On a busy street corner in midtown Manhattan in September, two old friends have come together to mark an anniversary of sorts. “This is where we met,” says Maurice Mazyck, 37. “Wait, wasn’t it further up the block?” asks Laura Schroff, 60. They finally settle on a spot and hug. “Sometimes,” says Mazyck, “I wonder if I would be here at all if you hadn’t done what you did.”

It was there on Monday, Sept. 1, 1986, that Mazyck, then a skinny 11-year-old in grimy sweats and sneakers, stuck out his hand as Schroff walked by. Thirty-five at the time and a successful newspaper executive, Schroff lived just two blocks away from Mazyck in New York City, but their homes might as well have been on different planets—he lived in a welfare hotel, she in a luxury high-rise.

“Excuse me, lady, do you have any spare change?” he asked, hoping to buy some food. Schroff didn’t answer and kept going.

Ellen Degeneres' Guide to Gift Giving

But then, just a few steps later, she stopped, turned, and came back. Instead of giving the boy money, she took him to lunch at McDonald’s. He got a Big Mac, fries, and a chocolate shake that day—and the two of them wound up with an extraordinary friendship that has changed both their lives. “Of all the achievements in my life,” says Schroff, who spent three decades in advertising sales before retiring in 2009, “there is nothing that makes me prouder than to call Maurice my friend.”

In 1986, the hungry child Schroff encountered was already trapped in a cycle of poverty, drugs, and violence. His father, a gang member, left when Maurice was 6; his mother was a heroin and crack addict. He had never known an adult who held a full-time job, and he’d received only two presents in his young life: a toy truck and a joint. Still, Mazyck, who today owns a small construction firm, says, “I know my mother did the best she could.”

And then he met Schroff. At the end of their lunch, she gave him her card and told him to call if he was hungry. After three days with no word, Schroff went looking for him. “I felt like he’d entered my life for a reason,” she says. Mazyck was on the corner where they’d met. They agreed to meet the following Monday, and the Monday after that, and a ritual evolved.

At first she took him out to dinner, but soon she began cooking for him at her place. The simple things they did on their nights together—setting the table, doing laundry, or just sitting and talking—were the kinds of comforting activities on which most childhoods are built, but they were foreign to Mazyck. Tellingly, no one in his family ever wondered where he was. When Schroff offered to make him lunch for school, he asked that she put it in a brown paper bag. “When kids see you walk in with a paper bag,” he explained, “they know someone cares about you.”

Why We Gave Away Our Home

But the impact Schroff had on Mazyck is only half the story. “When people tell me how lucky Maurice was,” she says, “I tell them, ‘I was the lucky one.’” She, too, had a turbulent childhood. Her father had a drinking problem and often hit her mother and brother. Schroff vowed that when she had kids, they would always feel safe.

With Mazyck, Schroff could try to repair some of the damage in his life that she couldn’t go back and fix in her own. And in the process he helped her see what truly matters. Watching him experience things for the first time—she took him to his first baseball game, bought him his first bicycle, let him decorate his first-ever Christmas tree—opened her eyes to the joy and beauty around her. “Sometimes those blessings are right there in front of you, just as Maurice was in front of me on the street,” says Schroff. “Sometimes you just have to open your eyes and open your heart.”

Then, in 1997, Mazyck, 22, vanished from Schroff’s life. She tried to track him down, but he had moved to North Carolina to try to set up a business. “I had to go away and become a man on my own,” he says now. There, Mazyck faced the temptation to make easy money selling drugs, as so many men in his family had done, but he resisted. “Because of Laura, I made the right decisions.”

He finally called Schroff in 2000 after his mother died. “I told her, ‘You are my mother now.’” She bore him no grudge for his absence. “I’d never given up on Maurice,” she says.

When Schroff helped the boy she met on the street get a shot at a better future, she was extending that same opportunity to his kids. Today Mazyck is a proud husband and father, and he and his wife have seven children, ages 4 to 19. He and Schroff see each other at least once a month. When she visits his New York City apartment, his kids swarm over their “Aunt Laurie.” “I have my own family,” says Schroff, who has three siblings and five nieces and nephews, “but they are my family, too.”

Back in 1986, Schroff took Mazyck to her sister’s house in the suburbs. For the first time, he sat down for a meal with her family at a large dining-room table. “To me, it was magical. I told them when I grew up, I’d have a big table in my home,” he says. True to his word, he now owns a huge dinner table, where he and his big, noisy family—and his friend Laura—eat and talk and count their blessings.

Alex Tresniowski is the coauthor of An Invisible Thread, on sale Nov. 1. The book tells the story of Schroff’s and Mazyck’s unlikely 25-year-long friendship.
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The Community Levee Association does not agree with legalizing drugs, the position advanced in the article below.

It's Time to Legalize Drugs
By Peter Moskos and Stanford "Neill" Franklin
Monday, August 17, 2009




Undercover Baltimore police officer Dante Arthur was doing what he does well, arresting drug dealers, when he approached a group in January. What he didn't know was that one of suspects knew from a previous arrest that Arthur was police. Arthur was shot twice in the face. In the gunfight that ensued, Arthur's partner returned fire and shot one of the suspects, three of whom were later arrested.

In many ways, Dante Arthur was lucky. He lived. Nationwide, a police officer dies on duty nearly every other day. Too often a flag-draped casket is followed by miles of flashing red and blue lights. Even more officers are shot and wounded, too many fighting the war on drugs. The prohibition on drugs leads to unregulated, and often violent, public drug dealing. Perhaps counterintuitively, better police training and bigger guns are not the answer.

When it makes sense to deal drugs in public, a neighborhood becomes home to drug violence. For a low-level drug dealer, working the street means more money and fewer economic risks. If police come, and they will, some young kid will be left holding the bag while the dealer walks around the block. But if the dealer sells inside, one raid, by either police or robbers, can put him out of business for good. Only those virtually immune from arrests (much less imprisonment) -- college students, the wealthy and those who never buy or sell from strangers -- can deal indoors.

Six years ago one of us wrote a column on this page, "Victims of the War on Drugs." It discussed violence, poor community relations, overly aggressive policing and riots. It failed to mention one important harm: the drug war's clear and present danger toward men and women in blue.

Drug users generally aren't violent. Most simply want to be left alone to enjoy their high. It's the corner slinger who terrifies neighbors and invites rivals to attack. Public drug dealing creates an environment where disputes about money or respect are settled with guns.

In high-crime areas, police spend much of their time answering drug-related calls for service, clearing dealers off corners, responding to shootings and homicides, and making lots of drug-related arrests.

One of us (Franklin) was the commanding officer at the police academy when Arthur (as well as Moskos) graduated. We all learned similar lessons. Police officers are taught about the evils of the drug trade and given the knowledge and tools to inflict as much damage as possible upon the people who constitute the drug community. Policymakers tell us to fight this unwinnable war.

Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies -- and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men -- have we and other police officers begun to question the system.

Cities and states license beer and tobacco sellers to control where, when and to whom drugs are sold. Ending Prohibition saved lives because it took gangsters out of the game. Regulated alcohol doesn't work perfectly, but it works well enough. Prescription drugs are regulated, and while there is a huge problem with abuse, at least a system of distribution involving doctors and pharmacists works without violence and high-volume incarceration. Regulating drugs would work similarly: not a cure-all, but a vast improvement on the status quo.

Legalization would not create a drug free-for-all. In fact, regulation reins in the mess we already have. If prohibition decreased drug use and drug arrests acted as a deterrent, America would not lead the world in illegal drug use and incarceration for drug crimes.

Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.

We simply urge the federal government to retreat. Let cities and states (and, while we're at it, other countries) decide their own drug policies. Many would continue prohibition, but some would try something new. California and its medical marijuana dispensaries provide a good working example, warts and all, that legalized drug distribution does not cause the sky to fall.

Having fought the war on drugs, we know that ending the drug war is the right thing to do -- for all of us, especially taxpayers. While the financial benefits of drug legalization are not our main concern, they are substantial. In a July referendum, Oakland, Calif., voted to tax drug sales by a 4-to-1 margin. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that ending the drug war would save $44 billion annually, with taxes bringing in an additional $33 billion.

Without the drug war, America's most decimated neighborhoods would have a chance to recover. Working people could sit on stoops, misguided youths wouldn't look up to criminals as role models, our overflowing prisons could hold real criminals, and -- most important to us -- more police officers wouldn't have to die.

Peter Moskos is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of "Cop in the Hood." Neill Franklin is a 32-year law enforcement veteran. Both served as Baltimore City police officers and are members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
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The Community Levee Association disagrees with the arguments calling for drug decriminalization.

 

Drugs: To Legalize or Not

April 25-26, 2009 Wall Street Journal

Decriminalizing the possession and use of marijuana would raise billions in taxes and eliminate much of the profits that fuel bloodshed and violence in Mexico. 

By STEVEN B. DUKE The drug-fueled murders and mayhem in Mexico bring to mind the Prohibition-era killings in Chicago. Although the Mexican violence dwarfs the bloodshed of the old bootleggers, both share a common motivation: profits. These are turf wars, fought between rival gangs trying to increase their share of the market for illegal drugs. Seventy-five years ago, we sensibly quelled the bootleggers' violence by repealing the prohibition of alcohol. The only long-term solution to the cartel-related murders in Mexico is to legalize the other illegal drugs we overlooked when we repealed Prohibition in 1933.

In 2000, the Mexican government disturbed a hornets' nest when it began arresting and prosecuting major distributors of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and amphetamines. Previously, the cartels had relied largely on bribery and corruption to maintain their peaceful co-existence with the Mexican government. Once this pax Mexicana ended, however, they began to fight not only the government but among themselves. The ensuing violence has claimed the lives of at least 10,000 in Mexico since 2005, and the carnage has even spilled north to the United States and south to Central and South America.

Some say that this killing spree -- about 400 murders a month currently -- threatens the survival of the Mexican government. Whether or not that is the exaggeration that Mexican President Felipe Calderón insists it is, Mexico is in crisis. The Mexicans have asked the Obama administration for help, and the president has obliged, offering material support and praising the integrity and courage of the Mexican government in taking on the cartels.

The U.S. should enforce its laws against murder and other atrocious crimes and we should cooperate with Mexican authorities in helping them arrest and prosecute drug traffickers hiding out here. But what more can and should we do?

Is gun control the answer? President Calderón asserts that the cartels get most of their guns from the U.S. We could virtually disarm the cartels, he implies, if we made it harder to buy guns here and smuggle them into Mexico. President Obama has bought into this claim and has made noises about reducing the availability of guns. However, even if the Obama administration were able to circumvent the political and constitutional impediments to restricting Americans' access to handguns, the effect on Mexican drug violence would be negligible. The cartels are heavily armed now, and handguns wear out very slowly.

Even if the Mexican gangsters lost their American supply line, they would probably not feel the loss for years. And when they did, they would simply turn to other suppliers. There is a world-wide black market in military weapons. If the Mexicans could not buy pistols and rifles, they might buy more bazookas, machine guns and bombs from the black market, thus escalating the violence.

Also hopeless is the notion -- now believed by almost no one -- that we can keep the drugs from coming into this country and thereby cut off the traffickers' major market. If we could effectively interdict smuggling through any of our 300-plus official border crossing points across the country and if we eventually build that fence along our entire border with Mexico -- 1,933 miles long -- experience strongly suggests that the smugglers will get through it or over it. If not, they will tunnel under or fly over it. And there is always our 12,383 miles of virtually unguarded coastline.

Several proposals have been submitted in the Mexican congress to decriminalize illegal drugs. One was even passed in 2006 but, under pressure from the U.S., President Vicente Fox refused to sign it. The proposals rest on the notion that by eliminating the profit from illegal drug distribution, the cartels will die from the dearth of profits. A major weakness in such proposals, however, is that the main source of the cartels' profits is not Mexican but American. Mexican drug consumption is a mere trickle compared to the river that flows north. However laudable, proposals to decriminalize drugs in Mexico would have little impact on the current drug warfare.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized the heart of the matter when she told the Mexicans last month that the "insatiable demand for illegal drugs" in the U.S. is fueling the Mexican drug wars. Without that demand, there would be few illegal drug traffickers in Mexico.

Once we have recognized this root cause, we have few options. We can try to eliminate demand, we can attack the suppliers or we can attempt a combination of both. Thus far, the Obama administration, like every other U.S. administration since drug prohibition went into effect in 1914, seems bent on trying to defeat the drug traffickers militarily. Hopefully, President Obama will soon realize, if he does not already, that this approach will not work.

Suppose the U.S. were to "bail out" the Mexican government with tens of billions of dollars, including the provision of military personnel, expertise and equipment in an all-out concerted attack on the drug traffickers. After first escalating, the level of cartel-related violence would ultimately subside. Thousands more lives would be lost in the process, but Mexico could thereby be made less hospitable to the traffickers, as other areas, such as Colombia, Peru and Panama, were made less hospitable in the past. That, after all, is how the Mexicans got their start in the grisly business. Eventually, the traffic would simply move to another country in Latin America or in the Caribbean and the entire process would begin anew. This push-down, pop-up effect has been demonstrated time and again in efforts to curb black markets. It produces an illusion of success, but only an illusion.

An administration really open to "change" would consider a long-term solution to the problem -- ending the market for illegal drugs by eliminating their illegality. We cannot destroy the appetite for psychotropic drugs. Both animals and humans have an innate desire for the altered consciousness obtainable through drugs. What we can and should do is eliminate the black market for the drugs by regulating and taxing them as we do our two most harmful recreational drugs, tobacco and alcohol.

Marijuana presents the strongest case for this approach. According to some estimates, marijuana comprises about 70% of the illegal product distributed by the Mexican cartels. Marijuana will grow anywhere. If the threat of criminal prosecution and forfeitures did not deter American marijuana farmers, America's entire supply of that drug would be home-grown. If we taxed the marijuana agribusiness at rates similar to that for tobacco and alcohol, we would raise about $10 billion in taxes per year and would save another $10 billion we now spend on law enforcement and imprisoning marijuana users and distributors.

Even with popular support, legalizing and regulating the distribution of marijuana in the U.S. would be neither easy nor quick. While imposing its prohibitionist will on the rest of the world for nearly a century, the U.S. has created a network of treaties and international agreements requiring drug prohibition. Those agreements would have to be revised. A sensible intermediate step would be to decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana and to exercise benign neglect of American marijuana growers. Doing both would puncture the market for imports from Mexico and elsewhere and would eliminate much of the profit that fuels the internecine warfare in Mexico.

After we reap the rewards from decriminalizing marijuana, we should move on to hard drugs. This will encounter strong resistance. Marijuana is a relatively safe drug. No one has ever died from a marijuana overdose nor has anyone gone on a violent rampage as a result of a marijuana high. Cocaine, heroin and amphetamines, on the other hand, can be highly addictive and harmful, both physically and psychologically. But prohibition makes those dangers worse, unleashing on vulnerable users chemicals of unknown content and potency, and deterring addicts from seeking help with their dependency. There is burgeoning recognition, in the U.S. and elsewhere, that the health benefits and the myriad social and economic advantages of substituting regulation of hard drugs for their prohibition deserves serious consideration.

A most impressive experiment has been underway in Portugal since 2001, when that country decriminalized the possession and personal use of all psychotropic drugs. According to a study just published by the Cato Institute, "judged by virtually every metric," the Portuguese decriminalization "has been a resounding success." Contrary to the prognostications of prohibitionists, the numbers of Portuguese drug users has not increased since decriminalization. Indeed, the percentage of the population who has ever used these drugs is lower in Portugal than virtually anywhere else in the European Union and is far below the percentage of users in the U.S.. One explanation for this startling fact is that decriminalization has both freed up funds for drug treatment and, by lifting the threat of criminal charges, encouraged drug abusers to seek that treatment.

We can try to deal with the Mexican murderers as we first dealt with Al Capone and his minions, or we can apply the lessons we learned from alcohol prohibition and finish dismantling the destructive prohibition experiment. We should begin by decriminalizing marijuana now.

Steven B. Duke is a professor of law at Yale Law School.





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The Community Levee Association agrees with Mr. Walters' arguments defending current laws that criminalize possession, use, and distribution of harmful drugs.

Drugs: To Legalize or Not

April 25-26, 2009 Wall Street Journal

Progress in Colombia provides clear evidence that the war on drugs is winnable, while history repeatedly shows that relaxed restrictions lead to more abuse and addiction.  

By JOHN P. WALTERS

Justified alarm over drug-related Mexican border violence has led to the predictable spate of drug legalization proposals. The most prominent was a call by three former Latin American presidents -- from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico -- to end what they claimed was the drug war. While there are many "end the drug war" plans, all of them, as even their advocates admit, result in more drug use and addiction. Their response? We should emasculate prevention and law enforcement and just spend more on treatment.

What would America look like with twice or three times as many drug users and addicts? To answer, consider what America was like in the recent past, during the frightening epidemic of methamphetamine, so similar to the crack outbreak of the 1980s. Each was a nightmare, fueled by ready drug availability.

Americans can't forget the meth epidemic hitting the heartland earlier this decade. In 2004, 1.4 million people said they had used methamphetamine in the past year, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. The powerful, long-lasting stimulant began growing rapidly as the make-it-yourself drug, using a precursor in over-the-counter cold medicine. It later was produced in large quantities by Mexican traffickers and smuggled into the U.S. Drugs weren't just an urban problem anymore.

Addiction, violence and drug poison hammered middle America. The addiction epidemic shattered families and created a staggering toll of family violence. Effective laws got the addicted into treatment through the courts, and thereby saved lives. In parallel, we deployed targeted prevention measures and, importantly, used law enforcement and regulation to cut meth production dramatically. As a result, use (as measured by workplace drug testing and youth surveys) and supply (as measured by the Drug Enforcement Administration) dropped sharply: by 60% or more between 2002 and 2008.

Cocaine and crack present a comparable case study. Urban policy experts on the left and right -- who agree about little else -- have a united view of what cocaine and crack did to our urban poor. Pushing back against crack made urban life better for all Americans.

The violence essential to drug trafficking is meant to be shocking -- from the marijuana traffickers who brutally murdered DEA special agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in Mexico in 1985 to the viciousness of rolling heads across a dance floor -- calculated to frighten decent citizens and government authorities into silence.

The violence of traffickers, which has harmed tens of thousands, is dwarfed by the millions harmed by another violence, that done daily by those in our own communities under the influence of drugs. Roughly 80% of child abuse and neglect cases are tied to the use and abuse of drugs. It is not that drug abuse causes all crime and violence, it just makes it much worse by impairing judgment, weakening impulse control and at some levels of pathology, with some drugs, causing paranoia and psychosis. Well more than 50% of those arrested today for violent and property crimes test positive for illegal drug use when arrested. Legalized access to drugs would increase drug-related suffering dramatically.

The origins of federal drug laws were a response to disastrous drug and violence epidemics when virtually every family had access to opiate- and cocaine-based remedies around the end of the 19th century. Drugs were available without penalty. Addiction was rampant, with an estimated 250,000 opiate addicts in the U.S. population of 76 million.

Or if you really think that prohibition causes the problem, remember that ancient China was brought to its knees by easy access to opium. Today, even highly traditional and regulated societies like Thailand, Malaysia, Iran and Afghanistan are suffering terrible addiction problems -- because heroin is addictive and easily accessible. Making highly addictive drugs easier to get and use is what makes this harm greater.

Although cynics on the left and right assert the drug problem is as big or bigger than ever, it is simply not true. Illegal drug use is still a problem, but by any fair assessment it is a smaller problem. Half as many teens are using drugs than 30 years ago and a quarter fewer than seven years ago, according to the Monitoring the Future, an ongoing study conducted by the University of Michigan under grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Cocaine and meth use are less than half what they were at their peak. Even drug offenders are a smaller percentage of the prison population than they were 15 or even seven years ago.

What are the indelible lessons? In the process of making the drug problem much smaller, we learned the importance of education -- not principally teaching the young about the health dangers of specific drugs, but teaching young and old about the disease of addiction. We know that the disease begins with the use of addictive drugs and that those drugs change the brain -- they create craving, impair judgment and lead to withdrawal or a feeling of illness in absence of the drug. Science has helped us see that we need to help those who are addicted particularly when they do not want our help -- every family of an addict or alcoholic knows that denial is a terrible part of this disease.

When I became the drug policy director in 2001, we faced an inherent weakness in prevention programs for youth. Teens told us they had been taught the dangers of drugs, but if their boyfriend or girlfriend used they did not want to be judgmental or estranged, so they were likely to join in. We put treatment specialists together with some of best creative minds in advertising to fashion prevention messages directly presenting drug abuse as a sickness that places an obligation on friends to help stop it. We enlisted the idealism and caring of the young to reverse the force of peer pressure. The ads were an important contributor to our progress that needs to continue and grow. With this knowledge of addiction, how do we choose to make more victims?

We have learned to apply public health tools that have been proven effective against other diseases. We have learned that addiction is a treatable disease. We are increasing the pathways to treatment -- through routine health care, the workplace, places of worship and schools. Drug courts leading to referral for treatment by the criminal justice system are now the major pathway through which the dependent are getting the help they need. Do we want to end all this by taking the courts out of the equation? Supervised, court-sanctioned treatment works best. Legalization robs us of this tool.

We have also learned how to join law enforcement and national security resources to break down trafficking groups and narcoterrorists. One of the greatest international policy success stories of the last decade has been the transformation of Colombia from a state dominated by narcoterrorism, violence and corruption to a thriving liberal democracy.

Between 2001 and 2007, the U.S. government's estimate of the maximum potential production of cocaine in Colombia dropped 24%. There is no certain method of translating that into drug profits, but even conservative estimates show that a 24% reduction equaled hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. There is now evidence that the combined effect of reduced production and increased seizures dropped the available Colombian cocaine supply to the U.S. from 2001 to 2007.

Colombia is the genuine backdrop for understanding the threat in Mexico today. The criminal gangs in Mexico go back decades. Many are drawn from generations in the same extended families. They have become wealthier and better armed, but the border areas they seek to control are an old battleground. The corruption they use to protect themselves has deep roots. They have become more dangerous as they have lost profits from the cocaine and meth trade over the last two years. Those who think legalizing drugs will stop the violence by cutting off the money to these groups seem unaware that they not only smuggle drugs and people across the border for profit, but that they also kidnap, hijack, manage large auto-theft operations and have extensive protection rackets.

Moreover, some of us remember that Bobby Kennedy was leading organized-crime strike forces against extremely dangerous mafia families, decades after the end of Prohibition. Just as ending Prohibition did not destroy organized crime in the U.S., legalizing drugs will not break the terrorist criminal groups in Mexico. In fact, the real pattern of violence from the mafia families in the U.S. to the cartels in Colombia suggests it is when they are threatened and destabilized that violence skyrockets. It is the violence focused on the threat of violent takeover by rival criminal groups that is an unfortunate but perhaps necessary first step in restoring the rule of law.

Legalizing drugs is the worst thing we could do for President Felipe Calderón and our Mexican allies. It would weaken the moral authority of his fight and the Mexicans would immediately realize that we have no intention of reducing consumption. Who do we think would take the profits from a legal drug trade? U.S. suppliers would certainly spring up, but that wouldn't preclude Mexican supplies as well -- or Mexican production for consumption in other countries. The Mexicans know that they too have a dangerous use and addiction problem. They have already learned that it is wrong and dangerous to make abuse and addiction worse.

We can make progress faster when more of us learn that drug use and addiction can not be an expression of individual liberty in a free society. Drug abuse is, by nature and the laws of organic chemistry that govern this disease, incompatible with freedom and civil society. Drug abuse makes human life solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short (a special version of Hobbes's hell in our own families). In the deepest sense, this is why failure is not an option.

John P. Walters is executive vice president of Hudson Institute and was director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush.







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"harm reduction" 02/28/2009
 

The Community Levee Association vehemently disagrees with any efforts to decriminalize marijuana. It is illegal for sound health reasons, which have not disappeared. Further, the legalization of marijuana should not be based upon its similarities and differences with other harmful substances but rather upon its own merits or lack thereof. It is addictive, harmful, and very much seen as a powerful "gateway" drug to other more harmful substances. Loudoun County youth would not be served well if cannabis were legalized. 

 

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

02/23/09

The War on Drugs Is a Failure We should focus instead on reducing harm to users and on tackling organized crime. 


By FERNANDO HENRIQUE CARDOSO, CéSAR GAVIRIA and ERNESTO ZEDILLO

The war on drugs has failed. And it's high time to replace an ineffective strategy with more humane and efficient drug policies. This is the central message of the report by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy we presented to the public recently in Rio de Janeiro.

AP A soldier stands next to packages containing marijuana at an army base in Cali, Colombia, August 2008.

Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven't worked. Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries. Latin America remains the world's largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis, and is fast becoming a major supplier of opium and heroin. Today, we are further than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs.

Over the last 30 years, Colombia implemented all conceivable measures to fight the drug trade in a massive effort where the benefits were not proportional to the resources invested. Despite the country's achievements in lowering levels of violence and crime, the areas of illegal cultivation are again expanding. In Mexico -- another epicenter of drug trafficking -- narcotics-related violence has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the past year alone.

The revision of U.S.-inspired drug policies is urgent in light of the rising levels of violence and corruption associated with narcotics. The alarming power of the drug cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of democracy in several Latin American countries.

The first step in the search for alternative solutions is to acknowledge the disastrous consequences of current policies. Next, we must shatter the taboos that inhibit public debate about drugs in our societies. Antinarcotic policies are firmly rooted in prejudices and fears that sometimes bear little relation to reality. The association of drugs with crime segregates addicts in closed circles where they become even more exposed to organized crime.

In order to drastically reduce the harm caused by narcotics, the long-term solution is to reduce demand for drugs in the main consumer countries. To move in this direction, it is essential to differentiate among illicit substances according to the harm they inflict on people's health, and the harm drugs cause to the social fabric.

In this spirit, we propose a paradigm shift in drug policies based on three guiding principles: Reduce the harm caused by drugs, decrease drug consumption through education, and aggressively combat organized crime. To translate this new paradigm into action we must start by changing the status of addicts from drug buyers in the illegal market to patients cared for by the public-health system.

We also propose the careful evaluation, from a public-health standpoint, of the possibility of decriminalizing the possession of cannabis for personal use. Cannabis is by far the most widely used drug in Latin America, and we acknowledge that its consumption has an adverse impact on health. But the available empirical evidence shows that the hazards caused by cannabis are similar to the harm caused by alcohol or tobacco.

If we want to effectively curb drug use, we should look to the campaign against tobacco consumption. The success of this campaign illustrates the effectiveness of prevention campaigns based on clear language and arguments consistent with individual experience. Likewise, statements by former addicts about the dangers of drugs will be far more compelling to current users than threats of repression or virtuous exhortations against drug use.

Such educational campaigns must be targeted at youth, by far the largest contingent of users and of those killed in the drug wars. The campaigns should also stress each person's responsibility toward the rising violence and corruption associated with the narcotics trade. By treating consumption as a matter of public health, we will enable police to focus their efforts on the critical issue: the fight against organized crime.

A growing number of political, civic and cultural leaders, mindful of the failure of our current drug policy, have publicly called for a major policy shift. Creating alternative policies is the task of many: educators, health professionals, spiritual leaders and policy makers. Each country's search for new policies must be consistent with its history and culture. But to be effective, the new paradigm must focus on health and education -- not repression.

Drugs are a threat that cuts across borders, which is why Latin America must establish dialogue with the United States and the European Union to develop workable alternatives to the war on drugs. Both the U.S. and the EU share responsibility for the problems faced by our countries, since their domestic markets are the main consumers of the drugs produced in Latin America.

The inauguration of President Barack Obama presents a unique opportunity for Latin America and the U.S. to engage in a substantive dialogue on issues of common concern, such as the reduction of domestic consumption and the control of arms sales, especially across the U.S.-Mexico border. Latin America should also pursue dialogue with the EU, asking European countries to renew their commitment to the reduction of domestic consumption and learning from their experiences with reducing the health hazards caused by drugs.

The time to act is now, and the way forward lies in strengthening partnerships to deal with a global problem that affects us all.

Mr. Cardoso is the former president of Brazil. Mr. Gaviria is a former president of Colombia. Mr. Zedillo is a former president of Mexico.





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