Diary Of A Mad Voter: Jessica Peck Corry
In Search Of A Presidential Candidate Who Will “Just Say No”
By Jessica Peck Corry, 8-09-07
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Hillary or Obama? Mitt or Rudy? The candidates are spending millions to distinguish themselves from each other. Except on the Drug War, where they remain united in their silence about our country’s continued flawed approach toward drug treatment and prohibition.
On every major presidential candidate’s campaign Web site, you’ll find their policy positions on diverse issues ranging from the war in Iraq to mortgage fraud. You will not find, however, a single reference to the Drug War by front-runners, including U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney.
These candidates are merely following a path of conformity that has historically served both parties well. The GOP remains silent in an effort to solidify its base with social conservatives and Democrats are quiet to deflect the perception that they are soft on crime.
While their continued silence doesn’t hurt their electoral chances, voters deserve a candidate who can acknowledge our failed drug war for what it is—a multi-decade failure that costs us billions of dollars each year.
We simply cannot have an honest debate about America’s social ills without first acknowledging our serious drug problems. According to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 22 million Americans suffer from drug or alcohol abuse. Department of Justice statistics demonstrate that 55 percent of all federal prison inmates are there because of drugs.
And too often, it’s our own government that serves as the source of our problems. Want drugs? Find your nearest agent from Drug Enforcement Agency and you may just learn how to whip up a nice batch of the illegal stuff.
At a DEA-hosted event earlier this summer in Denver, invited residents were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at just how the federal government fights drugs. As part of the day, agents taught participants how to make methamphetamine. One can only hope that participants were screened for past or present drug addiction.
Agents defended this flawed public relations effort, saying that meth recipes can be found easily on the Internet. I looked, and sure enough, more than 44,000 sites popped up. An important question remains, however: How do you and I benefit from the government giving meth cooking classes?
The answer: We don’t. History has proven the government wrong time and again in its hands-on anti-drug efforts. When the government says, “Just Say No,” the public response is all too often to just say “yes.” As a child during Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug campaign of the 1980’s, I lived this reality.
I first learned about alcohol, marijuana, hallucinogens, and cigarettes from law enforcement officials when whey came to my school representing D.A.R.E.—an acronym standing for “Drug Abuse Resistance Education” pledging “To Keep Our Kids Off Drugs.”
In seventh grade, my classmates and I giggled as we learned that it took three times as much beer than hard alcohol to get drunk. Wine was somewhere in the middle. Too much of any of it and you might start spinning in circles. Also, if you put special stickers called LSD on your tongue, you could start to see all kinds of strange things.
The program was little more than an advertisement for bad behavior. Students joked as they signed their sobriety pledges. Students are still having the last laugh today. According to D.A.R.E.’s Web page, more than 75 percent of the nation’s school districts still participate in the program. Meanwhile, according to government reports, more than 6,000 Americans try marijuana for the first time every day.
By the time I made it to ninth grade in a new suburban junior high, local law enforcement sat us down for a more serious anti-drug speech. I sat in shocked awe as I held the marijuana pipe and bong the officer had passed around. What would my parents think? This was the first time I’d ever seen illegal drug paraphernalia. For the officer, however, the demonstration ended abruptly when one of the students secretly made off with the pipe. So much for keeping kids off drugs.
From a fiscal perspective, the government simply cannot justify spending money on teaching people how to most effectively make or use illegal drugs. The federal government continues to drive us into debt with its irresponsible spending and our leaders at the state and local level have made a full time job out of convincing us they need more of our hard-earned money.
In Denver alone, taxpayers have approved 13 new tax increases in just the last four years totaling more than $280 million. One such increase was for a new prison—sold to voters based on the idea that more space was needed to house our exploding drug-using inmate population.
According to a report compiled by the non-partisan Colorado Legislative Council, the number of Colorado residents sent to prison because of drug-related offenses has skyrocketed nearly 500 percent in the last decade. Likewise, a recent study by the National Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse found that Colorado has the lowest per capita spending on substance abuse prevention, treatment, and research out of 46 reporting states. While we don’t have the money to treat drug addiction, we do have the money to send users to prison. Meanwhile, if you listen to the DEA, we definitely have the cash to teach presumed non-users how to mix their own illegal drug cocktails.
It’s time for a presidential candidate who will have the courage to “Just Say No” to our failed Drug War. Stop wasting our tax dollars. At minimum, and as a mother, I respectfully request that the government refrain from putting a bong in the hands of my children.
Editor’s note: Jessica Peck Corry’s weekly blogs are part of a new feature on NewWest.Net/Politics called “Diary of a Mad Voter,” a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post’s Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the ‘08 election cycle. Check back this week at www.newwest.net/madvoter.
Great essay: thank you.
There are too many people making money—and political hay—off the drug war. It's probably safe to say that at least half the money that gets sent to Mexico, Columbia, Afghanistan, etc., funding their part in the "war on drugs" get's stolen. I'm not certain how much of that money spent here gets stolen; I'd like to believe that Americans are somehow morally superior to those "swarthy" types, but at my age I know better.
How many companies profit off anti-drug materials?
How many cops make money from anti-drug activities?
How many police departments depend on war on drugs money to fund other operations?
And how many cops, politicians and others get bribed to look the other way about drug trafficing?
There's just too damn much money involved for anything to really happen.
Jessica,
You write :
"According to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 22 million Americans suffer from drug or alcohol abuse."
True but 70% of the cases are for one drug - alcohol. And alcohol is equally involved in another 15% of the cases. Prescription drugs ae the bulk of the remainder.
This is despite a failed drug war that includes the availability of
any drug to any teen for over 30 years (also from MTF via SAMHSA).
Nearly all drug abuse peaks at age 21 - and recedes rapidly by 25. The most serious problems often surface before the abuser is 10 or has used any drug. These are mental health and public health problems, not police problems.
The drug war simply is irrelevant to the problem while it feeds drug lords, crime, violence and corruption. It also takes money away from programs that might actually help.
Thank you for helping spark a look at this fiasco.
Thanks Jessica. I agree. One of the consequences underlying the utter failure of prohibition was the fact of all that revenue going to organized crime. Why couldn't government get into the racket? If government legalized, regulated and taxed the more benign drugs it could realize that revenue, taking it from the pockets of organized crime, help with our mounting debt and suffer no more social ills than the failed policy is experiencing. Indeed, allowing access to marijuana to young testronic males might actually resolve some of the issues we face with them on alcohol. It would certainly assist law enforcement in freeing up their time to focus on serious crime and giving more space in our prisons for those that need it.
Meth however is a different matter. It needs to be irradicated. And but for our pharmeceutical companies and their lobbyists this would have been accomplished by now. See:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meth/
One cartoonist recently commented that the problem with the war on drugs is that we're fighting the wrong enemy.
I'd love to see this essay in USA Today as an Op-Ed.
[Today's drug war has become The New Inquisition. A "Drug-free society"has replaced "life after death", CSA, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, and DEA the Officium Sanctae Inquisitionis.]
I don't think this is an issue to run on. It's waaaay too easy to hammer : soft on crime! We get a set of sensible leaders, then bring it up.
Comment By Tyler Watkins, 8-09-07This artical is wrong to claim that ALL presidential candidates have not taken a stance on the war on drugs. Congressman and Republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul has clearly taken a stance in opposition to the war on drugs. While this information is not posted on his campaign site, it can easily be found on the Internet. Dr. Ron Paul voted for legalization of industrial hemp, voted against random drug testing of government employees, and firmly believes that the war on drugs has abused the Bill of Rights. He even went so far as to sponsor the States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act. Ron Paul has publicly stated that, if elected, he would abolish the DEA. If you want to elect a president who can admit that the war on drugs is a failure, than do a little research on Ron Paul, because he is you man.
Comment By jdj, 8-10-07This piece shows exactly why certain drugs continue to be a problem for some people in this country - it's not serious. Your silly examples make the issue trivial. I doubt a couple meth workshops significantly add to the problem. Addiitonally, I read a lot of rant but little in the way of substance. Was a subtext to legalize some drugs? If so, say so. Your unwilliingness to actually dig into the issue, as some of those who commented did, displays what is so superficial in most blogs.
You also fall into the favorite strategy of most commenters on the topic - you lump drug and alchohol abuse together. We allow advertising and taxes on alchohol not so on illegal drugs. How can you treat the abuse as similar? Jerry E is correct - if you want efficient enforcment and treatment focus on booze; administer reasonable treatment programs for the others.
One comment is right - the meth issue could have been addressed by stringent regulation on over the counter drugs but that would not stop the Mexican gangs from bringing it over the border where the vast majority of meth comes from.
The reality is that the drug issue is not an issue for most voters. I have never seen it make a national list. This suggests to me that it is a subfederal scale issue where communities and states where it is a problem need to pony up both money and social capital. Until the conservatives admit that not all drugs are the same in thier effect and liberals admit that punishment, handed out with specific purpose in mind is effective, we will continue to talk around this issue for the next century. You can't legislate morality or rationality.
Tyler, it was made very clear that Jessica was only talking about the front runners, not the poop catchers at the back of the parade.
Comment By Sisyphus, 8-10-07jdj thanks for acknowledging my contribution but if you watch the program you'll see that focusing on that end of the problem is merely a finger in the dike. The chokehold is upon the manufacturers of the raw material for meth which the Mexican druglords continue to have access. They produce far more with large quantities of raw material than they will be able to produce than the cottage and labor intensive industry of addicts punching out tablets of cold medicine. Yet pharmaceutical lobbyists for years blocked any legal restrictions on those manufacturers.
Comment By Charlie S, 8-14-07For years, I have been saying that by the time you need more prisons, it's already too late. The damage is already done. It would be much more cost effective, and socially beneficial to attempt to learn what the underlying reasons are for requiring so much more jail space.
We need a realistic evaluation of the War on Drugs from a number of perspectives. Which drugs are the most destructive and readily available?(Of course, alcohol and tobacco would top the list.)
Which are the ones that tend to support organzied crime and the brutality that accompanies this relationship?
How bad really are some of the illegal drugs compared to the "legal" ones, including prescription drugs. One only has to watch commericials on TV for legal drugs to see how physically destructive they can be. In many cases, the side effects and potential dangers seem to be far worse than the original ailment.
And finally, reread your history. How effective was Prohibition and what is its legacy today.
I fail to understand why a plant like marijuana that can grow virtually anywhere is more of a danger than a "legal" drug that can cause possible seizures, vomitting, diarhea, dizziness, possible breathing problems, and the dreaded "sexual side effects"... etc. And it still may nor solve the problem after all that.
Why is alcohol, which has destroyed millions of lives and affected millions more over the years OK? Or tobacco that kills approximately 300,000 per year OK?
We need a realistic approach to the drug problem, including prevention and education as well as treatment. We need to address the reasons for drug abuse to begin with, be it unemployment, poverty, lack of education, or training, etc.
The claim that such an approach would be "too expensive" is ludicrous in light of the billions our government has pissed away while running around in circles and getting nowhere fast.
Duh, can you say "Ron Paul"?
Good, I knew you could!