Top Cops Say Drug War a Flop in Two New Surveys

Top Cops Say Drug War a Flop in Two New Surveys
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/365/aflop.html

More than two-thirds of some 300 US chiefs of police interviewed in a survey conducted for the Police Foundation and Drug Strategies (http://www.drugstrategies.org), a mainstream drug policy research and advocacy group with a strong emphasis on prevention and treatment that also supports some harm reduction measures, said that law enforcement has failed to quell drug use. Released this week, the survey found that 67% of police chiefs believe their drug enforcement efforts "have been unsuccessful in reducing the drug problem."

Similarly, while police chiefs surveyed continued to see drug abuse as a top law enforcement problem -- 63% said it was serious or very serious in their communities -- they also appeared to recognize that the decades-long war on drugs requires a radical rethinking. Nearly half of the chiefs (47%) said the nation's drug policy requires "major changes," while 37% called for a "fundamental overhaul."

While some may find these figures surprising, they are supported by a larger annual survey conducted by the National Association of Chiefs of Police (http://www.aphf.org). In one of a series of questions related to drug policy, that survey sent out to more than 22,000 police chiefs and sheriffs asks: "Has the national war on drugs, which has been ongoing for at least 15 years, been successful in reducing the use of illegal drugs?" In the last annual survey, a whopping 82.3% of respondents said no. Association spokesman Dennis Ray Martin told DRCNet that the latest annual survey, which is about to be released, will show a similar figure.

"It's a realistic assessment," said Police Foundation director Hubert Williams, a career police officer who served as director of the Newark Police Department for 11 years. "If the chiefs were to say otherwise, they would be telling lies," he told DRCNet.

"My old profession isn't as dumb as everybody thinks it is," laughed former Tonawanda, New York, police officer Peter Christ, a 20-year veteran of the drug wars who co-founded ReconsiDer: Forum on Drug Policy (http://www.reconsider.org) and then Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (http://www.leap.cc), both pro-legalization. "I've been arguing that legalization is the only solution for the terrible crime problem we've created. Drug use needs to be regulated and controlled -- it's not something we can make go away," he told DRCNet. "I think at least some in law enforcement understand that."

"I'm not in the least surprised," said LEAP executive director Jack Cole, a retired 26-year veteran of the New Jersey State Police. "This summer, LEAP decided to attend national and international police conferences as part of our outreach and we went to five of them. We keep track of everyone we talk to on a one-to-one basis. We're talking about maybe 200 people at each conference," he told DRCNet, "and what we've found in our informal tally is that 80% agree the drug war is a dismal failure."

But while police executives may be wary of the drug war, that sentiment seems at this point to translate not into support for legalization or regulation but for broadening anti-drug efforts to include a greater recognition of the drug problem as a public health problem. In other words, drug war and drug treatment. "Drug abuse is a medical problem, a disease," said the Police Foundation's Williams. "If America is going to be successful in ending drugs, we need a comprehensive approach."

The Drug Strategies/Police Foundation survey results supported that view. When asked to choose whether "drug abuse" is better handled by the criminal justice system or the public health approach, 35% said cops, while 18% said public health. Interestingly, 44% chose neither option, instead volunteering the answer "both."

[Editor's Note: Opinion polls are the creatures of those who commission them. The Drug Strategies/Police Foundation survey is no exception. Following the ideological predilections of Drug Strategies, the survey questions frame the problem as "drug abuse," not drug policy. Thus, 63% of chiefs said that "drug abuse" is a serious problem in their communities, when what they are really referring to is really a combination of problems related both to drug abuse -- as distinct from drug use, a distinction this poll fails to make -- and problems related to crime and violence generated by prohibitionist drug policies.]

But even if police chiefs are willing to anonymously agree that decades of prohibition have failed, few are ready to say so publicly. "That's what LEAP is for!" exclaimed Christ. "We are trying to create a safe space where people who want to agree with us can come forward. All the time, there will be cops at our presentations, and they will say nothing in public, but then they get me off to the side and tell me to keep up the good work. There are career considerations. When I was a cop, everyone knew how I felt, but I didn't speak out publicly because I had a career."

"Police are in a very bad situation when it comes to speaking out against the war on drugs," said LEAP's Cole. "They're scared to death their peers and the politicians are going to label them as soft on drugs, soft on crime. That's a real threat to a police officer. To stand up takes a lot of guts."

And it's a matter of continuing education, too, said the Police Foundation's Williams. "When Kurt Schmoke was mayor of Baltimore, and they wanted to do a needle exchange program, all the police chiefs just saw paraphernalia. But if you engage them in a serious discussion, you will see they agree prevention and treatment are part of the solution. Law enforcement alone is a poor way to address this problem." Bring on the debate, said Williams. "If we are going to address this issue, that will require a considerable amount of discussion so everyone is informed of the real facts. There must be a broad dialog to shape future policies, because law enforcement alone isn't the way."

Read the Drugs Strategies/Police Foundation survey, "Drugs and Crime Across America: Police Chiefs Speak Out," at http://www.drugstrategies.org and http://www.policefoundation.org online. Read the National Association of Chiefs of Police annual survey at http://www.aphf.org/surveyresults.pdf online.

 

It is truly telling that a sizeable majority of top law enforcement officials feel that the "war on drugs" strategy is a failed one.

 

Yeah, a sign that nobody can come up with an intelligent rebuttal as evidenced by your response.

 

I have been studying this issue for nearly two decades. I'm not giving up any time soon.

 

My own case drives me. When I was 15, I found illegal drugs easy to get and succumbed to the misinformation that passes for "education" about drugs and drug use. Most of that misinformation was from my peers, but there was plenty from authority figures and in the 70's, when I was growing up, drug use was pretty common, as it continues to be today. I used many different drugs and learned more than I care to remember about drug addiction and recovery from that addiction.

As a part of my recovery, I decided to work in the field and went to work in psychiatric hospitals during the biggest boom years for drug rehab, 1989-1994. I took classes and did my internship for my CADAC (Certified Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselor) before ultimately deciding that I could help far more people as a part of my daily life than I ever could in "recovery centers" (or, as I call them, money pits). I learned a heck of a lot about addiction, recovery, and prevention of drug abuse during that time and it was then that I first started really seeing how damaging prohibition is, particularly when it comes to people who are addicted to drugs.

Our approach is counterproductive and has, for the past 32 years, continued to see over half of our young people using drugs before they leave high school every single year. The biggest positive correlation with regards to addiction rates is the age at which one first uses mind altering chemicals. The older you are, the less likely you are to become addicted to ANY chemical over the course of your life. The only other statistic that jumps out is the fact that the more educated one is in general and regarding drugs specifically, the less likely they are to become addicted in the future.

Our drug policy has no chance of "winning" because it ensures that drugs will remain highly available (to the point that teens report that they can get illegal drugs more easily than alcohol) to young people and also ensures that any education will be more geared to drug war dogma than any actual honest education.

In this case, I call it 0%. This policy has never come close to achieving its stated goals, has harmed countless millions directly and indirectly, has sucked down literally trillions (as in two or more), and yet drugs are easier for high school age children to acquire than alcohol.

But there is absolutely NO evidence that prohibition is the best policy for the population as a whole and there is a growing mountain of the "exclusions" you decry as meaningless. The point we are debating here is whether drug use should BE a crime AT ALL. We need to "draw the line" somewhere that gets the government out of the bloodstreams of the populace.

I am looking at the big picture. I am certain that the statistics you will present (all from the ONDCP, no doubt) focus on very narrow segments and I will point that out. BTW, when attacking MY sources as biased, you would do well not to pull YOUR information from sources that EVERYONE knows are just as biased as stopthedrugwar.org.

This one shows a large drop after 1985 in the use of some drugs, but notice that since 1985, it has been flat or it has yo-yo'd up and down. Keep in mind also that there are all estimates. With a policy of regulation, we know exactly how much of each substance is being used. and can more easily track people who sell to kids.

Drug use is not declining and these statistics bear that out.

Of course, with a system of regulation, the crime dollars will dip to nearly zero, the taxes generated will pay for the social welfare and will also contribute to the health care costs.

These costs are created by prohibition and can be mitigated in a regulated market.

Again, with a system of regulation, we can track usage rates and target treatment at people exhibiting early warning signs of drug "abuse" while minimizing the societal harms and costs created by responsible drug use.

This decline also mirrors the drop in drug prices since the 1980s and is also related to the increase in drug purity over the same time. Reagan tightened things up, but organized crime got more efficient and smarter and the result is purer drugs at a lower price. Way to go, prohibition!

When prohibition is the policy in force, violent crime goes up. When these industries are regulated, violent crime drops dramatically as they did in the 1930s in the US and in the 1970s in Holland.

As far as violent crime drops in the 90s, I attribute much of that drop to the improvements in technology that have made it possible to catch far more criminals than at any point in our history. I don't have a problem with locking up violent criminals, but the VAST majority of drug users have never been violent in the least, and are responsible, employed taxpayers who do not deserve to be persecuted for their choice of intoxicants.

I am not talking about isolated cases or statistics. I am taking a macro view of this whole thing and I am seeing the most monstrously disastrous waste of human and fiscal capital this country has ever seen. The only worse policy in this country's history was slavery and the resulting discrimination against African-Americans. I only hope it doesn't take another century to correct this policy.

 

By the way, the source of this survey is the top police officers in this country. They are the ones this thread is about and even THEY (the ones charged with enforcing this debacle) don't believe that we are going the right direction.

84% of them responded that the "War on Drugs" requires either "major changes" or a "fundamental overhaul."

 

No, he can't because the only people who support this policy are those with a vested interest in its continuance, namely the US government, PDFA, alcohol and pharmaceutical industries, textile and logging concerns, the for profit prison industry, and the petrochemical industry.

Every scientist who has studied this issue since the late 1800s has found that regulation of some kind would be a better way of combatting drug abuse than prohibition.

I cite sources from all over the place. I will admit that I cite stopthedrugwar.com a lot, but nobody ever disputes the facts laid out by that publication, they simply bash the source. Look at this thread for evidence.

Because they get so much in campaign contributions from the interested parties that they continue to push the lies and propaganda.

 

Yeah, it is much easier to demonize the messenger than it is to actually come up with relevant, supportable justifications for a policy that has caused so much damage to this country (and others).

I actively advise people not to use drugs at every opportunity. Drugs do have the potential to create a lot of damage, though much of that damage can easily be mitigated with a rational, sane policy based on healthcare and education. If one chooses to use drugs, my suggestion to them is to do their research and educate themselves about drugs and addiction before they start because then you can more easily see the warning signs and have a much lower probablility of living an addiction free life. In addition, I think that our drug policy should focus on getting drugs out of the hands of children above and before any other consideration. our policy has done exactly the opposite and has guaranteed ready access to drugs for all of our young people.

Exactly.

Thank you, I will.

 

Yeah, I just hope it doesn't take ANOTHER century.