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FBI Report Reveals A Failed War On Drugs
So says Law Enforcement Against Prohibition noting that the new FBI report shows one drug arrest every 19 seconds in U.S.:
A group of police and judges who have been campaigning to legalize and regulate drugs pointed to the figures showing more than 1.6 million drug arrests in 2010 as evidence that the “war on drugs” is a failure that can never be won.
“Since the declaration of the ‘war on drugs’ 40 years ago we’ve arrested tens of millions of people in an effort to reduce drug use. The fact that cops had to spend time arresting another 1.6 million of our fellow citizens last year shows that it simply hasn’t worked. In the current economy we simply cannot afford to keep arresting three people every minute in the failed ‘war on drugs,’” said Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore narcotics cop who now heads the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). “If we legalized and taxed drugs, we could not only create new revenue in addition to the money we’d save from ending the cruel policy of arresting users, but we’d make society safer by bankrupting the cartels and gangs who control the currently illegal marketplace.”
They note that the report finds that 81.9 percent of all drug arrests in 2010 were for possession only, and 45.8 percent of all drug arrests were for possession of marijuana.
LEAP notes a separate Department of Justice report showing a rise in Mexican drug cartels operating in U.S. cities, from 230 to 1,000, over the past two year and a Health and Human Services report finding nearly one in 10 Americans regularly using illegal drugs.
I’m thinking the latter is this report, which was the starting point for a series of posts from Andrew Sullivan on the collapse of meth and the rise of pot:
The number of current methamphetamine users decreased by roughly half from 2006 to 2010 — from 731,000 people age 12 and older (0.3-percent) to 353,000 (0.1-percent). Cocaine use has also declined, from 2.4 million current users in 2006 to 1.5 million in 2010. In addition, among 12 – 17 year olds there were decreases between 2009 and 2010 in current drinking rates (from 14.7-percent down to 13.6-percent) and current tobacco use rates (from 11.6-percent to 10.7-percent)….
In 2010, 17.4 million Americans were current users of marijuana – compared to 14.4 million in 2007. This represents an increase in the rate of current marijuana use in the population 12 and older from 5.8-percent in 2007 to 6.9-percent in 2010. Another disturbing trend is the continuing rise in the rate of current illicit drug use among young adults aged 18 to 25 — from 19.6-percent in 2008 to 21.2-percent in 2009 and 21.5-percent in 2010. This increase was also driven in large part by a rise in the rate of current marijuana use among this population.
What Andrew finds disturbing is the government’s marijuana obsession. Notes he:
Maybe, just maybe, people know what they’re doing. Moving off drugs that kill you toward soft drugs that you cannot overdose on and don’t make you violent is a good thing. If the feds stopped demonizing marijuana they’d be cheering a more rational drug-using population in America.
Sullivan follows up with reader comments here and here. I’m guessing the Feds take credit for the shift to less dangerous drugs, and will use it to continue the failed policy.
9 Responses to “FBI Report Reveals A Failed War On Drugs”
Quite shocking so many lives are still being ruined by law enforcement over a drug like marijuana. Seems more like old Soviet Union than modern USA, but with asset forfeiture laws there is incentive for local law enforcement to do what is in effect legalized robbery. Very disturbing. Radley Balko has done much reporting in this area. I hope LEAP continues to expand and influence with their message.
legalize it
tax it
I wonder if Mexican drug cartels are lobbying Washington to keep the current drug laws in place?
The GOP will either ignore or downright belittle this research. They will do this because a) it sounds like “science”, b) it contains that “mathy stuff”, and c) it would prove that Ronald Reagan was wrong.
The GOP is allergic to all three.
@ShannonLee
More like US drug cartel called Pharma, but you got the right idea. The growing problem in drug abuse is from prescription drugs.
extremely good point Prof.
Due to the tyrannic and mindless actions of prohibitionists, tens of millions of people world-wide (both users and non-users) have been either killed, maimed, incarcerated or had their lives very seriously disrupted. Prohibitionists are solely responsible for an immense increase in violent organized crime, an AIDS Pandemic, the undermining of international development and security and a grave abuse of human rights on a scale barely witnessed in human social history.
Corporate greed and individual bigotry have accelerated us towards a situation where all the usual peaceful and democratic methods needed to reverse the acute damage done by prohibition no longer function as envisaged by the Founding Fathers of our once great and free nation. Such a political impasse coupled with great economic tribulation is precisely that which throughout history has invariably ignited violent revolution.
In order to avert what will surely be a far more violent situation than we are all presently experiencing, there appears to be just one last avenue left to us – Jury Nullification.
Jury Nullification is a constitutional doctrine that allows juries to acquit defendants who are technically guilty, but who don’t deserve punishment. All non-violent drug offenders who are not selling to children, be they users, dealers or importers, fall into this category. If you believe that prohibition is a dangerous and counter-productive policy, then you don’t have to help to apply it. Under the Constitution, when it comes to acquittals, you, the juror, have the last word!
The idea that jurors should judge the law, as well as the facts, is a proud and vital component of American history.
The most shining example of Jury Nullification occurred during the shameful period in US history when slavery was legal. People who helped slaves escape were committing a federal crime – violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Jurors would often acquit, even when the defendants admitted their guilt. Legal historians credit these cases with advancing the abolition of slavery.
No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safer; only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution? – When called for Jury Service concerning any non-violent prohibition-related offense, it is your moral and civic duty to VOTE TO ACQUIT!
“To function as the founders intended, our republic requires that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
~ THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787.
To avoid such carnage and turmoil on a scale not seen in this land since the 1860s, we may have just one last chance.
If you wish to see this insane prohibition replaced by drug policy based on science, public health and sound principles of human rights that will ensure a safe future for your children and grandchildren, PLEASE VOTE TO ACQUIT!
of course, in the task of stemming addiction and strengthening the rule of law and other enlightenment concepts upon which the U.S. was founded, the War on Drugs is a costly failure.
But…
As a federal jobs programme and means of expanding Federal authority into the most intimate aspects of citizens lives, as a means of destroying liberty, and circumventing the ideas underlying the first ten amendments of the Constitution, the war on drugs is a rousing success…
and I think the second paragraph more accurately describes the intent of the whole thing, than the first. The Drug war is an INDUSTRY-on both sides of the legal line, the casualties it generates have the net effect of terrorism-which is to say, terrorizing the affected population to the point that they saddle themselves with a Tyrant (or Tyrannical System), shed their liberties, and make their lives as difficult as possible to the benefit of those either in power, or seeking it.
And that is why, regardless of Republican or Democrat in the government, it will continue.
The War on Drugs failed $1 Trillion ago! This money could have been used for outreach programs to clean up the bad end of drug abuse by providing free HIV testing, free rehab, and clean needles. Harmless drugs like marijuana could be legalized to help boost our damaged economy. Cannabis can provide hemp for countless natural recourses and the tax revenue from sales alone would pull every state in our country out of the red! Vote Teapot, PASS IT, and legalize it. Voice you opinion with the movement and read more on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/01/vote-teapot-2011.html
I was 6 years old when a bigoted, paranoid and corrupt Richard Nixon brought about the War on Drugs. Black veterans were returning to the USA to social unrest toting ideas of equality and peace above their status. The war on drugs has been an effective tool, as designed, to keep minority classes under state control.
Since the start of the war on drugs my generation has witnessed the end of the Vietnam war, were not vaporised during the Cold War as expected, civil rights have progressed and the ‘Wall’ has come down. But, we are still being fed Nixon’s Reefer madness despite the War on Drugs being an unmitigated disaster except as a state tool to marginalise minorities. The cost in lives, public health, family breakdown, my generations loss of respect for the state, dollars etc etc is incalculable.
However, journalists and politicians can continue to support this disastrous war with full state backing.
The bigoted old fools who started this war have gone. But my generation has had to live with it’s consequences for most of our lives.
My generation must now clean up this mess left by our elders. We have had to wait for them to leave office in order to do so.
Drugs are dangerous, they should be under state control not in the hands of organised crime. It’s time for the state to say sorry to my generation and take drug control back from organised crime.
Tell your local politician you support ending the war on drugs.