Nix Nixon (Essay on American "War on Drugs)

While researching this issue that I am very much on the fence about, I came across a video of Sir Richard Bronson being interviewed on CNN, and one of the things he said is that “drugs should be treated as a health problem, not a criminal problem (Bronson, 2012) (Justice, 2010).” A simple statement with so much power. I think that encapsulates my general attitude of the idea of drug legalization, but beyond that, things get a little hazy.

First of all, I think the term “war on drugs” needs to be examined. The very word war makes me uncomfortable, because there hasn’t been a war since the conception of civilization where no died. In Nixon’s famous war on drugs speech, he speaks about actually declaring war on drug abuse. Sounds like a phenomenal idea to me. There should be focus on prevention and treatment of drug issues, just as Sir Bronson said in his interview. However, as the statistics show, the outcome has been very different.

Overwhelmingly, sources online state a staggering statistic. More than fifty percent of the people in our prison system are incarcerated due to a drug related offense. A friend of mine was arrested at one point and time for the possession of thirty eight pounds of marijuana. The prosecutor, who was the same prosecutor who gave my brother’s murderers twenty years in jail, was going to put my friend in jail for one year for every pound of pot. That’s thirty eight years in prison for a plant. Breaking down the costs of this one incident, with marijuana being valued around fifty dollars for an eighth ounce, the total street value of those drugs was $243,200. The cost to incarcerate and house my friend would have taken $950,000, on a low end estimate of twenty five thousand dollars a year. That doesn’t incorporate anything but incarceration. No factor for the money that the local economy and his family loses because he is in prison.

Let’s step away from the money aspect for a while and focus on something more important. The issue of lives lost, both domestic and abroad, from our declared war on drugs. According to the Department of Justice, the illegal drug market in the U.S. is dominated by 900,000 criminally active gang members affiliated with 20,000 street gangs in more than 2,500 cities (Justice, 2010), and that Mexican drug cartels now directly control illegal drug markets in at least 230 American cities (Justice, Drug Trafficking Organizations, 2008). Aside from the near million people already dedicated to throwing their lives away, how many people do you think die every year because of these criminal syndicates?

Let me digress, and answer the original question. Should full legalization for drugs occur? For drugs aside from marijuana, I would not agree with full legalization. Decriminalization would be the best choice I believe, or full legalization with the stipulation that it be treated like alcohol in public and be tested for with jobs, just as usual. It takes a fair amount of wind out of the sails of criminal syndicates, and lets people make their own choices. I’m reminded of the saying, “Take off the labels and let the idiots sort themselves out.” In this case, perhaps it’s the best policy.

References
Bronson, S. R. (2012, 12 6). Richard Branson on the 'War on Drugs'. (E. Burnett, Interviewer) CNN. Retrieved from

Justice, D. o. (2008, 12 1). Drug Trafficking Organizations. Retrieved from National Drug Intelligence Center Archives: http://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs31/31379/dtos.htm

Justice, D. o. (2010, 2 1). National Drug Threat Assessment. Retrieved from National Drug Intelligence Center Archives: http://www.justice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs38/38661/38661p.pdf