The Electronic Telegraph Monday 1 April 1996 World News
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This report appeared in the last edition of The Sunday Telegraph
AMERICA IS losing its scorched-earth total war against drugs. The evidence is everywhere. Consumption of marijuana has been going up steadily for the past three years among teenagers. Usage among 13- and 14-year-olds, has doubled since 1991. Young people are increasingly smoking marijuana laced with cocaine or PCP, sold in the form of "blunts" for $15 each.
Heroin has made a come-back among people of all ages, but it is making ominous inroads into a new group of younger, middle-class, Americans who buy "up-market" varieties that can be inhaled, rather than injected.
The Republicans are preparing a barrage of television "attack ads" to blame this all on President Clinton. They intend to make much of the fact that Clinton slashed the staff of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy from 146 to 25, relegating the "war on drugs" to the bottom rung of his domestic policy agenda.
Anticipating the assault, Clinton has done an abrupt volte-face. In January he appointed General Barry McCaffrey, the most decorated general in the US Army, to be his new "drug czar". McCaffrey refused to accept the token status of earlier drug czars. They were typically consigned to irrelevance in a charmless corner of the New Executive Building, far from the Oval Office. He demanded assurances that he would be undisputed commander-in-chief of America's total war against drugs, with the authority to pull every lever of US police and military power.
He got what he wanted. Last week, for example, he led a mission to Mexico flanked by top officials from the Justice Department, the Treasury, the State Department and the Pentagon, a striking display of US imperial might.
Nobody is tougher on drugs than the new Bill Clinton. His campaign is reaching fever pitch. On Thursday he signed a "one-strike-and-you're-out" order for drug offences in public housing.
The first victim of the new policy was a black woman in Ohio with four young children. The whole family was thrown out into the streets after a frightening assault by police. Apparently the woman's uncle had sold a small amount of marijuana in the apartment.
But while Democrats and Republicans keep trying to out-bid each other with ever harsher measures against drug users, a growing number of policy analysts think that drug prohibition has been a disastrous failure and should be abandoned. Typically, these dissenting voices have come from the Left of the political spectrum. Now the Right is voicing the ideas as well.
Last month the National Review, the premier magazine of conservative opinion in the United States, published an edition with the cover headline "The War On Drugs Is Lost: Kill It; Go For Legalization; Free Up Police, Courts; Reduce Crime".
In a joint statement the editors emphasised that they did not approve of drugs. "We deplore their use; we urge the stiffest feasible sentences against anyone convicted of selling a drug to a minor. But that said, it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states."
The magazine expected a large number of cancelled subscriptions. It has not happened. Instead the message seems to have struck a nerve among conservatives. One of the contributors, Ethan Nadelman, said that he has been invited to speak on Right-wing radio talk shows all over the country. "I can hardly believe it, Oliver North even had me on and he listened respectfully to arguments in favour of legalising drugs. The tide is turning."
America's "war on drugs" has been going on for almost a generation. The militant "zero-tolerance" phase is into its tenth year. There have been some successes. Drug use in the US armed forces has been virtually eliminated thanks to a strict regime of urine testing. Yet there is little to show for the effort. Per capita consumption of narcotics and marijuana dropped for a while but then went up again. The number of Americans using drugs has remained constant at about 40 million. The US still has the highest rate of drug abuse of any industrial country in the world.
But the collateral damage of drug prohibition has been nothing less than catastrophic. America is now suffering from early symptoms of "Colombianisation".
The estimated $150 billion annual income generated by drug smuggling is so huge that it is corrupting the government at every level. There are entire "narco-counties" in states like Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, where everybody from the judge to the sheriff is in cahoots with the Dixie Mafia.
Earlier this month two police officers in Washington DC were sent to prison for guarding cocaine shipments. The New York and Philadelphia police departments have been limping from one drug scandal to the next.
Nobody knows for certain whether the drug cartels have penetrated the upper echelons of the FBI, US Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the CIA. But there is suspicion that the federal police and judicial system is turning rotten.
The New York Bar Association has published a damning report - "Ending Drug Prohibition" - warning that "the Bill of Rights is in danger of becoming meaningless in cases involving drugs".
Anonymous tip-offs can lead to property being searched without a warrant. The police can stop passengers and search their luggage on trains, buses, and aircraft. This gives the police an excuse to frisk anybody they want, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Lawyer's fees can be seized, effectively denying suspects their right to legal defence. The police can confiscate houses, boats and cars because a guest happens to be carrying drugs. This form of forfeiture generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year for state and federal agencies.
At the last count 62 per cent of all inmates in federal prisons were drug offenders, up from 25 per cent in 1980. Most of them have never committed a violent crime. Under "mandatory minimum sentences" passed by Congress in 1986 - without holding hearings - their average sentence will be longer than those convicted of murder and rape. The penalty for the possession of five grams of crack cocaine is five years without parole.
"It is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew a dozen ounces of marijuana," said William F. Buckley, publisher of the National Review and doyen of American conservatism. It is time, he said, "to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre". Few politicians dare to say such things in public, but they are beginning to whisper them in private.
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