Disorder

In a major, broad-ranging report released Thursday, the Associated Press declared that "After 40 Years, $1 Trillion, US War on Drugs Has Failed to Meet Any of Its Goals." The report notes that after four decades of prohibitionist drug enforcement, "Drug use is rampant and violence is even more brutal and widespread."

The AP pointedly notes that despite official acknowledgments that the policy has been a flop, the Obama administration's federal drug budget continues to increase spending on law enforcement and interdiction and that the budget's broad contours are essentially identical to those of the Bush administration.

Here, according to the AP, is where some of that trillion dollars worth of policy disaster went:

• $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico -- and the violence along with it.
• $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.
• $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.
• $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.
• $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the US were serving sentences for drug offenses. [Editor's Note: This $450 billion dollar figure for federal drug war prisoners appears erroneous on the high side. According to Department of Justice budget figures, funding for the Bureau of Prisons, as well as courthouse security programs, was set at $9 billion for the coming fiscal year.]

The AP notes that, even adjusted for inflation, the federal drug war budget is 31 times what Richard Nixon asked for in his first federal drug budget.

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron told the AP that spending money for more police and soldiers only leads to more homicides. "Current policy is not having an effect of reducing drug use," Miron said, "but it's costing the public a fortune."

"President Obama's newly released drug war budget is essentially the same as Bush's, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal justice system as to treatment and prevention," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance. "This despite Obama's statements on the campaign trail that drug use should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue."

"For the first time ever, the nation has before it an administration that views the drug issue first and foremost through the lens of the public health mandate," said economist and drug policy expert John Carnevale, who served three administrations and four drug czars. "Yet... it appears that this historic policy stride has some problems with its supporting budget."

Of the record $15.5 billion Obama is requesting for the drug war for 2011, about two thirds of it is destined for law enforcement, eradication, and interdiction. About one-third will go for prevention and treatment.

The AP did manage to find one person to stick up for the drug war: former Bush administration drug czar John Walters, who insisted society would be worse if today if not for the drug war. "To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven't made any difference is ridiculous," Walters said. "It destroys everything we've done. It's saying all the people involved in law enforcement, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time. It's saying all these people's work is misguided."

Uh, yeah, John, that's what it's saying.

Jazzed by the sense that the tide is finally turning their way, more than a thousand people interested in changing drug policies flooded into Albuquerque, New Mexico, last weekend for the 2009 International Drug Policy Reform Conference, hosted by the Drug Policy Alliance. Police officers in suits mingled with aging hippies, politicians met with harm reductionists, research scientists chatted with attorneys, former prisoners huddled with state legislators, and marijuana legalizers mingled with drug treatment professionals -- all united by the belief that drug prohibition is a failed policy.

candlelight vigil outside the Albuquerque Convention Center (courtesy Drug Policy Alliance)

For three days, conference-goers attended a veritable plethora of panels and breakout sessions, with topics ranging from the drug war in Mexico and South America to research on psychedelics, from implementing harm reduction policies in rural areas to legalizing marijuana, from how to organize for drug reform to what sort of treatment works, and from medical marijuana to prescription heroin.

It was almost too much. At any given moment, several fascinating panels were going on, ensuring that at least some of them would be missed even by the most interested. The Thursday afternoon time bloc, for example, had six panels: "Medical Marijuana Production and Distribution Systems," "After Vienna: Prospects for UN and International Reform," "Innovative Approaches to Sentencing Reform," "Examining Gender in Drug Policy Reform," "Artistic Interventions for Gang Involved Youth," and "The Message is the Medium: Communications and Outreach Without Borders."

The choices weren't any easier at the Friday morning breakout session, with panels including "Marijuana Messaging that Works," "Fundraising in a Tough Economy," "Congress, President Obama, and the Drug Czar," "Zoned Out" (about "drug-free zones"), "Psychedelic Research: Neuroscience and Ethnobotanical Roots," "Opioid Overdose Prevention Workshop," and "Border Perspectives: Alternatives to the 40-Year-Old War on Drugs."

People came from all over the United States -- predominantly from the East Coast -- as well as South Africa, Australia, Canada, Europe (Denmark, England, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, and Switzerland), Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico), and Asia (Cambodia and Thailand).

Medical marijuana was one of the hot topics, and New Mexico, which has just authorized four dispensaries, was held up as a model by some panelists. "If we had a system as clear as New Mexico's, we'd be in great shape," said Alex Kreit, chair of a San Diego task force charged with developing regulations for dispensaries there.

"Our process has been deliberate, which you can also read as 'slow,'" responded Steve Jenison, medical director of the state Department of Health's Infectious Disease Bureau. "But our process will be a very sustainable one. We build a lot of consensus before we do anything."

Jenison added that the New Mexico, which relies on state-regulated dispensaries, was less likely to result in diversion than more open models, such as California's. "A not-for-profit being regulated by the state would be less likely to be a source of diversion to the illicit market," Jenison said.

For ACLU Drug Policy Law Project attorney Allen Hopper, such tight regulation has an added benefit: it is less likely to excite the ire of the feds. "The greater the degree of state involvement, the more the federal government is going to leave the state alone," Hopper said.

At Friday's plenary session, "Global Drug Prohibition: Costs, Consequences and Alternatives," Australia's Dr. Alex Wodak amused the audience by likening the drug war to "political Viagra" in that it "increases potency in elections." But he also made the more serious point that the US has exported its failed drug policy around the world, with deleterious consequences, especially for producer or transit states like Afghanistan, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru.

At that same session, former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda warned that Latin American countries feel constrained from making drug policy reforms because of the glowering presence of the US. Drug reform is a "radioactive" political issue, he said, in explaining why it is either elder statesmen, such as former Brazilian President Cardoso or people like himself, "with no political future," who raise the issue. At a panel the following day, Castaneda made news by bluntly accusing the Mexican army of executing drug traffickers without trial. (See related story here).

It wasn't all listening to panels. In the basement of the Albuquerque Convention Center, dozens of vendors showed off their wares, made their sales, and distributed their materials as attendees wandered through between sessions. And for many attendees, it was as much a reunion as a conference, with many informal small group huddles taking place at the center and in local bars and restaurants and nearby hotels so activists could swap experiences and strategies and just say hello again.

The conference also saw at least two premieres. On the first day of the conference, reporters and other interested parties repaired to a Convention Center conference room to see the US unveiling of the British Transform Drug Policy Foundation publication, After the War on Drugs: A Blueprint for Legalization, a how-to manual on how to get to drug reform's promised land. Transform executive director Danny Kushlick was joined by Jack Cole of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies, Deborah Small of Break the Chains, and DPA's Nadelmann as he laid out the case for moving beyond "what would it look like."

"There's never been a clear vision of a post-prohibition world," said Kushlick. "With this, we've tried to reclaim drug policy from the drug warriors. We want to make drug policy boring," he said. "We want not only harm reduction, but drama reduction," he added, envisioning debates about restrictions on sales hours, zoning, and other dreary topics instead of bloody drug wars and mass incarceration.

"As a movement, we have failed to articulate the alternative," said Tree. "And that leaves us vulnerable to the fear of the unknown. This report restores order to the anarchy. Prohibition means we have given up on regulating drugs; this report outlines some of the options for regulation."

That wasn't the only unveiling Thursday. Later in the evening, Flex Your Rights held the first public showing of a near-final version of its new video, 10 Rules for Dealing with Police. The screening of the self-explanatory successor to Flex Your Right's 2003 "Busted" -- which enjoyed a larger budget and consequently higher production level -- played to a packed and enthusiastic house. This highly useful examination of how not to get yourself busted is bound to equal if not exceed the break-out success of "Busted." "10 Rules" was one of a range of productions screened during a two-night conference film festival.

The conference ended Saturday evening with a plenary address by former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who came out as a legalizer back in 2001, and was welcomed with waves of applause before he ever opened his mouth. "It makes no sense to spend the kind of money we spend as a society locking up people for using drugs and using the criminal justice system to solve the problem," he said, throwing red meat to the crowd.

We'll do it all again two years from now in Los Angeles. See you there!

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the repeal of alcohol Prohibition, when Utah -- Utah!--became the 38th state to ratify the 21st Amendment to the Constitution, repealing the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act and drawing the curtain on America's failed experiment with social engineering. Repeal of Prohibition seemed unthinkable in 1930, but three years later it was history. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned as we commemorate that day.

prohibition-era beer raid, Washington, DC (Library of Congress)

At a Tuesday press conference in Washington, DC, LEAP unveiled a new project, We Can Do It Again!, where people are invited to send the anti-prohibitionist message to their federal representatives, and a report with the same title detailing and comparing the ills of Prohibition and current day drug prohibition. In its recommendations to policymakers, the report called for a national commission to study the true costs of drug prohibition, called on state and local legislatures and executive branches to reevaluate drug war spending, and urged "incremental reforms" and harm reduction measures in the short-term.

"In 1932, a majority of Congress realized that prohibition was ineffective," recalled Eric Sterling, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, at the press conference, "In 1933, more than two thirds of Congress sent prohibition repeal to the States for ratification. We ended prohibition's ineffective approach to alcohol control then, and we can do it again for drug prohibition now."

The parallels between Prohibition and today's drug prohibition are many, said Sterling. "Congress embraced the term 'war on drugs' in the early 1980s as the Colombians drove the Cubans out of control of the cocaine traffic with machine gun battles on South Florida streets and shopping malls. The violence mimicked the street battles to dominate the beer and liquor trade in American cities in the 1920s, exemplified by the 1929 Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago," he noted. "In 1929 the ruthless violence of Al Capone was fueled by alcohol prohibition profits. Maintaining our current approach, in 2009, the violence of al Qaeda will be financed by drug prohibition profits. We have to stop this violence, as we did 75 years ago. In Colombia, for more than two decades, I have observed drug prohibition finance terror -- by both the enemies and the allies of the government -- that undermines the institutions of their society. Seventy-five years ago, we ended the violence of alcohol prohibition, and we must do it again. We can do it again."

"We believe there are significant similarities between alcohol Prohibition and the drug war prohibition we have going on right now," Richard Van Winkler, LEAP member and superintendent of a New Hampshire correctional facility, told the Chronicle Thursday. "Prohibition doesn't stop Americans from using any substance they choose to. We tried that in the 1920s, and it failed, and now we are trying it again. We advocate for drug legalization not because we advocate for drug use, but because as those drugs are prohibited, we will continue to fund a significant criminal element that is getting larger and more powerful every day."

Sterling and LEAP weren't the only people musing about the end of Prohibition this week. "There are significant parallels, but also dissimilarities," said Dale Gieringer, head of California NORML. "Both Prohibition and drug prohibition are products of the same Progressive Era, an era of intense temperance agitation on all levels, with a lot of religious fervor behind it. One lasted 13 years, the other is with us still."

Long-time marijuana activist Dana Beal of Cures Not Wars saw little reason for optimism in the end of Prohibition. "I think you're dreaming if you think you can apply to marijuana the experience of repeal of prohibition of the psychoactive sacrament of the Catholic Church," he said. "Think outside the box. The end of alcohol prohibition has almost zero lessons for how we get out of pot prohibition."

But his was a decidedly minority view. "One lesson we can draw from Prohibition is that it did not work very well," said Aaron Houston director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project, "and we're seeing parallels to that today. In Mexico, the drug trade violence is spectacularly awful and increasingly vicious. Heads are rolling onto playgrounds there, and the cartels are coming to the US and kidnapping American citizens. By maintaining prohibition, we are giving our money to some very, very bad people, and there is a lesson there for our current prohibition policy; I call it the Al Capone lesson," he said.

"I think what many people don't realize is that what gave the Prohibition repeal movement muscle in 1930 was the Great Depression," said Houston. "Federal income tax revenues were declining significantly. Now, we are seeing similar economic problems. I think reformers should focus on the cost of marijuana prohibition. We have 13 states that are spending more than a billion dollars a year each on prisons, and what's the payoff?"

One big difference between Prohibition and drug prohibition is the level of debate, Gieringer said. "There was a huge public debate about Prohibition, it was a dominant issue for years, but there was very little debate about drug prohibition. Even now, drug prohibition is not that much of an issue. There is a lot of very ugly stuff going on in foreign countries, but that's not here. The last time drugs were a big issue here was 20 years ago, with the crack violence in the streets of America, and that got people riled up and not in an anti-prohibitionist way."

Some of the sunnier views of both the status quo and the prospects for change come from California, where the state's loosely-written medical marijuana law has created a sort of de facto personal legalization for anyone with a little initiative and $150 for a visit to the doctor's office for a recommendation. The state's network of dispensaries, now in the hundreds, has flourished despite the DEA's best efforts, creating a real world vision of what retail marijuana sales could look like. And now, the incoming president has promised to call off the dogs.

"After being involved in this issue since 1994, I think we're seeing a need for a lot of things to shift around to end prohibition, and the perfect storm may have arrived this year," said Jeff Jones, founder of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Club. "We have the alignment of a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president who has said he has used drugs, both soft and hard, and an economic recession. This could trigger a turn similar to that which we saw with the Great Depression and Prohibition."

Facts on the ground are creating a new reality, Jones said. "An end to prohibition is knocking at the door. There are new tax revenue streams being identified here, and public officials are starting to rethink this whole issue. And the Supreme Court's refusal to overturn the Kha case [where a California appeals court ruled that state and local police need not enforce federal drug laws; see story here] means it's over. We won with no fanfare. We don't get a badge or a checkered flag, but by default, we have won this week. It doesn't matter what the feds do. We're going to create infrastructure, jobs, and tax dollars, and we're going to change minds. The medicalization of cannabis has changed things forever, and there's no going back now," Jones prophesied.

Speakeasy photo, with flappers (courtesy arbizu.org)

Coming out of the closet is both desirable and necessary, said Gieringer. "Most people are happy as long as drugs stay out of sight and mind, but as we've seen with the LA cannabis clubs, people have learned to be comfortable having them around. We need more of this. Drugs in general need more public visibility to gain more public acceptance," Gieringer argued. "People need to know the world isn't going to collapse, because they've forgotten what it was like a hundred years ago, when our 19th Century legal drug market worked very well."

"With alcohol Prohibition, people had living memories of life before Prohibition," agreed LEAP's Van Wickler. "The generation taking power now doesn't know life without drug prohibition. That makes the paradigm shift all the more difficult."

But even with what's going on in California, there is a long way to go, said Gieringer. Federal legalization of marijuana is unlikely, he said, and thus, so is outright legalization in the states. "I don't see any state passing legalization, in part because of the harsh federal response to medical marijuana. What we need to do is first create de facto, on the ground legalization," as is arguably or partially the case in Gieringer's home state.

The United States has pinned itself to perpetual prohibition through the UN Single Convention, Gieringer noted. Federal legalization would require modifying the convention, and that would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate. "That's a major project, given that we don't have even one senator who even supports medical marijuana, much less decriminalization," he noted dryly.

If the federal government appears unmovable in the near term, then it is going to be up to the states to push the envelope, despite the obstacles. "I think the end of marijuana prohibition is going to come with the states taking action first," said Dr. Mitch Earleywine, a leading academic marijuana expert and editor of Pot Politics. "As a number of states not only have good experiences, but also start bringing in the tax revenues, the cogs will begin to turn at the federal level. We're already seeing this in California, where the rough economic times are being buffered by medical marijuana cash."

But despite all the cautious prognostications, there is one final lesson of Prohibition that may warm reformers hearts. "One of the most cheering things about Prohibition was that even though it looked impossible to end for so long, it collapsed so quickly," Gieringer said. "In 1930, the prohibitionists said there was as much chance of ending it as a bird flying to the moon with the Washington monument tied to its tail, but within three years it was gone. The conventional wisdom of 1930 about Prohibition is the same as the conventional wisdom about repealing the drug laws now, but as we saw, things can happen very quickly."

So, tonight, toss down a cold one as you commemorate Repeal Day and hope we don't have to wait another 75 years to celebrate the end of drug prohibition. How about 7.5 years instead?