War on Drugs: Failures, Racial Disparities, and Drug Policy Reform

Introduction: The History and Politics of Drug Prohibition

People like drugs. Drugs derived from plants — from coca and tobacco to ibogaine and opium — have been popular throughout the world, as have fermented and distilled alcoholic beverages. Altering the human brain and body, drugs produce a wide range of effects including pain relief, stimulation, and relaxation. Drugs have also been traded on the global commodities market for centuries, with the most infamous being opium and tobacco: both became so lucrative that they led to political and military skirmishes. Government intervention in the drug trade is a relatively new phenomenon, traceable first to the Opium Wars and then to the initial controls placed on chemical compounds as scientific research into their uses expanded in the late 19th and early 20th century. The first drug policy on the books in the United States was the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act ("America is At War," n.d.). It was followed by a cascade of similar legislation collectively referred to as the War on Drugs.

Prohibition of alcohol can be viewed as the only battle the government of the United States openly admits to having lost in the War on Drugs. Despite prohibition's failure to quell public fears about alcohol abuse and the violence associated with intoxicated or addicted individuals, the War on Drugs continued. The War on Drugs has enabled the rise of a powerful military-industrial complex and is intimately entwined with non-state actors including terrorist organizations and organized crime syndicates worldwide. Perpetuating the War on Drugs has become fundamental to the political and economic stability of nations around the world, which is why drug policy reform remains particularly difficult — despite the fact that no research can substantiate its effectiveness. Quite the opposite: the War on Drugs has led to more lives lost, more crime, and more economic and social instability than drug abuse or addiction has ever caused.

Fear of addiction and fear of drugs have become the propaganda fueling the War on Drugs, misleading the public into supporting failed drug policies. The first cracks in this facade appeared when several states and a handful of countries decided to decriminalize or legalize cannabis. Alcohol is prohibited in more than a handful of nations, including Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh. Ironically, the United States views Muslim prohibitions on alcohol as extreme while enforcing an equally harsh policy that criminally penalizes users of non-state-sanctioned substances. Alcohol and opioids cause many more deaths — not to mention ruined lives — than the drugs currently classified as illegal.

Literature Review: What the Research Reveals

Scholarly databases contain over a million entries related to the War on Drugs, covering perspectives linked to psychology, sociology, public health, history, and law. Of these, none provide tangible support for the War on Drugs or recommend its continuation as evidence-based or pragmatic policy. Almost without exception, major research organizations and academic institutions decry the War on Drugs and document its failure in quantitative terms. Writing for Harvard Law Today, London (2005) cites more than 500,000 individuals serving time in prison for nonviolent drug offenses. Imprisonment as a response to drug-related offenses has produced a humanitarian crisis. An article published on a university domain underscores why America — and the world — is losing the war on drugs by pointing to the effects on the children of those incarcerated and the reverberations felt throughout the global economy ("America is At War," n.d.). The literature thus demonstrates that the War on Drugs is more responsible for breaking apart families and communities than the drugs themselves. The Center for American Progress (Pearl, 2018) likewise describes the "disastrous effects" of current drug policy, advocating for widespread reform on human rights and social justice grounds (p. 1).

Major themes emerging in the scholarly literature include the harmful effect of the War on Drugs on racial disparities — including income, criminal justice, healthcare, and political status disparities. Other prominent themes include a substantial call from healthcare professionals for the decriminalization of drugs and addiction in order to provide effective interventions and better public education. The literature also directly addresses the economics of the drug trade and the financial implications of continuing versus ending the War on Drugs. A deeper historical and political analysis reveals that the War on Drugs is closely linked to the War on Terror.

Racial disparity is one of the reasons why the War on Drugs has become a far bigger problem than drug abuse itself ever was. Another is that the War on Drugs deliberately diverts valuable financial resources away from effective healthcare and channels them instead into the criminal justice and military sectors. For those more fiscally focused, Pearl (2018) notes the economic ramifications: "Since 1971, the war on drugs has cost the United States an estimated $1 trillion" (p. 1). Researchers also connect the War on Drugs to the opioid epidemic to demonstrate that the legal status of a drug has no effect on whether it will be abused — without even needing to invoke the well-documented harms of legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco. The literature also highlights progressive interventions being tested domestically and internationally to subvert, supplant, or supplement current drug policies. In Australia and New Zealand, for instance, research is examining how to redefine drug-related offenses (Payne & Hutton, 2017). One eleven-nation meta-analysis of data reveals the need to reframe drug policy based on supply-side market forces and a process of decriminalization (Coomber, Moyle, Belackova, et al., 2018). Benson, Kim, Rasmussen, et al. (2006) use Florida crime data to show that drug enforcement — not drug trafficking or drug use itself — plays a causal role in property crime.

Recent literature on the ineffectiveness of the War on Drugs capitalizes on the hypocrisies evident in the opioid epidemic, which is currently raging in the United States and ironically paralleled by opium-trade-fueled Islamist terrorist regimes. Using methodologies focused on the proliferation of pharmaceutical opioids, Netherland & Hansen (2017) "trace a separate system for categorizing and disciplining drug use among Whites," not altogether dissimilar from the racial tensions that emerged when different penalties were assigned to crack cocaine offenses versus powder cocaine (p. 217). The opioid epidemic reflects the War on Drugs' inability to tackle the root problem of addiction while perpetuating the false belief that there is a meaningful difference between legal and illegal drug addiction. A path less traveled in the literature connects drug policy to intersections of power, leading researchers like Muehlmann (2018) to identify a link between gender and the discriminatory criminalization of specific drug classes, with men of color bearing a disproportionate burden — leading to dismantled families and communities even as white communities receive abundant media attention concerning the woes of the opioid epidemic.

Another theme emerging in the literature concerns decriminalization as sensible public health policy. The criminal justice system is not equipped to address the mental health factors contributing to drug abuse. The editorial staff of prestigious publications like The British Medical Journal (Godlee & Hurley, 2016) argue that "doctors should lead calls for drug policy reform" in order to save lives and improve quality of life for countless millions around the world (p. 1). Perhaps the only cogent arguments against full-scale global legalization cite, albeit incorrectly, correlations between drug abuse and criminal behavior, as well as correlations between drug trafficking and violent crime. Historically, arguments in favor of a War on Drugs — also referred to in the literature as drug prohibition (Taylor, Buchanan & Ayres, 2016) — center on the harmful effects of drug abuse on communities, particularly communities of color (Putt, Payne & Milner, 2005). The bulk of social science literature, however, shows that the correlations between drug abuse, drug trafficking, and violent behavior are neither direct nor causal, and are far too complex to be addressed in a binary framework that classifies drugs as simply legal or illegal based on their use.

Legal scholars point out that the criminal justice system's current tactics fail to yield any statistically significant decreases in recidivism or drug abuse patterns (Farabee, Prendergast & Anglin, 1998). Coerced drug treatment programs offered in prison or to offenders on parole fail to address the underlying social justice and psychological problems associated with drug abuse, resulting in a "revolving prison door" (Harrison, 2001, p. 462). This revolving door costs taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money without resolving any public health or public safety problems ("America is At War," n.d.; London, 2005; Pearl, 2018; Taylor, Buchanan & Ayres, 2016). The literature reveals a nearly unanimous verdict against the War on Drugs. Taylor, Buchanan & Ayres (2016) lead the more substantial discussions on legalization and on approaches that dispel common myths and misunderstandings about drug use and abuse. Best, Irving & Albertson (2016) offer a refreshing perspective from psychology and addiction studies, noting that "identity change" may be the key to untangling some of the complex obstacles preventing the emergence of truly workable drug policies (p. 1). The identity change referenced encompasses subcultural, cultural, and individual identity in relation to drug use status.

A growing body of evidence supports full-scale drug policy reform as sensible international policy. Uruguay's landmark decision to legalize drugs, beginning with cannabis, spearheaded a revolution in how other countries considered reforming their domestic policies to align better with human rights and social justice goals (Von Hoffman, 2016). The conversation on drug policy reform remains in its early stages, however, and has produced considerable "turbulence," partly because even seemingly liberal policies such as cannabis decriminalization remain rooted in "arbitrary notions, moral dogma and fallacious evidence base" (p. 452). Those arbitrary notions involve the false dichotomies between alcohol and other legal drugs on one hand and psychedelics, cocaine, and other recreational substances on the other — substances that, if legalized, could be made safer through open dialogue and product testing.

The Economics and Racial Dimensions of Drug Policy

Racial disparity in drug policy enforcement and drug scheduling is a serious cause for concern. Research consistently shows that non-white individuals bear an excessive burden, being more likely to be arrested, convicted, and sentenced to prison for drug offenses in the United States and in many other countries (Payne & Hutton, 2017). Prison overcrowding is a major human rights concern in the United States, and one that could be substantially resolved through drug policy reform. Even before full legalization, it should be feasible to divert non-violent drug offenders into community-based mental health and personal development programs that empower people to rebuild their lives and become more engaged in their communities.

Racial disparity is thus one of the primary reasons why the War on Drugs has become a far greater problem than drug abuse itself. The war deliberately and demonstrably diverts financial resources away from effective healthcare into criminal justice and military sectors. As Pearl (2018) documents, the cumulative cost since 1971 exceeds $1 trillion — a staggering sum that has generated no measurable public health benefit. The economics literature, including work by Benson, Kim, Rasmussen, et al. (1992, 2006) and Coomber, Moyle, Belackova, et al. (2018), provides a blueprint for a reasonable and feasibly implemented decriminalization or legalization policy that would redirect these resources toward meaningful social investment.

Conclusion: Toward Evidence-Based Drug Policy

When considering the future of drug policy reform, it is important to approach the issue from a constitutional perspective that underscores the centrality of privacy. Drug use is a private matter — a matter of personal choice, much like decisions about reproductive health. Drug policy could be better reframed so that government no longer intrudes on an individual's lifestyle but instead promotes public health proactively through widespread education and awareness campaigns that help individuals use drugs responsibly. The goal of drug policy has never truly been to eliminate mind-altering substances from the marketplace; if it were, there would be no Twenty-First Amendment. Comprehensive prohibition would be the federal mandate, enforced as strictly as laws in Saudi Arabia. If the genuine goal of drug policy is maximum public safety, then policymakers and taxpayers must accept that some people will abuse drugs. Just as the public came to accept that alcohol and tobacco are potentially dangerous substances while still allowing them to remain legal and commercially viable, the public can come to recognize the value of all drugs — not merely cannabis.

Drug policy reform also offers hope for global peace. Terrorist organizations and organized crime syndicates fund themselves in part through the illegal drug trade — a market those actors control and manipulate. With liberal drug policy reform, the marketplace becomes freer and open to legitimate commercial actors with a vested interest in keeping their customers healthy and alive. Governments would also gain greater control over how mental and physical health services are promoted and delivered, and researchers would be able to invest in studies on how to promote safety and responsible use. Economically, the legalization of cannabis has already benefitted taxpayers in several American states, and it is easy to see why legalizing all drugs could prove broadly beneficial.

Criminal justice resources liberated through drug policy reform could then be redirected toward preventing genuine crimes against persons — from domestic violence and abuse to acts of terror to homicide. Removing the drug market from the chokehold of the black market would also weaken criminal syndicates and cartels, allowing federal law enforcement to focus on more serious problems such as human trafficking, weapons trafficking, and cybercrime. The public has been misled into believing that drugs are categorically harmful and into accepting the hypocrisy inherent in contradictory laws that permit some forms of substance abuse while criminalizing others. Based on empirical evidence rather than alarmist rhetoric, drug policy reform signals a shift toward sane, evidence-based governance.

References

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