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2040 Drug Policy Alternatives: What Are the Options? UUs for Drug Policy Reform | ||||||
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2040 Drug Policy Alternatives: What Are the Options? UUs for Drug Policy Reform | ||||||
Speakers: Cliff Thornton, Deborah SmallThe War on Drugs has been fought for 40 years, and the casualties are heavy, particularly in communities of people out of the mainstream. Some UUs think this is insane. Charles Thomas, head of UUDPR (Unitarian Universalists for Drug Policy Reform) and two distinguished panel members discussed some alternatives to the current Prohibitionist approach to dealing with the worldwide drug epidemic. The two other speakers were Debora Small of the Linda Smith Center for Drug Policy and Clifford Thornton, president of Efficacy.
According to Thomas, there are some facts we need to face. Drugs are here to stay. There has never been a drug-free society. Even if we abolished all the illicit drugs, the legal ones such as alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, inhalants (glue, paint, and gasoline) and prescription drugs would remain. Even if all addictive substances could miraculously be controlled, other destructive addictions such as sex, gambling, video games or even internet addictions would remain. Second, the facts about the War on Drugs are appalling. First, 1.5 million people are arrested each year, 75 % for possession. This means the war is being fought against users of drugs. The cost to taxpayers is $40 billion, with two-thirds of that being spent on police, courts and prisons and only one-third to try to prevent drug abuse. Yet, drug use has increased during the 90s in spite of draconian measures.
Thomas urged us to change the things we can change and asked us to consider what can we do within our principles and through the transforming power of love. He believes UU congregations should be safe places to talk and urged us to ensure that our congregational libraries contain adequate resource material. We need to concentrate on the realistic goal of minimizing the harm rather than concentrating on the unrealistic view of eliminating drugs.
Thomas asked us to think about what is in the middle between prohibition and laissez-faire market and whether we could separate the harm from the drugs themselves vs. the harm caused by the system.
Deborah Small, director of Public Policy and Community Outreach at the Linda Smith Center for Drug Policy Foundation, described how the bombs in the War on Drugs devastate minority communities. Most of those incarcerated for drug crimes are people of color (the actual figure is 94.5%), in spite of the fact that drug use actually closely parallels the racial distribution of our society. Lest anyone doubt that our drug polices are driven by considerations of race and class, she cited history to bolster her contentions. Anti-opium laws were aimed directly at the Chinese who used it, not the middle-class whites who also used it. Smoking of opium was viewed as dangerous, while taking it in liquid form (laudanum) was not. Heroin was first marketed as a cough suppressant, and only when heroin began to be used recreationally did white society become concerned and make it illegal. Cocaine was first given to field workers to get more work out of them for less food. Again, its recreational use by African-Americans produced the outrage. Even today, "crack" cocaine, which is popularly smoked in the black community, is viewed as particularly dangerous, while cocaine powder, which is "snorted" by white America is viewed as much less dangerous. Small also pointed out that most of the dangers of drugs are actually the result of our Prohibitionist approach. She asked whether the current AIDS pandemic would be nearly so serious had not the anti-drug crusaders kept clean needles out of the hands of users.
Clifford Thornton, President of Efficacy, said the War on Drugs represents the most important social issue of our times. His journey began in 1963, two weeks before his graduation from high school. Police came to his door and drove him to a junkyard where the naked body of his mother had been found, the apparent victim of a drug overdose. He became a passionate anti-drug crusader and supported the Prohibitionist approach until he began to see that it was not only failing, but it was making the problem much worse. The analogy he used was of an air force bombing its own cities rather than those of the enemy.
Thornton reiterated that most of the problems of drugs are not caused by the drugs themselves but rather as a direct result of their being illegal. Crime and a failure to work in productive jobs are caused by the high price of illegal drugs. Most of the adverse health effects result from the impurity of drugs and the sharing of needles. Children are effectively orphaned by incarceration of their parents.
The answers were first proposed by President John F. Kennedy's Blue Ribbon Commission. In 1963 the commission determined drug use was a medical problem, and that keeping drug prevention in the hands of the legal system would increase price and lead to destruction of black community. He proposed a series of solutions from decrimilization to outright legalization that would improve our currently losing War on Drugs. Drug empires will collapse after legalization. Legalization means regulation, and drugs sold in regulated stores would be more difficult to obtain than currently under the Prohibitionist approach. Crime would fall markedly with the need to steal large amounts of money to support an illegal habit. Legalization would scuttle the multibillion dollar drug industry and the bureaucracy that has a vested interested in not solving the problem.
As Thornton said, "There is no drug known to man wherein safety is improved when its production and distribution is handed over to criminals." With legalization, drugs present little problem to anyone who chooses not to use them, but if illegal, they are a danger to us all.
For more information see http://www.uudpr.org and http://www.efficacy-online.orgReported for the Web by Bob Hurst
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