As I was perusing the news this morning, I noticed an article from the AP on the confirmation hearings for former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, Obama’s presumptive Drug Czar- and something he said chilled my blood to the bone.
(Kerlikowske) said that as national drug czar, he would take a balanced, science-based approach to the job.
A thoughtful, balanced approach to drug policy with an emphasis on treatment over incarceration?
Dear God… this man is screwed.
It’s really sad- but perhaps not unexpected. Kerlikowske will certainly gain the attention of partisans and political hacks everywhere- I can see the talking points now. The outrage this will spark amongst politicians on both sides of the political aisle! News pundits, wondering if those FEMA concentration camps will feature drug addiction centers for re-education! In any case, drug users are the scum of the earth! We need to punish them! How dare this hippy suggest otherwise!
Sadly, it reminds me I used to be one of those voices. Indeed, when I was a Republican, I wholeheartedly supported an all-out “war” on drugs. Go into Colombia, burn the forests, shoot the drug dealers! Very much a chickenhawk stance, and totally ignoring any sense of nuance to the issue. I had a friend who clashed on this issue with me constantly. He was the kind-of guy who could recount a five-minute speech on the values of hemp, and why the War or Drugs was a misnomer- and a failure, to boot. I would loudly disagree with him, even when he’d make points I couldn’t address. He’d say something like, “You hear about alcoholics beating their kids, but when was the last time you heard about someone smoking too much weed and beating their kids?” I would flippantly respond “I heard one guy smoked too much weed and then beat his kids at Frisbee Golf. Does that count?” It was a humorous and friendly back and forth, but it never really changed my feelings on drug enforcement.
That all changed overnight. An aquaintence of mine had arrived home from work to find the police waiting for him. His wife and daughter had been on their way home from a music lesson, and were t-boned by a drunk driver; both died, the drunk driver walked away from the scene. Suddenly, the issue wasn’t so concise and intangible anymore.
Suddenly, I began to wonder why we threw drug addicts into federal prison, and yawned at DWIs. I began to wonder why we spent so much time, energy, and money focusing on fighting an unending “war”, and refused to address the underlying problems. I suppose because it’s so incredibly much easier to take an anti-drug stance- rail loudly about drug dealers and won’t somebody please think of the children- then to actually, y’know, do something about it.
I commend Chief Kerlikowske on his position, and certainly hope he succeeds in being confirmed. He sounds like he’s got the right ideas, and combined with Eric Holder’s statements about the importance of prosecuting marijuana casesand again combined with my state’s senior Senator, Jim Webb, and his work on revamping the prison system- make me truly hopeful that, even in the midst of the biggest mess for our country in recent memory…
There is a caveat to this, of course. My friend Hubie points out that treatment is only a small part of the issue. He says it better than I could:
Drug abuse and the incarceration addiction of the prison industry is a systemic and wide spread problem all around, and it’s one that needs to be addressed not just by treatment and enforcement, but giving reasons for people to NOT turn to drugs, period.
Decent education, housing, and jobs fight drugs far more effectively than knocking down doors and jailing folks and seizing their property.
We have fed a prison industry- and that is exactly what it is- with a whole banquet of “solutions” that increases funding for programs that simply don’t work. We have allowed our police and law enforcement to be bird dogs on real estate issues, and to grow fat on seizures, so a good number of less than clean cops and officials who have their hands out to be greased are going to support a system that limps along.
Education and better housing, and jobs are going to address our drug problems a lot more than clean needle programs.
We have a system that is dependent on the problem NOT being solved, but managed. Those who support the prison industry have grown fat on the increased incarceration of Americans, and the drug war has ballooned our prison population by a fair degree, tied up our police chasing down marijuana smuggling and seizures account for big business. With these kinds of profits at stake, folks are going to dig their heels into anything that is going to cut that back.
Our hope, is that police are going to realize that while they may lose funding for drug related programs, they are going to be safer with less drug related offenses to chase down, and can concentrate on real crimes. But, I’m not betting on it.
And neither am I. I think there’s still too much resistance to this sort of common-sense tack of things in the world, too many years of both sides of the aisle training the people of this country that drug use was akin to rape. But maybe- maybe– we’re finally seeing a way forward.
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