The War on Drugs is wasting our time, money and lives
Jim (he requested his real name not be used) is 22 years old. He has been a drug user since he was 15, when he first started smoking marijuana. At 19, he began using Oxycontin and has been addicted, by his own estimate, for the last year and a half.
Jim has never been arrested for a violent crime, nor has he been arrested for drug use, but he noted that fear of legal ramifications was one of the reasons he sought treatment at an outpatient facility. “I knew that if I didn’t stop, I was going to have run-ins with the law,” Jim stated, adding, “There were periods during my use that I felt watched and that I was being followed. My job and livelihood and drugs didn’t work together and if I didn’t fix it, they wouldn’t work together at all.”
We can look to the War on Drugs as, in many ways, a product of the counter-culture. Before the hippie movement, the birth of free love, and all the other things our parents got to enjoy but we didn’t, recreational drug use wasn’t common among the middle class. But slowly, it seeped into our consciousness in a way few will soon forget, and somewhere between heroin-addicted soldiers returning from Vietnam, the Manson family , and Altamont, America got scared of drugs corrupting youth and society, Reagan took office, the War on Drugs was born, and now the youth of today live with things like D.A.R.E. and mandatory minimums.
Many would point to Jim’s fear of the law as a motivator for quitting drug use as a demonstration of the effectiveness of strong drug laws. However, the cost of that deterrence comes at a high price: In the year 2000, almost $24 billion went to the costs associated with incarcerating non-violent drug offenders, and fully 76% of the increase in prison admission came from locking up non-violent drug convicts. The staggering increase even led to one former drug czar to refer to our country’s penal system as the “American gulag.”
What’s more, the War on Drugs has affected young non-violent drug offenders especially hard. Because, more often than not, drugs are first introduced to people during adolescence, it only makes sense that young people should have to deal with the legal ramifications of drug use. However, the cycle of penalization for drug deterrence takes a toll on our generation.
Overdoses among young people have often been shown to be a result of resistance to seeking medical attention because of punitive action. Penalties for drug use also can affect young people’s ability to get college loans or employment in a big way, paving the way for a cycle of recidivism.
What’s more, excessive sentencing has led to a host of young people seeing their lives taken away because of drug laws. In 2003, a 23-year-old woman with no priors was sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison just for being in an apartment where there was drug activity. One 28-year-old woman with no priors was sentenced to 15 years in a conspiracy charge because her boyfriend was a drug dealer.
The War on Drugs has been time consuming, a waste of resources, and has brought a tornado of suffering upon the lives of countless people. As long as people have certain appetites, there will be drug abuse, and to try to eradicate it is to try to eradicate an incremental part of human nature.
“I think that as human beings we have the human right to choose what we do to our bodies,” Jim said. “I feel, if I want to do drugs, that’s my choice. I think that if the government would focus on more important things, we would do better as a society.”
Photo by Jewfro-Macabbi
