people who've failed out of drug court when they're calculating recidivism rates. The cost benefits are also probably overstated, in that they're reported on an annual basis, rather than a total cost basis. Most people, at least on the misdemeanor side of things, spend much more time as a drug court participant than they would as an inmate in a local jail.
The point of all this is that the General's suggestion isn't new and isn't likely to have the intended effect. It's just shuffling money from one budget to another, for little if any net gain.
Q.E.D., Ed Brayton for president.
Posted by: MC | June 5, 2008 11:50 AM
Melanie Griffith??
Lindsay Lohan out of town?
Ummm.... not sure having an actress celebrity sorta known as being blond and ditsy is exactly an asset for team McCaffrey.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | June 5, 2008 12:24 PM
I would like to second (or third or fourth...) that prison is a very frightening place. The punishment of prison for any length of time, for mere personal possession does not fit the crime (I don't have my mind made up on trafficking; true trafficking, not just possessing a lot), and is the farthest thing from rehabilitation I can think of. Additionally, it's an area of "crime" where deterrents are shown to not be effective. This isn't tax law, it's often addiction and dependency. It pushes drugs underground into shady territory. Where better to become more involved in shady territory than in prison?
Posted by: Dennis N | June 5, 2008 12:54 PM
The best part of the war on drugs is, that it directly helps terrorists to finance themselves. So, if I were a member of Al Quaida Afghanistan, I would have to thank the western governments in helping to fund our activities through keeping price high and supply low.
;)
Posted by: student_b | June 5, 2008 12:59 PM
For those of you who haven't seen it, go rent/netflix/on-demand The Wire, an insightful meditation on the WoD, and one of the best tv shows ever.
Posted by: wk | June 5, 2008 1:00 PM
Don't forget about what black market drug trade is doing to (for example) Mexico, Central and South America. The resulting gang violence, corruption and crime are absolutely devastating. And completely out of hand.
The war on drugs has had disastrous consequences on a global scale.
Posted by: Leni | June 5, 2008 1:29 PM
Is it too much to hope that someday somebody like McCaffrey will see the light while they're actually still in office and in a position to do something about it? Or are rational revelations restricted to those who no longer have any sort of political power?
Posted by: Gretchen | June 5, 2008 3:10 PM
Gretchen:
Is it too much to hope that someday somebody like McCaffrey will see the light while they're actually still in office and in a position to do something about it? Or are rational revelations restricted to those who no longer have any sort of political power?
I have memories of a Democratic response to one of Der Gipper's "War on Drugs" speeches (possibly delivered by former Ohio senator Howard Metzenbaum) that actually pushed the alternative of medical treatment over draconian incarceration policies, but (as anyone knows from the last 25 years or so) nobody bothered to take such an alternative seriously. Poor us.
Posted by: Chris Krolczyk | June 5, 2008 7:45 PM
What's really sad is that we did take a full legalization approach until about WWI, and then politicians figured out they could make political capital on the issue. You could still order heroin through sears-roebuck up until the 40's or 50's iirc.
Having said that though, I think we'll see marijuana legalized with 15-20 years. The states are already beginning to ignore or legalize it's use, and if Coloradans are willing to take that step, I can't see rest of the mountain states being that far behind.
Given how it actually screws with the architecture of your brain, I think meth should stay banned regardless of what happens with the other restricted substances, but that's just my opinion.
Posted by: Julian | June 6, 2008 12:41 AM
Gretchen: If one of the drug czars were to "get religion" on legalising drugs while in office they would be replaced. Policy comes from the centre in any government, appointees are just a mouthpiece and spare pair of hands.
Maybe some politicians actually listen to the people they appoint, but it would be unusual, especially on such a political matter.
Posted by: James K | June 6, 2008 1:10 AM
While Obama isn't as completely opposed to the War on Drug Users as I am, I suggest you look at his (admittedly mixed) history and record. He favors either decriminalization of marijuana or treatment-based penalties.
Damn sight better than I usually hear from politicians.
Posted by: steve s | June 6, 2008 1:42 AM
I think this is correct. What's happening is that millions and millions of Americans have now tried pot and know it's basically harmless. The idea of filling our prisons with recreational users of a mostly harmless substance makes less and less sense to them.
Posted by: steve s | June 6, 2008 1:49 AM
Drugs (of the type we are discussing and even some legal ones) are poison; bad for people; their use is bad for society in general. But as a parent of adult children and a young adult as the 60's were unfolding I know the problem sits in the type of people that have a problem. What do I mean.. addiction is a disease, and abuse and destruction are part and parcel to the makeup of people. Why do some people who love a drink (wine, beer, whatever) have no problem with alcohol use yet others succumb to abusing it and take on its negatives so easily. I am not saying that some people are better than others -- just some people because of whatever are more prone to whatever. It's genetic and/or something driven deep into the makeup of the mindset. It is so obvious - putting people into jail for drug use is like putting people into jail for eating butter if their family has a history of lipid driven heart disease. Cost (taking jail cost out) to society of cornary disease vs. cost of addiction problems anyone? This country needs to stop thinking like ignorant asses.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | June 6, 2008 8:10 AM
Social Darwinism or the philosophy of my Fanatasy Political Party, "Thinning The" would uprobably cause a lot of deaths due to drug overdoses (but no more than probably die already from "Therapeutic mis-adventures" with presription drugs. Besides, think of the pluses, Rushbo could rail against Oxy and buy it at the 7-11 fifteen minutes later!
Posted by: democommie | June 6, 2008 8:46 AM
The manufacture and dispensing of medication is strictly regulated. That won't change. In other words, Rush will probably have to shoot it up or smoke it like the rest of the heroin addicts.
Also, I suspect the overdose issue would actually decreases. Unknown purity is what causes most overdoses. With regulated manufacture these drugs would probably become much safer. And who knows. Maybe they could find a safer deliver system than injectable.
Posted by: Leni | June 6, 2008 1:53 PM
Just for future reference can we stop calling addiction a disease. Cancer is a disease, addiction is a choice. That being said, here's to hoping tour government's war on its own people ends in my lifetime.
Posted by: Paul | June 10, 2008 5:40 PM
Um, no....because at this point, we don't know whether or not what you're saying is true.
Posted by: gwangung | June 10, 2008 6:58 PM