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Hawaii’s World
MY file labeled "Drugs" contains a 1989 national newsletter headlined: "The War on Drugs: Is It Time to Surrender?" Drug policy should
stress treatmentI have thought so ever since I heard the black mayor of Baltimore tell American newspaper editors that something like 75 percent of the young black males in his city were involved with the courts on drug charges -- either under arrest, on probation, on parole, in prison or whatever.
VIPs like George Shultz, former secretary of state, and economist Milton Friedman also think so.
"Surrender" in this case really could be victory -- a shift of national policy emphasizing treatment over criminalization.
We have a "victory" of that type over booze. Legal alcohol sales eliminate the "crime pays" days of Prohibition with mobsters controlling the supply.
Alcohol remains a problem -- but a more manageable, less demoralizing one. People still get addicted and can go to jail for offenses committed "under the influence" but not just for being "under the influence."
How we live with booze suggests how we might live in the future with drugs -- far from happily, still a social problem, but better and perhaps less costly -- financially and in human carnage -- than now.
Here in Hawaii, retired University of Hawaii Professor Donald W. Topping heads the Hawaii Drug Policy Forum, an unofficial group whose newsletter circulation totals 300.
He is recently back from a national meeting in Washington, D.C., happy that California voters this year may ratify a state amendment limiting the penalty for nonviolent, first-time drug offenders to treatment instead of imprisonment.
A similar measure never got out of committee in the Hawaii Legislature this year but Topping and his group will keep trying.
Topping has awesome figures on the immensity of our failure to control drugs. Drugs are more available than ever despite:
And what's our payoff?Federal anti-drug spending up from $418 million in 1972 to $18 billion in 1999. A comparable jump in the average monthly family Social Security check would be from $177 to $30,444.
DRUG supplies now are so large that a gram of pure cocaine that cost $191 in 1981 was down to $44 in 1998, heroin down from $1,200 a gram to $318.
Deaths from illegal drugs increased from 7,191 in 1979 to 15,973 in 1997.
New drugs have entered the market, notably "ice" (especially in Hawaii) and "ecstasy." The only drug with a higher price tag is pot, probably because its pungent fragrance is easily detected.
All in the name of drug control, we endure increased searches, racial profiling, assets forfeiture, clogged courts and demands for still more prisons where each "resident" costs society from $30,000 to $60,000 a year.
Topping "knows" society will gain by changing the focus of the war on drugs to legal control (as with booze), treatment as a first resort, imprisonment as a last resort.
Foremost should be saving lives, keeping drugs away from children and keeping people healthy. Switzerland and the Netherlands do it successfully. We could, too.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.