Saturday, March 31, 2012

Assessing the cost of war against drugs

King: Assessing the cost of war against drugs

By Bill King
Updated 12:12 p.m., Thursday, March 29, 2012
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Last year marked the 40th anniversary of PresidentRichard Nixon's declaration of war on drugs. Since then, the country has spent hundreds of billions of dollars attempting to suppress drug use, and millions of Americans have been imprisoned for drug-related offenses at an inestimable cost to society and the families involved.
Has the cost been worth it? Are we winning or losing the war on drugs?
That depends largely on whom you ask. The federalDrug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has published a lengthy booklet entitled "Speaking Out Against Drug Legalization" that defends the criminalization of drugs and the war on drugs in general. In it, the agency argues that overall drug use in the U.S. has fallen by a third since the 1970s. It cites even more dramatic reductions in the use of specific drugs, such as cocaine, which it claims has fallen by 70 percent.
Other groups, such as the Global Commission on Drug Policy, whose members include such notables as former Secretary of State George Schultz and former Federal Reserve ChairmanPaul Volcker, categorically believe that the war of drugs has been a miserable failure. They maintain that drug use has been on the increase and that the collateral damage caused by the criminalization of drugs far outweighs any benefits.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a chilling report on deaths from drug overdoses that suggests those arguing that we are losing the war may have the better argument. The CDC found that unintentional deaths from drug overdoses have increased tenfold on a per capita basis (from one in 100,000 to 10 in 100,000) since 1970.
Part of the disconnect between the two versions of the argument is attributable to the rapid rise in the abuse of prescription drugs. The DEA has traditionally been focused on drugs that cannot be legally prescribed, such as cocaine and heroin. And there does appear to be some pretty good evidence that the use of those drugs is down. However, the abuse of prescription drugs, primarily opioids, has more than offset that decline. The CDC study shows that the number of deaths from opioid overdoses is now greater than cocaine and heroin combined.
Those who favor legalization often compare the situation today to Prohibition, arguing that Prohibition did not work and neither will attempts to criminalize other drugs. But the case for the proposition that Prohibition did not work is not as clear as one might think. Health statistics from that time are a little sketchy, but seem to show a substantial drop in diseases known at that time to be associated with alcohol, such as cirrhosis. Crimes associated with alcohol also appear to have steeply declined during Prohibition.
And one can hardly say that alcohol, while legal today, does not cause serious societal problems. The CDC estimates that excessive drinking causes about 80,000 deaths annually in the U.S. I sat on a local grand jury a few years ago and would estimate that nearly half the cases that came before us involved someone who had too much to drink.
The damage caused by our other favorite legal drug, nicotine, is even worse. The CDC estimates that smoking kills more than 400,000 Americans every year. Just because we give up on enforcement and legalize a drug does not mean that problems associated with its abuse and addiction go way.
Yet the mere fact that a government agency such as the DEA would publish a lengthy document advocating the continued criminalization makes me nervous. The DEA's budget this year will be more than $15 billion. Multiply that many times for all of the state and local law enforcement bureaucracies that make a living off the war on drugs.
It reminds me of President Dwight Eisenhower warning in his farewell address of the military-industrial complex. One of our greatest generals turned president warned the country that the military and the defense industry had a financial incentive to exaggerate the threat of communism: to persuade the country to spend vast, unnecessary sums on defense. When you see the DEA publishing a nearly 100-page report on why it needs to stay in business, you cannot help but wonder to what degree there is a "drug-law enforcement complex" doing the same thing.
One thing on which everyone seems to agree is that there must be a better solution than our current strategy. The estimates of the economic costs of substance abuse and addiction run in the hundreds of billions annually. The cost in human terms is incalculable. We have every incentive to come up with the most efficient program possible to reduce these costs.
Is there a better way? Next week, I'll look at some options that lie between our current system and outright legalization.
Email King at weking@weking.net and follow him on twitter.com/weking.
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