Baby Steps in Delaware

On March 31st, the Delaware State Senate took the commendable and well-reasoned step of voting in favor of the state’s first medical marijuana law by a margin of 18 to 3. The bipartisan support received by bill (S.B. 17) is an encouraging and rare example of legislators crafting public policy guided by science, reason and common-sense and discounting the hysteria that often accompanies debate regarding the drug issue. If, as expected, the House of Representatives follows suit, Delaware would become the 16th state in the nation to allow seriously ill patients access to marijuana under medical supervision.

Earlier in the month, the House approved a significant overhaul of the state’s drug laws that would, among other things, reduce simple possession from a felony to a misdemeanor and provide judges with greater sentencing discretion in drug cases. That bill (H.B. 19), which passed 39 to 1, would retain stiff penalties for drug manufacturers and distributors. The Senate passed its version of the bill on April 5th.

In reaction to the vote, sponsor Rep. Melanie L. George, remarked that “all parties agree that current drug laws unevenly punish people caught in a cycle of addiction and do not effectively address the root of the problem – those who make and sell these dangerous drugs.”

To a degree, Rep. George is correct. To a larger degree, she is tragically wrong.

It is true that Delaware’s current drug laws impose draconian punishments on drug users. Possessing any amount of marijuana, for instance, can trigger up to 6 months in jail. Doing so within 1,000 feet of a school can boost that sentence to up to 15 years. But she is wrong to say that drug dealers are the “root of the problem.”

In fact, the real root of the problem is the failed policy of prohibition itself.

President Nixon declared our current “war on drugs” forty years ago this summer. Since then, we have spent more than $1 trillion and arrested millions of people. Last year alone, more than 1.5 million Americans were arrested for non-violent drug offenses. Due largely to prohibition, the U.S. incarcerates a much larger percentage of its citizens than any other country in the world—nearly one out of every 100 Americans is currently in prison or jail. The impact on racial minorities has been profoundly disproportionate. There are now more African-Americans incarcerated in our country than were enslaved during the mid-19th century.

According to a report last year by the conservative Cato Institute, the State of Delaware spends more than $328 million dollars a year fighting the drug war. More than 7,000 Delawareans are currently incarcerated, and another 17,000 are on probation or parole. The state’s Department of Corrections reports that the average cost of incarcerating a prisoner is approximately $30,000 a year.

What are we getting for this tremendous investment? In a word, failure.

According to a 2010 study by the University of Delaware, 24 percent of the state’s 11th graders report using marijuana regularly—up from 12 percent in 1990. During the same time frame, the rate among 8th graders rose from 3 percent to 12 percent. Interestingly, the same study found that regular alcohol use among 11th graders fell from 49 percent to 37 percent during those years, and cigarette smoking fell from 22 percent to 14 percent. In sum, far fewer Delaware teens use tobacco- which is legally available, regulated, and treated as a public health issue, than use marijuana, despite the fact that tobacco is far more addictive. Similar studies around the country have found the same trends.

It’s time for those of us who are concerned about illegal drug use to face facts. The current drug war is financially irresponsible, futile, and harmful to both addicts and the public at large. We know from our national experience with alcohol prohibition and the success of efforts to reduce tobacco use that public health education and treatment work, while prohibition only fosters crime and enriches criminal enterprises.

For 13 years, I supported the drug war as an analyst with the Drug Enforcement Administration. I know that the agency is filled with dedicated and hard-working agents, as are state and county drug task forces around the country. They valiantly put their lives on the line every day in an increasingly violent war with trafficking organizations around the world. Unfortunately, no amount of dedication or effort can create positive outcomes from misguided policies.

A growing number of these brave drug war soldiers have reached the same conclusion. I’m now a proud member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which is comprised of more than 15,000 current and former police officers, federal agents, prosecutors and judges who oppose our current drug policies in favor of regulated legalization. As the human and economic toll of prohibition continues to mount, their uniquely well-informed position should be heard.

Delaware’s legislature should be commended for supporting medical marijuana, scaling back mandatory minimums and reducing sentences for simple drug possession; however, none of these initiatives address the central problem with our nation’s drug policies. Drug prohibition, like alcohol prohibition before it, has engendered horrific violence and transfers billions of dollars a year from our economy to organized criminal gangs. For the sake of our communities, it’s time to end it.

Mexico and Argentina: Baby Steps

In the past two weeks, there have been two significant drug policy developments in the international arena. On August 21, Mexican President Felipe Calderon signed into law a bill that essentially decriminalizes the possession of marijuana and other drugs. Under the law, users caught with very small quantities—less then 5 grams of marijuana, half a gram of cocaine, 50 milligrams of heroin, or 40 milligrams of methamphetamine—will not be subject to prosecution. One third offense, users will be forced into treatment. Two days ago, the Argentine Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a law that provided penalties of up to two years in prison for simple possession of marijuana. In the ruling, the court encouragingly wrote:

"Each individual adult is responsible for making decisions freely about theirdesired lifestyle without state interference. Private conduct is allowed unlessit constitutes a real danger or causes damage to the property or the rights of others."

As the AP reported, the ruling has been met with support from the Fernandez administration:

Cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez declared that the ruling brings an end to"the repressive politics invented by the Nixon administration" in the UnitedStates and later adopted by Argenina’s dictators, to imprison drug users as ifthey were major traffickers."

The ruling sets a precedent that goes beyond marijuana by striking down anarticle in Argentina’s drug law that applies to people caught with personal useamounts of any narcotic.President Cristina Fernandez has supported drug law changes, saying in July 2008 that "I don’t like that an addict is condemned as if he were a criminal. The ones who need to be punished are those who sell the drug."

These legislative changes in Mexico and Argentina are positive to the extent that they will keep non-violent drug users out of jail; however, they will in no way alleviate the greater harms to society that prohibition currently causes. By keeping their country’s narcotics trade in the hands of organized crime, the plagues of violence, corruption, overdose deaths and injection-transmitted disease will continue unabated. The only solution to these problems is to legalize all substances, regulate and control the safety of those that are addictive and dangerous and focus harm reduction efforts on education and treatment. Anything short of that—including the incremental decriminalization that Mexico and Argentina recently adopted—is tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.