Forgetting the "War on Drugs"

An article in the Birmingham News titled "Police Shouldn't Profit from Drug Raids" details an unacceptable situation in which police departments are allowed to profit from drug raids:

" On the streets, where illegal drugs are still easy to get at affordable prices, Alabama's police chiefs are losing the decades-long drug war. Ironically, back in their precinct headquarters, many of these officers depend on drug raids to fatten their operating budgets.

While the drug trade still enriches the bad guys, police chiefs now get a piece of the action.

State and local police departments, working with U.S. agents, "federalize" money and property seized during local drug raids. The federal government gets at least 20 percent of the seized assets, but the feds give back up to 80 percent of the seizure - now exempt from state law - to state and local police agencies.

According to federal statistics, the share going to Alabama law enforcement agencies went from $1.8 million in 2000 to $8.5 million in 2007. Nationally, state and local agencies collected $416 million in 2007, up from $212 million in 2000. "

Although many states stipulate that assets seized in raids be used for education or other "nonpolice purposes", this type of legalized corruption is still allowed in many places. With a faltering economy, numerous threats abroad, and concerns over energy, important issues surrounding the War on Drugs have been largely forgotten. It is tragic that one of the most disastrous aspects of American society -- the hugely damaging effects of the failed "War on Drugs" -- has been completely ignored by Democrats and Republicans alike during this election season.

For most Americans, the "War on Drugs" is seen as a noble effort by police to keep dangerous drugs off America's streets. In the minds of Americans, this "war" conjures images of SWAT raids on filthy crackhouses and explosive meth labs, as well as efforts to keep gun-toting drug dealers off the streets. According to the narrative offered by the government, anti-drug enforcement programs were largely responsible for the nationwide decrease in crime in the 1990s, as most notably seen in New York City and Los Angeles. The War on Drugs is widely supported by Americans, and is generally viewed as a success.

This common view of the War on Drugs, however, is far from reality. As anyone who has taken the time to research the reality can tell you, this "war" is a costly and destructive failure. Contrary to the claims of the government, virtually all kinds of illegal drugs -- from marijuana to heroin -- are cheaper and more widely available than ever before. Despite spending tens of billions of dollars every year on interdiction, enforcement, incarceration, and education, there is no indication that drug use in the United States has decreased at all since the beginning of the War on Drugs.

The term "War on Drugs" was first used by President Richard Nixon in 1971, and since that time the national program has ballooned into a $45.5 billion complex of thousands of laws, police programs, and international operations. Corruption and systematic abuse of police power increased drastically under the War on Drugs. Drug enforcement laws have dramatically expanded police powers, resulting in widespread searches, seizures, wiretapping, and other encroachments on civil liberties, with little regard for constitutional principles. Current "civil forfeiture" laws even allow police to permanently seize the assets of any "suspect" without proving that a crime was committed.

Drug enforcement provided the justification for widespread militarization of U.S. police forces that has led to an increase in police shootings and other forms of abuse. All too often, police forces armed to the teeth with military-grade weapons kill unarmed, nonviolent drug suspects and even wrongfully assault innocent citizens.

The above-mentioned Birmingham News article gives this example of how corruption and police abuse can combine with deadly results:

" Donald Scott owned a valuable, 200-acre ranch in Malibu, Calif. One October morning in 1992, 30 agents, led by the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department, conducted a raid based on faulty rumors that Scott was growing marijuana plants. During the raid, Scott was shot and killed by sheriff deputies.

A Ventura County district attorney's report on the raid concluded: "The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to seize and forfeit the ranch for the government ... Based in part upon the possibility of forfeiture, the sheriff's deputy obtained a search warrant that was not supported by probable cause. The search warrant became Donald Scott's death warrant." "

Worst of all, the drug war profoundly harmed our civil liberties, and continues to undermine the foundational freedoms of American democracy. The war on drugs has flooded American prisons with non-violent drug offenders, making the United States the #1 jailer of its citizens -- both per capita and in absolute terms -- in the entire world. Since the escalation of the War on Drugs in the 1980s, the U.S. prison population has quadrupled despite substantial decreases in violent crime and property crime. This means that Americans are stealing less and harming each other less, and yet are being incarcerated in record numbers.

As of Februrary 2008, more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States was imprisoned. At the end of 2006, 2.2 million Americans were imprisoned, another 5 million people were either on parole, or on probation. To put this in context, the totalitarian government of communist China imprisons only 1.5 million of its citizens, out of a population over four times larger than that of the United States.

That a system so glaringly unjust, corrupt, and harmful to freedom is allowed to survive unchallenged by those aspiring to the presidency indicates a profound failure in American politics. The American people deserve better from their leaders.

Sources:
http://www.al.com/opinion/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1221380253174560.xml&coll=2
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91555835
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_drugs
http://www.theagitator.com/
http://www.militantlibertarian.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States