Part 5 – It’s time to negotiate an end to the war on drugs!

Addiction is a disease. I am not speaking of experimentation with drugs nor even abuse. When people first use illicit drugs, they are making a choice to experiment or even abuse the substance. True, some may have a genetic predisposition to addiction but early use is always a choice, a bad choice at that.

Some but not all of those who choose to use will become addicted as a result of continued use. Most do not. Most experiment but at some point discontinue the use because of negative impacts. However, for others, there comes a time when continued use actually rewires the brain’s circuitry resulting in what we call addiction.

 At that point a person has an unnatural compulsion to find, obtain and use drugs despite all the negative consequences. This is the person who is placed on probation for a crime and ordered not to use but does so in spite of a threatened prison sentence. We are talking about the parent who knows the next time he or she uses, the court will take their children away…and still uses.

These are people whose brain scans demonstrate a significant change in the way their brain functions as a result of continued, excessive drug use. We are now talking about addicts.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines addiction as a primary, chronic, neuro-biologic disease with genetic, psychosocial, and environmental factors influencing its development and manifestations. Addiction is characterized by behaviors that include one or more of the following:

·        Impaired control over drug use

·        Compulsive use

·        Continued use despite harm

·        Cravings

The War on Drugs has seldom distinguished itself by using the science to develop public policy. Indeed the science and the mountains of helpful research is overlooked or obscured by conflicting public policies and popular notions. The science is largely ignored not only by the legal system but even the clinicians. Yet the science is absolute.

This has seriously impaired the ability of the country to effectively meet the challenges of drug addiction. Why? If lawmakers or judges view the addict as someone who should just say no or as character flawed person, the conclusions they reach about the war on drugs is skewed. If a person engages in harmful drug use because they simply make bad choices and have no concern for the well-being of others, punishment is the appropriate penalty. More and harsher laws can be seen as the best recourse. Spending more millions on building prisons is then a sensible policy.

But if that person is addicted, i.e. has a brain disease, what sentencing alternatives should be used? How should that reality change the way the person is supervised on probation? What clinical practices should be employed?

The courts are not alone in failing to recognize the science. Some clinicians fail to use all the tools available to treat their patients because of their own prejudices against, for example, the use of effective prescription drugs or virtual therapy, or other best practices denying their clients the best chance at recovery.

What if the science is correct? What if we could wipe the slate clean and start over knowing what we know now rather than continuing to impose practices based on what we didn’t know about the science when the War was declared? What then would be the best policy? What laws, sentencing practices and treatment regimes would make sense? Let’s begin there.

Please share your thoughts.

Part 2: It is time to negotiate an end to America’s War on Drugs

 Whenever you see a dysfunctional government policy or program, you should first attempt to unravel a riddle. Who benefits by the dysfunction? The more incoherent or ineffective t may seem to outsiders, the more likely it is that someone with power has so much at stake in the status quo that attempts to reform are doomed.

The 40 years “war on drugs” is one of those dysfunctional systemic approaches to a serious national problem. There is a lot of money on the table and not all of it goes into the pockets of the usual suspects. 

A United Nations report estimated global drug trade generated more than $320 billion annually. That is an amount exceeding the Gross Domestic Product of 161 of the 190 nations whose GDP is analyzed by the CIA World Factbook. There is another interesting fact about that much money. If it was all converted into crisp new $100 bills, it would weigh more than 7 million pounds. A few years ago, I heard an NPR interview with a Columbian drug lord who said the weight of the currency they received in exchange for cocaine was at first a huge logistic problem. Then they found it to present an opportunity. They used it to compromise public officials ranging from law enforcement officers to judges and air traffic controllers. Seven million pounds of 100 dollar bills go a long way.

A recent report in The Observer (found at readersupportednews.org) blew the whistle on the reckless role US and international banks play in laundering this money. According to the report, when officers investigated a 2006 landing of a DC-9 jet in Mexico laden with almost 6 tons of cocaine, they found the plane had been purchased with drug profits laundered through Wachovia Bank, a part of Wells Fargo. The bank has settled claims against them for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. As a result a total of more than $378.3 billion was laundered through that one bank in a time frame which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drug war.

For that Wachovia received a sentence that would be the envy of anyone caught with even a small amount of drugs in his pocket. A deferred prosecution. If the bank changes its lax policies for handling drug money, they won’t be prosecuted, the sort of double standard that makes it difficult for citizens to respect the drug laws.

Of course Wachovia is far from alone among the nation’s banks. Remember 2008 and the near collapse of the international banking system? At the height of that crisis, then head of the UN office on drugs and crime, said proceeds from drugs and crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to many banks on the brink of collapse. Close your eyes and think about the implications! A banking system propped up in part by drug money means a lot of powerful people wanting to continue this so-called war.

To be continued…

It is time to negotiate an end to the war on drugs!

Those of us who grew up in the 60’s often speak nostalgically of those days when drug use became fashionable. Marijuana use was part and parcel of the social and political upheaval of the times. When America decided it had a problem she did as all addicts first do…she blamed someone else.

The first scapegoat was Mexico. President Richard Nixon appointed Myles Ambrose Commissioner of Customs, a likely place to implement a policy to stop the flow of drugs.

Ambrose told Frontline, “I thought it was crazy, we had these meetings in the Justice Department and decided they were going to close the border. They were going to close the border as a kind of a shock treatment to the Mexicans. I think it was September 16^th that we closed the border effectively. Cars were backed up as far as you could see, and we kept it going maybe five days.” So much for that idea.

Next the best and the brightest of the Nixon administration considered “pre-emptive buying”, i.e. buying up all the loose opium on the planet. Ambrose reminded them, “You can grow opium on probably 70% of the earth's surface. I'm in the wrong business if you're going to do this kind of thing. I mean you'll have a lot of people that you'll be buying up in the next growing season."

So then it was off to war. Nixon declared war the following year, calling drugs, "public enemy number one in the United States." Presidents generally choose words thoughtfully. When Nixon used the term “war” every American knew what it meant. By then we had been at war in Viet Nam for years and the images of that war translated into where we thought we were headed in this one.

By definition, war is an openly declared state of organized, violent conflict, typified by extreme aggression, societal disruption, and high mortality. The Thirty Years' War in Europe was fought from 1618 until 1648. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in history. It ended not on the battlefield but in a negotiation, not with a single treaty but several. The war on drugs has been our “Forty Years War” and 40 years later, we might ask ourselves, as clinicians often ask addicts as they report on repeated drug use, “how’s that working out for you?”

From 2006 until I retired last January, I served as the highest ranking official in Wyoming state government with responsibility for drug policy. I administered funding of programs for treatment and prevention and the state’s drug court program. Now that I have had time out of office to reflect and am no longer living in the political fish bowl, I want to use this blog as a space to create a genuine dialogue about how to negotiate an end to this war.

As a result of forty years of “mission creep” the endgame has eluded us. The collateral damage has become unacceptable. Never has American politics permitted an honest conversation about how to end this war but the time has come for us to at least talk about how we get to the negotiating table. But since you and I are not seeking public office, let’s talk!

To be continued…