We have a serious problem with victim-blaming in this country.
When a woman is sexually assaulted, it’s popular to assume she was “asking for it” because of how she was dressed. Same goes for young black men shot by cops.
But drug addicts? They might very well be the bottom of the barrel — if our justice system is anything to judge by. They brought this on themselves, and their prison sentence is their just desserts.
There’s a debate going on as we speak that could determine the fate of America’s so-called “war on drugs.” The question before us now is whether we will continue the knee-jerk, reactionary tactics of our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, or instead forge a new path that utilizes all we know about the science behind addiction and addiction treatment.
Crime-hawks in government seem to actively oppose rehabilitation programs and other answers to addiction in favor of a never-ending cycle of arrest, incarceration and recidivism. The end result has been an explosion of America’s prison population. We now rank first in the world in terms of the number of citizens languishing in our prisons, with 716 persons imprisoned per 100,000 persons in the national population. China is an authoritarian country with a much higher population, and they don’t imprison as large a portion of their population as we do.
That’s right — the United States imprisons a greater percentage of our population than any other country on earth. Is it any wonder our justice system is tragically overburdened? Something clearly needs to change.
The Moral Arguments for Something Better
The moral arguments underpinning this debate couldn’t be clearer. At the heart of our War on Drugs is an almost preternatural inclination toward mistrust of other races and cultures. African Americans, for example, are between three and four times more likely than whites to be arrested for drug-related crimes, and as a result are disproportionately represented in our nation’s prisons.
At the state level, things are even worse: Black individuals are nine times more likely to be imprisoned for drug offenses than their white counterparts, despite the fact that blacks and whites abuse drugs at roughly equal levels.
The moral argument to be made here is that our country’s drug policies are intrinsically unfair and undemocratic. As long as casual racism holds sway in police departments across this country, the problem won’t be going away any time soon. Thankfully, the #BlackLivesMatter movement and renewed interest in criminal justice reform have helped us pinpoint particularly regressive police departments, like the ones in Chicago and San Francisco.
The war on drugs is no longer a tool for fighting drug use or crime — it’s a tool (and an excuse) for bigots and hate-mongers to do what they do best.
Practical Arguments and Potential Solutions
Take heart: The situation is far from hopeless. But first, we must understand which solutions make sense and which do not.
For example: One proposed “solution” to America’s heroin and drug epidemic is to make anti-HIV pills available to people who abuse drugs. If this sounds about as effective as slapping a Band-Aid on a chainsaw wound, you’re not far off. While needle-sharing drug users are in the highest risk pool for contracting HIV/AIDS, it’s far from the only danger drug users subject themselves to.
A better solution? Take Europe and Canada’s lead and double down on safe injection sites. It’s done a world of good in countries that have scaled back their drug wars in favor of a more holistic approach. Whereas anti-HIV pills are not remotely cost-effective, Canada’s healthcare system has already found that safe injection sites are highly useful for addressing the real needs of addicts, and they’re also efficient and cost-effective.
Another “solution” being haphazardly experimented in the United States involves the deployment of specialized medicines to help stop opioid overdoses in their tracks. Entire states are discussing making these drugs available to their law enforcement officers.
Yet again, the Band-Aid metaphor fits. If a young man is dying in the gutter from a heroin overdose, and his only hope is a cop getting there in time to dispense an anti-overdose medicine, then society has already failed that young man.
The only thing that’s going to solve this problem is the United States deciding to treat addiction as a disease rather than a lifestyle choice. We’ve fought hard to bring birth control into the realm of healthcare expenses covered by insurance, and we now need to fight to have mental illnesses, like addiction, covered as well. A healthcare system that fails to treat the whole person isn’t much use when we make new discoveries about the human body on an almost weekly basis.
The United States has an embarrassingly high rate of recidivism: Within three years of being released, about two-thirds of our prisoners will be arrested again. If we get serious about treating addiction as the disease it is, rather than doling out prison sentences indiscriminately, we could significantly decrease that number in a few short years.
It’s Not a ‘War on Drugs’ Anymore
It’s true that drug addicts, in seeking out and using illicit substances, are breaking the law. It’s also true that some people are predisposed to drug abuse. Those people deserve our love and understanding — not the inside of a prison cell.
This debate is not about drugs, just as the “bathroom debate” is not about bathrooms and the “classroom debate” was not about classrooms back in the ‘50s. It’s about exclusion — and right now we’re desperate to exclude drug addicts from participation in mainstream society.