US War on Drugs at an end?

[Drygioni]

US waves white flag in disastrous 'war on drugs'

After 40 years, Washington is quietly giving up on a futile battle that has spread corruption and destroyed thousands of lives

By Hugh O'Shaughnessy

Sunday, 17 January 2010

After 40 years of defeat and failure, America's "war on drugs" is being buried in the same fashion as it was born – amid bloodshed, confusion, corruption and scandal. US agents are being pulled from South America; Washington is putting its narcotics policy under review, and a newly confident region is no longer prepared to swallow its fatal Prohibition error. Indeed, after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of people, a suitable epitaph for America's longest "war" may well be the plan, in Bolivia, for every family to be given the right to grow coca in its own backyard.

The "war", declared unilaterally throughout the world by Richard Nixon in 1969, is expiring as its strategists start discarding plans that have proved futile over four decades: they are preparing to withdraw their agents from narcotics battlefields from Colombia to Afghanistan and beginning to coach them in the art of trumpeting victory and melting away into anonymous defeat. Not surprisingly, the new strategy is being gingerly aired in the media of the US establishment, from The Wall Street Journal to the Miami Herald.

Prospects in the new decade are thus opening up for vast amounts of useless government expenditure being reassigned to the treatment of addicts instead of their capture and imprisonment. And, no less important, the ever-expanding balloon of corruption that the "war" has brought to heads of government, armies and police forces wherever it has been waged may slowly start to deflate.


Prepare to shed a tear over the loss of revenue that eventual decriminalisation of narcotics could bring to the traffickers, large and small, and to the contractors who have been making good money building and running the new prisons that help to bankrupt governments – in the US in particular, where drug offenders – principally small retailers and seldom the rich and important wholesalers – have helped to push the prison population to 1,600,000; their imprisonment is already straining federal and state budgets. In Mississippi, where drug offenders once had to serve 85 per cent of their sentences, they are now being required to serve less than a quarter. California has been ordered to release 40,000 inmates because its prisons are hugely overcrowded.

At the same time, some in the US are confused and fear that the new commission proposed by Congressman Eliot Engel, a man with a record of hostility to the Cuban and Venezuelan governments, may prove to be a broken reed. As he brought in his bill he added timidly: "Let me be absolutely clear that this bill has not been introduced to support the legalisation of illegal drugs. That is not something that I would like to see."

Part of the reason for the slow US retreat from the "war" is that the strategy of fighting it in foreign lands and not at home has proved valueless. Along the already sensitive frontier with Mexico the effect of US attempts to enforce a hard line by blasting drug dealers away has been bloody. Anxious to keep in check the flood of illegal immigrants into territory that once belonged to Mexico, Washington is building a wall and fence comparable to that which once cut through Berlin and that which is today causing havoc between Israelis and Palestinians.

In the areas of Mexico closest to the US frontier the toll of deaths in drug-related violence exceeded 7,000 people in 2009 (1,000 of them dying in January and February). This takes the death toll over three years to above 16,000, figures far in excess of US fatalities in Afghanistan. The bloodshed has continued despite – or perhaps because of – the intense US pressure on President Felipe Calderon to station a large part of the Mexican army in the region. It is deploying 49,000 men on its own soil in the campaign against drugs, a larger force than the 46,000 Britain sent to take part in the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003. But still the blood flows.

As in Colombia, where a multibillion-dollar US subsidy maintains that country's armed forces, there are well-founded suspicions that military operations are often rendered futile because the miserably paid local commanders and individual soldiers are easily bought off by drug dealers.

The quiet expiry of the "war" has dawned slowly on a world focused on the US's more palpable conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last month, the US House of Representatives gave unanimous approval to a bill creating an independent commission to reconsider domestic and international drug policies and suggest better ones. Congressman Engel, a Democrat from the Bronx and the sponsor of the bill, declared: "Billions upon billions of US taxpayer dollars have been spent over the years to combat the drug trade in Latin America and the Caribbean. In spite of our efforts, the positive results are few and far between."

As far back as last May, Gil Kerlikowske, the former police chief of Seattle who was named head of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy and thus boss of the campaign, announced he would not be using the term "war on drugs" any more. A few weeks earlier, former Latin American presidents of the centre and right – Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia – had told the new US President that the "war" had failed and appealed for greater emphasis on cutting drug consumption and the decriminalisation of cannabis.

For the lives and sanity of millions, the seeing of the light is decidedly late. The conditions of the 1920s, when the US Congress outlawed alcohol and allowed Al Capone and his kin to make massive fortunes, have been re-created up and down Latin America.

Mexico's President has not been afraid to point out to Washington that official corruption is at the root of drug trafficking in the US just as it is in Mexico. "I say we should investigate on both sides. I'm cleaning my house and I hope that on the other side as well the house is being cleaned," he said pointedly last April before President Obama came visiting.

Furthermore, President Calderon says that lax gun control laws in the US caused an influx of firearms into Mexico. He has declared that 90 per cent of the 30,000 weapons that government forces seized from drug dealers in Mexico came from north of the border. For their part, the Latin Americans, under a new generation of more self-confident leaders, are tired of being hectored about their failings by the US, the world's principal source of cannabis whose agents continue the drug dealing they indulged in during the Iran-Contra affair of the Reagan years.

Evidence points to aircraft – familiarly known as "torture taxis" – used by the CIA to move captives seized in its kidnapping or "extraordinary rendition" operations through Gatwick and other airports in the EU being simultaneously used for drug distribution in the Western hemisphere. A Gulfstream II jet aircraft N9875A identified by the British Government and the European Parliament as being involved in this traffic crashed in Mexico in September 2008 while en route from Colombia to the US with a load of more than three tons of cocaine.

In 2004, another torture taxi crashed in a field in Nicaragua with a ton of cocaine aboard. It had been identified by Britain and the European Parliament's temporary committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners as a frequent visitor in 2004 and 2005 to British, Cypriot, Czech, German, Greek, Hungarian, Spanish and other European cities with its cargo of captives for secret imprisonment and torture in Iraq, Jordan and Azerbaijan.

Given the circumstances, it is unremarkable that US strictures are being politely ignored. President Evo Morales of Bolivia – criticised by the US for defending Bolivians' practice of chewing coca leaves to assuage hunger and altitude sickness – wants to allow every Bolivian family around the city of Cochabamba to cultivate coca bushes for their own use. He also wants to export coca leaves to his country's neighbours. Mr Morales's authority, recently reinforced by winning a second presidential term in fair elections and by a strengthening of Bolivia's economy, has no need to worry about US criticism.

Venezuela and Bolivia have expelled US narcotics officers from their territory. At the end of last month, President Rafael Correa of Ecuador ended Washington's lease of a large air base on the Pacific from where US aircraft were engaged in the struggle against the region's increasingly powerful left.

This year should be the year that common sense vanquishes the mailed fist in an unwinnable war against an invisible enemy.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-waves-wh ite-flag-in-disastrous-war-on-drugs-1870218.html

Interesting read I thought

[Toaster]

Not to make light of a serious issue, but "the mailed fist" would make an awesome band name.

I could also see how someone looking to name a band might get really jazzed about "torture taxi". If you were that sort of band.

[jaydub]

We can only hope.  What a waste of time, careers, money, and lives.  Prisons bulging, courts clogged, addicts criminalized, and the "problem" is far worse now than it ever was before this madness started.

[littlefallsmets]

Next right-winger who uses it to get made President, it's back on.

That's all.

It is a tragedy that gets repeated everytime it becomes a way to get elected and promise that gets followed through on in hopes of a second-term.

It is right up there with getting family-planning doctors murdered as a side-effect of creating wedge issues.

Politicians who are sociopaths can convince themselves they weren't DIRECTLY involved and, hey, it got them elected and the ends justify the means.

But if there is a God, that elusive creature and I will someday have a nice long chat about that kind of person.

[jay-ell]

I would have been a lot more in favor of this before my grandmother was killed by a meth addict who had been out of jail for 12 hours before he broke into her house and beat her to death and assaulted my step-grandfather, who died later of his injuries and was buried yesterday.

Now I'm thinking maybe we should keep people with obvious drug problems and violent tendencies locked up a little longer than your ordinary run-of-the-mill criminals. There are a lot of peaceful druggies, but those who are desperate and unhinged enough to commit violence are, in my opinion, unlikely to be rehabilitated.

[Toaster]

I speak for all of us when I give you my deepest condolences.

[KeithHernandez]

I also offer my condolences, and meth is fuck*ng crazy, but there are many, many more people who are peaceful ruined by the system you propose.

Not to mention the fact that drugs are illegal make them more expensive and increases crime to get them and to transport/manufacture/distribute them.  It also brings a stigma that may make it harder to get your money legally.

[Thomas Pain]

a comment on that article says:  "Correction: It is Gulfstream II jet aircraft N987SA, not N9875A for those doing further research."

Re: Jay-ell's story, that's terrible.  I do agree that rehabilitation is unlikely, but personally I qualify that with 'in our society such as it currently is.'  Unfortunately, it's a story that happens over and over.  People who are potentiall violent or even known to be violent and dangerous are released into American society without any regard for the public safety, or perhaps are not detained to begin with, and/or do not receive any kind of professional attention like diagnosis or treatment.  Sometimes these people harm other people, and/or sometimes they just get shot down by our trigger happy American police.  It could be someone high on meth, it could be someone having a schitzoid episode, manic depression, etc.  Sometimes it's a procedural mistake in the jail or the courts, sometimes it's because the procedures themselves are flawed and broken, and depending on the state, the mix of case law and legislation may have everyone's hands tied in what can be done.  Not to mention the fact that police, hospitals, and prisons (so-called correctional institutions) are so under-funded in terms of both money and sophistication that very little can really truly be expected in the way of correction.  If I ever get incarcerated, I hope it's in a federal prison, they seem to have more resources...

The thing is, though, it's impossible to control people's behavior directly.  That's why the "war on drugs" is such a dangerous red herring which actually contributes to violence and all manner of social problems more than it helps.  Obviously, you do want to keep some amount of pressure on criminal syndicates.  You don't stand down to the point where they are able to rent a huge warehouse to produce their wares and contract with the postal service for distribution, and shrug your shoulders and say 'yeah well, I know there's this warehouse across the street but we're not gonna worry about the production side of things, we're focused on the demand side of the equation, not the supply side... That would be inane...  But of course, the other extreme of the spectrum would be inane as well, and unfortunately, it is at this end of the spectrum that we find ourselves presently...

We are totally focused on these production and distribution warehouses and mechanisms in Columbia and Mexico and domestically as well, and yet, when we become aware of the conditions which generate demand, when we are presented with opportunities to alleviate some of the stresses and social problems which stimulate demand for drugs, we just shrug our shoulders and say 'hey, this isn't a war on social problems, it's a war on drugs.  Drugs are the social problem.  We're focused on the supply side of the equation, meaning the syndicates that produce and distribute, and also, we're also focused on the criminals who distribute the drugs into their own veins and their own lungs...' And so the users become the criminals, not because of the crimes they commit ancillary to their drug consumption, but because of the drug consumption it's self.  So we establish this link... consumption of drugs results in commission of crimes... And so now people who distribute and/or consume drugs are considered guilty of the commission of crimes which they haven't yet committed or conspired to commit... When you look at the prison sentences that are handed down for drug offenses in this country, you can't tell me that those prison sentences are for the drugs themselves... no... those prison sentences are because of the link between the drugs and the ancillary crimes.  Drugs are the root cause of the crimes.  Drugs and nothing else. 

Well, okay, I do have to admit that drugs can be a root cause.  If you take and hire engineers and scientists and charge them with making sure that Ray loves his sugar puffs breakfast cereal or whatever, if you secretly get Ray addicted to junk food, and pump him full of sugar, and this affects his temperament to the point where he has a sugar spasm and flips out and kills Pat, then okay, we can sort of say that drugs were the root cause there.  So I mean, you never know.  Every situation is different.  It is plausible that if someone didn't have access to a drug, they would have never tried it and gotten hooked.... So sure, if we can limit access to harmful addictive drugs, then by all means, we should. 

But the flip side of it is...  If I'm living in poverty, if my life sucks, if I don't have an education and a golf club membership and steady employment and a couple of girl friends with boob jobs to distract me from the misery of my existence, I am going to find drugs.  It don't matter how hard you try to keep the drugs from me, I am going to find them, even if I have to resort to sniffin' frggin glue and petrol.  And you know, as violent and deranged as I may become on drugs, you have to admit that even without the drugs, I probably wasn't no saint any which way.

So how did the "war on drugs" and "saying no to drugs" become our primary if not exclusive focus?  It's really very simple.  It's just Newspeak is all it is.  The powers that be -- big business, corporations, politicians, the wealthy -- long before the modern 'war on drugs' came about, these powers manipulated as much as possible the thinking of the populace via manipulation of it's language.  Our culture is really defined by our language, and even as individuals we are defined by our language.  So, you tweak the language a little bit, and voila! 

So there's really a whole, I guess the best way to describe it is... 'ecosystem'... there's this whole sort of symbiotic, almost in places uhh... Stockholm-ish, ecosystem wherein emerge these patterns of interaction, these patterns of language which underpin these patterns of interaction, these patterns of relationships which need balance... when there is too much power on one side of the scale, then, it must be balanced on the other side with something, and that something is language... and so language is the currency of our relationships, of our social and bureaucratic relationships and interactions, be it a sustained and prolonged relationship with a friend, a family member, an employer, an institution, or a momentary and transient interaction with a cop, with a negro you pass on the street, that sort of thing... So when there is some sort of imbalance, balance can be restored via the currency of red herrings and, you know, that whole catalog, that repertoire of... well.. fallacy of reasoning is such a harsh phrase... : -)  Some might prefer 'difference of opinion' or 'difference of perception...'

So as a society, as role players in institutions, and as individuals, we are swimming in this currency of Newspeak, in this language... This language emerges spontaneously here and there... The more egregious the imbalance, then the more tenacious the language must be in order to compensate...  Perhaps sometimes even a bit of language may emerge which is simply, like some kind of meme... catchy, and having a certain quality of resonance... Perhaps "war on drugs" is such a bit of language?  May be.  Perhaps if the language is strong enough, and spreads through some viral property, perhaps then the language, instead of compensating for an imbalance, might instead create an imbalance, and well, imbalances do tend to even themselves out one way or another, and so, if the language holds fast, then perhaps some physical, tangible, real aspect of reality must adjust it's self to counter-ballast the language...

So we have this ecosystem, this machine, that is so much in the habit of manufacturing, exactly like a drug, this language for the populace, and this machine is very much sort of a collection of organelles for the body of those who have... power.  Not all language is controlled by this body of power, but, it does do it's best.  And so, well, drugs, you know, they present certain challenges to these bodies of power.  Unfortunately, some drugs have unpredictable effects on thinking... drugs affect balance in a society... balance comes down to what people think.  When people start getting crazy ideas, that's when revolutions happen.  So language is just a mechanism for achieving balance, to keep things from getting too chaotic.  And here you have drugs, agents of chaos, nay, demons of chaos. 

I'm not saying that the language is a conscious calculated response to a macro threat of macro revolution.  No.  It's usually not.   It's simply reflexive.  Language usually emerges as micro reflexive responses to micro imbalances.  Taken together as an aggregate, multiple instances of language work together.  If they don't establish symbiosis or synergy with one another, then as in any such system, they don't survive.

And the interesting thing about it is, of course the language generated by the bodies of power, the corporations, the institutions, this language is of course favorable for them.  Ironically, this creates a sort of auto-catalytic reaction in the system whereby it's inevitable that there should emerge some corporations that counter-balance the power of the established corporations.  The irony is that these counter-balancing corporations derive their power from the same language used to empower the established corporations.  "war on drugs" is absolutely another gem from the pro-business rhetoric machine, and yet what is narcotics if not big business... 

Language may benefit a specific corporation or group of corporations by virtue of it's actual specific meaning, but more often, language benefits the overall brotherhood of corporations by virtue of it's structure, by virtue of manipulating not the ideas that the populace has, but rather, by manipulating, on a lower more fundamental level, the cognitive structure that processes, that births, nurtures, and sees away those ideas in the first place.

The "war on drugs" is the only surety the drug industry needs.  Just as surely as the "war on terrorism" makes a phoenix of every kamikaze jihadi, our "war on drugs" ensures, of the thing that it represents, on both sides of the looking glass, an invincibility.

There is no simple singular solution to drugs any more than there is to violence.  You can't just attack one variable of the polynomial equation at a time.  E.g. obviously you can't reduce the level of aggression on the part of the police without simultaneously reducing the level of aggression on the part of the populace as a whole with which the police necessarily interact.  The problem with our established relationships with businesses and institutions and politicians and each other is that our language is really Newspeaked into being a language of contrast, of if not binary ideas then linear ideas where everything is considered as falling somewhere on a linear spectrum...  We won't change our realities until we change our language, and unfortunately, our realities significantly reinforce our language.  Language is just information, however, so, of these possible attack vectors, language is probably the easier of the two.

[Thomas Pain]

kinda like tiny cans of dr peffer... a linear measurement...

[jay-ell]

I was probably a little overly harsh in my earlier post. Knee-jerk reaction and all.

I'm still pro-legalization of marijuana, but I think maybe we should consider keeping substances addictive enough to commit murder for on the wrong side of the law. This is a case where we have to say to people, "I know you want to get high, but this is bad for you and bad for society."

I know that some people are going to be violent and are willing to kill for a pair of sneakers or because a dude likes to wear pink under##### or just for the sheer joy of killing someone. But these people are far rarer than tweakers who are desperate for the next hit and end up accidentally pulling the trigger during a random mugging. Or people like the sack of shit who robbed my grandparents, who preyed on the elderly because they were easy targets.

I don't think he meant to kill anyone. He robbed at least five other houses (all belonging to people over 80) in the subsequent weeks and all the victims survived. I think my step-grandfather fought back (dude was large) and he panicked or got pissed or something and used more force than he intended to. But the result is the same, and I don't really care whether his intention was to murder my grandparents or if he just wanted their money. The fact is, if he weren't a meth addict, none of this would have happened.

Did the war on drugs keep him from becoming an addict? No. Did the prison system help him get over his addiction during his three years in prison for prior offenses? No. Does this mean we should abandon the restrictions on controlled substances and the prison system because they're broken? Of course not. It means we as a nation need to ask ourselves some serious questions about the causes of drug addiction and how to break the cycle of addiction and crime.

I don't know the answers, and I didn't share my story for shock value or to make anyone feel bad. I just think that there's more to consider in the legalization argument than whether or not the government has a right to tell you and me what we can do on weekends. There is a clear connection between violent crime and drug addiction and until we get that sorted my instinct is to double the maximum sentence for people who commit crimes under the influence (and I would include alcohol here as well).

_{This proposal would inherently exclude marijuana, however, because nobody is going to get hopped up on giggle grass and knock over a quickie mart. Just not gonna happen.}

[Arachno-capitalist]

I think you're making broad statements on what is a very nuanced issue.
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1926079

[Thomas Pain]

I just think that there's more to consider in the legalization argument than whether or not the government has a right to tell you and me what we can do on weekends.

I quite agree.

There is a clear connection between violent crime and drug addiction and until we get that sorted my instinct is to double the maximum sentence for people who commit crimes under the influence (and I would include alcohol here as well).

But that would be focusing on one aspect outside of the larger context.  Still, that is my instinct also.  But instinct or reflex kinda takes a direct approach, which isn't always best.  Direct and simple point A to point B cause and effect ideas really propagate more readily than ideas which more accurately reflect the complexity of the situation.  I dunno.  America doesn't handle complex systems very well.  That's why we got our ass kicked in Vietnam.  The tactics of the Vietnamese were simply superior to ours.  The Vietnamese kinda went with the flow of things.  Our troops would attack an area, they would just melt away into the forest, and fight another day.  We were the Redcoats marching in formation, they were the rebels with the more dynamic and more complex tactics.

This proposal would inherently exclude marijuana, however, because nobody is going to get hopped up on giggle grass and knock over a quickie mart. Just not gonna happen.

Generally.  It depends on the person.  I'm sure there's some people who get violent on pot.  Certainly, the soldiers in Vietnam killed a lot of people while high on pot.  And other drugs. 

It has always been an aspiration of mine (despite the fact that I've never aspired pot) to invent a turn-key grow-room solution that is so discrete and inexpensive and small and idiot-proof that everyone who wanted it could have an unlimited supply of pot without too much fear of getting caught. 

Or maybe if we could genetically engineer mice so they poop THC or something.

[AugustWest]

Or maybe if we could genetically engineer mice so they poop THC or something.

I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[greenkoolayd]

im not interested in consuming marijuana, but im even less interested in consuming rodentine excrement.  also, do we need another reason for mice to procreate?  they do that on their own, often to our chagrin.

[Doc]

People already do it with those indonesian coffee civets.