Why the 'Drug War' Will Never End |
GUEST COLUMNMarch-April 1997 |
Dr. Jonas is a professor of preventive medicine at the School of Medicine, State University of New York, Stony Brook, NY 11794-8036, Tel: (516) 444-2147. This paper was delivered at the Tenth International Conference on Drug Policy Reform in Washington, DC on November 9, 1996 and is reprinted with permission.
The "Drug War" is no more about drugs than rape is about sex. Both are about violence and control. And that is why for the foreseeable future the "Drug War" will not end in the United States. The true goals of the "Drug War," unstated though they may be, are not concerned with drug use. Experience has shown that while the "Drug War" itself has little impact on drug use, drug use can be significantly reduced by other, non-violent means. The goals of the "Drug War" are concerned rather with the control of those ethnic minorities at which it is aimed.
The primary tools of the "Drug War" are violent in nature. Ostensibly, they are employed in an attempt to effect a change in human behavior related to the use by a relatively small number of persons of an arbitrarily determined subset of the recreational mood-altering drugs. However, in dealing with much more widely used drugs (the uses of which have much more devastating effects on society than does the use of the drugs on which the "Drug War" focuses), the U.S. has successfully employed non-violent, public-health-based approaches to preventing and/or stopping drug use.
It should be noted that success in reducing such drug use has been achieved in the context of even stronger efforts to promote the use of the same drugs. These facts are central to revealing the real agenda of the "Drug War."
That agenda is sharply highlighted when it is noticed that "Drug War" violence is actually aimed not only at an arbitrarily determined minor subset of the recreational mood-altering drugs, but also in the main at an arbitrarily determined minority subset of the already relatively small group of users of those drugs. That subset is defined primarily by skin color and ethnicity.
Despite these contradictions, in fact largely because of them, the violent enterprise called the "Drug War" carries out major political, economic, social, and corporate ends. Given, among other things, that there is no significant opposition to the "Drug War" based on an understanding of its true nature, it can be safely said that: The "Drug War" will never end. Let us consider these factors in order.
The "Drug War," whether consciously or unconsciously, is a politico-racist enterprise. The percentage of use in each major ethnic group of the primary recreational mood-altering drugs, illicit and otherwise, are similar among the several major ethnic groups in the United States (Table One) (Tables at the end). Thus the majority of illicit drug use in the United States is among whites (Table Two). Nevertheless, the "Drug War" is waged almost entirely in Black and to a lesser extent Hispanic, communities. Thus, the majority of persons in prison and jail for drug-related offenses (a primary outcome of the "Drug War" being imprisonment of certain illicit drug users and dealers) are non-white (Tables Three - Five).
Turning to a consideration of law enforcement procedures by drug rather than by person, it should be noted that in the United States most anti-drug-use statutes are decriminalized. The laws against the sale of tobacco and alcohol to underage persons are rarely enforced and when they are the penalties are usually light. The laws against the sale and use by anyone of the prescription psychoactive drugs on a non-prescription basis are virtually never enforced. (It should be noted that in 1995 there were close to 60% more regular users of the prescription psychactive drugs on a non-prescription basis as there were regular users of heroin and cocaine put together [Table 5a, SAMHSA source referenced in Table Two].) Thus, in only limited instances are the drug laws widely enforced. For the most part it is only those laws dealing with the sale and use of the illicit drugs and then their sale to and use by a limited segment of the population, defined as noted by skin color and ethnicity.
Even if "Drug War" violence were useful in permanently changing human drug-use behavior of those arrested and imprisoned (and there is no evidence that it is), the "Drug War" could have little if any impact upon illicit drug use in the population as a whole. This is because of the "Drug War's" highly limited and selective targeting: the violence of enforcement is directed against white users to a much lesser extent than against non-white ones. Essentially the policy is an absurdity: if we lock up non-whites, use among the white majority can be controlled and reduced.
The "Drug War" creates a set of self-fulfilling prophecies that are central to the racism that is central to U.S. politics. It is in this arena that the "Drug War" achieves its primary goal of controlling a major sector of the Black population. In a vicious downward spiral of thought, policy, and action, law enforcement efforts contain the street illicit drug trade to non-white neighborhoods, even though the majority of use is among whites. Thus politicians, when assailing "illegal drug use" are easily able to paint that use "black" in the public mind, without having to say so in so many words.
The "Drug War" as it is waged (along with education, employment, housing, health, and family policies that economically castrate many black young men) is central to maintaining the whole U.S. politico-racist mythology: blacks, especially the men, are inferior, lazy, dumb, hand-out-hooked, good-for-nothing criminals who deny "family values" and will do just about anything to avoid working. The political forces in the U.S. that promote this view of black society will not give up the "Drug War." Unfortunately, most of those political forces that do not share or promote this view of black society cannot give the "Drug War" up either, because they cannot or do not want to comprehend its true nature. The latter forces are thus trapped politically by its rhetoric. And no reform can be achieved.
Another factor is responsible for the perpetuation of the "Drug War." The proportion of the total prisoner population serving drug-crime related sentences is increasing. This means that the rapidly expanding criminal justice/corrections system has a vested interest in maintaining the "Drug War."
It is in the interest of the major recreational mood-altering drug industries in the United States, tobacco and alcohol, to maintain the "Drug War." The sales of their products to underage persons are illegal. It happens that underage persons constitute almost all of those industries' potential "new-users." The "Drug War" serves to divert attention from the illegal activities of the tobacco and alcohol industries, which happen, as noted, to be largely decriminalized. To the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry, the "Drug War" also diverts attention from the other decriminalized illegal drug market: that of prescription psychoactive drugs used on a non-prescription basis.
(The reason why the tobacco industry is deathly afraid of FDA regulation of its product is not the programmatic content of the proposed regulations dealing with teenage smoking. That content is very similar to what the industry has already proposed. Rather it is the proposed labeling of nicotine as an addictive drug and categorization of the cigarette as a "drug delivery device." Given the "anti-drug" climate in this country, should nicotine in tobacco come to be lumped in the public cosciousness with the illicits, the days of tobacco's acceptance would be numbered indeed.)
Finally among the reasons accounting for the fact that the "Drug War" will never end, it should be noted that the "drug policy reform movement" is completely ineffective. Primarily that is because it is married to (and presumably primarily funded by) right-wing libertarianism. The "reformers" therefore do not deal with the very real U.S. drug problem, the one that is responsible for over 1/4 of all deaths (primarily tobacco use) and (along with unregulated guns, also protected by right-wing libertarianism) a great deal of the violence, lethal and otherwise (alcohol use). That is because libertarianism regards tobacco and alcohol use as matters of "free choice," beyond the purview of any national program to deal with it -- an approach that would certainly require strong government intervention, anathema to the libertarians.
Further, the "reformers" do not deal with the major causative factors for drug use in the U.S., such as the U.S. Drug Culture and the Gateway Drug Effect. That is because any effective program to deal with either one would also require major government intervention. Like the "Drug Warriors," the "reform movement" thus ignores the integral tobacco-alcohol-illicit drug linkage, robbing itself of a powerful weapon in any public-health-based campaign to reduce the use of all drugs in our society.
But most importantly, like the "Drug Warriors," the "reform movement" treats the "Drug War" as if it were a-racial. Because it is anything but a-racial, the "reformers'" non-racial approach cannot be useful. In fact, the reformers' approach does nothing but reinforce the Drug Warriors' artificially created twin fictions that while drug use is primarily a black problem, the "Drug War" itself is a-racial. But because the "Drug War" is in fact a racist enterprise to its core, a reform policy that does not recognize that fact cannot develop the highly sophisticated programmatic and political strategy that would be necessary to bring it to an end (as well as seriously deal with the real U.S. drug problem at the same time).
However correctly it is applied, the primary analytical and rhetorical tool of most "Drug War" opponents, simple logic, simply cannot work in this total socio-political environment. Thus for the "Drug War" there is no end in sight.
Drug |
White | Black | Hispanic |
|---|---|---|---|
Marijuana |
4.7 | 5.9 | 3.9 |
Cocaine (including crack) |
0.6 | 1.1 | 0.7 |
Any illicit drug |
6.0 | 7.9 | 5.1 |
Alcohol |
55.6 | 40.8 | 45.2 |
Alcohol, "binge use" |
16.6 | 11.2 | 17.2 |
Cigarettes |
29.7 | 28.1 | 24.7 |
| DRUG | WHITE | BLACK | HISPANIC | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number (000) | % | Number (000) | % | Number (000) | % | |
Marijuana (1995) |
7,507 | 78% | 1,398 | 14% | 770 | 8% |
Cocaine (including crack, 1995) |
958 | 65% | 305 | 20% | 217 | 15% |
Any illicit drug (1995) |
9,583 | 77% | 1,871 | 15% | 1,007 | 8% |
Heroin (use in past year, 1994) |
113 | 41% | 116 | 41% | 51 | 18% |
Psychotherapeutics (1994) |
2,167 | 85% | 201 | 8% | 184 | 7% |
Source (for heroin, and psychotherapeutics used on a non-prescription basis): Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Population Estimates 1994, Rockville, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Tables: 2, 3, 4, 8, 17.
| RACE | Percent of Total Drug Offenders in Federal Prison | Percent of Total Illicit Drug Users |
|---|---|---|
White and Hispanic |
26% | 85% |
Black |
74% | 15% |
See also, Perkins, C., National Corrections Report Program, 1991, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Feb., 1994, Table 5.5, p. 58.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Preliminary Estimates from the 1995 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, Rockville, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Tables: 1a, 6.
| RACE | Percent of Total Drug Offenders in State Prison | Percent of Total Illicit Drug Users |
|---|---|---|
White |
10% | 77% |
Black |
74% | 15% |
Hispanic |
16% | 8% |
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Preliminary Estimates from the 1995 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, Rockville, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Tables: 1a, 6.
RACE |
NUMBER | Percent of Total Drug Offenders in Local Jail | Percent of Total Illicit Drug Users |
|---|---|---|---|
White |
24,500 | 25% | 77% |
Black |
47,040 | 48% | 15% |
Hispanic |
24,500 | 25% | 8% |
Other |
1,960 | 2% | -- |
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Preliminary Estimates from the 1995 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, Rockville, MD: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Tables: 1a, 6.