Obama Ending the ‘War on Drugs’?
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What is it with Barack Obama? First he ditches the phrase “War on Terror,” and now he’s doing away with America’s longest running bumper-sticker conflict. Say good-bye to the “War on Drugs.” Via The Wall Street Journal:
The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting a”a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.
Just say yes to that! Unlike the re-branding of the never-ending fight against terrorism, this revision could actually represent a substantially different set of practices when it comes to how the country deals with a rising drug problem. By changing focus from punishment to treatment, the U.S. stands to save millions of actual dollars from a reduced prison population.
One wonders whether, in order to make this change more meaningful, the Obama administration will switch course and consider decriminalizing marijuana and other drugs.
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I think you are right, the decriminalization of marijuana for personal use would definitely seem to dovetail nicely with this paradigm shift on the “War on Drugs.” Perhaps it is my own bias (i.e. tend to think of pot as a more “harmless,” “soft” drug and other drugs such as cocaine and heroin as “hard” drugs), but I am more uneasy about the decriminalization of other drugs. Maybe it could be a good idea, especially for addicts but at the very least I think they should start with pot!
A long overdue shift in policy, Amen!
M,
Legalize, regulate, and tax.
RE: legalize, regulate, and tax. It scares me to think what mainstream American commercial culture might do to marijuana. There’s a counterculture and set of rituals surrounding this particular commodity that will be lost or twisted if the commodity is ever legalized, regulated, and taxed. That might be a regrettable loss. I think that culture needs to leverage itself against prohibition. The least harm might be done by keeping the prohibition, but not enforcing it.
In response to another comment. See in context »Ending the “war on” mentality is a great first step, though legalizing would of course bring a whole host of other problems: FrankenPot, massive agri-business chemical adulteration, making “pot cigarettes” even worse than the tobacco kind. THC will be stripped and then re-added via various evil ways.
We can’t even regulate cigarettes properly: the toxic chemical tinkering with lovely tobacco is the problem, but we’ve banned smoking instead of the additives. I worry pot will be destroyed in much the same way.
Smoke American Spirits like I do. But you know just as well I do that it’s the tobacco that gives you cancer, not the additives.
In response to another comment. See in context »Smoke American Spirits like I do, but if you think they really are safer than other brands of cigarettes you’re kidding yourself.
In response to another comment. See in context »Well, eating 20 strip steaks a day will kill me too, but I’ll take them over Big Macs
In response to another comment. See in context »But if just possession is legalized, then you could still buy off your local dealer. Also, I think that the leader of the Marijuana Party of Canada ones many of the patents for different plants, so it would be hard for agri-business to simply start pumping out packed, processed joints.
In response to another comment. See in context »I long for the day agri-business starts pumping out packed, processed joints.
In response to another comment. See in context »I hope that’s the case. I worry there will be all sorts of licensing, legislation and regulations and other big-business bullying tactics that will allow them to dominate the market. Maybe I’m just paranoid…hmmm, how’d that happen?
In response to another comment. See in context »I seriously doubt that Obama will move towards legalization. As it stands, Marijuana is still a Schedule I drug, a classification that includes Heroin, Ecstasy and LSD, among other things (http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/scheduling.html), and, so far as I know, no country has decriminalized any of those three. Given that US drug policy is backwards at best and extremely far behind most other countries, and the fact that Obama has reneged on many of the progressive policies he outlined in his election platform, it seems extremely unlikely that anything resembling legalization is going to occur anytime soon.
And, given that prisons make bucket loads of money for private companies, I am inclined to think that moving towards “treatment” is going to happen slowly if at all.
Furthermore, isn’t it sort of odd for Obama to talk about “treatment” as punishment for petty drug charges? It suggests that there is something wrong with people who like to smoke a joint every once and a while. I dont know about anyone else, but I dont feel like I need any sort of “treatment”.
David,
Interesting idea, but I thought it had been proven that forcing one to go through treatment even as a means of avoiding incarceration does not work. So, if that is still true, wouldn’t the money being spent on rehab be a waste? I think the point of the studies was that even facing incarceration, the individual truly has to want to quit using drugs for treatment to be of any use.
I don’t see politicians rallying around the idea of decriminalization of marijuana and other drugs. It’s too risky politically. It may be that it is the most realistic of the options, but I don’t believe it will happen.
Sandy
I should mention that I was half-right, half-wrong about other country’s policies on drugs. What I was right about, is that no country has legalized drugs. However, I didnt realize the very important distinction between decriminalization and legalization. The former simply means that drug possession is not a criminal offense, but can still be punished by fines. The latter entails that drug possession would be nonpunishable, meaning that possession of drugs would be treated like the possession of cigarettes.
So while no country has legalized drugs, one country has full-scale decriminalization (even on Schedule I drugs such as heroin and cocaine): Portugal. This program started in 2001 and has significantly curtailed what was the country’s most widespread health crisis.
So, this is to say that I DEFINITELY dont think Obama is going to move toward legalization, because no one has and its effects have yet to be analyzed. And I am still sure that decriminalization won’t happen, but it is A more realistic future than I previously thought.
Check out Glenn Greenwald’s presentation of his findings on the effects of the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal here:
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5887
jeff is the Culture of pot smoking really so worth saving? The giggly “420″ talk, imitations of bong water roiling, grotesque mouth to mouth Shotgunning. Its all very smelly and hairy.
People who want to make a fuss over their stupid cocktails still do despite the fact that you can get Mojitos in a can at the 7-11.
I think the gain far outweighs the loss. And I’m sure health food stores will gladly step in and sell “organic” at a premium.
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