In the summer of 1999, following an 18-month undercover drug operation, police in Tulia, Texas (population of 4,700) arrested 46 people for drug dealing. Of the 46 mostly teenagers and young adults, 40 were African American – constituting more than 15% of the entire black population of the town. 11 defendants were found guilty in jury trials, one is still awaiting trial and the others entered into plea bargains. Their prison sentences were strikingly harsh: many were sent away for 20-25 years, and some received far longer terms amounting to life sentences. Critics have charged the prosecution with targeting blacks, and have strongly challenged the accuracy of evidence used in the convictions. (Town Rocked by Drug Sting, 2000).
HOW CAN WE CONTROL THIS BEHAVIOR IN ORDER TO REDUCE THE HARM?
Finally we would have to examine how we should control this behavior in order to reduce the harm. Likewise, analyze crime control strategies vs. harm reduction strategies and determine which strategies will be the most effective in reducing the harm. According to the article, Poor Prescription : The Costs of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United States, measures by which to reduce drug use as well ad drug-related crime are:
§ Increase the safety of America’s citizens by substantially reducing drug-related crime and violence;
§ Reduce health and social costs to the public of illegal drug use;
§ Shield America’s air, land, and sea frontiers from the drug threat;
§ Break foreign and domestic drug sources of supply. The vast majority of the budget for counter-narcotics programs is applied to the first three goals. (Poor Prescriptions, 2000).
According to Psychemedics Corporation President, methods to control drug use are widespread. Controls are set in the workplace as well as in the privacy of one s home. Many workplaces use hair strand testing to determine drug use, which would indicate if drugs had been used in the prior seven months or longer. Kubacki articulates:
Psychemedics currently serve over 1600 corporations, many In the Fortune 500, four of the largest police departments, five Federal Reserve Banks, hospitals, universities and others. They have done extensive due diligence on our patented hair test for drugs of abuse and find our method accurate and extremely effective in identifying drug users.
Another means of control as proposed by Vice President Al Gore in his May 2nd speech in Atlanta, mandatory drug testing of parolees. Mr. Gore proposed federal spending of $500 million a year to help states test, treat and counsel prisoners and parolees for drug use. Under the plan, inmates in state prisons — mandatory drug testing already applies in federal prisons — would not be released until they could pass drug tests. If parolees failed the test, which would be administered twice per week, they could be returned to prison (Gore, 2000).
According to Duke and Gross, A drug-free society is no more attainable than a sex-free society. Duke and Gross argue, One way to minimize the harm from drugs is to reduce the number of people who use them. In order to reduce the number of people who use drugs, society must be education and treated without govern coercion. As quotes in the book, The Rich Get Rich and the Poor Get Prison, some form of decriminalization of marijuana, heroin and cocaine would reduce criminalization of law-abiding users, would reduce the need for addicts to steal, would reduce incentives to drug traffickers and smugglers, and would free up personnel and resources for more effective war again the crimes that people fear most. When we look at these ideas, it would seem feasible if drugs such as marijuana, heroin and cocaine were decriminalized, cost would diminish drastically, reducing the number of property crimes committed to purchase these drugs in their illicit state, addicts would probably receive better or less harmful products and would be better able to monitor their dosage. Because we know that a drug-free society will never exit we need to find a way to make the circumstances these addicts face a little healthier. To reemphasize the quote made in a song by the late Tupac Shakur, Instead of a War on Poverty, there is a War on Drugs The point can be taken from this excerpt to be, we as a country, need to focus on the causes of drug use, as well as the underlying social conditions that foster the lifestyle of drug usage. Poverty is one example of a cause, but as statistics have shown, even the wealthy and highly paid will admit to drug use.
Crime Control vs. Harm Reduction Strategies
In order to control drug use and reduce harm we must first determine who is using drugs and who is being harmed. At first glance one might think they are one in the same, but that may not be true. The severity and frequency of harm as a result of drug use falls into two distinct categories. People of color and the poor have a crime victimization rate many times higher than middle-class whites. Neighborhoods on the lowest rung of the economic ladder have been saturated by a combination of drugs and crime (Walker, 2000). Although drug use is widespread, the harm that results falls heavily on the poor and minorities.
Crime control strategies that have been implemented during the past decade are primarily focused drug distribution and possession and the crimes that are associated with them. Although African-Americans represent only 13% of the population in the United States, a disproportionate number of them are represented in the prison population and a large number of those are for drug related offenses.
During the 1980 s, prisons in the United States began to swell with those who were convicted and handed lengthy sentences, especially in states where habitual offender laws had been established. The eventual result of these policies was the early release of many prisoners due to overcrowding. As sentences for crimes lengthened and prison population swelled, money was spirited away from all areas of government spending including higher education.
Violent crime is a severe problem for the United States. The violent crime rate in this country is far higher than any other industrialized nation. Samuel Walker reviews the 1997 University Maryland Report Preventing Crime in his book Sense and Nonsense about Crime and Drugs. The report views crime reduction strategies in a different light by identifying seven institutional settings in which crime policies are delivered. Each of the seven, communities, families, schools, labor markets, crime hot spots policing, and other criminal justice institutions, are closely interrelated. The effectiveness of a crime control strategy depends heavily on the condition of the other six institutions related to it (Walker, 2000).
Conservative theologian James Q. Wilson asserts that criminals lack self control and offenses against society will continue without methods of separating the offender from law-abiding citizens. Wilson believes that effective deterrent strategies must be in place that can effectively steer would-be offenders away from criminal activities. Others in the conservative ideology point to a moral breakdown as the root cause of crime and desire swift, certain punishment of offenders . The problem with this response to crime is that it does not address the persons who have already rejected societal norms and governmental authority (Walker, 2000).
Liberal crime control strategists views crime as more of community wide problem rather than an individual problem. Their strategy points to the need for reducing the social factors that lead to crime such as family, neighborhood setting, economic opportunities, and discriminatory practices. Treatment, rather than incarceration, is the best method for dealing with offenders who have not graduated to the most violent crimes. No treatment programs have demonstrated consistent success (Walker, 2000).
Walker concludes that neither conservatives nor liberals have achieved a universally effective crime control strategy. Each have seized very public examples of criminal situations that seldom occur to highlight their respective points, but these don t reach the root cause of crime and result in no meaningful reduction of crime.
Phil Coffin of The Lindesmith Center studied prison incarceration trends and found as of 1995, there were almost eight times as many people incarcerated for drug offenses as there were in 1980. The cost for housing these 388,000 people in prison facilities was nearly 9 billion dollars. Among those incarcerated approximately 80% are minorities. Part of the difference is associated with the difference in mandatory sentencing for different forms of the same drug. Possession of 500 grams or more of powdered cocaine, for instance, carries a five-year mandatory sentence. Yet, carrying only 5 grams of cocaine in the refined form of crack invokes the same sentence.
This illustrates the racial disparity in the execution of drug laws. The harm experienced by minorities is greater because 88% of all crack cocaine defendants were black while only 27% were found in possession of powder cocaine (Coffin, 1995).
The harm resulting from the fight against drug use extends to all persons in the United States. Currently, billions of dollars spent on enforcement, adjudication, and sentencing related to drug laws. The tremendous financial resources diverted to combat the drug war could be used on social programs that have proven outcomes. The United States is among the richest countries in the world and yet we trail most countries in our educational achievement. The drug offender is removed from society and the costs of his absence are incalculable. His family and children are punished by proxy, and yet the incarceration seemingly has no measurable effect on the problem of drug sales and use in the United States. In fact, arrests for drug related offenses between 1982 and 1998 have increased from 676,000 to 1,559,100 (The Failed Drug War, 2000).
The National Institute of Justice has compiled Research Findings Relevant to the Abuse of Alcohol and Other Drugs and Victimization and has compiled the following statistics:
· At least 4.5 million women are alcohol abusers or alcoholics; 3.1 million regularly use illicit drugs; 3.5 million misuse prescription drugs; and 21.5 million smoke cigarettes (Reid 1996).
· Of the 23.1 million persons who used an illicit drug in the past year, 1.9 million reported some health problem due to their illicit drug use; 3.5 million reported an emotional or psychological problem due to their drug use; and 4.1 million were dependent on an illicit drug. An estimated 963,000 had received treatment or counseling for their drug use (SAMHSA 1998).
· 9.7 million people were estimated to be dependent on alcohol, including 915,000 youths, ages twelve to seventeen. An estimated 1.7 million people (including 148,000 youths) reported receiving treatment or counseling (Ibid.).
· In 1995, the estimated annual cost of alcohol abuse in the U.S. was $166.5 billion, and drug abuse is estimated to have cost $109.8 billion. Alcohol use disorders cost $56.7 billion more than the estimated annual economic cost of illegal drug use (Harwood et al. 1998).
· Alcohol abuse was involved in over 70 percent of substance abuse treatment admissions in 1997, and about half of people entering treatment reported alcohol as their primary drug of abuse (NIJ 1999).
· The 1997 National Treatment Improvement Study of addiction treatment effectiveness found a 70 percent reduction in the number of clients reporting problems with alcohol in the year following treatment (SAMHSA 1997a).
Alcohol abuse is currently a larger problem for society than drug abuse in terms of the financial costs to our society. This is disturbing considering that alcohol is a legal drug and more funds are available to combat the problem. Persons who have an illegal drug abuse program must first overcome the tendency to hide the addiction to an illegal substance.
Emphasis should be placed on drug abuse as a health problem, not a primary criminal justice problem. A 1994 report by RAND researchers concluded that the cost of drug treatment is one/seventh the cost of law enforcement efforts pursuing the same goal: ending the use and abuse of illegal drugs. The placement of illegal drug use in the hands of law enforcement has difficulty moving toward harm reduction principles. These principles must include education, sterile paraphernalia programs (to prevent a drug problem becoming an HIV problem), and the facilitation of treatment and patient confidentiality for the drug user (Fischler, 1996).
Conclusion
Drug abuse is widespread and spans every ethnic group, every race, people of different creeds, age and gender. Without a doubt a change is needed. The cost of housing prisoners is $25,000 per year. It seems it would be a more feasible plan to educate and treat these individuals versus incarceration. The criminalization of drugs seems to be doing more harm than good. Our priorities should be the prevention and treatment options available for those in need of the services and law enforcement efforts should be focused on large-scale deliveries rather than end-users. George Soros, a leading advocate for the legalization for drugs, cuts through the myth and hysteria regarding drug use in an article he wrote in 1997.
In the article he points to the destructive consequences of fighting the drug war the way we are fighting it, and proposes a flanking maneuver. His proposal is to treat the drug abuser as you would any other medical patient but leave the occasional recreational user be. The staggering problem with alcohol abuse listed above has one major advantage for the government, tax revenue. If the illicit drugs were made legal, tax revenues on them would help generate treatment resources.
America needs to consider alternatives to law enforcement fighting the drug war .
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