WaPo takes on the War on Some Drugs

Staff writer Dan Eggen at the WaPo posts a story today discussing how the "war on drugs" has actually become a "war on marijuana." Pete at Drug War Rant has already posted on this one and I just put up a rather longish screed at DetNews myself so I just look at it briefly here.

I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you that marijuana arrests have almost doubled to comprise half of all drug arrests. A quarter of them are for possession. The most shocking rise is in New York City, where under Rudolph W. Giuliani's "zero tolerance" policies, marijuana arrests went from 5,100 to more than 50,000 during 1990 to 2002. Eggen reports, "nine of 10 of arrests in 2002 were for possession rather than dealing."

This of course is why we now spend more tax dollars on prisons than do on education. Our politicians have filled their corporate friend's private prisons with potheads while public children don't have books and after-school programs that might actually have a deterrent effect on teenage drug use are but a distant memory.

Pete already blasted John Walters and also rightfully complains that Eggen missed the boat on questioning the ONDCP propaganda. I'll just remind you that if the plant caused psychosis you would have seen it manifest in the baby boomers and it hasn't. The ONDCP trots out these flawed "scientific studies" that they pay for themselves as justification for the billions wasted annually on the drug war.

Law enforcement gets its money out of those billions in block grants for task forces and other "tough on crime" programs that were originally instituted to fight heroin and cocaine traffickers. But the grants run on statistics and they need arrests to continue their funding and it doesn't matter what drug they bust. It's a hell of lot easier to get a pot possession bust than it is to bust a major heroin supplier or even an opiate user. The opiate addict is nodding off in some corner, while the pot smoker is out in public - for instance spending money at the local restaurants.

The forfeiture aspect also puts the focus on pot. Based on the absurd assumption that property is guilty until proven innocent of being acquired by illegal drug profits and the cops getting to keep what they seize makes for a strong incentive to go after tokers. Most responsible cannabis consumers are productive people who contribute to the economy. Meth and opiate addicts tend to spend all their money on drugs so they have nothing to confiscate. Some police departments have learned to make a tidy profit on this scheme and corruption within the practice is rife.

According to the Sentencing Project, we now spend $4 billion tax dollars a year on arresting and prosecuting marijuana crimes. I don't think that includes incarceration costs which also rise into the billions nor does it account for lost productivity of the inmates who are no longer contributing to the tax base. Nor the social cost of broken homes with mothers and children forced onto the welfare rolls while the breadwinner is in jail.

Deficient though the article was, I'm glad to see the WaPo take a stab at exposing the obscene waste of this war and especially this new dunderheaded focus on marijuana. It's a sign of progress for reform.

Update: A transcript of the live web chat that discussed this article on the WaPo site is posted at Cannabis News. [thanks to jackl]