Drugs, The Law, and The Future

WWW Links:

• Office of National Drug Control Strategy
• FDA Law Institute
• Charts and Graphs about the Drug War
• Schaffer Library of Drug Policy
• Drug Policy Alliance
• DEA HomePage
• NIDA
• SAMHSA
• International Journal of Drug Policy
• PBS Frontline: Drug Wars
• Efficacy.org (http://www.efficacy-online.org/) A focus on the problems with the "war on drugs."
• Drugsense Drug War Clock: http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
• The Nation, December 27, 2010: D.A.R.E. to end the War on Drugs
• April 2014: America’s New Drug Policy Landscape (Pew Research Center)(local copy)
• The costs of prohibition

World Drug Report

Federal Legislation of the 20th Century

another version

Legal Issues Today

2005 Federal Anti-Drug Budget (executive summary)

2007 Federal Anti-Drug Budget (executive summary)

FY 2009 Federal Anti-Drug Budget (executive summary)

2009--Change? (local copy)

Budget for 2010

Budget for 2013 (local copy)

Budget for 2014 (local copy)

Budget for FY 2015 (local copy)

Budget for FY 2017

Budget for FY 2018

National Drug Control Strategy for 2010 (critique (local copy))

National Drug Control Strategy for 2012 (critique (local copy))

National Drug Control Strategy for 2014 (local copy)

Drug Busts and Drug Control Budgets 1970-2012

Punitive Strategies: Prohibition

• Classical perspective: Rational Choice- Control through negative reinforcement
  • Illicit Drugs: Price Elasticity of Demand and Supply (local copy)
• Three categories
  • Legal Drugs (including OTC, alcohol, tobacco)
  • Prescription Drugs (including Schedule II-V)
  • Illegal Drugs (Schedule I)
• Drug use detrimental to society--eliminate (at what cost?)
• Can it work?
• Are current penalties to mild?
• Prohibition--unintended consequences
  • Report Review (2009): New Federal Drug Threat Assessment Finds Prohibition Greatest Drug-Related Menace (local copy)
• War on Drugs (Militarism)
  • Peter Kraska: metaphor into reality
  • 1981: MIlitary as "civil enforcers" (outside USA borders)
• Race, Arrest, and Incarceration and the drug war on minorities.
  

Source Control

• Profit (Jamaica-$1 billion, dealers: millions a month, POWER)
• Traditional enterprise in many lessor developed countries
• Issue of Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism
• Shift to domestic production
• Little land area is needed: Coca production needs less than 1000 square miles- 2,500,000 square miles available; Entire U.S. supply of heroin could be produce in only 50 square miles of opium fields (5% of opium production)
• If cultivation is controlled, still have the reality of synthetic production
• Heroin in Afghanistan: Enforcing drug laws versus a heroin-based economy? In 2007
• Cocaine Control? (local copy)
• Push-down/Pop-up
• Mexican Drug Wars, 2010

Domestic Control

(Drug bust, illegal ship)

• DEA Statistics (arrests, Drug Seizures, and ER reports)
• Needle in a haystack
• Millions of boarder crossings
• Couriers/Mules: skills and replaceable
• Hit one, another pops up
• NYC: est. 250,000 earn living off of illicit drugs
• 1982: $200 million seized. 1990: Over $1 billion (10 tons of cocaine)seized- still readily available
• Drug Asset Forfeiture (1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Bill)
  • Miller and Selva (1994, disguised observation, Goode: page 394)
    • "Law of unanticipated consequences": Asset hunting versus policing
    • Organizational versus personal corruption (narcotic officiers as revenue hunters).
  • Vecci and Sigle (2001, interviews, Goode page 395)
  • Officers think: effective
  • Officers rank as important
  • Local versus federal agency: dependence on forfeiture monies.
• Proactive Policing
  • Zimmer (1990, Goode pages 396-397): "Operation Pressure Point" in Manhatten, late 1980s
    • Overall: Decline in outside traffic and drug related crime
    • Decline versus eliminated
    • Diversion--shift activity to other neighborhoods
    • Differential impact based on SES: block by block effect
• And, there is no correlation between drug possession arrests and rates of drug use (1979-2015). Washington Post, Wonkblog, October 12, 2016. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/12/police-arrest-more-people-for-marijuana-use-than-for-all-violent-crimes-combined). See, the Human Rights Watch report, 10/12/2016.

Increase Penalties

• Law of Criminal Justice Thermodynamics: The more severe the penalty, the less likely is the application: 1973 NY law- very harsh penalties: use rises (general trend) and arrests remain stable
• Prison costs and overcrowding
• CJS inundation: Crime down, Use level: Arrests for drug related offenses up.
• Inmates are categorized based on their most serious offense. As of January 23, 1998, 15% (3614) inmates in the Missouri Prison system (this does exclude those in jails) where incarcerated with their most serious offense being a drug offense. (from a telephone conversation with officials of the Missouri Department of Corrections 2/10/98)
• Over 400,000 arrests in 1994 for marijuana, over ~750,000 in 2008, down to 587,700 in 2016.
• In some jurisdictions: 50% of inmate population.
• Expanding the net: How much are we willing to give up?
• County by county arrests in Missouri: Marijuana Arrests By Rate 1995 - 1997.
• Cost of cigarettes around the world (consumption and this)(USA: state by state consumption)(1998 consumption).

(Source: FBI, The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and http://www.bjs.gov/content/dcf/enforce.cfm)

• 2002: Cost of "War on Marijuana."
• 2003 Marijuana Arrests
• War on Drugs Shifts to War on Marijuana ("A study of FBI arrest and conviction data by a Washington think-tank has underscored a dramatic shift in US drug policy in the decade of the 1990s. "The War on Marijuana: The Transformation of the War on Drugs,", released Tuesday by the Sentencing Project, reports that from 1992 to 2002, the proportion of drug arrests involving marijuana increased from 28% to 45% of all drug arrests, while arrests for the much more dangerous cocaine and heroin decreased from more than half of all drug arrests to less than 30%. " http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/385/shifted.shtml 5/6/05)
• Drug War Facts and BJS data

Does Prohibition Work?

• MacCoun and Reuter (2001): no significant link between severity or certainty and drug involvement (Goode, pages 397-398).
• Multinational embeddedness
• Since 1981 (beginning of "war"): cocaine and heroin prices down and purity up (Rhoades, Johnston, and King, 2001, in Goode page 399).
• Absolute versus relative deterrence
• Efficacy.org (http://www.efficacy-online.org/) A focus on the problems with the "war on drugs."
• Drugsense Drug War Clock: http://www.drugsense.org/wodclock.htm
• The Failure of Drug Control Policies, Gary Potter, Criminal Justice and Police Studies, Eastern Kentucky University
• Race, Arrest, and Incarceration and the drug war on minorities.
• Laws ineffective in curbing cannabis use (Reuters)(local copy)
• Vancouver: 'Drug Central' of North America" (BBC News)
• Ethan Nadelmann's Ted Talk: Why we need to end the War on Drugs (another link), October 2014.
• ABC News Special Report, 1996: America's War on Drugs (for classroom use only--go to our MyGateway course site, click on Course Documents, and then "Virtual Handouts" to find the video).

Legalization

• Entails regulation and potential tax revenues
• State's role in distribution and oversight
  • And, 16 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes: Alaska | Colorado | Washington | Oregon | California | Nevada | Maine| Massachusetts| Vermont|Michigan (2018)|Illinois (2019/2020)|South Dakota (2020)| Montana (2020)| New Jersey (2020) | Virginia (2021) | New York (2021) | (City of St. Louis decriminalizes 4/1/2013). What happens when we make cannabis legal? Washington Post Wonkblog 6/21/2016. November 2020: Oregon decrinimalizes possession of small quantities of all illegal drugs and legalizes psilocybin (Washington DC decriminalizes psilocybin, too). .
• Illicit Drug Trade Sources: http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/drugs/sources.html
• Drug Use in Europe
• What if the President Smoked Pot?

Decriminalization

• Full versus partial decriminalization
• Misdemeanor vs. Felony- removal of criminal penalties
• Distinguishes between use, possession, and distribution
• Basically asserts the State no longer has a significant role or interest in the regulation of the activity.
• Decriminalization in Latin America (2009)
• Decriminalization in Portugal (Time, April 2010)

Maintenance/Prescription Drug Model

• Treatment of drug dependency
• Use of heroin and heroin maintenance
  • Goode on Heroin Maintenance in the USA (1999)
    • Problem of leakage
    • Screening and admission policies
    • Stabilization problems: Euphoria seekers vs. Maintainers
    • Assume all addicts would enroll?
    • Only source of medicinal heroin?
  • (See: "Through a Blue Lens," a 1999 film on the streets in Vancouver, BC by Veronivca Alice Mannix).
• Medicalization

Legalization/Decriminalization Arguments

see also: Between Politics and Reason- The Drug Legalization Debate, Erich Goode, 1997.

• Use would not rise much
  1. Apollonian versus Dionysian Culture (fear mongering and reality: proportionality
  2. Extensive availability already
  3. Yet:
     1. Alcohol use did decline during Prohibition
     2. Availability of drugs in Viet Nam- high rates of use (yet circumstances different)
     3. High rates of use in medical profession (easy availability)
     4. Legal drugs have high rates of use, and use is stable
     5. So, yes there would most likely be an increase. It that necessarily a problem? Depends on the drug!
• Nonetheless, demand does exist (and profit, too)
• Drug effects and social context
• Harm produced by drugs themselves is not so significant
• Current policies do not work. Waste of people and resources. Criminalization does not deter use.
• Punitive strategy:
  1. Push down -- Pop up (see also)
  2. Increases profit
  3. Stimulates that which it seeks to control (crime)
  4. Produces unregulated, uncontrolled and contaminated market
  5. Produces a shift to more potent drugs ("Iron Law of Prohibition"): smuggling and profit; paraquat; Jake during Prohibition, etc.
  6. Cost of interdiction and enforcement: Over $20 billion a year- If legalized the State could make money!
• Ethan Nadelmann on Drug Prohibition in the USA: (Science 1989)
• Impedes access to therapeutic substances
• Political and Moral Issues
  1. Privacy and civil rights
  2. Police corruption
  3. Criminalization of an entire category of people
  4. Stimulates disrespect for the law

European Model: Harm Reduction

• Harm reduction (another view) (and Public Health)
• Practical use of resources
• Flexible enforcement practices
• Tolerance rather than approval
• Education/prevention and treatment versus incarceration
• Expand maintenance
• Demarginalize populations
• Cannabis: a harm reduction perspective. Chapter 11 of A cannabis reader: global issues and local experiences, EMCDDA, Lisbon, June 2008 (local copy in .pdf).
• International Harm Reduction: Harm Reduction in Europe: Mapping Coverage and Civil Society Advocacy 2011 (local copy)
• Ethan Nadelmann's Ted Talk: Why we need to end the War on Drugs (another link), October 2014.

Recent research from CEDRO

The origins and future of the Dutch approach towards drugs
by Justus Uitermark

This paper considers the roots of the Dutch approach towards drugs. It argues that the idiosyncratic nature of Dutch drug policies can be explained by taking into account the peculiar evolution of the Netherlands ’ political institutions. The distinctive character of Dutch policies is explained through the concept of gedogen. Gedogen refers to the practice of discriminatory enforcement. Gedogen can be defined as a regulatory system of organized toleration and targeted repression. Only those illegalities that are actually considered to cause social problems are targeted for repression. As such, the policy differs markedly from orthodox prohibitionist policy approaches. Policies towards ecstasy and cannabis are discussed to illustrate how gedogen works in practice. While it is argued that gedogen has functioned well for a number of years, doubts are expressed about the extent to which the Netherlands can be expected to continue to play the role of pioneer with respect to drug policies. After a revival of conservative politics, the country now seems ill equipped to develop alternative drug policies.

<http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/uitermark.origins.html>

Decriminalize Marijuana?

• Erroneous belief that use can be eliminated
• Decline in use, and current rise seem to be products of the sub-culture rather than legal policies
• Arrests don't seem to impact use (when high, use is high; when low, use is low)
• Health consequences seem negligible
• Medicinal use: as of November 2014: 34 states and DC have medicinal marijuana legislation.
  • And, 4 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for recreational purposes: Alaska | Colorado | Washington | Oregon |. (City of St. Louis decriminalizes 4/1/2013)
  • Federal: illegal--Schedule I.
• Practically true, anyway
• What if the President Smoked Pot?

Heroin and Cocaine: Special Problems?

• Not as available as "soft" drugs
• Sensuous appeal
• Dependency and frequent use
• Issue of crime and disease
• Apollonian/Dionysian Culture again. Which are we?
• Most use non-abusively, but prediction is that absolute number of abuser will rise: dramatic impact.

Practical Issues of Legalization

• Containment and Harm reduction (and Public Health)

• Potential for success?

• 

(from Goode, 2005, page 442)

Drugs are a Part of Life

The solution to the "drug problem" is not "drug free."

1. Controlled use
2. Reduction of risk and harm reduction: Treatment and beyond (Drug Policy Alliance)
3. Economic and social stability: Demarginalization

Reasonable suggestions?

• Decriminalize marijuana expand access for medicinal use.
• No arrests for simple possession of so-called hard drugs.
• Non-penal approach to low level dealing and distribution.
• No prison: Focus on demand reduction (currently only 1/4 of the budget goes toward prevention/treatment).
• Expand treatment availability.
• Leave other countries alone.
• Reschedule: explore therapeutic use of LSD, ecstasy, heroin.
• Refocus on alcohol and tobacco.

Quit Dreaming of a Drug Free America!

2016: Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General's Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health. Chapter 7: Vision for the Future: A Public Health Approach. US Department of Health and Human Services (local copy)

What do YOU think?

URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/180/law.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel rok@umsl.edu
References and Credits for this Page of Notes
Last Updated: Friday, April 2, 2021 11:43 AM