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the past few weeks, NRO has had some give-and-take on the drug wars.
Jonah Goldberg broke ranks with NR's editors
in "The
Right Dope." Then, syndicated columnist and Reason
senior editor (and former NR staffer) Jacob Sullum took Goldberg
on in "High
Anxiety." In NRO's latest symposium, experts Jack Dunphy, an
LA cop, and Sally Satel, a clinical psychiatrist who has dealt extensively
with drug addicts have their say, along with freelance writer Noah
Pollak.
Jack
Dunphy, an officer of the
LAPD and NRO columnist
Dunphy is one of the more amiable cops. No matter the affront to
the commonweal that brings a person to my attention, I try to make
pleasant his first steps into the vortex of the justice system.
Over the better part of two decades in the business I have hauled
perhaps three or four hundred drug users before the bar of justice,
and in so hauling I have conducted a poll among them. Though my
methods are well short of anything that could be called scientific,
the results are nonetheless startling in their uniformity.
"Do you think we should legalize drugs?" I ask them. And of all
those three or four hundred people, only one of them — a young
man who did not strike me as being given to serious introspection
— responded in the affirmative. The rest of them, men and women
of all races and backgrounds, were opposed to the idea of legalization.
When I asked them why, the most common answer was something along
the lines of, "Drugs have ruined my life. I wish I had never started
up with them."
I find it curious that the national ethos appears to be shifting.
In his speech at the 1996 Republican Convention, Colin Powell said
that when grew up he was taught that using drugs was not only wrong
but shameful. People are finding it less and less so today. Only
cigarette smokers should be ashamed, it seems, though I have yet
to encounter a smoker whose soul has been diminished and enslaved
by tobacco.
I remember one man to whom I put the question. I had arrested him
for possession of heroin, but his previous criminal record was nothing
less than opulent. "If they legalize that [stuff]," he said, "pretty
soon everybody will be like me."
Sally Satel, fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute, practicing
psychiatrist, and author of PC,
M.D.
The drug-legalization debate will always be with us. Surely, I agree
with much of what Jacob Sullum has to say about the libertarian
regime. On paper it looks good but for his vision to succeed, our
society will have to stop picking up after people who cannot control
their drug use. That is, no public housing for addicts, no welfare
benefits, no publicly financed treatment. Until we are prepared
to allow people with the "disease" of addiction to experience the
consequences of their actions, a liberalized reform won't work.
The legalization front, however, seems to be manned not so much
by people like Sullum but by vocal groups — like the Drug Policy
Foundation and Soros's Lindesmith Center — who are infatuated
with the European model, like the Netherlands, wherein addicts are
given greater access to hard drugs and then effectively become wards
of the state when they hit the wall. The motto: The addict has a
right to use drugs, society has the responsibility to care for him
when he abuses that right. The worst of both worlds. This scenario
makes the libertarian thought experiment downright appealing.
Jonah Goldberg weighs in with a well-reasoned reckoning culminating
in bid for a medical cure for addiction. As a former addiction-researcher,
however, I think that Goldberg's faith in the development of anti-addiction
drugs, while touching, is too fervent. True, the National Institute
on Drug Abuse is pouring millions into the development of such agents.
A few years ago, the director of NIDA talked about developing a
cocaine vaccine by the year 2000; it was supposed to be a veritable
magic bullet. We're still waiting.
To be fair, it is possible that such a discovery is just beyond
the horizon and compared to some of the truly outlandish government
expenditures, the NIDA medications development project falls safely
within the bounds of responsible research. Still, Goldberg should
not hold his breath. After all, for almost half a century methadone
has been used for heroin addiction. While it works well to reduce
or abolish drug craving and withdrawal symptoms and help addicts
reduce their drug use, a large fraction continue to use some drugs
and remain minimally productive citizens. Thus, while methadone
is definitely a valuable treatment, the person underneath the habit
typically needs more than medication to help her become a fully
responsible parent, spouse, employee, and citizen. That's where
solid rehabilitation programs, like the 12- to 18-months long residential
Phoenix House placements, enter the picture.
None of this is to deny that the status quo has its problems. And
there are a number of rational reforms we can undertake within the
current system to ameliorate the realities and perceptions of unfairness.
First, strengthen the diversion-to-treatment system within the criminal
justice system. One promising model is the "drug court" wherein
a nonviolent addict offender is given the choice of treatment or
trial. If he chooses the former and completes the mandated and highly
supervised treatment program, charges are expunged from his record.
For this to work properly we must continue to distinguish criminal
addicts from addicted criminals. The former is some poor guy who
but for a habit would not be committing a petty crime for cash to
buy his next hit. But for the latter — the big-time dealer
who snorts some of his own product or car-jacker who just happened
to be high at the time — don't think twice about locking him
up.
Second, for cocaine crimes end the crack-powder disparity. Third,
consider repealing mandatory-minimum sentences. Lastly, we need
to realize that the "disease" model of addiction is dangerously
incomplete.
To compare addiction to other chronic conditions like asthma, high
blood pressure, and diabetes is among the most facile of all concepts
health professionals have had to offer. The other is that addiction
is a "chronic and relapsing brain disease." The implications of
this rhetoric, well-intentioned though it is, is that the addict
is a victim of his biology and the drug's pharmacology. I work with
addicts and they are nobody's victim. I am in favor of treatment,
of course, both detox — which takes a matter of days to a few
weeks — and long-term rehabilitation. But to distract ourselves
from the fact that these men and women are in a position to control
their lives is woefully niave. I see how they make decisions on
hourly basis that helps cement their sobriety or invites them to
relapse.
A few common-sense revisions would soften some of the rancor generated
by the "drug war" by improving the prospects of addicts caught up
in the criminal justice system. In the process they would relieve
us from having to contemplate Sullum's theoretical social model
or waiting, as Goldberg is prepared to do, for medical science to
rescue us.
Noah Pollak, freelance writer
In his sprawling commentary, Jonah Goldberg says that "the truth
is, I don't think either [the legalizers or the prohibitionists
are] right because drug addiction is not a soluble problem through
social policy in a free society, though it is a problem." This is
probably the wisest statement in Mr. Goldberg's article, yet contradicts
many of his other comments.
Since the inception of the war on drugs in 1914, prohibition proponents
have been discussing drug use as if it is smallpox or whooping cough,
an outbreak to be defeated. But no array of laws has ever decisively,
or even moderately, deterred drug use, because what drives drug
use is the natural human lust for intoxication. That lust will never
be stamped out or suppressed, no matter how severe the mandatory
minimums or how many helicopters are shipped to Colombia; the government
might as well be prohibiting illicit orgasms.
The best course of action is legalization, without hopes for utopia.
We should accept the fact that there will always be some junkies
in America. Drugs will not go away, whether they are legal or illegal;
some people will make bad choices, hurt themselves, and cause pain
among their family and friends, and that might happen more often
if drugs are legal. However, that misfortune must be weighed against
the untold millions in the past few decades who have had their lives
ruined by prison sentences and their futures curtailed by criminal
records — people whose drug use cannot be classified as the
type of behavior that should concern the government, or anyone,
in many cases.
William F. Buckley, a forceful proponent of terminating the war
on drugs, once remarked to a skeptic that "conservatism is the politics
of reality." Instead of fighting drugs with the goal of completely
eradicating them from society, we would be better served if the
government concerned itself with the more humble task of protecting
rights, which involves arresting people who hurt other people, rather
than the better-living-through-jail strategy of the drug war. Legalize
drugs and adopt policies that reflect a tough love for people with
drug problems, such as forced rehab for those who commit crimes
while high, treatment on request, and the encouragement of private
discrimination in housing and employment to ensure that no one need
tolerate junkies.
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