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CRJ 875: Crime and Public Policy

Module 5: The Failure of Drug Control Policies

Drug War Cowboys

There is probably no social problem that has so captured the imagination of the American public as the problem of drug abuse. Public opinion polls indicate that Americans think drugs are among the major problems in the nation. In fact, over half of the public favors the use of the military in incursions into drug producing countries (Benoit, 1989: 33). This strong public reaction should surprise no one. We are bombarded daily by public service messages on television dramatically portraying the horrors of drug abuse. Television talk shows pander to the most sensational aspects of the drug problems. The rhetoric from politicians and government officials often borders on hysteria as they call for more prisons, more police, the abolition of constitutional protections, and even the death penalty for drug dealers. The problem of drugs has been elevated to a national crusade by leaders like President Ronald Reagan who said, "In this crusade, let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is. The destructiveness and human wreckage mock our heritage" (Lyman and Potter, 1998). President Bush left no doubt as to his administration's feeling on the drugs: "Speak the truth: that drugs are evil, that they ruin and end young lives ... the drug dealers are murderers and should be treated as such" (Lyman and Potter, 1998: 62). In the streets of Washington, D.C., New York City, Panama, and Colombia our leaders have called us to war: a war on drugs.

But, despite the frenzied wailing of the media and our political leaders, very real questions still face us about how, as a society, do we best deal with the problems of drug use and drug abuse. For years a debate has raged in the medical, sociological, and law enforcement communities over whether drug use and abuse was a problem for the criminal justice system or for the public health care system. Despite the rhetoric and sensationalism of today's anti-drug campaigns, that question remains unresolved. As David Musto (1973: 244) tells us, this is not a new problem:

American concern with narcotics is more than a medical or legal problem - it is in the fullest sense a political problem. The energy that has given impetus to drug control and prohibition came from profound tensions among socio-economic groups, ethnic minorities, and generations - as well as the psychological attraction of certain drugs. The form of control has been shaped by the gradual evolution of federal police powers. The bad results of drug use and the number of drug users have often been exaggerated for partisan advantage. Public demand for action against drug abuse has led to regulative decisions that lack a true regard for the reality of drug use. Regulations with foreign nations, often the sources of drugs, have been a theme in the domestic scene from the beginning of the American antinarcotic movement. Narcotics addiction has proven to be one of the most intractable medical inquiries ever faced by American clinicians and scientists.

It has, indeed, proved to be an intractable problem. It is a problem fueled by politics and the bureaucratic needs of law enforcement. The natural reaction for politicians to the drug problem is to pander to popular fear and frame the issue in the starkest, most unyielding terms. The "safe" political response to the issue of drugs is to call for more law and more order. The law enforcement bureaucracy responds to this by accepting the challenge. After all, there are very few issues on which public opinion and the rhetoric of decision-makers so closely coincide with opportunities for bureaucratic expansion. A "war on drugs" offers the opportunity for more money, more personnel, and most importantly, greater police powers. It is a very attractive offer most police executives and others in the criminal justice system find impossible to refuse.

However, despite the public consensus, despite the speeches of Presidents, and despite the dire warnings of the press and the law enforcement establishment, serious questions have been raised about the drug war. In fact, these questions are so serious that some public figures have broken ranks and have openly criticized the law enforcement approach to drug control (Lyman and Potter, 1998). Political leaders like former Secretary of State George Schultz and the Mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke, have called for a discussion of precisely the opposite approach to drug control, drug legalization. Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has declared himself to be in favor of shifting funds for law enforcement to drug treatment and prevention. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Henry Hyde, who is about as conservative as they come, says mandatory minimum sentences and drug-related asset forfeitures have gone too far, and the latter may be unconstitutional. Los Angeles' Republican mayor Richard Riordan had declared that he is looking for alternatives to the failed policies of the past. They have been joined by conservative political theoreticians, like economist Milton Friedman and columnist William F. Buckley. Most surprisingly, the legalization issue has been raised by some law enforcement officials, such as organized crime expert Ralph Salerno, former New York City Police Commissioner and Police Foundation Head Patrick Murphy, San Jose Police Chief Joseph MacNamara, Federal Judges Rufus King and Whitman Knapp and former Minneapolis Police Chief Anthony Bouza. The critics have posed a compelling question: Is the war on drugs having any positive impact on the problems associated with drug abuse? And if it is not, what are the alternatives?

We will explore some of the issues related to this debate. First, we will look at the question of drugs and related harm. What exactly do drugs do? What do we know about the potential of illicit drugs to kill and injure users? We will try to put the discussion of harm in context and separate the harms resulting from the illegality of drugs from the harms resulting from the abuse of drugs. Second, we will look at the connection between drugs and crime. One of the most effective tactics of today's drug warriors has been to create a mythical link between drugs and crimes against innocent citizens. This portrayal of drug users as "drug fiends" pays a key role in the popular conception of the drug problem. But is this view justified? Once again, we will try to put the issue of drugs and crime into context and to separate those dysfunctions caused by drugs from those dysfunctions caused by the illegality of drugs. Third, we will look at the drug war itself, the strategies employed, and their impact on the drug problem. Finally, we will consider the viability and importance of noncriminal justice approaches to the problem of drugs. But, first we will look at an issue that is rarely considered in discussions of drug policy. Where did the drug laws come from?

The Origins of Narcotics Control in America

It may surprise you to know that early campaigns against psychoactive drugs in the United States did not focus on issues of drugs and crime or addiction or the potential for physical harm. Instead the problems of psychoactive drugs, particularly alcohol, heroin, cocaine and marijuana, were framed in the context of "aliens." These aliens were not the Martians or Venusians popularized by the National Enquirer, but rather were far more dangerous entities, Irish and eastern European Catholics, Jews, blacks, and Mexicans.

The temperance movement, for example, was a part of a nativist panic over the diminution of traditional white, rural, middle-class, Protestant, native lifestyles in America. As Joseph Gusfield (1963: 122-23, 124) comments:

The power of the Protestant, rural, native Americans was greater than that of the Eastern upper classes, the Catholic and Jewish immigrants, and the urbanized middle class. This was the lineup of the electoral struggle. In this struggle the champions of drinking represented cultural enemies and they had lost ...

Increasingly the problem of liquor control became the central issue around which was posed the conflict between the new and old cultural forces in American society. On the one side were the Wets - a union of cultural sophistication and secularism with Catholic lower-class traditionalism. These represented the new additions to the American population that made up the increasingly powerful political force of urban politics. On the other were the defenders of fundamental religion, of old moral values, of the ascetic, cautious, and sober middle class that had been the ideal of Americans in the nineteenth century.

Liquor and its associated problems in the 1890s was the result of foreign, alien impingement upon an otherwise righteous society.

The same fear of alien influence can be seen in discussions surrounding early narcotics legislation. Despite the fact that the 250,000 addicts in the United States at the turn of the century were predominantly middle-aged, middle-class, white women (Brecher, 1972), the problem of drugs was laid squarely at the feet of aliens.

In the nineteenth century addicts were identified with foreign groups and internal minorities who were already actively feared and the objects of elaborate and massive social and legal restraints. Two repressed groups which were associated with the use of certain drugs were the Chinese and the Negroes. The Chinese and their custom of opium smoking were closely watched after their entry into the United States in about 1870. At first, the Chinese represented only one more group brought in to help build the railroads, but, particularly after economic depressions made them a labor surplus and a threat to American citizens, many forms of antagonism arose to drive them out, or at least to isolate them. Along with the prejudice came a fear of opium smoking as one of the ways in which the Chinese were supposed to undermine American society.

Cocaine was especially feared in the South by 1900 because of its euphoric and stimulating properties. The South feared that Negro cocaine users might become oblivious of their prescribed bounds and attack white society ...

Evidence does not suggest that cocaine cause a crime wave but rather that anticipation of black rebellion inspired white alarm. Anecdotes often told of superhuman strength, cunning, and efficiency resulting from cocaine. One of the most terrifying beliefs about cocaine was that it actually improved pistol marksmanship. Another myth, that cocaine made blacks almost unaffected by mere .32 caliber bullets, is said to have caused Southern police departments to switch to .38 caliber revolvers. These fantasies characterized white fear, not the reality of cocaine's effects and gave one more reason for the repression of blacks.

By 1914 prominent newspapers, physicians, pharmacists, and congressmen believes opiates and cocaine predisposed habitues toward insanity and crime. They were widely seen as substances associated with foreigners or alien subgroups. Cocaine raised the specter of the wild Negro, opium the devious Chinese, morphine the tramps in the slums, it was feared that use of all of these drugs was spreading into the "higher classes" (Musto, 1973: 5-7, 65).

Musto (1973) links similar fears toward Mexicans with the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, as illustrated by the following item in a 1929 Montana newspaper:

There was fun in the House Health Committee during the week when the Marijuana bill came up for consideration. Marijuana is Mexican opium, a plant used by Mexicans and cultivated for sale by Indians. "When some beet field peon takes a few rares of this stuff," explained Dr. Fred Fulsher of Mineral County, "he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico so he starts out to execute all of his political enemies. I understand that over in Butte where the Mexicans often go for the winter they stage imaginary bullfights in the 'Bower of Roses' or put on tournaments for the favor of 'Spanish Rose' after a couple of whiffs of Marijuana ..." Everybody laughed and the bill was recommended for passage (Montana Standard, January 27, 1929, cited in McCaghy and Cernkovich, 1987).

The fear of immigrants and repressed racial and ethnic groups in the United States was used to construct a conspiracy myth of drug use. The argument has always been the same: forces outside of mainstream American culture are at work which seek to pervert an otherwise morally sound, industrious, and democratic people. It is a convenient and easily understood argument. It is also as much of a myth today was it was at the turn of the century.

The Demonization of Illicit Drugs

Central to the case for drug prohibition and the prosecution of the drug war is the idea that drugs are dangerous to users. The images presented in the media are stark and frightening. Fried eggs are used to simulate "your brain on drugs," addicts are shown cowering in corners in the throes of withdrawal, earnest actors portray cocaine users who have lost their houses, jobs, and wives to this chemical seductress. No one will dispute that drugs, all drugs, are dangerous. People die of heroin overdoses and occasionally of cardiac and respiratory failure related to cocaine. People also die from lung cancer as a result of smoking tobacco and of a variety of diseases related to the consumption of alcohol, even though these drugs are quite legal. In fact, people can die and suffer injury from any drug, even aspirin and penicillin.

The question is not whether illegal drugs are dangerous, but whether they are dangerous enough to justify legal prohibition and the social outrage associated with their use. As with all other issues in the drug debate, the issue of harm has to be put in context and perspective. In order to do this let us examine the three drugs which have elicited the strongest reaction from law makers and law enforcers: heroin, cocaine, and marijuana.

Heroin

In the 1960s, during Richard Nixon's drug war, most public attention was focused on heroin. Heroin is a narcotic, a direct derivative of the opium poppy. Heroin users snort, smoke and inject the drug, although for the best "high" most users inject heroin into a vein ("mainlining"). Mainlining produces an immediate euphoric reaction (a "rush") followed by a period of sedation. The principal problem with heroin is that it is highly addictive. Repeated use of the drug creates a physical need for more of the drug. In addition, the drug has a high tolerance level, which means that the more often it is used the greater the quantity and frequency of use required to reach a "high." The net effect of this cycle of need and tolerance is addiction. Being a narcotic, heroin also suppresses both respiratory and cardiovascular activity, meaning that an overdose can produce respiratory arrest and shock sometimes leading to death (Inciardi, 1986: 52). However, if properly used, under supervised conditions, heroin is a relatively benign drug. As Inciardi points out, heroin is responsible for "little direct or permanent physiological damage" (Inciardi, 1986: 52). The real dangers in the use of heroin are attributable to the potential for overdose and the fact that users on the street do not engage in standard practices of good hygiene, resulting in infection from hepatitis and more recently AIDS (Inciardi, 1986: 65).

Cocaine

In the 1980s federal drug enforcers, while still raising the specter of heroin, have shifted public concern to the use of cocaine. Cocaine is the most powerful natural stimulant available to man. It comes from the leaves of the South American coca plant. Like heroin it produces a "rush" when used, but unlike heroin it is a stimulant which awakens and enlivens users. Most cocaine users snort cocaine hydrochloride (the white, crystalline powder) into their nasal passages. Snorting cocaine allows for rapid absorption of the drug into the bloodstream creating an intense but rather brief "high."

During the 1970s it appeared that cocaine would become the new drug of choice for the wealthy. It was an expensive drug, selling for over $100 a gram on the street. Because of its expense, it had a limited market of upper middle-class and upper class users. Cocaine developed the reputation of being a glamour drug associated with sports figures and Hollywood. However, during 1985-1986 cocaine appeared in a new form, "crack," that made it accessible to every one, even the poor. "Crack" is simply cocaine hydrochloride powder mixed with baking soda, ammonia, and water, dried and subsequently smoked. "Crack" sells for $10-$15 a "hit," making it far more affordable than cocaine hydrochloride. It was the advent of "crack" that heralded much of the concern about cocaine. In fact, research on the use of cocaine had indicated that it was a relatively safe drug. Surveys of medical examiners and coroners representing 30% of the population of the United States and Canada had revealed only 26 cases of drug-induced deaths between 1971 and 1976 where cocaine had been the sole drug found in the body (McCaghy and Cernkovich, 1987: 454). With the advent of "crack," and the subsequent increase in the smoking of cocaine, the numbers of cocaine- related deaths quadrupled. It is important to note that 92 percent of cocaine-related deaths result from smoking the drug, and only about 10 percent of all cocaine users smoke cocaine rather than snort cocaine (Goode, 1984: 187-189). It would therefore appear that moderate use of cocaine is relatively safe, although, heavy cocaine users, particularly those who smoke the drug in the form of "crack" exhibit a wide variety of symptoms such as nervousness, fatigue, irritability, and paranoia (Ray, 1983: 301).

Central to concerns about cocaine has been the specter of addiction. Addiction is a scary and very powerful concept that has both medical and social contexts. Until very recently, we though we knew with come precision what addiction was. Traditionally the concept was defined as physical dependence associated with the use of a drug. Physical dependence developed through a process that involved using a drug, developing a level of tolerance for the drug, increasing dosage or frequency of use, and the presence of withdrawal symptoms if the user attempted to break off his or her pattern of drug use. If we define addiction in this manner, medically, cocaine is not an addicting drug. In fact, in strict medical terms addiction is, for the most part, limited to heroin and other opium derivatives.

But the sizeable increases in cocaine usage in the 1970s and the introduction of crack to drug market in the late 1970s and 1980s, led to claims that cocaine and its by-products were addictive. As indicated above, the problem is that cocaine is usually thought of as a drug that does not produce physical dependence and therefore does not fit the traditional definition of addiction. But increasing levels of cocaine use and the draconian laws passed to control it seemed to necessitate a revision in the concept of addiction. This was accomplished by redefining the concept of addiction from one of physical dependence to a psychological model of dependence.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s it became relatively standard fare for psychiatric hospital advertisements, tabloid television programs, television talk shows and even the nightly news for the media to showcase alleged cocaine addicts discussing in graphic details the anguish of their cocaine "addiction" and the horrifying consequences for their lives that have ensued from cocaine dependence. This socially created view of cocaine use and cocaine addiction went uncontested for three basic reasons. First, there was very little data from which to evaluate the claims. Second, this view of cocaine as an addicting and enslaving drug was promoted by government's drug war and therefore was unlikely to be contested by the state itself. And finally, the only data that was available came primarily from alleged cocaine addicts in treatment or seeking treatment (Johanson & Fischman, 1989: 9). The cocaine addiction argument went unchallenged for such a long period of time and was repeated with such ferocity by the media and the state that it became an accepted "truth." But as we have sen with many other accepted "truths" related to crime and criminal justice, the substance of the claim may be more myth than fact.

As the years have progressed and more and more research has been done, information has been developed which might lead reasonable people to a very different conclusion. For example, the preponderance of the evidence shows that cocaine, no matter what the mode of administration (snorted, smoked or injected) is not especially addictive for human beings (Erickson, 1993; Erickson & Alexander, 1989; Fagan & Chin, 1989). He government's own drug use surveys seem to make the point. For example, the 1990 NIDA household survey of drug use found that 11 percent of Americans reported they had used cocaine. But, only 3 percent had used it in the past year and only 0.8 percent had used cocaine in the past month (NIDA, 1991). Clearly, only about one-quarter of cocaine users showed a consistent pattern of use, let alone addiction. But, it is more instructive to note that among current users only one in ten used cocaine once a week or more. This means that roughly 2.7% of cocaine users had patterns of use that might fall into a category of addictive behavior. A similar Canadian study found that only 5 percent of current cocaine users used the drug monthly or more frequently (Adlaf, et al., 1991). So the vast majority of current cocaine users use the drug only infrequently. It is also fair to point out that monthly and weekly use, even when it occurs, is still a long way from addiction. The studies clearly demonstrate that only a very small proportion of cocaine users are persistent abusers, much less addicts (Erickson & Alexander, 1989).

It is true that a small minority of long-term, persistent cocaine users do exhibit some characteristics of addiction. But it is a very small number. For example, of 50 regular, persistent cocaine users, studied over a ten-year period, only five demonstrated the characteristics of compulsive users at any point in the ten-years (Siegel, 1984). These persistent users, even during periods of heavily increased use, did not progress to habitual patterns of cocaine use. Similar studies of regular cocaine users in Canada, Scotland, Australia, and Holland all found controlled use to be the common pattern (Cohen, 1989; Ditton, et al., 1991; Mugford & Cohen, 1989). All of these studies showed the level of use and problems associated with use came and went during the study period. The most frequent response to problems incurred in using cocaine was to quit or greatly cut back use, once again hardly the characteristics of addiction (Erickson, 1993; Erickson, et al., 1987; Siegel, 1984).

Closely related to the issue of the addictiveness of cocaine is alleged crack epidemic of the 1980s. News magazines, television, newspapers, and the state's drug war bureaucracy worked in concert to create a drug scare around crack as a means of continuing and extending the "War on Drugs" begun in the Reagan administration. Craig Reinarmann and Harry Levine (1989) have carefully researched the media and state efforts to create the crack scare. Reinarmann and Levine define a "drug scare" as an historical period in which all manner of social difficulties, such as crime, health problems, the failure of the education system, are blamed on a chemical substance. As we have seen, "drug scares" are amost routine in American history. Problems of opiate addiction at the turn of the century were blamed on Chinese immigrants; African-Americans were portrayed as "cocaine fiends" during the 1920s; and, violent behavior resulting from marijuana consumption was linked to Mexican farm laborers in the 1920s and 1930s. The construction of the crack scare was similar in that it linked the use of crack-cocaine to inner-city blacks, Hispanics, and youth. In the 1970s, when the use of expensive cocaine hydrochloride was concentrated among affluent whites, both the media and state focused their attention on heroin, seen as a drug of the inner-city poor. Only when cocaine was democratized with the availability of inexpensive crack, and after its use spread to minority groups and the poor, did the social construction of crack as a demon drug begin.

The media hype, which began in 1986, was intense. Time and Newsweek ran five cover stories each on crack during 1986. The three major television networks quickly in with NBC doing 400 news stories on crack between June and December 1986; and all three networks running 74 drug stories on their nightly news in July 1986. These stories universally repeated highly inflated and inaccurate estimates of crack use and warnings about the dangers of crack that were out of all proportion to the available evidence.

The fact is that by 1986 cocaine and crack use were no longer growing. Research from the National Institute of Drug Abuse showed that the use of all forms of cocaine had reached its peak four years earlier and had been declining ever since. Every indicator showed that at the height of the media frenzy crack use was relatively rare (Walker, 1994; Beckett, 1994; Orcutt and Turner, 1993). Surveys of high school seniors clearly showed that experimentation with cocaine and cocaine products had been decreasingly steadily since 1980. The government's own drug use statistics showed that 96% of young people in the United States had never even tried crack. If there had been an epidemic it was long over. Reinarmann and Levine argue convincingly that the media portrayal of crack use was out of all proportion to reality. They even argue that the intense coverage of crack may have created new markets for the drug and slowed the decline in use which had already been underway for almost a decade (Reinarmann and Levine. 1989).

Data from government sources also strongly refuted other claims about crack use. Media reports emphasized that crack and cocaine were highly addictive and that crack in particular was so addictive that one experience with the drug could enslave a user to addiction for life. But, as we have seen, the facts are that NIDA estimates showed that 22 million Americans had used cocaine and cocaine-products and very few of them ever became addicted. In fact very few of them ever escalated to daily use or ended up seeking medical treatment. NIDA's own estimates indicated that fewer than 3% of cocaine users would ever become "problem" users (Kappeler, Blumberg, and Potter, 1996). The health dangers of cocaine and crack were also widely exaggerated, as we shall see later in this chapter.

Despite the severe problems of fact associated with Reagan's crack scare, the results were serious and immediate. New state and federal laws were passed increasing mandatory sentences for crack use and sales. Ironically, these laws resulted in a situation where someone arrested for crack faced the prospect of a prison sentence three to eight times longer than a sentence for cocaine hydrochloride, the substance needed to produce crack (Walker, 1994). The drug laws had been turned on their head with drug wholesalers now treated more leniently than retailers and users. In addition, the crack scare resulted in the racialization of the drug was (a topic which will be explored in detail later in the chapter). Starting with the crack panic of the 1980s, both the state and the media have gone to extraordinary lengths to tie illicit drug use to African-Americans, while ignoring heavy drug use among affluent whites. Half of all television news stories about drugs feature blacks as users or sellers, while only 32 percent of the stories feature whites (Reed, 1991). This is out of all proportion to the known patterns of drug use. About 70% of all cocaine and crack users are white and about 14% are black. The media's overemphasis on African-American drug use is matched perfectly by the police. Blacks represent 48% of all individuals arrested on drug charges, roughly three-and-a-half times their actual rate of use (Walker, 1994).

One other cocaine-related scare needs to be examined before we move on. The introduction of cocaine in smokeable form raised concerns about the potential impact of cocaine use on pregnant women and their fetuses. While it is obvious that use of any drug, whether it be alcohol, tobacco, or "crack" is unadvisable during pregnancy, the panic which resulted from early research claims about cocaine's damage to fetuses and the laws passed by the state and federal governments in response to that research clearly exaggerated the harm and created policies which did far more damage to the mother and fetus than the drug itself (Phillip Coffin, 1996).
 

The early research, particularly a 1985 case study, suggested that prenatal cocaine use could result in several health problems related to fetal development, the health of the newborn, and future child development. Quickly, thereafter, several other studies linked prenatal cocaine use to maternal weight loss and nutritional deficits; premature detachment of the placenta; premature birth; low birth weight; reductions in infants body length and head circumference; rare birth defects, bone defects and neural tube abnormalities (Coffin, 1996).

The media, of course, widely repeated these research findings creating the impression that an epidemic of "crack babies" was plaguing the medical community. The intense publicity and an already demonstrated proclivity for dealing with drug issues with harsh measures lead politicians to introduce laws in response to the "crack baby crisis." Laws were passed which required doctors and nurses to report pregnant drug users to child welfare authorities. Other laws quickly passed which required child welfare agencies to take children away from mothers who had used drugs while pregnant. And many states criminalized drug use during pregnancy. In July 1996 the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a law which allowed women to be imprisoned for up to ten years for prenatal drug use (Coffin, 1996).

But, in this flurry of media activity and legislative frenzy to pass draconian laws, few took note of continuing research on the issue of prenatal cocaine use which seemed to call the whole "crack baby scare" into question. For example, subsequent reviews of the early studies on prenatal cocaine use found serious methodological difficulties, including the absence of any control groups; not distinguishing cocaine from other substances in the studies; and lack of follow-up studies noting the health and development of the newborn (Coffin, 1996).

One of the most serious problems with the early studies suggesting a "fetal cocaine withdrawal syndrome" was that they were "non-blind," meaning that the individuals making the observations were told in advance which infants had mothers who had used cocaine during pregnancy. This horribly biased the research and contradicted other observations from doctors and nurses which reported cocaine-exposed children to be indistinguishable from other children. In subsequent blind studies, therefore, it came as no surprise that observers were unable to detect the presence of "fetal cocaine withdrawal syndrome. (Coffin, 1996).

In addition, research using control groups finds no increased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) among cocaine-exposed infants. Earlier studies suggesting a possible relationship between SIDS and maternal cocaine use had failed to control for one of the most important variables in SIDS deaths, the socio-economic status of the mother (Coffin, 1996; Bauchner, et al., 1988).

In reviewing all the studies on both animals and humans it is now clear that most found no direct effects on newborns from social cocaine use or arrived at inconsistent results suggesting the presence of factors other than cocaine use. No study has been able to establish a causal link between maternal cocaine and poor fetal development, and epidemiological studies have not detected any increase in birth defects that could be associated with cocaine use during pregnancy. Although it is likely that cocaine, like any other psychoactive substance that enters the bloodstream has the potential to impact on fetal and newborn development (Coffin, 1996; Martin, et al., 1992).

Rather than maternal cocaine use, most of the scientific evidence points to the lack of quality prenatal care; the use of alcohol and tobacco; environmental agents, and heredity as primary factors in poor fetal development and birth defects. Inadequate prenatal medical services have been positively associated with prematurity and low birth weight. The provision of quality prenatal care to cocaine using mothers and non-cocaine using mothers significantly improves fetal development. Without question it is the use of alcohol, resulting in fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which is responsible for the most severe birth defects. Tobacco use has also been strongly associated with low birth weight, prematurity, growth retardation, SIDS, low cognitive achievement, behavioral problems and mental retardation. Other factors fare surpassing cocaine use in their impact on fetal and newborn development are poverty and lead exposure (Coffin, 1996).

The legal responses to the "crack baby scare" clearly did much more harm than good to both the mothers and the children. Making substance abuse during pregnancy a crime kept mothers from prenatal medical care, thereby endangering the fetus far more than would be the case with drug use, and discouraged them from seeking drug treatment. When babies were removed from maternal care as a result of alleged drug use, social service agencies found it very difficult and often impossible to find homes for infants labeled as "crack babies" because of the alleged behavioral problems that might occur during infancy and early childhood. In addition, enforcement of maternal drug abuse laws was also clearly and blatantly racist. Over 80% of the women subjected to prosecution under those laws were African-Americans or Latina women (Coffin, 1996, Polan, et al. 1993).

As we said before, cocaine use during pregnancy is certainly not a good idea, but the fact remains that recent studies on cocaine use by pregnant women clearly demonstrate that the pharmacological impact of cocaine has been greatly exaggerated, that many other factors impact on fetal and newborn development, and that legal responses to maternal cocaine use have made every aspect of the problem worse.

Illicit Drugs and Death

Before moving on to a discussion of marijuana, let us put the issue of drug-related deaths into context. If one were to listen to speeches of politicians and the warnings in anti-drug ads on television, it would appear that we are in the midst of a massive epidemic of illicit drug-related deaths. While any death is tragic and certainly should raise concern, there are two points to be made about drug-related deaths. First, they are relatively infrequent, despite popular impressions. And second, when they do occur, they are more directly attributable to drug laws than to the drugs themselves.

It is very difficult to estimate the total number of drug-related deaths because of definitional problems. For example some estimates include the drive-by shootings of drug dealers as drug-related deaths. We are inclined to think of them as bullet-related. Other definitions are confounded the fact that in alleged drug-related deaths there are usually multiple drugs, most commonly alcohol and an illicit drug present at autopsy. Which substance "caused" the death is frequently in doubt. Additionally, often at autopsy severe, congenital health conditions are discovered along with the presence of an illicit drug. Once again, whether the death was drug-related is highly speculative. For a variety of reasons we are most comfortable with an estimate that about 3,600 people die each year from the consumption of all illegal drugs put together (Nadelmann, 1989: 943). But for the purposes of this discussion, and because definitional difficulties abound, we will gladly accede to the official Department of Justice government estimate of 7,500 (Byrne, 1994)

The first, and most obvious point, is that in a country where 217 million people are over the age of 12, 7,500 is a very, very, very small number. That's about 1 drug-related death for every 29,000 people over the age of 12. This pales in comparison to the number of deaths on an annual basis from just two legal drugs, alcohol and tobacco. There are 150,000 alcohol-related deaths each year. Add to that figure the estimated 390,000 people each year who die from illnesses related to the consumption of tobacco and you arrive at a figure 72 times larger than all the deaths related to illicit drug consumption. Yet the federal government has not declared a war on alcohol and tobacco, nor has it attempted to create the hysterical reaction to these legal drugs which has accompanied its campaign against heroin and cocaine.

Now, some of you may be saying, hold on, you're using the same tricks as the FBI uses in presenting crime data. You're taking little numbers and dividing them into very big numbers. Well, that's not true if we are in fact assessing the probability of individuals dying from drugs. But, to be fairer let's limit our discussion to people who use drugs. If we average the Drug Abuse Warning Network's numbers for deaths from cocaine and heroin we come up with an average of 400 heroin deaths a year and 200 cocaine deaths a year. There are about 3,500,000 heroin users in the United States, so the number of deaths per 100,000 heroin users are about 11. There are roughly 500,000 heroin addicts in the United States, so the number of deaths per 100,000 heroin addicts are about 80. There are roughly 22,000,000 cocaine users in the United States, so the number of deaths per 100,000 cocaine users are about 0.9 But to be fairer, there are about 5 million regular cocaine users, so their death rate per 100,000 is about 3. What about tobacco and alcohol? Well, 100 million Americans use alcohol. About 150,000 of them die in alcohol-related deaths each year, for a death rate per100,000 of 150 a death rate ten times greater than heroin and 167 times greater than for cocaine. Tobacco's even worse. There are about 60,000,000 tobacco users in the U.S.; about 390,000 of them are killed by tobacco every year, for a death rate of 650 per 100,000, a death rate 59 times greater than for heroin and 722 times greater than for cocaine.

While the numbers seem to belie the urgency of the "drug war," or at the very least suggest a degree of hypocrisy in that war, it is even more troubling to realize that most of these 7,500 or so drug-related deaths that occur each year occur not as a result of the drug used, but as a result of the drug laws. Take the case of heroin. As was pointed out earlier, heroin is a relatively benign drug. As Jeffrey Reiman tells is, "there is no evidence conclusively establishing a link between heroin and disease or tissue degeneration such as that which has been established for tobacco and alcohol" (Reiman, 1998). Why then do people die from using heroin? The answer is that the drug laws make inevitable the unregulated production, sale and use of dangerous drugs. Consumers of heroin and other illicit drugs produced in clandestine laboratories under unregulated conditions are in constant danger of taking drugs which are mixed with other dangerous substances, mixed with other dangerous drugs, and have potencies far in excess of that which the user expects, leading directly to fatal overdoses and poisonings (Nadelmann, 1989: 942). These are deaths directly attributable to the drug laws which force users to buy their supplies in an unregulated, unsafe market. Most drug overdoses result from the ingestion of adulterated drugs, not from user misuse or abuse. In addition, users engage in unsanitary practices related to drug use which results in further death and injury because of the clandestine nature of drug use necessitated by drug prohibition. Heroin addicts share needles, spreading disease and illness. One-quarter of all the AIDS cases in the United States can be directly attributed to the unsafe and unsanitary conditions in which illicit drugs are used (Nadelmann, 1989: 942).

Finally, the drug laws encourage misuse of illicit drugs. Consider the case of cocaine. Studies show that about 22 million Americans are cocaine users. Of that number only about 3 percent are ever going to become problem cocaine abusers (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1987). The real danger from cocaine is a direct result of the drug laws which encourage users to seek a more intense and cheaper high by smoking the drug rather than snorting it. The drug laws drive the price of cocaine up and users innovate to compensate for the expense. They freebase and use crack for greater efficiency, and as we have seen they are far more likely to suffer injury or death smoking the drug than snorting it.

Marijuana

So, it seems that the dangers of heroin and cocaine use, while real enough, are exaggerated by the government and exacerbated by the drug laws themselves. But what of marijuana, the most commonly used illegal drug in the United States and the drug for which, in 1996, 641,642 Americans were arrested, 85% of whom were arrested simple possession (FBI, 1997).

Marijuana comes from the flowers and leaves of the cannabis sativa plant. The dried leaves and flowers are smoked, like tobacco, in cigarettes ("joints") or pipes. All the available evidence we have on marijuana indicates that it is not addictive, nor does a tolerance to the drug develop. In addition there has never been a death resulting from marijuana consumption (Brecher, 1972: 395; Goode, 1984: 99-108). The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, chaired by Pennsylvania's Republican governor Raymond Shafer, which was created by Richard Nixon in 1972, found that:

Marihuana's relative potential for harm to the vast majority of individual users and its actual impact on society does not justify a social policy designed to seek out and firmly punish those who use it. This judgment is based on prevalent use patterns, on behavior exhibited by the vast majority of users and on our interpretations of existing medical and scientific data. This position also is consistent with the estimate by law enforcement personnel that the elimination of use is unattainable (Shafer, et al., 1972: Ch. V).

Further, the Commission found in its examination of the alleged connection between marijuana and violent crime that:

Rather than inducing violent or aggressive behavior through its purported effects of lowering inhibitions, weakening impulse control and heightening aggressive tendencies, marihuana was usually found to inhibit the expression of aggressive impulses by pacifying the user, interfering with muscular coordination, reducing psychomotor activities and generally producing states of drowsiness lethargy, timidity and passivity (Shafer, et al., 1972).

When reviewing the research on medical dangers from marijuana, the commission found:

A careful search of the literature and testimony of the nation's health officials has not revealed a single human fatality in the United States proven to have resulted solely from ingestion of marihuana. Experiments with the drug in monkeys demonstrated that the dose required for overdose death was enormous and for all practical purposes unachievable by humans smoking marihuana. This is in marked contrast to other substances in common use, most notably alcohol and barbiturate sleeping pills (Shafer, et al., 1972).

In fact, even the Drug Enforcement Administration has trouble making marijuana look like a dangerous drug. In September 1988, Francis L. Young, the chief administrative law judge of the DEA reviewed all the medical and scientific evidence on marijuana and came to some startling conclusions (Trebach, 1989):

- There has never been a single documented cannabis-related death.

- About 70 million Americans have used marijuana and there has never been a reported overdose, a striking contrast not just with alcohol but with aspirin.

- Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.

- In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume.

The real danger to marijuana smokers comes from marijuana which has been tainted by government drug control programs, such as the spraying of paraquat and other herbicides on marijuana crops. While some problems are associated with marijuana use, such as injury to the mucous membranes and interrupted attention spans (Murray, 1986:23-55), it scarcely appears to deserve the attention it gets from law enforcement authorities, especially when considered alongside of tobacco, alcohol, and as Judge Young comments, aspirin.

So, were Governor Shafer and his commission and Judge Young and his a colleagues at DEA fooled, or perhaps stoned, at the time they commented on marijuana's apparent inoffensiveness. If you were to believe today's drug warriors, yes they were. Suddenly, in the mid and late 1990s a whole new frightening portrait of the "killer weed" is being put forth by our drug warriors. In this modern version of "Reefer Madness" marjuana causes brain damage, impairs reproduction, is a gateway to the use of "hard" drugs, "flatlines" users, and as one would expect if he or she were "flatlined" can be lethal.

Ever since Harry Anslinger, the Hearst newspaper chain, and other moral entrepreneurs began campaigning for the criminalization of marijuana in the 1930s, a frightening and wholly inaccurate mythology of marijuana has been used to scare citizens into supporting criminal penalties against marijuana. In the 1930s horrifying stories of violent atrocities related to marijuana, all of them untrue, were used by narcotics agents and yellow journalists to justify criminalization. In the 1990s, drug warriors and anti-marijuana "public service" organizations continue to disseminate many of the myths of marijuana usage. These half-truths and outright deceptions are repeated in television public service ads and in DARE classes all across the country. The facts are quite different than the propaganda. Let us take a brief look at the most common myths that constitute 1990s "Reefer Madness."

1. Marijuana causes brain damage. The study most frequently cited to "demonstrate" brain damage is seriously flawed. That study was conducted on four rhesus monkeys. The methodology failed to control for experimental bias and the researcher incorrectly identified a perfectly normal monkey brain as "damaged." A review panel made up of scientists associated with the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences strongly disputed the study results. Subsequent studies of human populations, including a study of heavy users, have never shown evidence of brain damage resulting from marijuana use (Co, et al. 1977. 1229-1230; Kuehnle, et al. 1977: 1231-1232; Institute of Medicine, 1982).

2. Marijuana damages the reproductive system. This claim is based on experimental studies in which the researchers isolated tissue cells in petri dishes and in which researchers dosed animals with near-fatal doses of cannabinoids (the intoxicating components of marijuana). Review of the petri dish experiments rejected them as invalid. In the case of the animal studies, the animals, who fortunately survived the extremely high doses of marijuana returned to normal within 30 days after the administration of the cannabinoids stopped, thereby clearly demonstrating that no permanent damage had occurred. Studies on humans have failed to produce any evidence of an adverse effect on the reproductive system caused by marijuana (Institute of Medicine, 1982; Grinspoon, 1978).

3. Marijuana is a "gateway" drug. There is probably no more enduring myth than the argument that marijuana serves as a "gateway" drug and leads to use of heroin, cocaine and other "hard" drugs. There is no real evidence to support this claim and there is strong evidence, from the actual experiences of real people in actual settings that it is entirely untrue. Take the example of Holland. The Dutch, during the 1970s, partially legalized the sale and use of marijuana. Since marijuana legalization rates of heroin and cocaine use in Holland have declined substantially and continue to decline. Studies done in the United States in the 1970s, after several states "decriminalized" marijuana possession showed a strong negative correlation between marijuana use and alcohol use. A RAND Corporation study in 1993 also measured the "gateway" effect in the United States. The RAND study showed that in states where marijuana possession had been decriminalized and marijuana was more available than in other states, drug-related emergency room visits actually decreased. Rather than being a "gateway" drug it appears that marijuana is a substitute for more dangerous drugs like alcohol, heroin and cocaine (Dennis, 1990: 130; .Rand Corporation, 1993).

4. Marijuana use impairs the human immune system. Once again this myth is based on studies on animals using extremely high doses of cannabinoids. Researchers have been unable to replicate the results in humans, and three studies have actually demonstrated that the use of marijuana and hashish stimulated the immune system in humans (Marijuana and immunity, 1988; Wallace, et al., 1988) .

5. Marijuana is more carcinogenic than tobacco. It is true that marijuana, if smoked, does contain about the same amount of carcinogens as tobacco. But this has to be qualified in two ways. First, tobacco smokers consume much more tobacco than marijuana smokers consumer marijuana. Tobacco has a 90% addiction rate and is the most addictive of all drugs. Second, paraphernalia laws, passed as a adjunct to drug laws, make safe marijuana smoking much more difficult. Water pipes and bongs which remove many of the carcinogens in marijuana smoke are illegal in most states. Additionally, if marijuana were legal it could be consumed in cannabis drinks like bhlang (cannabis tea) which is totally non-carcinogenic (Franklin, 1988; Dreher, 1982).

6. Legalizing marijuana would lead to a massive increase in highway accidents. No one can argue that marijuana, when used to the point of intoxication, does impair psycho-motor functioning. But the truth is that marijuana is much less of a hazard on the roads than alcohol. Studies of traffic accidents have shown that people intoxicated on alcohol and people intoxicated on marijuana and alcohol have about the same number of accidents. But when people using marijuana only are studied the accident rate is much lower. In fact, research in states that have reduced penalties for marijuana possession which have experienced an increase in marijuana use, have shown a decline in alcohol usage and a decline in fatal highway accidents as a result (Gieringer, 1988; Chaloupka & Laixuthai, 1992).

7. Marijuana and "flatliners." In one of the most famous anti-marijuana television commercials, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America (a private organization supported heavily by contributions from the tobacco industry) presented a picture of what they claimed was a normal human brainwave and compared it to what they claimed was a "flat" brainwave from a fourteen-year-old on pot. The Partnership had to pull the ad after complaints from medical researchers. The Partnership had "faked" the marijuana intoxicated brainwave. The truth is that marijuana actually increases alpha wave activity. Alpha waves are associated with relaxation and human creativity (Cotts, 1992. Dornbush, et al., 1971).

8. Today's marijuana is more potent. This myth isn't just the result of bad research, it's the result of lazy research. Researchers mistakenly compared the baseline THC content of marijuana seized by police in the 1970s with contemporary marijuana samples. The problem is that the 1970s marijuana was stored in hot evidence rooms for long periods of time before it was tested for potency. The result was a deterioration and decline in potency before the chemical assay was performed. Independent chemical assays performed under scientific conditions on 1970s marijuana shows a potency equivalent to contemporary "street" marijuana (Mikuirya and Aldrich, 1988).

9. Marijuana impairs short-term memory. Well, of course it does. After all the point of smoking is intoxication. But the claim is blatantly misleading. The "impairment" ceases as soon as the marijuana intoxication ceases. There is no permanent problem with relation to short-term memory (Institute of Medicine, 1982; Dornbush, et al., 1971).

10. There are over a thousand chemicals in marijuana smoke. True, there are, as there are in most things. Coffee for example contains about the same number of chemicals and only 21 of them have been tested on animals, with 16 causing cancer in rodents. Coffee it legal and is generally considered safe (Institute of Medicine, 1982).

11. Marijuana can be lethal. Animal research on high doses of cannabinoids have found a lethal dose, but the ration of cannabinoids necessary to get a person stoned to the amount necessary to kill them 1 to 40,000. Simply put you would have to smoke 40,000 times the dose of marijuana necessary to get high to overdose. This may explain why no one in recorded human history has ever died from marijuana consumption. Incidentally the lethal ratio for alcohol is 1 to 4, making it very easy to understand how over 5,000 people a year die from alcohol overdoses. (Grinspoon, 1978).

The data appear to tell us that the danger from the consumption of illicit drugs, while real, does not justify the panic reaction which the media and government have created. In fact, the dangers of illicit drugs appear to pale in comparison to the dangers from drugs which are tolerated and even endorsed in everyday life. While certainly not related to the issue of the harmfulness of drugs, it is appropriate that in discussing their effects we take note of the potentially positive contributions that illicit drugs could make if it were not for the legal prohibitions controlling them. The fact is that the drug laws, while making drugs more dangerous, also make it virtually impossible for us to make constructive use of these proscribed substances (Nadelmann, 1989; Trebach 1989). Marijuana, for example, has shown itself to be useful in treating disorders such as multiple sclerosis and glaucoma, and in relieving the side effects of chemotherapy for cancer patients. In fact, the Drug Enforcement Administration itself has argued for the medical legalization of marijuana. Heroin is a particularly useful and very safe pain reliever, as is cocaine, both of which are widely used outside of the United States for medical treatment. It appears that in yet another way the drug laws make our drug problems even worse.

Drugs and Crime

One of the most compelling questions which has been raised in the debate on drug policy is whether drug use and drug addiction leads to an increase in crime in the United States. Those who favor drug prohibition point to several important research findings as indicators of a relationship between drugs and crime. For example, James Inciardi's study of narcotic users and non-narcotics users in Miami during the period 1978 and 1981 showed that narcotic users "committed more crimes, engaged in a greater diversity of offenses, and significantly larger proportions committed the more serious crimes of robbery and burglary" (Inciardi, 1986: 129). Other findings have seemingly pointed to similar relationships between drugs and crime. For example, it appears that the degree of drug use is directly related to the degree of criminality. Drug addicts tend to commit substantially fewer crimes prior to the beginning of addiction and after the cessation of addiction than they do during addiction (Gropper, 1985). Among heroin users this effect is pronounced. Daily heroin users seem to commit twice the number of property crimes as regular users (those who use the drug three to five days a week) and five times as many property crimes as irregular (those who use the drug two days a week or less) heroin users. As the level of drug usage decreases, the involvement in crime decreases as well. In addition, research indicates that a history of drug abuse is one of the best predictors of involvement in serious offenses (Gropper, 1985).

These are seemingly damning data. However, in order to be understood and to be relevant to a discussion of drug control policy, they must be put into context. While there is an apparent relationship between the use of drugs and the amount of crime committed by users, there is little evidence that drugs cause crime. Take the case of heroin. A majority of heroin users have been involved in criminal activity prior to their use of heroin (McGlothlin, Anglin, and Wilson, 1978). In fact, heroin addicts engage in criminal activity "proportionally in excess of their numbers in the population before becoming involved with narcotics" (Goode, 1984: 256). While it is easy for policymakers to make the emotional claim that drugs cause crime, a more accurate appraisal of the data is that "drugs do not cause criminality, but that addiction to narcotics like heroin clearly escalates criminal involvement" (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 1991: 144).

There is a further irony in the drugs-crime connection, and that is the fact that the only drug for which a clear causal link with crime has been established is alcohol, a drug which is legal. Columbia University researchers found that alcohol is associated with far more violent crime that all illegal drugs combined. Of all prisoners incarcerated in state prisons for violent offenses, 21% committed their crimes under the influence of alcohol alone. In contrast, only 1 % were high on heroin at the time and only 3% had used cocaine or crack (Califano, 1998). That research is confirmed by federal statistics which show that 30.7% of all crimes are committed "under the influence of" alcohol, while 16.1% of all crimes are committed under the influence of alcohol and other drugs, and, only 8.8% are committed under the influence of illegal drugs alone (Rasmussen, et al., 1994: 106).

So, while there is no evidence that drugs cause crime, the same can not be said for the drug laws. The fact is that the drug laws adversely affect the market for drugs and the conditions under which drugs are purchased and consumed. As a result, the drug laws create a great deal of serious crime with very real, innocent victims:

Prohibition also causes what the media and police misname "drug-related violence." This prohibition-related violence includes all the random shootings and murders associated with black market drug transactions: ripoffs, eliminating the competition, killing informers and suspected informers. Those who doubt that prohibition is responsible for this violence need only note the absence of violence in the legal drug market. For example, there is no violence associated with the production, distribution, and sale of alcohol. Such violence was ended by the repeal of Prohibition (Ostrowski, 1990: 650).

Illegal markets, markets created by the criminal law, breed violence for many reasons.

The profits realized from the sales of illegal drugs are so high that competition becomes intense and turf wars result. Illicit drug entrepreneurs have no recourse to legal institutions to resolve disputes over turf, quality of merchandise, and "brand" names. Because drugs are illegal the law itself makes violence the only dispute resolution mechanism available to drug dealers. The importance of drug laws in creating violence-prone illegal markets was clearly established in major research project looking at the crack market in New York City. The researchers found that 85% of "crack-related" crimes were the direct result of market-related issues, primarily territorial disputes among crack dealers (Goldstein, et. al. 1997).

Despite the fact that term "drug-related crime" implies that it is the pharmacological effects of drugs that cause violent and criminal behavior, the fact is that the research shows that "drug-related crime" is related only tangentially to drugs themselves. The actual cause of "drug-related crime" is the illicit market in drugs created by the drug laws. Research conducted by the New York City Police department makes this clear. Researchers analyzed homicides in New York in which cocaine or crack use had played a role and identified five specific types of relationships between drugs and murder (Salekin and Alexander, 1991):

(1) Psychopharmacological homicides were murders in which the ingestion of a drug or withdrawal symptoms related to addiction caused individuals to become angry, aggressive, irrational or violent, resulting in them committing a murder or being the victim of a killing. This relationship is the one usually thought of when the term "drug-related crime" is used.

(2) Economic-compulsive homicide results from situations in which a drug user engaged in a violent crime in order to obtain money with which to buy drugs. Illicit drug users, particularly those who have developed an addiction to a drug such as heroin, commit crimes such as robbery, burglary, prostitution, and drug dealing as a means of raising funds to support their drug habits. These crimes are rarely violent and rarely result in homicide, but occasionally they do. But this criminal behavior is a direct result of laws prohibiting the sale and use of drugs, not of the drugs themselves. Because the illegality of drugs artificially and dramatically inflates their price, the cost of drug use quickly exceeds the income of the drug user, and soon exhausts his or her resources. A heroin user with a relatively moderate habit will spend about $7500 a year on heroin (McCaghy and Cernkovich, 1987: 461). Individuals who come from poverty-wracked inner-cities are simply not going to be able to pay for the necessities of life (food, clothing, shelter) and heroin. Compare the cost of illegal heroin with the cost of alcohol and tobacco, two legal drugs which are heavily taxed and regulated, and it becomes clear that legal drugs are far cheaper. It is the prohibitionary laws which inflate the price of illicit drugs 40 to 50 times above market value. Drugs do not cause drug users to commit crime. It is the illegality of drugs with the subsequent outrageous prices which can be demanded in the illicit market that causes crime.

(3) Systemic homicides were instances of a drug dealer using violence as a competitive business strategy in the drug black market. Prime examples are competition over turf and infringement of street-brand names for drugs.

(4) Multidimensional homicides were murders that contained more than several events making it difficult to discern what really precipitated the violent act.

(5) Homicides with drug-related dimensions were murders where either the perpetrator and/or the victim were using drugs but reasons other than drugs were considered the primary explanation for the murder.

The researchers concluded that the psychopharmacological model, the model usually identified with the concept of "drug-related crime" and the economic compulsive model, also sometimes identified as a major source of drug-related crime were very rare. Rather it was competition in the drug business, denoted by systemic homicides, which was not related in anyway to the consumption of drugs, which caused most allegedly "drug-related" homicides. Obviously the "cause" of systemic homicides are more appropriately located in the drug laws than in drugs themselves:

...[T]he pharmacological model fits cocaine and crack related crime only rarely. Similarly, the economic-compulsive model applies to only a very small portion of the cocaine and crack related crime. However, the systemic model does account for a substantial amount of crime.... [M]ost cocaine-related homicides are systemic and most systemic homicides are cocaine-related.

...[T]here is still no substantial evidence to support the hypothesis that drugs, in this case cocaine, cause crime" (Salekin and Alexander, 1991: 105, 111).

In Los Angeles, police discovered a similar relationship. Highly lucrative turf wars between street gangs which are related to the drive-by shootings in that city have nothing to do with the ingestion of drugs. Rather, they were caused by the exigencies of the illegal cocaine market and the profits to be realized in that market (F.B.I. says Los Angeles gang has drug cartel ties, 1992: A12). Another study of New York City homicides estimated that 40% of the 414 homicides studied were result of business competition in the drug market, once again not the consumption or effects of the drugs themselves (Galiber, 1990: 831, 849). This market-related violence in the illicit drug market is a replication of precisely the same kind of violence which accompanied alcohol Prohibition as newly created organized crime groups competed for "turf" related to illicit alcohol sales:
 

The murder rate rose with the start of Prohibition, remained high during Prohibition, and then declined for 11 consecutive years when Prohibition ended. The rate of assaults with a firearm rose with Prohibition and declined for 10 consecutive years after Prohibition (Ostrowski, 1989: 1).

But illicit market created competition and the inflated price for drugs caused by

prohibition is not the only criminogenic effect of the drug laws. Because drugs are illegal, purchasers are forced into a criminal underworld to buy drugs, thereby making them potential victims of crime and bringing them into contact with criminal actors with whom they would ordinarily never have contact (Kaplan, 1983: 81-83). Crimes ancillary to drug use take place because of this relationship, a relationship entirely attributable to the illegality of drugs.

While no one can guarantee that repeal of the drug laws would make the underground market disappear entirely, common sense should indicate that reduced profits resulting from legal drugs would shrink the size of that market and reduce the incentive for violence in direct proportion to the reduction in market size and profit.

Law Enforcement Strategies in the War on Drugs

In his book Deviant Behavior, criminologist Charles McCaghy (1985: 298) provides the most concise and direct evaluation of the war on drugs in the criminological literature:

In baseball a player with three strikes is out. But after three dismal failures in trying to stop the use of alcohol, opiates, and marihuana, the U.S. government still stands at the plate determined to smash the hell out of the drug problem. Unlike ballplayers, who adjust to the peculiarities of various pitchers and who put past experience to use, U.S. legislators subscribe to a single-minded philosophy - if you don't hit it, you're not swinging hard enough.

Ever since Richard Nixon declared on heroin in 1969 and Ronald Reagan proclaimed yet another war on drugs in 1980, the federal government has been swinging harder and striking out with greater regularity than ever before. In 1969, Nixon opened his drug war with expenditure of $65 million; by 1982 The Reagan drug war had escalated that cost to $1.65 billion; and today, the Clinton administration had budgeted $17.1 billion to continue that war (U.S. Congress, 1976; Office of National Drug Control Policy, 1992: 214; 1998: 5). At the moment it costs about $8.6 billion a year to incarcerate convicted drug law violators (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997: 10-11). According to a 1998 report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism the economic costs of drug abuse in the United States were about $97.66 billion in 1992, of which 60% or about $59 billion were related to the costs of drug-related law enforcement and incarceration (NIDA, 1998: 1-6). At the state and local levels, law enforcement agencies are expending more than 20% of their total budgets on drug enforcement (Nadelmann, 1989: 940). In 1973, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports show 328,670 arrests for drug law violations. In 1996, the number increased to 1,506,200. The 379,700 inmates who have been imprisoned on drug charges make up 23% of all adults in state prison and an astounding 59.5% of all adults in federal institutions (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997: 10-11). In 1980 8% of all inmates, or 51,950 of 502,000 incarcerated adults were in prison for drug law violations. The 80% increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995 was almost entirely due to drug convictions (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997). Today, the United States imprisons six times as many people as do other Western industrial democracies (Currie, 1998: 61).

Drug law violators receive much longer sentences than most other convicted criminals. For example, the average time served in a federal prison for a drug law violation is 78 months, compared to 67months for rape, 51 months for burglary, 50 months for aggravated assault, and 37 months for auto theft (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997: 476).

Measures of Success in the War on Drugs

With all of this law enforcement activity, all of these arrests and incarcerations, has anything changed? From 1977 to 1989, during the first twelve years of the Reagan-Bush drug war, the price of a kilo of cocaine has dropped 80% and there was ten times as much cocaine on the streets as there was when the drug war started (Benoit, 1989: 33). During the same period the purity of cocaine on the streets has quintupled, and the profits from the sale of cocaine have climbed to an estimated $50 billion a year (Benoit, 1989: 33). Precisely the same effects were noted with regard to heroin. Today, the international drug trade generates about $400 billion annually. That constitutes about 8% of all international trade, making it an industry equal to the international textile and automobile industries (Associated Press, 1997). The drug trade apears to have survived the drug war quite nicely.

Drug Use and the Drug War

Has the war on drugs reduced drug use? Those who support a punitive approach to drug enforcement argue that the large numbers of arrests, significant increases in incarceration rates, and long prison terms should cause a decline in drug use. But the facts do not support this claim.

First, the number of heavy drug users in the United States is unchanged. About 4 to 6 million Americans continue to be heavy drug users (Jehl, 1994: D20). In addition marijuana use continues to rise in all regions of the country, cocaine use is stable, and heroin use is rising markedly in the Southwest, West and Southern regions of the country. The total number of monthly drug users is about 11.4 million and Americans still spend about $49 billion a year on drug consumption still stands at $49 billion annually ("Drug use increasing despite Federal war," 1994: 16A).

Second, recent surveys of use patterns among high school students show increasing numbers of students using marijuana (up from 21.2% in 1992 to 26%) and LSD (up from 5.6% in 1992 to 6.8%) (Treaster, 1994: A1, A14). About half of all high school students in 1995 tried an illegal drug prior to graduation (Johnson, et al., 1996: 42). 82% of high school seniors say they find marijuana "fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain, a percentage that has been about the same each year since 1975 (Johnson, et al., 1996: 270).

Even the most ardent supporters of the war on drugs admit that it has not and cannot eliminate drug abuse or addiction (Kleber, 1994: 361). In the last 20 years the government has spent almost $500 billion fight the drug war. The net impact of those expenditures have been that in the past twenty years use levels rose and the number of drug arrests and the amounts of drugs seized increased with regularity every year. In that twenty year period an average of 750,000 people were incarcerated for violating drug laws each year at an average cost of $25 billion, a cost which reached $61 billion by 1991 (Drucker and Arno, 1992: A22; Treaster, 1992: Sec. 4: 7; Ostrowski, 1989: 6). Researchers note that the legal threats accompanying drug use have little or no impact on use levels, describing the legal threat as "very weak" (Erickson and Cheung, 1992: 258). Fagan and Spelman (1994: A 34) have argued persuasively that market forces, not law enforcement efforts impact patterns of drug usage. They argue that legal institutions have almost impact on drug market.

In fact, there is a credible argument to be made that the existence of drug laws and the intensive enforcement campaign accompanying them may stimulate drug use and may be responsible for the production of larger numbers of addicts that we might otherwise have had. Mishan, for example, suggests that the crucial factor in spreading addiction is the enormous profits in the drug trade made possible by the illegality of drugs (Mishan, 1990). As long as drugs are illegal virtually every addict becomes a drug salesman in order to raise sufficient funds to pay for his or her habit (Zion, 1993: A27). In addition to the profits that can be realized from the sale of illegal drugs, illegality also stimulates experimentation, particularly among adolescents by raising the specter of the "forbidden fruit" which simply must be tasted in order to fully experience life (Ostrowski, 1989: 1).

We know that 75,000,000 Americans, or 37% of the population over the age of twelve have used illegal drugs. We also know that 6 percent of the American population are current users (Walker, 1994: 255). About 22 million Americans have used cocaine, and 3 million Americans have used cocaine in the last 30 days (Eitzen and Zinn, 1992: 558). There are about 18 to 35 million regular marijuana users in the United States and five million regular heroin users (Trebach and Engelsman, 1989: 40). Furthermore, it is probable that these are gross underestimates of drug use because the instruments utilized to reach these conclusions miss a sizeable segment of society altogether. High school drop-outs, the homeless, and inner- city youth simply slip through the researchers' nets and there is some reason to believe that drug use may be higher among these groups than in the general population.

Why has there been so little progress made after such a huge expenditure of money and after so many arrests and incarcerations? As McCaghy (1985: 298) suggested, it is because present drug enforcement policies do not work and can not be made to work even with dramatic increases in resources and personnel. The government's strategy in the war on drugs hinges on three basic policies: eradication, interdiction and street-level drug enforcement associated with domestic drug crackdowns.

The Failure of Interdiction

Let us first consider interdiction as a strategy. Interdiction assumes that with sufficient resources drugs can be stopped from entering the United States by controlling the borders. Using the most optimistic claims of interdiction success about 10-15% of the heroin and about 30% of the cocaine in international drug shipments is seized. In order for there to be any impact on the drug market, about 75% of these shipments would have to interdicted. Under present conditions drug traffickers earn gross profits of about 300% despite interdiction efforts (Associated Press, 1997).

The difficulty with interdiction strategies can be illustrated by taking a quick look at the cocaine market. The entire U.S. demand for cocaine, the largest demand in the world, can be satisfied by thirteen truck loads of cocaine a year. Considering that the U.S. has 88,633 miles of shoreline, 7,500 miles of international borders with Canada and Mexico and 300 ports of entry, finding 13 truck loads of anything is virtually impossible (Frankel, 1997: A1).

As the numbers reported above indicate, interdiction has failed with regard to both heroin and cocaine. The only minor success that the interdiction campaign can claim is with marijuana, a bulky commodity which is difficult to transport. But the net effect of that success has been a even bigger problem. Marijuana smugglers and growers in other countries have simply moved to cocaine and heroin as substitutes for marijuana, meaning even more of those drugs are being imported to the U.S., and marijuana production in the United States has increased dramatically in the last ten years. A Rand Corporation evaluation study of interdiction determined that "even massively stepped up drug interdiction efforts are not likely to greatly affect the availability of cocaine and heroin in the United States" (Reuter, Crawford and Cace, 1988). Consider this simple fact: the criminal justice system cannot keep drugs out of maximum security prisons, much less seal the nation's borders to drug trafficking.

The Failure of Crop Eradication Policies

Efforts directed at crop eradication in producing countries have failed miserably. The reasons for this should be obvious. First of all, drugs like heroin, cocaine, and marijuana can be grown and processed in a wide variety of locations, making crop eradication programs impossible to implement. Even if a particular locale is targeted and eradication programs are successfully carried out there, growers in other locations will merely make up for the deficit in supply. If heroin supplies in the Golden Crescent (Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan) are targeted, opium growers in the Golden Triangle (Thailand, Burma, Laos) or in Mexico will simply grow more and supply the demand. These three regions have had no problem in supplying the demand for heroin for the last century, although the relative importance of each fluctuates with enforcement efforts. The case of cocaine is even more instructive. In theory, cocaine should be the easiest of the illicit crops to subject to an eradication strategy. It grows only in South America and principally in Peru and Bolivia (with Colombia, Ecaudor and Brazil making small contributions to the supply). At the moment the world's entire cocaine supply is grown on 700 square miles of arable land. Even so it would still be prohibitively costly to eradicate the crop. But the fact is that cocaine, even though it can only be grown in certain areas of South America, can be grown on 2,500,000 square miles of arable land (Nadelmann, 1989: 945). Eradication as a control strategy is doomed to failure by Mother Nature herself.

In addition, crop eradication programs in producer countries are very difficult to arrange and carry out. In those countries there is well-organized political opposition to these programs. Obviously, crop eradication cannot be carried out without the support and active participation of the country involved. The production of cocaine and opium brings in billions of dollars in hard currency to impoverished countries and puts money in the pockets of millions of cultivators, processors and smugglers. In Bolivia, for example, 98% of the country's foreign exchange earnings from goods and services comes from the cocaine market (Office of Technology Assessment, 1993). In Colombia, it is estimates that $7 billion in drug profits are repatriated to that country each year. All of Colombia's legitimate exports only repatriate $7.6 billion (Trade and Environment Database, 1997: 4). These governments, therefore, are extremely reluctant to give their approval to eradication efforts, and even when they do, they are often unable to provide the logistical support necessary for success.

Peru is an example of another problem. The prime cocaine growing areas are not under government control but rather under the influence of the Sendero Luminoso guerrilla group. The government of Peru, even if it wished to support an eradication program, is in no position to do so. The same could be said of opium growing areas in the Golden Triangle, most of which are ruled by renegade warlords beyond the reach and control of the government (Lyman and Potter, 1991).

A word needs to said about domestic crop eradication programs as well. Efforts to eradicate the marijuana crop in the United States have not only failed but have made the marijuana industry stronger and more dangerous than ever before (Potter, Gaines and Holbrook, 1990). In Kentucky, where the state participates in a federally-funded program to find and burn the marijuana crop, the net effect of the eradication program has been to spread marijuana cultivation throughout the state, increase the quantity of marijuana being produced, and increase the quality of the marijuana being produced. In addition, the eradication program has taken what was essentially a "Mom and Pop" industry a few years ago and turned it into a highly organized criminal cartel which is not only dangerous but also enjoys a high degree of community support in the marijuana belt counties.

One additional concern with regard to crop eradication programs is that in attempting to comply with U.S. demands for domestic control of drugs, source countries often engage in programs that are environmentally disastrous. Colombia is a case in point. In order to meet U.S. demands to control coca production, the Colombian government has initiated a program of aerial spraying which drops herbicides on over 100,000 acres of land each year (Embassy of Colombia, 1998). As a result, Colombian peasants, dependent on the coca crop as their only source of income have moved into the Amazon rainforests. The movement of coca growers to rainforest has resulted in the clearing of 1.75 million acres of rainforest (Trade and Environment Database, 1997: 4-8). This is important because Colombia's forests accounts for about 10% of the world's biodiversity. In fact it is the second most biodiverse country in world (Trade and Environment Database, 1997). Despite the obvious problems, the aerial coca fumigation program in Colombia is a dismal failure. In 194 coca production consumed 111,000 acres, by 1998 that production had expanded to 195,000 acres (Reuters, 1998).

In addition to aerial spraying program, the illegality of cocaine manufacture in Colombia is also a source of severe environmental damage. Cocaine manufacturers hide their laboratories deep in the Colombian forests. This obviously makes it impossible to dispose of hazardous wastes associated with the refining of cocaine. As a result some 10 million liters of sulfuric acid, 16 million liters of ethyl ether, 8 million liters of acetone and 40-770 million liters of kerosene are poured directly into the ground and into streams (Trade and Environment Database, 1997).

The Failure of Domestic Drug Crackdowns

Street-level drug enforcement efforts in the United States have also shown little hope of success in the drug war. Intensive street-level law enforcement efforts are very expensive. Although they result in the arrests of thousands of low-level drug dealers and users, they have little impact on the other elements involved in illicit drug supply. While some of these enforcement efforts have been able to claim "temporary and transitory success" they have not impacted at all on the availability of illegal drugs (Chaiken, 1988). In fact, all illegal drug prices have fallen, purity has increased, the supply has increased, and use levels have increased in jurisdictions where intensive street-level enforcement has been tried. In addition, crimes ancillary to drug trafficking have increased in almost every case where saturation enforcement strategies have been utilized.
 

The classic case study of draconian law enforcement efforts being employed against drug use and drug trafficking is New York's experience with the infamous "Rockefeller Drug Law." In 1973, New York law was amended as part of an all-out drug war in that state. Individuals caught selling drugs were subjected to mandatory prison terms of fifteen to twenty-five years. In 1977, the New York Bar Association appointed a commission to evaluate New York's "drug war." They found that the state had spent $32 million in implementing the laws, but the net effect of the three years of intensive enforcement was negligible. There was no reduction in drug-related crime or in heroin usage, and there were ample supplies of drugs still on the streets. The commission declared the law an expensive failure (Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 1978). Despite these findings, New York has tripled its prison capacity since 1982 and spends more per capita on corrections than any state in the country. Sixty percent of the prison population is serving time for nonviolent crimes: 44 percent of new felons each year are for drug offenses. In 1995, Republican Governor George Pataki, despite a conservative reputation decided the state had to choose between fighting violent crime and fighting the drug war. He hopes drug rehabilitation, community service, and electronic monitoring offer alternatives to expensive prison sentences.

Let us be very clear, also on who it is who gets arrested in drug crackdowns. Although drug war rhetoric claims that drug enforcement targets "Drug Kingpins," large-scale smugglers, and organized crime figures, the fact is that in 1996, 75% (1,131,156) drug arrests in the United States were for possession and only 25% (374,044) were for the sale or manufacture of a drug (Office of National Drug Control Policy, 1998). That later number of also highly misleading. The average drug "pusher" is not a "Kingpin." In fact the average dealer holds a low-wage job and sells drugs part-time only to fund his or her own drug use (Reuter, et al., 1990: 49-50). Fifty-five percent of drug defendants in federal cases are low-level offenders, such as mules or street-dealers. Only 11% of those prosecuted by the federal officials are classified as high-level dealers (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 1995: Table 18). In the case of crack convictions federal prosecutions are even more skewed. Only 5.5% of federal crack defendants are considered high-level dealers (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 1995: Table 18). By 1993, nearly 17% of the inmates in the federal prison system were low-level drug-offenders with no prior criminal history (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994: 3).

Another aspect of intensified street-level drug enforcement which deserves attention is the militarization of American law enforcement which has resulted from the drug war. Today, the National Guard has more drug agents that the DEA has special agents. Every day in the United States the National Guard is involved in 1,300 drug-related operations (Munger, 1997). In addition, 89% of American police departments have created paramilitary units and 46% have bene trained by active duty armed forces members. These units are primarily used in serving no-knock search warrants, n other words breaking into private homes. Today, about 20% of the U.S. police departments use paramilitary units to patrol urban neighborhoods (Kraska and Kappeler, 1997).

Finally, there is a "civil" side to street-level drug enforcement, asset forfeiture. In theory, the asset forfeiture laws allow the state to seize "ill-gotten" gains from criminals, particularly drug traffickers so that they are denied the spoils of their crime. Unfortunately, while asset forfeiture is common, the theory behind it is bankrupt. In a forfeiture case a "civil action" is initiated against the property itself, not the individual. Therefore very few constitutional protections which are normal in criminal cases apply to forfeiture cases. For example, there is no presumption of innocence, no exclusion of hearsay, and no right to an attorney. In addition the burden of proof is reversed in a forfeiture case. The government only has to establish probably cause that the property involved is subject to the forfeiture laws. The property owner must prove that the property is "innocent" (United States v. Property at 4492 S. Livonia Rd., 889 F.2d 1258. 1267-1268 (2d Cir. 1989); Lassiter v. Dept. of Social Services, 452 U.S. 18, 26-27 (1981)). Here is no legal requirement that the property owner involved be prosecuted for any criminal act. Forfeiture can move ahead even if the property owner is arrested, tried and acquitted of the charges (United States v. One Assortment of 89 Firearms, 465 .S. 354, 361 (1984); United States vs. Real Property Located at 6625 Zumierz Drive, 845 F. Supp. 725, 733 (1994)). Eighty percent of the people who forfeit property were never charged with a crime (Schneider and Flaherty, 1991). In fact, innocent ownership is not even a legal defense to asset forfeiture. Property may be seized even if its owner had not knowlege of illegal activties (Bennis v. Michigan, US 116 S. Ct. 994, 134 L.Ed.2d 68, 74-79 (1996)). In 1994, federal forfeitures totaled $730 million (Heilbroner, 1994: 70). Forfeiture has become a high priority in the drug war and the ability of law enforcement agencies to profit from their enforcement activities has seriously compromised the due process goals of the criminal justice system. As a result of large federal block grants for forfeiture activities and the profits from forfeiture itself law enforcement agencies have begun targeting potential assets rater than probable crimes. In addition, police department policies which often make salary levels, continued employment, new equipment and total budget dollars available to drug units dependent on forfeiture activities have changed the fundamental nature of law enforcement and the basic relationship between the police and the public (Blumenson and Nilsen, 1998).

Racism and the Drug War

The drug war, and particularly intensive street-level drug enforcement has been blatantly racist. African-Americans represent 37% of all drug arrests. Forty-two percent of drug law violators in federal correctional facilities and 60% of those in state prison are black. Yet only 11% of the nation's drug users are black (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1997: 19; Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1997: 382).

In addition to being subject to arrest in disproportionate numbers to their use of drugs, blacks are also far more likely to get prison sentences for drug law violations. Overall, 54% of African-Americans get sentenced to prison as opposed to 34% of whites for the same drug offenses. In drug possession cases 44% of blacks get prison time as compared to 29% of whites, and in trafficking cases 60% of blacks go to prison as opposed to 37% of whites (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1996: 501). Between 1990 and 1996 the number of blacks in the federal prison system for violent and property crimes decreased by 726, while the number of blacks in prison for drug offenses increased by 12,852 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998: 13).

Much of this horrifying racial disparity results from federal laws specifically targeting crack. Crack cocaine is the only controlled substance for which a first-time possession offense triggers a federal mandatory minimum sentence. Being in possession of 5 grams of crack carried a mandatory 5 year minimum. Simple possession of any quantity of cocaine hydrochloride, the substance required to produce crack is a federal misdemeanor punishable by a maximum sentence of one year (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 1995: iii). In 1986, prior to mandatory minimums for crack offenses the average federal drug sentence for African-Americans was 11% higher than that of whites. By 1990, the average federal sentence for blacks was 49% higher than for whites (Meierhoefer, 1992: 20). Under federal mandatory minimums, first-time crack offenders and low-level crack dealers receive an average sentence of 10 years and six months. That sentence in 59% longer than the average prison sentence for rapists; 38% longer than the average prison sentence for those convicted of weapons offenses; and, only 18% shorter than the average prison sentence for those convicted of murder (U.S. Sentencing Commission, 1995: 150). At present levels of incarceration, a newborn black male has a 1 in 4 chance of being sentenced to prison during their lifetime compared to a 1 in 23 chance for a newborn white male (Bonczar and Beck, 1997).

The War on Drugs as War Against Women

In addition to the blatant racism of the drug war one of its most devastating aspects has been its impact on women in general and minority women in particular..Between 1985 and 1996, female drug arrests have increased by 95%, while male drug arrests have increased by 55.1 (UCR, 1985 and 1997) For example, between 1989 and 1994, the group suffering the greatest increase in correctional system control are black women between the ages of 20 and 29. The increase in incarceration, parole and probation rates for these women totaled 78%. Between 1986 and 1991, black women of all ages represented suffered a 828% increase in state incarceration on drug charges, the highest rate of all ethnic and gender groups (Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 1994: 523).

A study by the Correctional Association of New York, focusing on the arrests and prosecutions of "drug mules" in Queens, New York, illustrates the scope of this problem. The study found a drastic increase in the number of women arrested and subsequently charges with felony narcotics offenses. Many of these women were first time offenders arrested for attempting to smuggle drugs through JFK International Airport, a major entry point for international travelers. As a result of the combined effect of New York's "Rockefeller Drug laws" and the accessorial liability statute, women suspected of being drug couriers in the employ smuggling syndicates faced mandatory prison sentences of 15 and 25 years-to-life on their first felony arrests. If they were also charged under Federal laws they faced the additional risk of a 50 years-to-life federal sentence (Correctional Association of New York, 1992). Investigations determined that many of these women were either unwitting agents of drug smugglers or were women only marginally involved in drug smuggling operations. Because of the severe sentences they faced, most of these women did not go trial. Instead they accepted plea bargains carrying sentences of 3 years-to-life, a sentence totally out of proportion with other first-time felony sentences. Many of these women were mothers who were either unable or unwilling to be separated from their children for potentially very long times if they were convicted of the original charge. In fact, 80% of all women prisoners in the United States are the sole caretakers of children under the age of 18 (Greenfield and Harper, 1991). As a result, the study shows that many charged women drug couriers pleaded guilty even if they had valid defenses or were innocent of the charges being proffered (Correctional Association of New York, 1992).

In these drug courier cases, and many others, women are disproportionately impacted by restrictions on judicial discretion in mandatory sentencing drug statutes. The inability of the defendant to present evidence of mitigating circumstances in such cases in particularly crippling (Letwin, 1994: 2). Women are further disadvantaged by drug laws which fail to make a distinction between major participants in drug organizations and minor or ancillary players; drug laws which fail to recognize first-time offender status; and, drug laws which fail to account for individual characteristics of defendants. As a result of the rate of incarceration for women has grown dramatically, increasing by 275% from 1980 to 1992 in the U.S. as a whole, and increasing by 433% ( from 2,370 to 12,633) between 1986 and 1991 for drug defendants incarcerated in state prison. By 1991, one out of every three women incarcerated in a state prison was there as the result of a drug convictions, up from 1 in 8 in 1986 (Mauer and Huling, 1995).

But the impact of the drug war on women does not end with women as drug defendants. With drug policy emphasizing enforcement and punishment rather than education and rehabilitation the impact on families is profound. When fathers are incarcerated on drug trafficking, or more likely drug possession charges, it is the women who are left as single heads of households to raise the children. When male children are arrested for drug sales it is their mothers who face the brunt of the civil forfeiture laws, losing possessions, what meager funds they may have accumulated in bank accounts, and facing almost certain eviction from their domiciles. When male addicts share needles because of a policy that makes the provision of clean needles a criminal offense, it is the women they sleep with who face the risk of acquiring the HIV infection.

For those women who are not drug couriers or traffickers, but merely users with addictions, legal discrimination is most intense. These women face not only the threat of arrests for possessions but mandatory reporting requirements and child abuse and neglect laws which can deprive them of access to medical care, pre-natal care and even drug counseling and treatment. Pregnant and new mothers face the danger of criminal prosecution on charges ranging from drug distribution to assault and murder. This discourages any effort to seek drug treatment, pre-natal care, or even post-natal care for their babies. This problem is even greater for African-American women. In cases where levels of drug use are similar or equal during pregnancy, black women are 10 times more likely than white women to be reported to child welfare agencies (Neuspiel, 1996). These kinds of criminal charges are the most discriminatory of all, excluding men from participation at all and endangering the health of mothers and children far more egregiously than any pattern of drug use ever could.

Drug War Blowback

As if it were not enough that these drug war strategies have failed, they have also created a number of serious problems that would not exist if it were not for the intensive enforcement efforts against drugs. First, intensive drug enforcement efforts inevitably lead to corruption of law enforcement and other criminal justice personnel. The immense amounts of money generated by the drug trade makes it possible to offer substantial inducements to enforcement personnel to overlook activities by specific traffickers and groups. Political and police corruption in America is certainly nothing new. Official corruption related to liquor and gambling laws has been well documented in virtually every American city during the early years of the century when alcohol prohibition was still in effect. The same type of prohibition-style corruption is rampant today in drug enforcement. In fact, half of all police officers convicted as a result of FBI initiated corruption investigations between 1993 and 1997 were involved in drug-related offenses (GAO, 1998: 35). According to a report in the New York Times, more than 100 drug corruption cases involving law enforcement officers are prosecuted in federal and state courts each year (Shenon, 1988: A12). That 1998 GAO report also notes:

... several studies and investigations of drug-related police corruption found on-duty police officers engaged in serious criminal activities, such as (1) conducting unconstitutional searches and seizures; (2) stealing money and/or drugs from drug dealers; (3) selling stolen drugs; (4) protecting drug operations; (5) providing false testimony; and (6) submitting false crime reports (GAO, 1998: 8).

The GAO report on police corruption and drug enforcement cited examples of major police corruption problems in Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Savannah and Washington, D.C. (GAO, 1998: 36-37).In Miami over 75 Miami police officers were under investigation for involvement in criminal activities including drug dealing, robbery, theft and murder. One investigation in particular revealed several officers who had ambushed drug dealers bringing cocaine into Miami. This investigation revealed that officers loaded the cocaine into marked police vehicles. Duffel bags full of cocaine were reportedly "stacked to the ceilings of the patrol car." Three of the suspects, in an effort to escape, jumped into the river and drowned (Lyman and Potter, 1998: 140). The Miami case is not atypical.

In New Orleans, 11 police officers were convicted for taking almost $100,000 in bribes from undercover agents to protect a cocaine supply warehouse holding 286 pounds of cocaine. The New Orleans investigation was terminated when a witness was murdered on orders from a New Orleans police officer (GAO, 198: 36).

In Philadelphia the GAO found that:

Since 1995, 10 police officers from Philadelphia's 39^th District have been charged with planting drugs on suspects, shaking down drug dealers for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and breaking into homes to steal drugs and cash (GAO, 1998: 37).

Just as disturbing as the cases of police corruption uncovered by the GAO are it is even more unsettling to observe the impact of the drug war on patterns of police corruption. The GAO found that the war on drugs had changed police corruption in two major ways. First, with regard to motive, the GAO found traditional patterns of greed, but the report also found growing patterns of vigilantism:

Although profit was found to be a motive common to traditional and drug-related police corruption, New York City's Mollen Commission identified power and vigilante justice as two additional motives for drug-related police corruption (GAO, 1998: 3).

In addition, the GAO suggested that the war on drugs was resulting in more systematized and organized patterns of police corruption:

The most commonly identified pattern of drug-related corruption involved small groups of officers who protected and assisted each other in criminal activities, rather than the traditional pattern of non-drug-related police corruption that involved just a few isolated individuals or systemic corruption pervading an entire police department or precinct (GAO, 1998: 3).
 

Beirne and Messerschmidt (1991: 247) report other examples of police corruption:

In several rural Georgia areas certain sheriffs accepted bribes of $50,000 each to allow drug smugglers to land planes on stretches of abandoned highway.

A member of the Justice Department's Organized Crime Strike Force provided drug dealers with the identities of government informants for $210,000.

An FBI agent accumulated over $850,000 in money, real estate, and other property for not only allowing drug dealers to sell cocaine, but selling it himself.

A customs agent was paid $50,000 for each marijuana-packed automobile he allowed to cross from Mexico into the U.S. without inspection.

While we usually think of corruption in relation to police officers on the street and local prosecutors, the drug war has managed to offer incentives for corruption that reach to the very highest levels of the United States government. It is indeed ironic that the very agencies of government who are beating the drums loudest in the war on drugs have also established an infamous record of accepting assistance from and providing logistical support to some of the largest drug trafficking syndicates in the world. Consider the following examples (Chambliss and Block, 1981; Lernoux, 1984; Lyman and Potter, 1999; McCoy, 1972; Mills, 1986; Simon, 1998):

For more than three decades the U.S. government has directly supported the opium-growing warlords of the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia. Not only does the government provide them with military assistance and arms under the guise of fighting communism, but it has also protected corrupt governments, such as that of Thailand, which nurture the heroin industry.

Immediately following World War II, the OSS, predecessor to the CIA struck a deal with Corsican organized crime groups in Marseilles to break a dockworkers strike which was impeding French efforts to put down a rebellion in the colony of Vietnam. In return the Corsicans were given carte blanche to refine heroin in Marseilles and import to the United states. He result of this deal was the infamous French Connection.

During the Vietnam war and for some time thereafter, CIA-funded Laotian tribesmen were used to refine opium poppies into heroin. A CIA front company, Air America, was used to transport the heroin out of Southeast Asia.

The CIA has helped to establish money-laundering facilities for the Southeast Asian heroin connection. The Nugan Hand Bank, established in Australia in 1973, laundered funds for both the CIA and the Southeast Asian heroin traffickers.

CIA associates in the Caribbean, including the paymaster for the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, played key roles in the operations of Castle Bank, a Florida money laundry for organized crime's drug money.

Another Florida bank with strong intelligence- community connections, the Bank of Perrine, has been used by the Colombian cartels to launder money from their burgeoning cocaine business.

The CIA and organized crime played a key role in establishing and operating the World Finance Corporation, a Florida-based company involved in laundering drug money and supporting terrorist activities in the early 1970s.

Mexican heroin magnate Alberto Sicilia-Falcon not only claimed to have been a CIA agent operating on orders from Washington but also had access to classified CIA documents and had a chief enforcer with CIA ties.

The world's largest opium merchant, Chang Chi- fu, operated as a CIA "client." Another heroin czar, Li Wen-huan, was given direct financial and logistical assistance by the CIA. A third major heroin trafficker, Lu Hus-shui, was protected from a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation on orders from the CIA.

In the 1980s, the CIA provided assistance to the mujahadeen rebels fighting a civil war in Afghanistan. As part of the effort, U.S. supplied funds, supplies, and technical assistance were used to re-open the heroin pipeline out of Afghanistan through Pakistan which had been severed during the war.

The CIA effectively blocked a major DEA investigation of drug trafficking and money laundering by Manuel Noriega in Panama, and the State Department blocked an investigation targeting the government of the Bahamas, after evidence was developed that the government drug traffickers were making a deal to use the islands as a safe haven for both drugs and money.

In the 1980s, U.S. government intelligence agents working with the Nicaraguan contras in an attempt to overthrow the government of Nicaragua (1) solicited funds for the operation from the Medellin Cartel; (2) provided logistical air support for cocaine flights to United States and allowed the cartels use of contra landing strips in Costa Rica; (3) arranged State department payments to companies owned by drug traffickers, ostensibly as part of a humanitarian relief operation; and allowed the contras to deal in large quantities of cocaine themselves. Recent investigations have revealed that a sizeable portion of the cocaine being sold to Los Angeles-based street gangs for the production of crack came from the contras.

Closely related to the spread of drug-related corruption has been the added impetus the drug war has given to organized crime. The fact is that the drug laws and intensified enforcement strategies related to the drug war have strengthened organized crime and created a whole new generation of prohibition-conceived organized crime groups (Lyman and Potter, 1999). Drug enforcement is by its very nature highly selective and discriminatory. It targets only those easiest to catch and most visible to the police. Those few dealers who are arrested are the least important, smallest operators. The net effect of drug enforcement is to weed out the inefficient and slothful drug dealers giving organized crime an exclusive monopoly in drug trafficking. And the mob makes the most of its monopoly, raking in profits of $78 billion a year from drugs, and conducting their business with virtual immunity. Compare that figure with organized crime's profits of about $200 million in the bootlegging of tobacco, a legal drug, and it is easy to understand why organized crime is such a strong supporter of drug prohibition (Nadelmann, 1989: 941). The only reason organized crime can realize such enormous profits in the drug market is the fact that drugs are illegal. The actual cost of growing and producing illegal drugs is modest, but the criminal surcharge that organized crime can add to the cost of drugs, because it competes with no legitimate suppliers, is staggering. The drug laws, in effect, act like a government-sponsored subsidy to organized crime, a subsidy worth billions of dollars a year.

Finally, the war on drugs is beginning to spill out of its inner-city boundaries. The zeal to win the war against drugs has caused the courts to abrogate the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Increasingly, the courts have cast a lenient eye on whether forced-entry, no-knock raids are necessary to protect evidence and to avoid violence. In June1995, the Supreme Court decided that school administrations should not be bound by the niceties of presumption of innocence if drugs are the issue. A seventh-grader in Vernonia, Oregon refused to sign a form agreeing to submit to random urine tests to detect drug use by members of the football team. "The government may not ransack every house in a neighborhood on the off-chance that it will make a few interesting discoveries. To search a 13-year-old's room, or his pockets, the police need probably cause to think he's broken the law. But to inspect his urine, the court now says, school officials need nothing beyond a vague fear of drugs ... The policy may not have a great effect on drug abuse among adolescents, but it will teach them that they have no rights of privacy that the government is obliged to respect" (Chapman, 1995: 27).

So, not only have the strategies designed to control drug use and drug trafficking been unsuccessful, but the very act of vigorously enforcing the drug laws has created social problems far more serious than any caused by drug use alone. And let us be clear on this point. Drug control policy has not failed for lack of resources, funding, legal powers, or adequate manpower. It has failed because the problem is not amenable to a criminal justice solution. As the Pennsylvania Crime Commission concluded in its 1987 report on organized crime:

It should be understood that, short of creating a police state, there is no evidence to suggest that vast expansion of investigative efforts would lead to the eradication of illegal drugs.

Making Peace in the War on Drugs

The list of failures of our present drug control initiatives could go on endlessly. We could talk about the inconsistency in the drug laws. The two most dangerous drugs in America - tobacco and alcohol - are freely available, while less dangerous drugs lead to felony convictions. We could talk about the threats to our basic constitutional rights created by questionable police tactics emanating from the difficulties of drug enforcement. We could talk about the disrespect for the law, in general, bred by drug enforcement. But the facts are straightforward and relatively simple. Law enforcement efforts directed at the drug problem have failed and will continue to fail.

We have allowed the drug problem to be framed by political leaders and law enforcement officials as strictly a criminal justice system problem. As we have seen, the problem of drugs is far more complex than this simple approach. While it is beyond the purview of this present discussion to fully explore the alternatives to a criminal justice approach to drugs, we can take the time to raise a few issues.

First, there appears to be a much greater chance of success in reducing the incidence of drug use through drug education and drug treatment programs than through the use of the criminal law. Everything we know about drug treatment and education programs demonstrates that they are exponentially more effective than law enforcement strategies in reducing drug use. Drug Treatment

Despite the fact that available research points to great successes in drug rehabilitation and drug counseling, the problem is that these programs are simply not available where they are needed (particularly the inner city) nor are they available in sufficient number (most drug rehabilitation programs targeted at lower income groups have long waiting lists). In the United States 48% of the need for drug treatment, excluding alcohol abuse, is unmet (Woodward, et al., 1997). The problem, of course, is the government spends only 7% of its drug-control budget on treatment while dedicating the remaining 93% to the ineffective control programs discussed above (Rydell and Everingham, 1994: 5). In fact, since the early 1980s, treatment has been a declining priority in federal drug budgets. In 1981 treatment made up 25% of the federal drug budget, by 1991 that percentage had dropped to 14%, while federal spending on law enforcement approaches increased by 737% (Adams, 1994: 1). Trying to solve a public health problem with punitive enforcement policies not only antagonizes the problem, but ignores policies which show great promise of actually doing something about drug use and its ancillary problems. This is an enormously foolish waste of resources, We know that every dollar invested in substance abuse treatment programs saves taxpayers $7.46 in social costs . On the other hand we know that drug crackdowns cost 15 times as much as drug treatment to achieve the same overall levels of reduction in social costs. Drug treatment is 10 times more cost effective than interdiction programs in reducing the use of cocaine in the U.S. (Rydell and Everingham, 1994).

Most importantly drug treatment works. Drug treatment not only can successfully break patterns of addiction and abuse, by much more importantly drug treatment impacts positively on every ancillary social problem linked to drug abuse. Every evaluation study done in the last two decades has shown conclusively that the most commonly utilized modalities of drug treatment work. Whether the studies have evaluated methadone treatment programs, inpatient residential programs or outpatient drug-free programs they all produce evidence of dramatic and positive results (Hubbard, et. al. 1989).

The Treatment Outcomes Prospectives Study ("TOPS"), funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, is the most comprehensive evaluation study of the effectiveness of drug treatment done in the United States. TOPS found drug treatment programs to be extremely effective in reducing drug use (Hubbard, et. al., 1989). The researchers tracked 10,000 drug abusers for a five year period following their admission to one of the thirty-seven treatment programs being evaluated. Heroin and cocaine use declined markedly. After only one year in methadone maintenance programs heroin use by patients had declined by 70%. Heroin and cocaine use has dropped by 75% for patients in outpatient drug-free programs and by 56% for patients in residential treatment. By the end of the five year tracking period less that 20% of the patients used any illegal drug except marijuana, and 40 to 50% of the patients abstained from all psychoactive drugs, legal or illegal, altogether.

Other evaluation studies have shown strikingly similar results. A NIDA sponsored study looking that the risk of AIDS infection for intravenous drug users found that methadone maintenance reduced intravenous drug use by 71% (Ball, et. al. 1988). An earlier NIDA study, the Drug Abuse Report program (DARP) followed the drug use patterns of 44,000 opiate addicts from 1969 through 1974. The DARP study found that most patients stopped using opiates daily upon the inception of treatment and had not resumed daily use after discharge. Seventy-six percent of the patients in methadone therapy, 74% of the patients in therapeutic communities, and 72% of the patients in outpatient programs did not resume the daily use of opiates (Hubbard, et. al., 1989). Much more importantly, a follow-up study found that 74% of the patients were not using heroin on a regular basis twelve years after their treatment had ended (National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, 1990:17).

What is even more remarkable about the evaluations of the three most common drug treatment modalities is that researchers have found them effective despite the many personal problems impacting clients, their long histories of deviant lifestyles, their long absences from medical care, and a lack of support for clients' rehabilitation efforts in their communities (Hubbard, et. al., 1989: 163).

Evaluations of the impact of drug treatment programs on problems ancillary to drug use offer even stronger evidence for a commitment to drug treatment rather than drug enforcement. For example, studies evaluating the impact of drug treatment on the transmission of HIV and other diseases carried in the blood show remarkable results. The rate of HIV infection for addicts living in New York City (46%-47%) is twice that of addicts in methadone maintenance programs (23%-27%). Even more remarkable is the fact that a study tracking the history of methadone patients with ten or more years in treatment found that none of them test positive for HIV (NIDA, 1988; Office of Technology Assessment, 1990).

Drug treatment also reduces criminal involvement by drug abuser and drug addicts. The recent National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study found that with drug treatment, drug dealing by patients decreased by 78%; shoplifting fell by 82%; assaults declined by 78%. Additionally, there was a 64% decrease in arrests for any crime among the subject population and the number of subjects who said they supported themselves through illegal activity fell by 48% (Center for Substance Abuse and Treatment, 1996). The TOPS study showed that in the first six months following treatment, 97% of the residential therapeutic community clients and 70% of outpatient clients who had self-reported participation in predatory crimes during the previous year, engaged in no criminal activity at all. Three to five years after treatment proportion of addicts involved in predatory crimes fell between 50% and 67% (Hubbard, et. al., 1989: 128-129, 181). In looking at all treatment modalities the DARP study found that arrest rates fell by 74% after treatment for all patients and clients (National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, 1990:17-18).

In addition to reducing levels of criminal involvement and reducing high-risk health behaviors, drug treatment programs also show remarkable success in helping clients stabilize their lives. Only one-third of the 44,000 patients in the DARP study worked in the year prior to entering drug treatment. But in the year following their discharge 57% were holding jobs (National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, 1990:17-18). Over two-thirds of the patients who had been involved in t