How to End the War on Drugs

August 27 - September 10, 1996

Created by Washington editor James Fallows

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EXECUTIVE-DECISION MEMORANDUM

To: The President of the United States
From: D. N. Forser, Chief of Staff
Re: Drugs
Date: August 27, 1996

Dear Mr./Ms. President:

The mission I undertook for you in China was on the whole a big success. I have to admit that our team was not able to meet the test you had originally set for us: conducting a covert raid on a steroid factory that was supplying the Chinese Olympic swimming team, so that we could parachute into Olympic stadium during the opening ceremonies with the drug-master manacled between us, shaming the Chinese and gaining a crucial bargaining advantage over them. Good idea, though! When we got to the factory it seemed to have been hastily evacuated. All we found was a little scrap of paper covered with Chinese writing. I have just received a note from our CIA analysts indicating their best guess about the contents of the writing. They cannot make out every word, but the part they have interpreted says: "Please forward our mail to our new address: c/o Women's Olympic Swimming Team, Central Pool, Dublin, Republic of Irel..... Please wrap the 'special samples' careful...." That is all they could make out. What do you think it could mean?

Despite this setback we had another and perhaps more significant success: we may have found a way to end our war on drugs.

It was the mayor of Shanghai who did the honors. Following -- as always! -- your advice that we read at least one book of relevant history before going on a foreign trip, and a second book of history during the long hours of the flight (with a waiver for trips to Canada), I came prepared with some probing questions for Hizzoner, the mayor of Shanghai. In 1939, I learned, there were at least one million opium addicts in the city of Shanghai itself. What had become of them? How could a city cope with such a social burden? The question behind this question, when I posed it to the mayor, was evident even through the veil of translation: with such a history of drug abuse, was it even conceivable that the Olympic team would NOT use drugs?

The mayor's expression shifted from benign indifference to what I can only call a smirk as he listened to the interpreter relay my question. He chuckled to himself for a moment, then began an exchange with me.

Hizzoner: Ah, that is a very interesting question, honorable Forser. Interesting indeed. Our fine city was, as you say, burdened with a million addicts. It was a sad and decadent situation.
Forser: Yeah, yeah. [glance at watch]
H: You representatives of a young culture are so impatient! Wait until your nation has been around for 5000 years! Heh-heh.
F: Your honor, our plane is waiting. . . .
H: My honorable Forser, how many addicts do you think are in our city now?
F: Sir, I don't have the slightest idea. I give up. What's the answer?
H: I cannot tell you exactly . . .
F: A guess will do.
H: . . . but the total is now very, very small. You see, the Communists of Chairman Mao's era may have had their excesses. We see now that our economy will grow more rapidly if we take a more flexible approach. But whatever their defects, the Communists knew how to cope with certain problems. Among these was drugs. After the Long March and the Revolution, when the Communists took control of our city, they decided to cope with the drug problem once and for all. After taking power, they rounded up all the unfortunate opium addicts. You know, opium has been a symbol of our ancient people's subjugation ever since the perfidious British introduced it to our people in the 1800s?
F: Yeah, yeah. I read about it on the plane.
H: To save the addicts, and to save our proud nation from this shame, the Communists offered every addict extensive help for one year. Treatment facilities were opened. Counseling was available. Herbal treatments, even acupuncture, were used to help people break this curse.
F: And so?
H: At the end of the year, many of our addicts had cured themselves. Such celebration! The addicts' families welcomed their return. The degrading opium dens were closed down. Some people, of course, were not as successful. And at the end of the year . . .
F: Yes?
H: And at the end of the year, the addicts who had not been able to break their addiction were shot. And since that time, my honorable and well-connected visitor from a young and brash civilization, since that time, our drug problem has been solved.

The lightbulb came on in my brain at that moment, Mr./Ms. President. With their inscrutable, ancient wisdom, our Chinese hosts really had posed the question for us: just how serious are we about dealing with drugs?

If we want to think in extremes, there are two polar-opposite paths to take in our drug policy. One possibility would be to emulate the Chinese of the pre-Communist era. Drug use was barely discouraged in those days. In fact -- even though the mayor of Shanghai was being tendentious in saying so -- it seems to be historic truth that the British pushed opium like crazy, both to build exports from their colonies in India and to make the Chinese population more tractable. Opium use had its destructive side effects: emaciated coolies bunked out in the seedy Terry and the Pirates atmosphere of opium dens. But at least it didn't generate second-level damage. Opium was cheap, so addicts didn't need to go on crime rampages to pay for it. The Chinese police, if they existed, didn't spend their time tracking down dope-users and putting them in jail.

The other extreme is the Shanghai policy. You're a drug user Mr. Wong? We'll give you a year to rehabilitate yourself; if you don't, too bad: we'll execute you.

May I suggest, Mr./Ms. President, that our nation is dangerously close to having the worst of both drug-policy worlds? We've jacked up the penalties for drug crimes until they're nearly at the Shanghai level -- but without the saving grace of Shanghai's effectiveness.

Because Americans are worried that their children might start using drugs, and that somebody else's children who already use drugs might steal from them, the penalties for drug use have grown stiffer with every passing year. Three-strikes-you're-out laws have spread from state to state. Judges increasingly operate under "mandatory minimum" rules that force them to send drug users away for years. As a result the fastest-growing sector of our economy is prison-building. Some 1.6 million people are now in jail in the United States. This is embarrassing: we have more people in jail than Russia does, than China does, than any police-state does. As a proportion of our population, twice as many Americans are in jail as a decade ago. (According to the latest figures from your Justice Department, there are 600 people in jail for every 100,000 Americans. In 1985, the rate was about 300 convicts per 100,000 people.) Prison-building is expensive: California, which leads the way in all things, now spends more on prisons than on universities, despite the fact that twenty-five years ago it spent about ten times as much on universities as on prisons. It is not working: according to a recently released federal drug survey, drug use among teenagers has doubled just since 1992. And it is a source of racial tension: because crack-cocaine is mainly used by African-Americans, and because penalties for the use and sale of crack are generally much tougher than those for the use and sale of other drugs, there is a disproportionate number of blacks in jail. Anachronistic laws about marijuana possession are still in effect in many states and are unfairly tough when compared to laws dealing with other types of crimes. (For more information on marijuana laws look for the articles by Eric Schlosser in Election Connection's index of articles on crime.)

What have we gotten for all of this, Mr./Ms. President? Excuse my French, but we've gotten damned little. Our drug czars bravely claim that they're making more arrests, rounding up more petty dealers, intercepting more shipments of drugs. Hooray for them. Meanwhile, the number of addicts rises; the fortunes based on drug-dealing continue to grow; and the economies of nations from Mexico to Colombia to Burma are distorted and corrupted by drugs headed for customers in the United States.

With your political skills, Mr./Ms. President, it would no doubt be possible to serve out your term temporizing in the way that all your predecessors have done. You can talk tough about drugs, watch as more money is sucked away by prison-building, explain to black Americans that there is not really any plot to lock up all their men, and know that the drug problem will be worse when you leave office than it was when you entered. But that would be wrong! Lesser leaders would do that -- and have. You have just won re-election, Mr./Ms. President. You need never run for any office again. It is time to do what's right in coping with America's drug problem. It is time to clarify what has until now been a muddled series of compromises on drugs and drug policy. We ask you to choose among the following options:

The selections are:

Please read a memo containing a brief argument in favor of Option A.

B: Peace (Please read a memo containing a brief argument in favor of Option B.)

B: The White Flag (Please read a memo containing a brief argument in favor of Option C.)

Option A: War

Mr./Ms. President:

We've talked about a war on drugs for years, but it's been a fake war, like the inconclusive ones this nation waged in Korea and Vietnam. For the average citizen, being locked up for a drug offense might be a serious deterrent. To the population that buys, sells, uses, steals, and relies on hard drugs for their livelihood, a jail term is a nuisance. A cost of doing business. Free room and board!

The "three strikes" laws and mandatory minimums are a start. At the very least, they get dealers and users off the street, reducing the proportion of their lives in which they can prey on everyone else. But manifestly they are not enough. If they were, the problem would be solved already.

Drugs are an unacceptable threat to our nation. They are destroying our communities. They are directly or indirectly responsible for at least half the nation's total crime. Through history they have debauched populations. They make human existence less than fully human.

We are at war, and must act as if we are. Trafficking in drugs easily falls under federal jurisdiction. Nearly all the raw product crosses our national borders, and then state lines, so the federal government could take charge. The U.S. military, currently underemployed, should be dispatched with border-interdiction as a principal responsibility. And the federal criminal code should be constructed as if we are a nation at war. Treason is punishable by death. Dealing drugs is a form of treason against our social compact. Drug-dealing should be punishable by death, as it already is in Singapore and Malaysia. The United States, in its magnanimity, need not make mere possession of drugs a capital crime, as it is in those two nations; users should be brought under supervision, in federal medical-penal facilities, and kept until they have broken their addiction. Like the Chinese during the first year of their rehabilitation program, the government should do everything possible to reform its addicts. But if they remain addicted, they should be locked up for the rest of their lives. If they have become dealers in that time, they should be killed. This may sound cruel, but unlike today's policy it would be effective. Remember, Mr./Ms. President, war is hell.

Option B: Peace

Mr./Ms. President:

Let's be serious. This nation is not communist China. It does not operate under strict Islamic law. It is not a tiny, authoritarian city-state like Singapore, with draconian penalties for littering or chewing gum. It is a modern, liberal democracy rightly concerned with balancing individual rights and community interests.

The reality is that we're never going to declare all-out, Shanghai-style war on drugs. Whether or not that approach might ever work doesn't matter; it is not going to be tried. And since it's not, we should abandon the reckless current policy that gives us 90 percent of the social damage of a draconian approach with none of the anti-drug effect.

Fortunately we have an alternative. Earlier this year, a group called Drug Strategies released a poll of city police chiefs from across the nation. Overwhelmingly, the chiefs felt that the drug problem was serious, and that it was getting worse. But overwhelmingly they said that stricter sentences were not the answer. You could lock more people up for longer terms, the great majority of police chiefs said, and you would not make a dent in the supply of or demand for drugs.

What would make a difference, they said, was a radically expanded program of treating people who were already addicted, and preventing addiction among those who had not yet fallen off the cliff. Remember, these were not hand-wringing social workers talking, but people who pack guns and wear badges. In their view, an addict sent off to prison was still an addict who would go back to old ways upon getting out. Therefore, they recommended that the country shift money from prisons and law enforcement to new beds in treatment centers, with the aim of getting people past their addictions.

This is the sensible route for the country as a whole, Mr./Ms. President. In your next term -- your last term, your last chance to do right -- recommend that the mandatory minimums for drug offenses be repealed, that the three-strike laws apply only to truly violent criminals, that treatment rather than imprisonment become the first line of defense and attack against the nation's drug problem. If twenty years of war on drugs have taught us anything, it is that a flawed strategy can never succeed, no matter how many resources are thrown behind it. Let us change the strategy and attack the problem at its root.

Option C: The White Flag

Mr./Ms. President:

There is really just one way to solve the problem of drug "crimes." That is to classify the activity itself as non-criminal. History suggests that individuals are worse off when they become drug addicts, and that a society is worse off as the rate of addiction grows. But there are many evils that the state cannot prudently fight. Individual decisions to use drugs are high on that list. You can win the war on drugs only by declining to fight a losing battle. Treat all drugs the way we now treat alcohol: tax them heavily, discourage children from using them, enforce strict penalties when the side effects of drug use -- mainly, what happens when people are driving -- harm other citizens. Otherwise, let people alone. It's a losing game to try anything more.

One argument against simply waving the white flag is conceptual, and another rests on practical grounds. The conceptual complaint is that tolerating an evil is itself evil. According to this argument, the other vices that society decides to tolerate -- smoking, moderate drinking -- differ from hard-drug use precisely in that they are tolerable. Smokers die early and impose external costs on society, but through their productive years they are not driven to crime (except scofflaw violations of No Smoking laws) and they can hold down jobs just like anyone else. Similarly, only a small group of drinkers have ever been rendered absolutely dysfunctional; most people are able to drink a beer or wine at night and show up at work the next morning. Heroin, cocaine, and above all crack-cocaine are, by this logic, something entirely different. They take over the user's mind and body so completely that it is hard for him or her to do anything but sustain the addiction. Human beings have a purpose beyond merely nodding off in a drug-induced haze. While the state should not be a nanny, it needs to take stands on large questions of right and wrong, and "tolerance" about drug use is objectively wrong.

So say the moralists, and in isolation their case is irrefutable. But their view has the same drawback as does the conceit that whenever there is evil in the world, the United States should immediately dispatch troops to correct and end it. The hard truth is that some evils must be tolerated because there is no practical way to correct them. All the evidence of our failed anti-drug war suggests that no matter how earnest we are about extirpating this evil, we will fail.

Some opponents of the white-flag view take the opposite tack. The real problem with tolerance, they say, is that it will worsen the problem. However frustrating it may be to try to fight a war against drugs, they say, it would be far worse to give up the fight altogether. If today's porous drug laws deter even a single child from experimenting with heroin or crack, then those laws have served some purpose.

The problem with this argument is that it assumes an all-or-nothing universe: if we stop locking people up for 99 years on crack offenses, we will make no attempt to discourage crack use at all. Life is more nuanced than that. Even government policies can be! From the mid-1960s through the mid-1990s, the federal government made no attempt to indict, try, jail, or otherwise legally harrass people who decided to smoke cigarettes. Yet during those same years it used a variety of weapons -- "public education" in the view of some, "propaganda" to others -- to discourage people from smoking. This policy worked a lot better than the war against hard drugs did. We should learn from its success. No more criminal sanctions for drug use, but a heroic effort to convince people not to start.

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