HaCKeRz KrOnIcKLeZ 3/HaCKeRz_KrOnIcKLeZ.iso/drugs/dethrone.the.drug.czar

Text File | 1996-05-06 | 15KB | 325 lines

Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,alt.drugs
From: [e-mail] (Eric Woudenberg)
Subject: "Dethrone the Drug Czar" New York Times Op-Ed piece
Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 13:19:08 GMT
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

This is from the Sunday, May 9, New York Times OP-ED page.
Whitman Knapp is a Senior United States District Judge for the
Southern District of New York.

DETHRHONE THE DRUG CZAR
by Whitman Knapp

The nation was fortunate in President Clinton's selection of Lee Brown
as Director of the Office of National Drug Control.

Having been police commissioner in Atlanta, Houston and New York, Mr.
Brown has been in key positions to observe that a half-century of the
Federal war against drugs has had a simple result: Each year, the
Government has spent more on enforcing drug laws than it did the year
before. Each year, more people have gone to jail for drug offenses.

Yet each year there have been more drugs on the streets.

Surely, Mr. Brown can have no interest in simply spending more money
and filling more prisons. Indeed, he might well conclude that his
mission is to find out how to eliminate his new job.

Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate economist, has a simple
explanation of the upward spiral with which Mr. Brown must contend.
Law enforcement temporarily reduces the drug supply and thus causes
prices to rise. Higher prices draw new sources of supply and even new
drugs into the market, resulting in more drugs on the street. The
increased availability of drugs creates more addicts. The Government
reacts with more vigorous enforcement, and the cycle starts anew.

Mr. Friedman and those who share his views propose a straightforward
way out of this discouraging spiral: Decriminalize drugs, thus
eliminating the pressure on supply that creates an ever-bigger market.
This, they contend, will reduce demand and reverse the cycle, much as
a similar approach has cut into alcohol addiction.

I do not claim competence to evaluate this theory. But after 20 years
on the bench, I have concluded that Federal drug laws are a disaster.
It is time to get the Government out of drug enforcement. As long as
we indulged the fantasy that the problem could be solved by making
America drug free, it was appropriate that the Government assume the
burden. But that ambition has been shown to be absurd.

Attorney General Janet Reno's statement on Friday that she hopes to
refocus the drug war on treatment show's admirable determination that
the drug problem is primarily a local issue, more properly the concern
and responsibility of state and city governments.

If the possession or distribution of drugs were no longer a Federal
crime, other levels of government would face the choice of enforcement
or trying out Milton Friedman's theory and decriminalizing. If they
chose the second route, they would have to decide whether to license
drug retailers, distribute drugs through state agencies or perhaps
allow drugs only to be purchased with a physician's prescription.

The variety, complexity and importance of these questions make it
exceedingly clear that the Federal Government has no business being
involved in any of them. What might be a hopeful solution in New York
could be a disaster in Idaho, and only state legislatures and city
governments, not Congress, can pass laws tailored to local needs.

What did the nation do when it decided to rid itself of the
catastrophes spawned by Prohibition? It adopted the 21st Amendment,
which excluded the Government from any role in regulation of alcoholic
beverages and strengthened the powers of the states to deal with such
matters.

That is precisely what the Congress should do with respect to drugs.
It should repeal all Federal laws that prohibit or regulate their
distribution or use and devise methods for helping the states to
exercise their respective powers in those areas.

But having created the problem by decades of ill-considered
legislation, congress can't just throw it back to the states without
helping finance the efforts. That raises a host of complex problems,
including apportionment of Federal monies among the states,
restrictions on how the monies may be used, the ratio of Federal
dollars for enforcement to those spent on treatment and the role of
nongovernmental organizations that treat addicts.

Such problems will not lend themselves to easy resolution. After all,
Prohibition was allowed to wreak havoc for a mere 14 years, while the
drug warriors have been at it for many decades. Under Lee Brown's
leadership, we may hope for a return to sanity.

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Comments:

An article like this appearing in the NYT cannot be a bad sign.

It would be nice if someone who knows what Milton Friedman has
actually said about legalizing drugs could sanity check the theory
that was attributed to him here. The notion that reducing the supply
causes prices to go up which then increases the supply and the number
of users seems to have a false ring to it.

I sense that the drug policy pendulum is beginning to reach apogee.
The only thought which clouds my relief is that we could now be stuck
with a terminally "Half-Fast" end to the WOD. Specifically,
decriminalization but not legalization. Decriminalization is good in
that it keeps drug violations from resulting in what will soon be
considered "criminally insane" jail sentences, but does nothing to
stop corruption, street crime, drug contamination, artificially high
prices and the blackout on truthful drug information.

I can only encourage us to keep up the fight, mostly by being
persistent in questioning government policy. Why are we
only decriminalizing? Why not legalizing? As someone said a long time
ago on alt.drugs, decriminalization solves none of the real problems.

Eric Woudenberg

=======================================================================

Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs,alt.drugs
From: [e-mail] (Eric Woudenberg)
Subject: 3 "Letters to the Editor" from the New York Times
Date: Mon, 31 May 1993 23:57:44 GMT
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

These three "Letters to the Editor" appeared in the May 24 NYT. My
comments follow each one.

DECRIMINALIZATION WOULD JUST BOOST DRUG USE
To the Editor:

"Dethrone the Drug Czar" (Op-Ed May 9), in which Whitman Knapp calls
for decriminalizing drugs, proved poignant for me. I read it soon
after coming off an emergency room shift where I saw two
cocaine-induced abortions and got to resuscitate a 15-year-old who
suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage due to cocaine use.
"Resuscitate" may be too strong a word. What I actually did was hook
up a brain-dead boy to life support, drill a hole in his head and try
to comfort his hysterical mom while I negotiated him into our last
remaining intensive care unit bed.

Judge Knapp doesn't seem to understand that the consumption of illegal
drugs, not the commerce surrounding them, causes most of the
drug-related misery and death. This tragedy is visited not only upon
the drug users, but also upon those who get in the way of their fists,
knives, guns and cars. Justice Department studies have shown that a
majority of violent crimes are committed by people already
intoxicated -- not by those seeking drugs.

Those who learn their history from historians, rather than from old
re-runs of the "Untouchables"," know that Prohibition resulted in a
major reduction in child abuse, domestic violence, murders, disease
and absenteeism. The subsequent decriminalization of alcohol did not
"cut into alcohol addiction" -- it facilitated and encouraged it.

For many people and for society as a whole, alcohol and illicit drugs
are agents of disease. Decriminalizing illegal drugs will remove yet
another barrier to their consumption and end up increasing their use.
This may put the drug czar out of business, but it's sure to keep me
spending more of your health care dollars for years to come.

Daniel Brookoff, M.D.
Assistand Professor of Medicine
University of Tennessee
Memphis, May 10, 1993

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Comments: This is the letter Tad Cook apparently quoted from, although
I seem to recall he got it from a paper other than the NYT. Maybe this
doctor is sending out lots of letters to newspapers? He starts off
with a very heartrending tale of cocaine-induced abortions
(miscarriages?), a cerebral hemorrhage, and drilling a hole in a kid's
head. However, we know that if these substances were legal and
packaged with precautionary information (e.g. "Do not exceed this
dosage within a 24 hour period"), at least the accidental cases of
such poisonings would be greatly reduced. An informed (not
propogandized) user is a safer user.

The second paragraph strikes me as slightly dishonest. Even if
consumption causes more problems than the commerce (which I doubt),
the simple fact that these substances are illegal is what causes most
of the problems with consumption. If these drugs were legal, *all* of
the commerce problems would go away and most of the consumption ones
as well. He then goes on to talk about drug user's "fists, knives,
guns and cars", but all except cars are problems due to commerce. He
then mentions a Justice Department study which must surely be
referring to alcohol, which is not an illegal drug. And I seem to
recall a recent Justice Department study saying that drug use in
itself did not correlate strongly with violent drime.

The third paragraph seems to be just plain wrong. Can anyone post a
few relavent facts and put the lie to this nonsense?

Finally, I must be getting infected with the libertarian bug, how is
it there can be an agent of disease for "society?". How does "society"
get better, by drinking plenty of liquids and getting lots of bedrest?
Let's keep to the topic of individuals and individual responsibility
please.

Second letter:

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MANY GOOD RESULTS
To the Editor:

We can no longer ignore calls like Judge Whitman Knapp's in "Dethrone
the Drug Czar" to decriminalize drugs. When most of our jails are
filled with drug-related convicted criminals; when the criminal
justice system is crippled by drug-related cases; when drugs cost us
billions of dollars in police, judges, prosecutors and lawyers; when
our streets, schools, subways, parks, homes and we are not safe from
drug-related shootings, burglaries and muggings, our politicians can
at least debate decriminalization honestly.

What are we afraid of? That it would become too easy to obtain drugs?
How difficult is it now? Are we afraid that more youngsters will use
drugs? Do we really believe that the fear of criminal punishment
deters drug use? If so, where is the proof of such deterrence? These
questions should be debated.

If drugs were decriminalized and made available without the fear of
long-term jail terms for sellers and user,s it stands to reason that
prices would be reduced drastically. The drug user who now steals,
mugs and burglarizes to support his habit may not commit such crimes
if he could obtain the drugs at a lower price. The billions of dollars
now spent to enforce drug laws could be spent to educate youngsters
against the use of drugs and to treat drug users. Decriminalizing
drugs does not mean encouragement of their use.

On the positive side, decriminalizing drugs could reduce crime, unclog
our judicial system and free billions of dollars for other purposes,
including drug treatment facilities. What is the negative side of
decriminalizing drugs? Can we afford more of the same?

Demetrios Coritsidis
Long Island City, Queens, May 12, 1993
_The writer is a lawyer._

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Comments: Notice how he calls for the topic of legalization to be
debated honestly. This is really good, we should all keep harping on
this. "We're not asking people to favor drugs, but we do need an
honest and rational debate of drug policy".

Third letter:

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CALI CARTEL'S THREAT
To the Editor:

Over the last few years we have lost our focus on illegal drugs as a
national security threat. Editorials increasingly demand a United
States counternarcotics policy that attempts to solve the drug problem
solely through domestic actions. Increased resources for drug
prevention and treatment can pay big dividends, and should be
pursued.

But we also need a focused foreign policy. The news that Gilberto
Rodriguez-Orjuela, the Cali cartel drug kingpin, ordered the killing
in New York City of Manuel de Dios Unanue to silence his writings
about the cartel (front page, May 11) should serve as a wake-up call
to all Americans that an isolationist counternarcotics strategy would
be a tragic mistake.

Although the Medellin cartel has been badly damaged, the Colombian
cocaine cartel headquartered in Cali is more powerful than ever.
Through corruption, intimidation and murder, it exerts a powerful
influence over Colombian Government institutions. Its influence has
spread.

In Bolivia, trafficking networks of native Colombians have replaced
native Bolivians, while in Guatemala Cali traffickers have bought up
ranches to use as staging locations for aerial smuggling. Wherever they
go, the curruption of democratic institutions follows. And now the
first murder by the Cali cartel of an American journalist on American
soil has been charged.

So long as the Cali cartel is allowed to flourish unchecked, it will
export death and violence to America. It has the most effective
clandestine distribution system in America for contraband and weapons.
When American weans itself away from widespread cocaine addiction, the
cartel will have shifted to heroin. The cartel is financing a massive
opium cultivation program in Colombia that has in less than two years
catapulted Columbia to the world's No. 3 heroin producer.

A global drug cartel like Cali can only be weakened and incapacitated
by global-law enforcement action. If we leave these global mafias for
our children to deal with, it may be too late.

Robert C. Bonner
Drug Enforcement Administrator
Washington, May 14, 1993

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Comments:

"Pay no attention to that drug legalization talk behind the curtain,
we need MUCH MORE guns and money for international gangbuster type
shoot-em-up operations".

Here we see a die hard drug warrior showing his anachronistic mindset.
I realize my thinking must be very simplistic, but we do not have any
international alchohol or tobacco cartels which are threatening US
national security with it's exports of death and violence and
clandestine distribution systems for contraband and weapons.

Legalize it, Mr. Bonner, and go find yourself a respectable job in
Hollywood, selling your fantasy world to the theatre goers.

These three letters were clipped and sent to me by my father, who is
sympathetic to my views. On the top of the page he wrote "The Dialog
has Started!". Yes, I think it has. Now it's time to keep it going.

Eric Woudenberg

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