I am a physician with 30 years' experience in the substance abuse field with most of my activity in recent years in drug-law reform. Your article said what I have been trying to communicate but in a much more comprehensive and lucid manner. The comments about drug education-really the absence of any meaningful drug education-are particularly important.
One thing not mentioned in the article, but hopefully covered in the book [Drug War Politics, University of California Press, 1996] is the complication to reform produced by the widespread use of forfeiture of "criminal property." The $600 million per year in forfeiture accruing to law enforcement (mostly local) units in this country accounts to a great degree for their opposition to any diminution in the drug war. I commend Swarthmore for the courage to feature this article so prominently.
Bill Wenner '47
Volcano, Hawaii
The sociological reactions to Prohibition, both societal and criminal, were immediate. And with good reason: Alcohol has been part of social ritual across virtually all cultures in all ages, and free societies have been able to accommodate its popular use and thrive. Prohibition was an unjustified abridgement of American freedom and responsibility. It was entirely consonant with the American psyche to rebel against it.
The current pathologies of the drug war, by comparison, took several decades to develop-again, with good reason: No civilized society in history has ever survived the popular recreational use of hard drugs. When our government instituted prohibitions against hard drugs, Americans accepted the sanctions as perfectly reasonable and no abridgement of their rights as responsible citizens. The current pathologies of the drug war are properly traced not to the prohibitions of the '20s, but to the counter-culture revolution of the '60s when radical individualism redefined personal liberty as personal license.
A more appropriate parallel for our drug crisis-and a better predictor for the outcome of the legalization-health care approach-is the history of the other major social crisis that arose from that Pandora's box. Sexual promiscuity, like recreational drug use, was promoted as a perfectly legitimate personal choice, a putative "right" by virtue of not affecting anyone else. For the next couple of decades, it was glorified by the media and defended by the civil libertarians. Legal and societal sanctions against immoral sexual behaviors atrophied, and within a generation the pathologies became manifest: rampant disease; exploding rates of divorce, illegitimacy, and abortion; increased crime and poverty. Sexual promiscuity was then defined as a critical health care problem, and the federal government instituted coercive "solutions," which violate genuine rights guaranteed by our Constitution-and which, not incidentally, must be subsidized by ever-increasing taxpayer dollars. We cannot afford another such reasonable and compassionate solution in the drug crisis we currently face.
Rather than lament loudly that the alleged "war" on drugs has been lost, it is time for us to engage the battle seriously. It is time that we demand accountability-accountability of high-level officials in both the current and past administrations who have been complicit in international drug trafficking; accountability of corrupt judges, politicians, and activists who subvert the law; accountability of media that glorify and promote the drug culture and of academicians who accommodate it; accountability of drug pushers-of whatever age or background; and perhaps most of all, accountability of the drug user whose determined self-indulgence is a real and present threat to all of us.
It is the proper role of our government, as defined by our Constitution, to assume this "moral paradigm" in dealing with the drug crisis; it is not the proper role of government to assume the health care paradigm. Aside from the fact that such a model is antithetical to the American cultural values of liberty and personal responsibility, it is demonstrably impractical. Nonjudgmental, federally funded (and controlled) drug rehab programs have a very poor track record, both in terms of recidivism and in terms of waste, fraud, and abuse. Private-sector, faith-based, 12-step-type programs, on the other hand, have consistently demonstrated a dramatically higher success rate and are much more cost-effective. Practically and constitutionally, therefore, ministering to the needs of the drug user is properly an individual and communal response rather than a federal prerogative.
Although arguably a desirable component in any serious assault on the drug culture, the health care model is optional. The moral/legal model is not. It has demonstrated its efficiency across all cultures and all ages, and we discard it at our certain peril.
Virginia Loven
Trappe, Pa.
Peggy Spencer '45
Cox's Creek, Ky.
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