Drug Policy: Failure at Home.

Over a century ago, before the U.S. launched its war on drugs abroad, America commenced a domestic war on drugs. Both of these wars rely upon coercion. Abroad, military force and violence in Colombia and elsewhere are being unleashed largely against peasant farmers who grow opium, coca, and cannabis to support their families. Domestically, police operations and imprisonment are directed against drug users--most of whom never commit violent crimes--and street drug sellers. Both wars have disproportionately targeted the poorest and the lowest level participants in the narcotics commerce. These twin sides of U.S. drug policy have failed to reduce either the overall quantities of drugs produced and delivered or the number of seriously addicted drug abusers in the United States.

U.S. antidrug policy has historically been riddled with racism, and the policy has always entwined domestic and foreign policy considerations. Exploitation of exaggerated fears of drug users and drug traffickers--usually depicted as racial minorities or foreigners--has been a staple of those promoting tough antinarcotics measures. The first American antidrug laws--penalizing the smoking of opium in San Francisco (1875)--were enacted to keep whites from mingling with Chinese immigrants and to stigmatize Chinese laborers competing with white immigrants for employment. Similarly, the alcohol temperance movement, closely affiliated with the antinarcotics movement, had tendencies that were anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-Polish, and anti-Jewish.

The foreign policy considerations are also very old. Britain's victory over China in the Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-58 assured British dominance in the lucrative opium trade between British-controlled India and China. When America became an imperial power, an early step in its control of the new empire was the prohibition of opium use in the Philippines in 1905. And the Shanghai Opium Commission of 1909--portrayed as the West's effort to cure a "backward," non-Christian nation of its drug problem--was explicitly motivated by a desire to give Europe and the U.S. an advantage in trade negotiations with China.

However, the dearth of U.S. domestic law against the use of narcotics impugned America's sincerity in this effort. To relieve this embarrassment, a multiyear effort to enact a federal antidrug law culminated in the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. To convince conservative Southern members of Congress to accept this substantial expansion of federal power, promoters of the law exploited racist myths, depicting "cocainized" Negroes as the principal cause of rape of white women.

Exaggerated claims that drugs came violence have been repeated time and again regarding marijuana, heroin, LSD, crack cocaine, and lately, methamphetamines. Although hundreds of thousands of Americans were addicted to these drugs in the early 20th century, little crime was associated with such addiction. The Harrison Act was ostensibly a revenue and registration measure, but its zealous enforcement by Treasury Department officials led to a near total prohibition of the use of heroin, cocaine, and opium. In one of the first federal interferences in medical practice, physicians were barred from prescribing narcotics for the safe maintenance of addicts.

Enactment of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act was a reprise of whites seeking economic advantage, here against Mexican workers in competition for agricultural jobs during the Great Depression. The press carried sensational (but false) stories of marijuana-caused violence by Mexicans. In the mid-1950s, such fear mongering turned eastward. Ambitious politicians pushed for mandatory minimum sentences for drug peddling by promoting myths that "Red China" was distributing heroin to undermine the United States.

In the late 1960s, drug use increased in many parts of the world. In the U.S., recreational drug use--such as marijuana smoking and the use of LSD--skyrocketed among white youth protesting the unpopular war in Vietnam, the draft, and racial discrimination against African-Americans. Heroin addiction grew widely, but was most noticed among poor and working-class people of color. Drug use also became widespread among the U.S. armed forces in Southeast Asia.

Politicians eagerly responded. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller (R), harboring presidential hopes, hyped the drug epidemic and legislated long prison sentences for offenders. President Richard Nixon declared a "war" on drugs. In practice, his programs and legislation emphasized treatment for drug addicts--particularly, rehabilitating heroin addicts with methadone--because he wanted lower crime rates to bolster his reelection bid, and because he feared that drug addiction among GIs in Vietnam would further fuel public opposition to the war in Southeast Asia. Tragically, however, his harsh rhetoric fostered a climate of hostility toward those with drug problems. Current policies perpetuate Nixon's martial language while de-emphasizing treatment.

Key Points

* The U.S. war on drugs at home and abroad both rely on coercion and disproportionately target the poorest and lowest level participants in the drug trade.

* U.S. antidrug policy has had racist overtones and is driven by political opportunism, not by considerations of effectiveness or justice.

* The policy, which emphasizes law enforcement instead of effective demand-control measures, hasn't reduced deaths, drug abuse, drug availability, or the spread of disease.

Eric E. Sterling <[e-mail]> is president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.