Kraus (left) and Roberts (right)
To frame anything in terms of war is to approach the situation with a failing strategy. We see this with actual wars, where the outcome is destruction, injury, rape, and death; the economy might get a temporary boost and the “winners” gain results through coercion. Look at the “War on Terrorism.” People and places are being destroyed, but is anything being done to address ideologies of terrorism? Has LBJ’s “War on Poverty” done anything to change the conditions in this country which create poverty? As with all the others, the “War on Drugs” resembles actual wars — lots of casualties, with only a handful of people experiencing real gains.
So, as leadership is stepping away from the decades’ old approach, why are decriminalization discussions still using the outmoded terminology? How we frame any issue is going to color our preconceived notions walking into a discussion; when I first saw the title of Friday morning’s community dialogue — “The Drug War: Is it time to change strategies?” — at the Mark Twain House and Museum, I had to wonder why this language was still being used, as a shift in strategies has already begun. A quick look at national policy shows a hierarchy of prevention, intervention, and recovery above incarceration. That’s on the federal level, though. Is any of this trickling down to local efforts to deal with a very real drug problem?
I’m not alone. During the question and response period of the Key Issues Forum, an audience member said that the “terminology is wrong,” citing the same examples as provided above. This man spoke about his experience growing up in a neighborhood where much of the drug trade sprang out of “middle class values with welfare money.” He said that selling drugs was not about being broke, but due to “self-esteem,” and wanting a certain type of lifestyle. If we talk about this in terms of war, then we would essentially need to declare war on the culture of conspicuous consumption which has become synonymous with “American lifestyle.” Anyone about to do that is going to get slapped with the label of “socialist.”
Another member of the audience spoke about her child’s addiction. This woman said she was from suburbia. Her child was raised by two parents and was taught to not use drugs, yet the adult child is recovering. How is some declaration of war going to look in this case? Are we going to fight middle class, suburban families?
The terminology is ludicrous.
Jack Cole
For 2011, as of publication, over $15 billion in federal and state dollars have been spent on the so-called drug war; in the past forty years, the expenditure has been over $1.5 trillion. As consumers, we expect something in return when we spend money. According to Jack Cole, a retired officer who spent much of his career undercover in narcotics, the national drug policy has purchased no positive results. Cole — on whom one of the main characters of Flipside is based – gave a presentation this morning in which he noted that the only statistic to remain the same before drugs were illegal, at the start of the “drug war,” and now, is that of addiction: 1.3% of the population. The percentage of those struggling with addiction may not have changed, but how addiction is being managed is not entirely positive. Mark Friedlander,M.D., Aetna’s Senior Medical Director, said that there is a divide in how people respond to substance abuse treatment; those over 25 have more success, where those under 25 do not respond as well to traditional treatments. Panelist Mark L. Kraus, M.D., described addiction as a “biopsychosocial disease” which is “progressive” and “in most cases will cause premature death.” Cole, of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), echoed this, saying that the organization wants “to treat this as a health problem.”
So, if locking up thousands of people every year has not done anything to reduce the amount of people whose lives are destroyed by addiction, what is there to do? Continue reading 'We’re Still Calling it a War?'»
Comments (3) 
This kiosk was formerly a newsstand.
Death and taxes.
On a recent Saturday groups of residents volunteered to clean scattered areas around the city. These annual (or semi-annual in some spots) events, besides achieving what they are supposed to, provide an interesting anthropology exercise. In the area near between Flatbush Avenue and Brookfield Street, the most prevalent types of trash were fast food and snack wrappers/utensils, tires, various other car parts, and alcohol bottles. For this most recent clean up, the streets, park, and school lawns that the group I joined up with scoured showed a disturbing trend. Besides the standard fastfood and snack debris, we also dealt with an inordinate amount of broken glass, cigarette butts, cigar wrap wrappers (particularly vanilla), and literally hundreds of (mostly) used glassine bags. One person found a baggie that was actually still filled with heroin. There was one syringe found in the area of a park and an elementary school; another capped syringe was found near the fence bordering a different elementary school, where a vial was discovered as well. None of these finds — except for the one bag that still contained heroin — were particularly surprising, but when hours are spent picking up one baggie after another, the enormity of the drug problem becomes clear.
