Drug Control Policy as Ethan

Drug Control Policy

As Ethan a. Nadelmann, Director of the Lindesmith Center for Drug Policy Research in New York, maintains in his article "Common Sense Drug Policy," America's goal of a "drug-free" society, part of a resolution passed by the U.S. Congress in 1988, "has failed persistently over the decades because it has preferred... rhetoric to reality and moralism to pragmatism" (1998, p. 111), meaning that the federal government has failed to realize that drug use and addiction in the United States is deeply embedded in the American psyche and has nothing to do with a person's moral foundations. In essence, Nadelmann's argument presented in this article is based upon the idea that "the so-called war on drugs has made matters worse, not better" (1998, p. 111).

Although illicit drug use among young Americans between the ages of sixteen and nineteen years of age declined by more than fifty percent during the Reagan Administration, no one had the foresight to realize how devastating an effect a specific new type of drug would have on American society, namely, crack cocaine, which by the 1990's had "reached epidemic proportions in American cities, largely driven by prohibitionist economics and morals," (1998, p. 112) advocated by certain members of the federal government. Between 1980 and 1997, the federal budget for drug control in the U.S. rose from about $1 billion dollars to more than $16 billion dollars and on any given day in the 1980's, some 50,000 Americans were in prison for violating either state or federal drug laws. By the late 1990's, this number had increased to more than 400,000, being the result of "drug policy over-reliance on criminal justice solutions" based upon abstinence programs and out-patient treatment (1998, p. 112).

Obviously, due to these numbers which only increased after 2000, it is quite clear that U.S. federal and state drug policies have failed miserably. As Nadelmann points out, new policies on drug control are urgently required because "drugs are here to stay and we have no choice but to learn to live with them." Thus, Nadelmann makes a solid and sensible argument when he states that any new policy must focus on "reducing not illicit drugs use but the crime and misery caused by both drug abuse and prohibitionist policies" (1998, 112).

One important area of concern addressed by Nadelmann in relation to creating new policies on drug use and control has much to do with looking for drug control models which appear to have worked in foreign nations, particularly in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, the American government has been looking in the wrong place for these models, especially in Asia and Latin America. For example, the coca plant from which cocaine is derived grows in abundance in many geographical regions of northern South America and in Central America, where growers make huge profits as compared to efforts to force farmers and peasants to grow legal crops which inevitably do not produce enough profits in order to survive.

Of course, over the last twenty years or so, the U.S. federal government has done much and at great expense to attempt to eradicate the growing of coca but these efforts have also failed miserably. As Nadelmann relates, even if foreign supplies of coca and other drugs like heroin could be cut off, "the drug abuse problem in the U.S. would scarcely abate," due to the fact that much if not most of the drugs like marijuana, amphetamines and hallucinogens (LSD) are made in the U.S. Thus, if cocaine and heroin supplies were eliminated, drug users "would quickly substitute other drugs" in place of cocaine and heroin, thus creating a never-ending cycle of drug substitution and a system wherein new types of drugs are invented to replace the old ones (1998, p. 113).

Nadelmann also points out that any drug control initiative which relies upon supply reduction is futile and that the "single-minded pursuit of a drug-free American society" is dangerously naive. However, the demand for drugs also plays a very important role in helping to design and implement any and all drug control policies, but this too is inherently unreasonable. In the end, Nadlemann only sees drug legalization as the most effective way to control drug abuse and the crimes associated with it; however, the U.S. federal government and most state governments see legalization as "politically unwise and as risking increased drug use" (1998, p. 114).