War on Drugs

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This article or section deals primarily with the United States and does not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

A basic economic problem of unintended consequences: Large profits and markups associated with the very illegality of illicit drugs, helps fuel the business which the "war on drugs" was constructed to stop. In this way, the war on drugs assists illicit drug trade. UK Govt report

The War on Drugs is a prohibition campaign undertaken by the United States government with the assistance of participating countries, intended to reduce the illegal drug trade—to curb supply and diminish demand for certain psychoactive substances deemed "harmful or undesirable" by the government. This initiative includes a set of laws and policies that are intended to discourage the production, distribution, and consumption of targeted substances. The term was first used by President Richard Nixon in 1972, and his choice of words was probably based on the War on Poverty, announced by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964.

[edit] History

In the broadest sense, modern War on Drugs could be considered to have started in 1880, when the U.S. and Qing China completed an agreement that prohibited the shipment of opium between the two countries; Qing China itself was still reeling from the effects of fighting the Opium War after a failed attempt to stem the British importing of opium into China proper (see Lin Zexu). The United States alcohol prohibition from 1920–1933 is the most widely known historical period of drug prohibition. The term itself, however, was coined in 1971 by Richard Nixon to describe a new set of initiatives designed to enhance drug prohibition.

[edit] Timeline

1911: United States first Opium Commissioner argues that of all the nations of the world, the United States consumes most habit-forming drugs per capita. ^[1]

1914: The first recorded instance of the United States enacting a ban on the domestic distribution of drugs is the Harrison Narcotic Act [1] of 1914. This act was presented and passed as a method of regulating the production and distribution of opiate-containing substances under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, but a section of the act was later interpreted by law enforcement officials for the purpose of prosecuting doctors who prescribe opiates to addicts.

1919: Alcohol prohibition in the U.S. first appeared under numerous provincial bans and was eventually codified under a federal constitutional amendment in 1919, having been approved by 36 of the 48 U.S. states.

1925: United States supported regulation of cannabis as a drug in the International Opium Convention.^[2] and by the mid 1930s all member states had some regulation of cannabis.

1933: Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is repealed. The amendment remains the only major act of prohibition to be repealed, having been repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution.

1935 President Roosevelt hails the International Opium Convention and application of it in US. law in a radio message to the nation. ^[3]

1937: Congress passed the Marijuana Tax Act. Presented as a $1 nuisance tax on the distribution of marijuana, this act required anyone distributing the drug to maintain and submit a detailed account of his or her transactions, including inspections, affidavits, and private information regarding the parties involved. This law, however, was something of a "Catch-22", as obtaining a tax stamp required individuals to first present their goods, which was an action tantamount to confession. This act was passed by Congress on the basis of testimony and public perception that marijuana caused insanity, criminality, and death.

1951: The 1951 Boggs Act increased penalties fourfold

1956: The Daniel Act increased penalties by a factor of eight over those specified in the Boggs Act. Although by this time there was adequate testimony to refute the claim that marijuana caused insanity, criminality, or death, the rationalizations for these laws shifted in focus to the proposition that marijuana use led to the use of heroin, creating the gateway drug theory.

1960s: The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations adapted relatively liberal drug policies in the 1960s. The 1960s is remembered for its "Flower Power" culture and frequent and open use of marijuana and other drugs.

1969: Psychiatrist Dr. Robert DuPont conducts urinalysis of everyone entering the D.C. jail system in August of 1969. He finds 44% test positive for heroin.^[4]

1971: The Vietnam War is linked with concerns over drugs.

• May: Congressmen Robert Steele (R-CT) and Morgan Murphy (D-IL) release an explosive report on the growing heroin epidemic among U.S. servicemen in Vietnam.^[4]
• June 17th: Nixon declares war on drugs.^[4] He characterized the abuse of illicit substances as "public enemy number one in the United States". Under Nixon, the U.S. Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. This legislation is the foundation on which the modern drug war exists. Responsibility for enforcement of this new law was given to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and then in 1973 to the newly formed Drug Enforcement Administration. During the Nixon era, for the only time in the history of the war on drugs, the majority of funding goes towards treatment, rather than law enforcement.^[4]
• Later in the month the U.S. military announces they will begin urinalysis of all returning servicemen. The program goes into effect in September and the results are favorable: "only" 4.5% of the soldiers test positive for heroin.^[4]

1972, March 22nd: The National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse recommends legalizing possession and sales of small amounts of marijuana. Nixon and the Congress ignores the suggestion^[5]

1974: A Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. James O. Eastland on The Marihuana-hashish epidemic and its impact on United States security invited 21 scientists of the first rank from seven different countries to testify, including Gabriel G. Nahas and Nils Bejerot. The testimony of these experts showed that the evidence accumulated by scientific researchers on marijuana had turned dramatically against this drug.^[6][7]

1988: Near the end of the Reagan administration, the Office of National Drug Control Policy was created for central coordination of drug-related legislative, security, diplomatic, research and health policy throughout the government. In recognition of his central role, the director of ONDCP is commonly known as the Drug Czar. The position was raised to cabinet-level status by Bill Clinton in 1993.

1989 The first drug court in the U.S. took shape in Miami-Dade County, Florida

1993, December 7: Joycelyn Elders, the Surgeon General, said that the legalization of drugs "should be studied", causing a stir among opponents

1998: The National Research Council (NRC) commissions such a study, establishing a Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs.

2001: The National Research Council Committee on Data and Research for Policy on Illegal Drugs publishes its findings. The NRC Committee finds that existing studies on efforts to address drug usage and smuggling, from U.S. military operations to eradicate coca fields in Colombia, to domestic drug treatment centers, have all been inconclusive, if the programs have been evaluated at all: “The existing drug-use monitoring systems are strikingly inadequate to support the full range of policy decisions that the nation must make...It is unconscionable for this country to continue to carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of knowing whether and to what extent it is having the desired effect.”^[8] The study, though not ignored by the press, is almost entirely ignored by policymakers, leading Committee Chair Charles Manski to conclude, as one observer notes, that "the drug war has no interest in its own results." ^[9]

[edit] Cost

The U.S. government estimates the cost of the War on Drugs by calculating the funds used in attempting to control the supply of illegal drugs, in paying government employees involved in waging the war on drugs, and to satisfy rehabilitation costs. This total was estimated by the federal U.S. government's cost report on drug control to be roughly $12 billion in 2005. Additionally, in a separate report, the U.S. government reports that the cost of incarcerating drug law offenders was $30.1 billion—$9.1 billion for police protection, $4.5 billion for legal adjudication, and $11.0 billion for state and federal corrections. In total, roughly $45.5 billion was spent in 2005 for these factors.^[10] The socioeconomic costs, as well as the individual costs (i.e., the personal disadvantages in income and career), caused by the incarceration of millions of people are not included in this number. Nor are the many real wars fought in the name of the "War on Drugs" included.

In 1998 the total cost of drug abuse in America was estimated at $143.4 billion.^[11] This number, however, includes indirect costs and includes some costs of drug policy enforcement, and so is not directly comparable.

[edit] Effects

Drug use has increased in all categories since prohibition ^[12] except that opium use is at a fraction of its peak level, although this is not an effect of the War on Drugs. The big decline in use of opium started already after the Harrison Act of 1914.^[13]

By 1937, the use of marijuana, once an activity seemingly limited to Mexican immigrants and jazz musicians,^[14] has become one undertaken by up to 50% of the youth of the United States.^[12] The big growth in use of marijuana happened however in the 1960s, well before the start of the war on drugs in 1971. President Richard Nixon stated that the increased drug use and drug related crime in the decade before 1971 was the cause for the war on drugs.

Between 1972 and 1988 the use of cocaine increased more than fivefold.^[15] The usage patterns of the current two most prevalent drugs, amphetamines and ecstasy, have shown similar gains.^[12]

It was, however, successful in reducing the amount of marijuana being illegally imported into the United States. Unintended consequences^{[citation needed]} of the War on Drugs include increased potency and growth of marijuana crops within the United States, and an increase in cocaine smuggling which is easier to move and yields a higher profit margin.

A number of economically-depressed Colombian farmers in several remote areas of their country began to turn to what became a new, illicit cash crop for its high resale value and cheap manufacturing process. Local coca cultivation, however, remained comparatively rare in Colombia until the mid-1990s. Drug traffickers originally imported most coca base from traditional producers in Peru and Bolivia for processing in Colombia, continuing to do so until eradication efforts in those countries resulted in a "balloon effect".

Despite the Reagan administration's high-profile public pronouncements, secretly, many senior officials of the Reagan administration illegally trained and armed the Nicaraguan Contras, which they funded by the shipment of large quantities of cocaine into the United States using U.S. government aircraft and U.S. military facilities.^[16][17] Funding for the Contras was also obtained through the illegal sale of weaponry to Iran.^[18][19] When this practice was discovered and condemned in the media, it was referred to as the Iran-Contra affair.

In 1996, 56% of California voters voted for Proposition 215, legalizing the growing and use of marijuana for medical purposes. This created significant legal and policy tensions between the federal and state governments. Courts have since decided that state laws in conflict with a federal law about cannabis are not valid. Cannabis is restricted by federal law (see Gonzales v. Raich).

Regardless of public opinion, marijuana could be the single most targeted drug in the drug war. It constitutes almost half of all drug arrests, and between 1990–2002, out of the overall drug arrests, 82% of the increase was for marijuana. In this same time period, New York experienced an increase of 2,640% for marijuana possession arrests.^{[citation needed]} Less than 1 % of all state prison inmates are serving time for just marijuana possession. ^[20]

As of 2006, marijuana has become the United States of America's biggest cash crop in terms of revenues.^[21]

[edit] United States domestic policy

Main article: Drug policy of the United States

Operation Mallorca, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 2005 (US Department of Justice press release)

For U.S. public policy purposes, drug abuse is any personal use of a drug contrary to law. The definition includes otherwise-legal pharmaceuticals if they are obtained by illegal means or used for non-medicinal purposes. This differs from what mental health professionals classify as drug abuse per the DSM-IV, which is defined as more problematic drug misuse, both of which are different from drug use.

In 1994, it was reported that the War on Drugs results in the incarceration of one million Americans each year.^[22] Of the related drug arrests, about 225,000 are for simple possession of marijuana, the fourth most common cause of arrest in the United States.^[23] In the 1980s, while the number of arrests for all crimes was rising 28%, the number of arrests for drug offenses rose 126%.^[24] The United States has a higher proportion of its population incarcerated than any other country in the world for which reliable statistics are available, reaching a total of 2.2 million inmates in the U.S. in 2005. The U.S. Dept. of Justice, reporting on the effects of state initiatives, has stated that, from 1990 through 2000, "the increasing number of drug offenses accounted for 27% of the total growth among black inmates, 7% of the total growth among Hispanic inmates, and 15% of the growth among white inmates." In addition, the United States provides for the deportation of many non-citizens convicted of drug offenses.^[25] Federal and state policies also impose collateral consequences on those convicted of drug offenses, such as denial of public benefits or licenses, that that are not applicable to those convicted of other types of crime. ^[26]

[edit] United States foreign policy

Main article: Foreign policy of the United States

Operation Just Cause involving 25,000 American troops. The U.S. alleged that Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of government of Panama, was involved in drug trafficking in Panama. As part of Plan Colombia, the U.S. has funded coca eradication through private contractors such as DynCorp and helped train the Colombian armed forces to eradicate coca and fight left-wing guerrillas such as the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and right-wing paramilitaries such as the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), both of which have been accused of participating in the illegal drug trade in their areas of influence. Private U.S. enterprises have signed contracts to carry out anti-drug activities as part of Plan Colombia. DynCorp, the largest private company involved, was among those contracted by the State Department, while others signed contracts with the Defense Department.^[27]

In 2000, the Clinton administration initially waived all but one of the human rights conditions attached to Plan Colombia, considering such aid as crucial to national security at the time.^[28] Subsequently, the U.S. government certified that the Colombian government had taken steps to improve respect for human rights and to prosecute abusers among its security forces.^[29] The U.S. has later denied aid to individual Colombian military units accused of such abuses, such as the Palanquero Air Force base and the Army's XVII Brigade.^[30][31] Opponents of aid given to the Colombian military as part of the War on Drugs argue that the U.S. and Colombian governments primarily focus on fighting the guerrillas, devoting less attention to the paramilitaries although these have a greater degree of participation in the illicit drug industry. Critics argue that Human Rights Watch, congressional committees and other entities have documented the existence of connections between members of the Colombian military and the AUC, and that Colombian military personnel have committed human rights abuses which would make them ineligible for U.S. aid under current laws.

In January 2007, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales met in Mexico with his counterpart Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza to discuss ways to stem growing drug-related violence in Mexican border towns associated with the illegal drug trade to America. More than 2,000 Mexicans died in gangland-style killings in 2006, prompting a petition by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open new offices in Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, and Nogales. The requested expansion would bring the total number of Mexican offices to 11 and increase the number of DEA agents from 81 to nearly 100.^[32]

[edit] U.S. government alleged involvement in cocaine trafficking

A lawsuit filed in 1986 by two journalists represented by the Christic Institute, alleged that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other parties were engaged in criminal acts, including financing the purchase of arms with the proceeds of cocaine sales.^[33]

Senator John Kerry's 1988 U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links, which was released on April 20, 1989, concluded that members of the U.S. State Department "who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking...and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers."^[17] The report went on to say that "the Contra drug links included...payments to drug traffickers by the U.S. State Department of funds authorized by the Congress for humanitarian assistance to the Contras, in some cases after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges, in others while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies."

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb published reports in the San Jose Mercury News,^[34] and later in his book Dark Alliance,^[35] detailing how Contras had distributed crack cocaine into Los Angeles to fund weapons purchases. These reports were initially attacked by various other newspapers, which attempted to debunk the link, citing official reports that apparently cleared the CIA.

In 1998, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz published a two-volume report^[36] that substantiated many of Webb's claims, and described how 50 contras and contra-related entities involved in the drug trade had been protected from law enforcement activity by the Reagan-Bush administration, and documented a cover-up of evidence relating to these activities. The report also showed that the National Security Council was aware of these activities. A report later that same year by the Justice Department Inspector General also came to similar conclusions.

[edit] U.S.-sponsored heroin production and smuggling

In the 1980s, top U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials believed that they would never be able to justify a multibillion-dollar budget from the U.S. government to fund the Afghan Muslim radicals, the mujahideen, in their fight against the Soviet army, which had occupied Afghanistan. As a result, the Mujahideen decided to generate funds through the poppy-rich Afghan soil and heroin production and smuggling to finance the Afghan war creating the notorious Pashtun Mafia. Ayub Afridi, a radical Pashtun Muslim leader and drug baron, was the kingpin of this plan.^[37]

[edit] Criticism

The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

[edit] Negative

[edit] Legitimacy

“ We're playing with half a deck as long as we tolerate that the cardinals of government and science should dictate where human curiousity can legitimately send its attention and where it can not. It's an essentially preposterous situation. It is essentially a civil rights issue, because what we're talking about here is the repression of a religious sensibility. In fact, not a religious sensibility, the religious sensibility.”

Terence McKenna in: Non-Ordinary States Through Vision Plants, Sound Photosynthesis, Mill Valley CA., 1988, ISBN 1-569-64709-7

“ The government has been actively destroying crop fields in which marijuana is suspected to have been growing—however, punitive measures such as long prison sentences for drug offenders does not actually decrease the demand for the drug. If anything, its banned status gives it a certain “appeal” that actually makes it more attractive to people. With artificially low supply and high demand, the cartels profit dramatically, and with dealers competing for the “turf,” which is often the nation’s inner cities, to sell these highly valuable products, violence often erupts.”

Petition from http://www.legalreefer.com"

[edit] Legality

In his essay The Drug War and the Constitution,^[38] Libertarian philosopher Paul Hager makes the case that the War on Drugs in the United States is an illegal form of prohibition, which violates the principles of a limited government embodied in the Constitution. Alcohol prohibition required amending the Constitution, because this was not a power granted to the federal government. Hager asserts if this is true, then marijuana prohibition should likewise require a Constitutional amendment.

[edit] Legislation of desire

The US War on Drugs is widely criticised as an infringement of the inalienable right of the pursuit of happiness as described in the Declaration of independence.

[edit] Federalist argument

In her dissent in Gonzales v. Raich, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argued that drug prohibition is an improper usurpation of the power to regulate interstate commerce, and the power to prohibit should be reserved by the states. In the same case, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a stronger dissent expressing the similar idea.

[edit] Substantive due process

There is the argument that the War on Drugs in United States violates the implicit rights within the substantive due process doctrine, that the drug laws achieve no reasonable state interest while arbitrarily restrict a person's liberty under the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendment. One proponent of this notion is attorney Warren Redlich.^[39]

The substantive due process is sometimes used in medical marijuana cases. NORML once wrote in an amicus brief on United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative that the right to use medical marijuana to save one's life is within the rights established by the substantive due process.^[40] However, the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas did not accept the argument and ruled against the medical marijuana dispensaries.

Some opponents of the substantive due process doctrine who support the War on Drugs have also noted that the doctrine can potentially lead to the invalidation of drug laws.^[41]

[edit] Efficacy

USS Rentz (FFG-46) combats a fire set by drug smugglers trying to escape and destroy evidence.

Richard Davenport-Hines, in his book The Pursuit of Oblivion (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), criticized the efficacy of the War on Drugs by pointing out:

“

10–15% of illicit heroin and 30% of illicit cocaine is intercepted. Drug traffickers have gross profit margins of up to 300%. At least 75% of illicit drug shipments would have to be intercepted before the traffickers' profits were hurt.”

Alberto Fujimori, president of Peru from 1990–2000, described U.S. foreign drug policy as "failed" on grounds that "for 10 years, there has been a considerable sum invested by the Peruvian government and another sum on the part of the American government, and this has not led to a reduction in the supply of coca leaf offered for sale. Rather, in the 10 years from 1980 to 1990, it grew 10-fold."^[42]

Critics often note that during alcohol prohibition, alcohol use initially fell but began to increase as early as 1922. It has been extrapolated that even if prohibition hadn't been repealed in 1933, alcohol consumption would have quickly surpassed pre-prohibition levels ^[43]. They argue that the War on Drugs uses similar measures and is no more effective. In the six years from 2000–2006, the USA spent $4.7 billion on Plan Colombia, an effort to eradicate coca production in Colombia. The main result of this effort was to shift coca production into more remote areas and force other forms of adaptation. The overall acreage cultivated for coca in Colombia at the end of the six years was found to be the same, after the U.S. Drug Czar's office announced a change in measuring methodology in 2005 and included new areas in its surveys.^[44] Cultivation in the neighboring countries of Peru and Bolivia actually increased.^[45]

Similar lack of efficacy is observed in other countries pursuing similar^{[citation needed]} policies. In 1994, 28.5% of Canadians reported having consumed illicit drugs in their life; by 2004, that figure had risen to 45%. 73% of the $368 million spent by the Canadian government on targeting illicit drugs in 2004–2005 went toward law enforcement rather than treatment, prevention or harm reduction.^[46]

[edit] Terminology

[edit] War as a propaganda term

The phrase "War on Drugs" has been condemned as being propaganda to justify military or paramilitary operations under the guise of a noble cause. ^[47] Noam Chomsky points out^{[citation needed]} that the term is an example of synecdoche referring to operations against suspected producers, traders and/or users of certain substances.

This form of language was previously used in Lyndon B. Johnson's "war on poverty", and later by George W. Bush's "War on Terrorism". The word "war" is used to invoke a state of emergency, although the target and methods of the campaign is largely unlike that of a regular war.

[edit] War as an accurate description of the government's war against the people

In their book Multitude, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri oppose the view that the use of the term "war" is only metaphorical: they analyse the War on Drugs as part of a global war of a biopolitical nature. Like the War on Terrorism, the War on Drugs is a true war, waged by the US government against its own people.^[48]

Richard Lawrence Miller's Drug Warriors and Their Prey draws detailed comparisons of the War on Drugs in the United States today with events in 1930s Germany that led to Hitler's Third Reich and the attempted destruction of the Jewish people. Miller writes that "authoritarians are manufacturing and manipulating public fears about drug use in order to create a police state where a much broader agenda of social control can be implemented, using government power to determine what movies we may watch, determine who we may love and how we may love them, determine whether we may or must pray to a deity. I believe the war on drug users masks a war on democracy."^[49]

[edit] Children involved in the illegal drug trade

The U.S. government's most recent 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) reported that nationwide over 800,000 adolescents ages 12–17 sold illegal drugs during the 12 months preceding the survey. [2] The 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that nationwide 25.4% of students had been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug by someone on school property. The prevalence of having been offered, sold, or given an illegal drug on school property ranged from 15.5% to 38.7% across state CDC surveys (median: 26.1%) and from 20.3% to 40.0% across local surveys (median: 29.4%).^[50]

Despite over $7 billion spent annually towards arresting^[51] and prosecuting nearly 800,000 people across the country for marijuana offenses in 2005^{[citation needed]}(FBI Uniform Crime Reports), the federally-funded Monitoring the Future Survey reports about 85% of high school seniors find marijuana “easy to obtain.” That figure has remained virtually unchanged since 1975, never dropping below 82.7% in three decades of national surveys.^[52]

[edit] Hindrance to legitimate research

The scientific community^{[citation needed]} has criticized U.S. drug policy as being "outdated,"^[53] and a hindrance to legitimate medical and scientific research efforts. For example, the U.S. government's classification of marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug (having no medicinal value) is contradicted by the journal Nature Medicine:^[54]

“

the endocannabinoid system has an important role in nearly every important paradigm of pain, in memory, in neurodegeneration and in inflammation;" although this quote refers to endogenous cannabinoids (cannabinoids made from the body itself and not taken in from the outside of the body), research on cannabinoids from secondary sources such as the cannabis plant has shown them to have legitimate medical uses.”

Also Marijuana is known to be particularly effective in treating the symptoms of glaucoma. Many people suffering from glaucoma are considered to be legally blind and cannot drive due to the blind spots caused by the internal pressure on the optical nerve. Marijuana, when smoked, helps to relieve this pressure significantly.

[edit] Racial inequities in prosecution

The social consequences of the drug war have been widely criticized by such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union as being racially biased against minorities and disproportionately responsible for the exploding United States prison population. According to a report commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, and released in March 2006 by the Justice Policy Institute, America's "Drug-Free Zones" are ineffective at keeping youths away from drugs, and instead create strong racial disparities in the judicial system.^[55]

[edit] Environmental consequences

Environmental consequences of the drug war, resulting from US-backed aerial fumigation of drug-growing operations in third world countries, have been criticized as detrimental to some of the world's most fragile ecosystems;^[56] the same aerial fumigation practices are further credited with causing health problems in local populations.^[57]

[edit] Impact on growers

The US's coca eradication policy has been criticised for its negative impact on the livelihood of coca growers in South America. In many areas of South America the coca leaf has traditionally been chewed and used in tea and for religious, medicinal and nutritional purposes by locals. For this reason many insist that the illegality of traditional coca cultivation is unjust. In many areas the US government and military has forced the eradication of coca without providing for any meaningful alternate crop for farmers. The status of coca and coca growers has become an intense political issue in several countries, particularly in Bolivia, where the president, Evo Morales, a former coca growers' union leader, has promised to legalise the traditional cultivation and use of coca.

In Afghanistan, the implementation of costly poppy eradication policies by the international community, and in particular the United States since their military intervention in 2001, have led^{[citation needed]} to poverty and discontent on the part of the rural community, especially in the south of the country where alternative development policies have not been put in place to replace livelihoods lost through eradication. Furthermore, poppy cultivation has dramatically increased since 2003 as has support for anti-government elements. Although alternative policies such as controlled opium licensing have been suggested and are supported by many in Afghanistan and abroad, government leaders have still to move away from harmful eradication schemes.

[edit] Innocent Victims

Peter Guthier in his Drug War Victims blog posted at Salon lists dozens of people who have been killed by law enforcement and the DEA, without having been convicted of any crime. Many of them were not even suspects, nor had been using drugs at all. These include a 35-year-old Christian missionary and her seven-month-old infant daughter, both killed (and her husband and son seriously injured) in April of 2001 when the Cessna airplane carrying them and other missionaries was shot out of the sky over Peru due to faulty information from the DEA. Others include an eleven-year-old boy who was shot in the back by a SWAT team after following their instructions and lying on the ground, and an elderly woman frightened into a fatal heart attack when law enforcement officers burst into her home unannounced in the middle of the night, setting off flash grenades — they had the wrong address. Several were cases of people defending themselves and families against what they thought were burglars or rapists, but which were actually law enforcement, with the police killing them in retaliation.

[edit] War on drugs as cyclic creation of a permanent underclass

Since illegal drug use has been blamed for feeding the growth of the underclass, this has caused prohibitionists^{[citation needed]} to call for further increases in certain drug-crime penalties, even though some of these disrupt opportunities for drug users to advance in society in socially acceptable ways. It has been argued by Blumenson and Nilsen that this causes a vicious cycle: since penalties for drug crimes among youth almost always involve semi-permanent removal from opportunities for education, and later involve creation of criminal records which make employment far more difficult, that the "war on drugs" has in fact resulted in the creation of a permanent underclass of people who have few education or job opportunities, often as a result of being punished for drug offenses which in turn have resulted from attempts to earn a living in spite of having no education or job opportunities.^[58]

[edit] Positive

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (May 2008)

[edit] U.S. comparison to other countries

Official agencies and departments tasked with implementing drug policies, such as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, argue that other countries with restrictive drug policies have for decades produced significantly better results than U.S. drug policies.^[59][60]

[edit] Pharmaceuticals

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In another regard, the war on drugs affects the US in the manner of its impact upon how health care providers employ psychoactive medications already extant in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia (many of which have the potential for abuse, or for use as chemical precursors to substances proscribed by the Controlled Substances Act).

To take as one example, patients with ADHD are commonly prescribed various stimulant medications in maintenance regimens to control the symptoms of the condition. Frequently used drugs are Ritalin (Methylphenidate), Dexedrine (Dextroamphetamine), Adderall (Amphetamine), and Desoxyn (Methamphetamine). All three of these products (and their congeners) are rated as Schedule II drugs which - per CDS-imposed regulations - can only be dispensed in amounts suitable for a month's medication at most, with the requirement that each month's supply can be renewed only with the auhorization of yet another written prescription. Licensed prescribers are not even permitted to telephone or fax an authorization for refill to the patient's pharmacy.

This obliges patients on stable regimens of therapy to physically visit their health care providers for reasons of regulatory compliance rather than medical necessity, adding substantially to the aggregate burden in financial cost accruing nationally due to the incidence of ADHD in the population, and providing no substantive benefit to either the patient or the community.

Another example is found in the 2005 Combat Methamphetamine Act, which seeks to control the volume of retail purchase of pseudoephedrine, a safe and effective over-the-counter systemic decongestant, simply because the methods by which these pseudoephedrine products can be used to extract a chemical base for the illicit manufacture of methamphetamine has become widespread knowledge in the flourishing black market for drugs of abuse.

This latter government grope in the War on (Some) Drugs serves to impose a major financial burden on the pharmaceuticals industry (forcing the reformulation of well-established products with the substitution of the demonstrably less effective decongestant phenylephrine) as well as substantially increased costs upon pharmacies and inconveniences upon patients on the dubious grounds that it poses a minor inconvenience to the hardened criminals running meth labs.

[edit] See also

• Above the Influence
• American Drug War: The Last White Hope
• Arguments for and against drug prohibition
• Cognitive liberty
• Cocaine Cowboys
• Plan Colombia
• Decriminalization
• Demand reduction
• Drug policy
• Drug Policy Alliance
• Harm reduction
• Gang
• Gary Webb
• Golden Crescent
• Golden Triangle
• Illegal drug trade
• Just Say No
• Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
• Legal history of marijuana in the United States
• Legal issues of cannabis
• Lin Zexu
• List of wars on concepts
• Marijuana Policy Project
• Mexican Drug War
• Nancy Reagan
• Narco News
• Narcotrafficking in Colombia
• Neurolaw
• Norml
• Office of National Drug Control Policy
• Opium War
• Organized crime
• Prison-industrial complex
• Prohibition (drugs)
• Richard Nixon
• Ricky Ross (drug trafficker)
• Ronald Reagan
• Students for Sensible Drug Policy
• United Nations Drug Control Programme
• Zero Tolerance

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Cocaine overdose cases quadruple at hospitals Telegraph.co.uk 25 May 2008
• The War on Drugs is the subject of the 2007 documentary film "American Drug War"
• The War on Drugs is covered in the 2006 documentary film "Cocaine Cowboys"
• Students for Sensible Drug Policy An international grassroots network of students working to end the War on Drugs.
• Major Studies of Drugs and Drug Policy Full text of major government commission reports on the drug laws from around the world over the last 100 years
• Historical Research on the Drug War Full text of numerous full histories of the drug war and thousands of original historical documents
• National Drug Threat Assessment 2006 from the United States Department of Justice
• War On Drugs: Legislation in the 108th Congress and Related Developments, a 2003 report from the Congressional Research Service via the State Department website
• Review of the War on Drugs
• Gabriel Chin, Race, the War on Drugs and the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction, 6 Journal of Race, Gender & Justice 253 (2002)
• Michael Blanchard & Gabriel J. Chin, Identifying the Enemy in the War on Drugs: A Critique of the Developing Rule Permitting Visual Identification of Indescript White Powders in Narcotics Prosecutions, 47 American University Law Review 557 (1998)
• Drug War Facts
• Drug War Distortions
• November Coalition—Working to end drug war injustice
• The Anti-drugwar Over 100 years of Headlines
• Wasted in the War on Drugs report by Citizens Against Government Waste
• Cato Institute Drug Prohibition Research
• The Media Awareness Project
• Nobel Prize in Economics winner Milton Friedman interviewed about his opposition to the War on Drugs
• Lawful Arrest FAQ
• The Prison Industrial Complex War on Drugs Documentary
• Another documentary film, The Damage Done
• War on Drugs—How government drug war policies promote violence, destroy liberty and actually increase drug abuse.
• How America Lost the War on Drugs—Rolling Stone Magazine, November 27, 2007
• The Report of the Canadian Government Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs—1972
• Drug War Victims
• (Dutch) War on Drugs

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