Drug War: How We Got Into This Mess and the Special Interests That Keep Us Here
By Suzanne Wills
suzy@dpft.org
How We Got Into This Mess
The Drug Policy Forum of Texas was started by Dr. G. Alan Robison in 1995 when he retired Chairman of the
Department of Pharmacology at UT Health Science Center in Houston. Dr. Robison was disturbed that drug
laws have no basis in science. Drug laws are based on money and politics. The best way to begin to
understand them is by reading these books, Drug Crazy, by Mike Gray, How We Got Into This Mess and
How We Can Get Out and/or Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed by Judge James Gray, A Judicial
Indictment of the War on Drugs.
In 1900 the US was awash in drugs. Cocaine was in Coca Cola and lots of other soft drinks. Over the counter
medicines routinely contained morphine and cocaine. The Bayer Company introduced its brand of morphine,
heroin, in 1898 and sold it over the counter for a year. In 1906 Congress passed the only law that has ever
reduced drug consumption. It was not a prohibition law. It was the Pure Food and Drug Act. It required
manufacturers to list the ingredients of their products on the label. When people realized that many of their
favorite medicines contained narcotics, they simply stopped taking them. Of course, not everyone stopped
taking all drugs. About 2 to 3 people per 1000 were addicted, usually to laudanum which was a mixture of
alcohol and morphine.
This was treated as a family problem and a medical problem until Dr. Hamilton Wright decided to wipe out
opium use worldwide. Other countries ignored his crusade, but in this country he had the support of the
temperance movement and the financial support of his wife, Elizabeth Washburn Wright, who was a powerful
senator’s daughter,. In the winter of 1914 he was able to get the Harrison Narcotics Act passed in the U. S.
Congress despite the fact that he had no support from law enforcement and was opposed by the medical
community. The act made it illegal for physicians to prescribe narcotics to addicts. Suddenly addicts who had
been patients were criminals. The New York Medical Journal wrote “The results of this legislation will appear
only gradually and will not always be recognized as such. These will be the failure of promising careers, the
disrupting of happy families, the commission of crimes…, and the influx into hospitals for the mentally
disordered of many who would otherwise live socially competent lives.” The Harrison Narcotics Act called for
$150,000 in total funding. Today we spend that much every two minutes on drug law enforcement. And our
rate of addiction is about the same.
Hamilton Wright was a severe alcoholic and had to leave government service for that reason. His work was
carried on for half a century by Elizabeth Washburn Wright and by Harry Anslinger. The most notable thing
that Anslinger did was to champion the campaign to outlaw Cannabis in the 1930s. At that time Cannabis was
widely used in medicine and it grew everywhere. It was literally a weed. It was largely ignored by everyone
except Mexican migrant workers who had come to this country to try to find work during the depression.
Anslinger ran a very shrewd campaign. He received strong support from Hearst newspapers. Anslinger also
used the radio, which was a new medium and got the additional respect that new mediums get. And he gave
Cannabis a new name, marijuana. He called marijuana as “as hellish as heroin” and referred to “marihuanacrazed madmen.” He said “some beet-field peon takes a few puffs of this stuff, (and) thinks he has just been
elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies.”
In 1937 the word marijuana was substituted for the word cannabis for the first time in U.S. law. A hearing was
held on “The Taxation of Marijuana Act.” Only one medical expert was called to speak, Dr. William C.
Woodward. He testified that none of the claims being made about Cannabis indica were true. The
congressmen were New Deal Democrats. Dr. Woodward was a Republican. They had already been
scrapping about Social Security. As usual, party lines held. Author Mike Gray writes, “In a vote they didn’t
bother to record, on a matter of little interest, a handful of congressmen forwarded a bill that would one day
help fill the nation’s prisons to the roof beams.” In 2001 there were 723,627 arrests for nonviolent marijuana
offenses in this country, 88.6% for possession only, more than the combined total for all violent crimes. Every
year enforcing marijuana laws costs an estimated $10-15 billion in direct costs alone.
Contrast the history of marijuana, which has never killed anyone, with the history of the most addictive, most
deadly drug we know, tobacco. During the WWII, approximately the same time that marijuana was made
illegal, about 65% of American adults smoked tobacco. Since then anti-smoking activists have reduced that
number to about 21% using entirely non-violent, non-coercive methods. Fewer high school students smoke
tobacco than smoke marijuana by a slight margin. This is in spite of the fact that tobacco is not only legal, but
subsidized. It is one of the ironies of the drug war that while we spend millions of dollars to spray coca and
other crops in Colombia with herbicide our trade agreements require Colombia to accept not only our tobacco,
but also our tobacco advertising.
Back to the history lesson. Richard Nixon was swept into office in 1968 on law-and-order, anti-drug sentiment.
Young people in the US and western Europe were protesting the war in Vietnam and smoking marijuana. The
United Kingdom, Canada, The Netherlands and the US each created scientific commissions to study
marijuana and what should be done about it. Nixon appointed his friend and Republican drug war hawk war,
Ray Shafer, to head ours. It was widely expected that his report would reflect his views. It did not. The
Shafer Commission found the same things that all the other scientific commissions found. Marijuana use does
not cause crime. There is no basis for the gateway theory. Personal use of marijuana should no longer be a
crime.
The Shafer Commission made another comment that did not grab headlines, but was just as insightful.
“Perhaps the major consequence of [well-meaning efforts to do something about drug use] …
has been the creation of a vested interest in the perpetuation of the problem among those dispensing and
receiving funds.” The amount of money spent in 1972 that so disturbed the Commission was a small fraction
of the amount that special interests spend today.
Only the Netherlands took the advice of its scientific commission. The Dutch began selling marijuana for
personal use in their famous “coffee shops.” Thirty years have passed and the results are in. The Dutch,
including Dutch teenagers, now use marijuana at about half the rate that Americans do. According to a 1994
survey taken in Amsterdam the average age of first use of marijuana among the Dutch is 20, among
Americans it’s 16. The rate of heroin addiction in the Netherlands is about 1/3 of the rate here. Here is the
most important result. In the mid-1970s the average age of a heroin addict in the US and the Netherlands was
about the same, about 26 years old. Today the average age of a heroin addict in the US is 19. 87% of
American heroin users are under age 26. The average age of a heroin addict in the Netherlands has risen to
40. The Dutch wanted to keep from their kids away from drug dealers and they did. Using the opposite
approach, the U. S. created the highest rate of illicit drug use in the world.
Instead of following the recommendations of the Shafer Commission, the Nixon administration created the
Drug Enforcement Agency. This was a vast new organization with the power to call for wiretaps and no-knock
warrants. Today it has more than 10,000 agents in the United States and 58 foreign countries.
Even that didn’t quite get the job done. In 1984, the Omnibus Crime Bill gave prosecutors the right of
forfeiture. They could now confiscate cash, cars, boats, homes, bank accounts, stock portfolios, anything,
based on an accusation that it was used in a crime. Law enforcement agencies throughout the country
promptly factored forfeiture into their budgets. Billions of dollars worth of property has been seized. Fewer
than 20% of the owners of that property have ever been charged with a federal crime.
In 1972, the year before the Nixon administration created the DEA, the federal budget for enforcing the drug
laws was roughly $101 million. Gen. McCaffrey says, quite proudly, that under his term as drug czar the
federal budget for drug law enforcement increased from $17.8B to $19.2B. By comparison, the average
monthly Social Security check in 1972 was $177. Today it’s about $800 per month. If Social Security
benefits had increased at the same rate as drug war spending, today’s check would be around $35,000 a
month. The minimum wage in 1972 was $1.60. Today it’s $5.15. If the minimum wage had increased at the
same rate as drug war spending, the wage today would be $316.80/hour. The cost of the drug war exceeds
$40 billion per year when state and local costs are added to federal costs. That’s half the budget for law
enforcement, half the budget for courts and half the budget for prisons every year.
The only place that prohibition makes drugs unavailable is in a medical setting. In 1996, California voted to
allow patients to use marijuana as a medicine. That same year Arizona voted to allow physicians to prescribe
any drug they saw fit regardless of federal law. Since then 8 more states and DC have voted to allow use of
marijuana as a medicine. Maryland law requires the court to consider use of marijuana for medical purposes
to be a mitigating factor in marijuana-related state prosecution.
Since the first laws were passed the federal government has been trying to block any legal distribution of
marijuana in a medical setting, except for its own medical marijuana program, the Compassionate
Investigational New Drug Program run since 1978 by the Food and Drug Administration, which has 5 patients.
The federal government won a class action suit by hundreds of patients who sued for the right to join the
program. California physicians had to go to the Supreme Court to avoid losing their right to prescribe drugs if
they discussed cannabis with their patients. The 9th Circuit Court has ruled that the DEA must cease
interfering with distribution of medical cannabis that does not involve interstate commerce. The case (Ashcroft
vs. Raich) will be heard by the Supreme Court in the winter, 2004 session. About 1% of marijuana users in
California are medical users, yet in 2002 half of all federal marijuana cases filed in the U.S. district court in
San Francisco were against medical patients.
The controversy over medical use of cannabis is really a controversy over whether this very easy to grow herb
should be allowed to compete with pharmaceutical products for pennies on the dollar. According to a survey
conducted by the Australian National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in 2004, nearly two-thirds of people
using marijuana for medical reasons decreased or stopped taking other medications.
One of the most tragic consequences of the drug war is the denial of treatment to those in chronic pain.
Survey after survey has found that physicians routinely under prescribe pain medication because they fear
they will be disciplined by medical licensing boards or the DEA. Dr. Russell Portnoy of the Pain Center at
Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital, has said, “The undertreatment of pain in hospitals is absolutely medieval.”
Dr. Ronald Myers, a Baptist minister who operates clinics for poor people in the Mississippi Delta is president
of the American Pain Institute. He says, "The war on drugs has turned into a war on doctors and pain
patients. Such is the climate of fear across the medical community that for every doctor who has his license
yanked by the DEA, there are a hundred doctors scared to prescribe proper pain medication for fear of going
to prison. The DEA is creating a situation where legitimate pain patients now have to go to the streets to get
their medication.”
Even more horrifying is our failure to stem the worldwide AIDS epidemic. More people died of AIDS during
2003 than in any previous year. More people became infected with HIV during 2003 than in any previous year.
8,000 per day die of AIDS related illness. Providing sterile syringes to addicts and patients is among the most
effective and least expensive ways to curb the epidemic yet it receives no federal funding and is illegal in most
states. The United States, influenced mostly by Sen. Jesse Helms, has used its influence in the United
Nations to prevent countries that receive UN aid from distributing sterile syringes for disease prevention.
In the last 30 years the United States has created the largest prison system in the history of the world. More
than 2 million people are imprisoned, up from 400,000 in 1970. We imprison a larger percentage of our
citizens than any country, more than 700 per 100,000 population. About 500,000 U.S. prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders. That is more than the European Union imprisons for all offenses and they have 100
million more people. Children of inmates are at high risk of educational failure, joblessness, addiction and
crime. They are the people in our society most likely to eventually be imprisoned themselves. Since 1986,
Texas has increased general-fund spending on higher education by 47 percent, while increasing spending on
corrections by 346 percent.
Other countries have begun to take a different approach to drug policy. In January 1994, the Swiss instituted a
program of giving injectable doses of heroin to addicts at certified medical centers. After three years, crime
among the addicts had dropped by 60%, half of the unemployed had found jobs, nobody was homeless and
the general health of the group had improved dramatically. There are now 24 participating clinics, up from 6.
There have been no drug related deaths among these addicts. A referendum has been held on whether or
not to continue the program. It was approved with more than a 70% majority. Swiss property insurance
companies are among the most ardent supporters of the program because their claims in the areas around
the clinics have decreased significantly. The head of the Swiss police has called this the best crime fighting
program he has ever seen. During 2000 the clinics distributed 55lbs of heroin. It cost $128,000. On the
illegal market that heroin would have brought traffickers, and possibly terrorists, $3.7 million.
Italy, Spain, Portugal, Luxemburg and Ukraine have decriminalized all drug use. Russia has decriminalized
possession and use of small amounts of drugs. Belgium and the United Kingdom have decriminalized
possession and use of small amounts of cannabis. The effort to decriminalize cannabis in the UK was lead by
the British police. Canada and The Netherlands have begun distributing cannabis through their public health
programs.
King County Washington Bar Association together with the county medical association did a drug policy
project in 2001.
"Any examination of criminal sanctions related to drugs should consider whether current drug policy is serving
essential public policy objectives. Among the most important of those objectives are:
1. Enhanced public order and reduced crime
2. Improved public health
3. Protection of children
4. Efficient use of scarce public resources.
This report finds that the War on Drugs has not only failed to fulfill any of these objectives, but also has
exacerbated the very problems it was designed to address."
The DPFT is an education organization and has no legislative agenda. I think it is fair to say that most
members would agree with the King County Bar Association’s conclusion.
Drug prohibition, in the popular vernacular, is regulation carried to such extreme that the black market
becomes the primary supplier. At that point there is no regulation. Drug policy reform is the effort to return
regulation to the market place. I would regulate sales of the relatively less dangerous drugs the way we sell
alcohol today. Examples would be marijuana, MDMA, the psychedelics. I would regulate sales of the
relatively more dangerous drugs using a permit system. Examples would be tobacco, alcohol, heroin, cocaine,
etc. Permits need not and should not be onerous, but they would help us with the problem of underage
purchases, they would give us an opportunity to offer education to the buyer, they could be used to limit drug
purchases to personal use amounts and they could be suspended or revoked if a person committed a crime
associated with the drug, like DWI. I would limit advertising for non-medical drugs to in store advertising and
direct mail to permit holders.
Special interests
Crime bills and drug laws are passed the same way all other laws are passed, with the heavy influence of
special interest lobbyists and their money. The special interests involved in drug policy are formidable. They
include all federal agencies, the defense industry, the prison industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the tobacco
and liquor industries, the advertising industry, the media, the drug treatment industry, the drug testing
industry, the home security industry, the timber industry and, of course, the international illicit drug cartels.
The federal bureaucracy: MDMA and INcredible research
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has a vested interest in maintaining and expanding prohibition. Its
influence on drug laws can be illustrated by looking at the research it has funded on MDMA.
MDMA (for meth-ylenedioxymethamphetamine) was discovered and patented in 1913 by the German
pharmaceutical company Merck. The patent doesn't mention uses.
It was largely unnoticed until a renowned biochemist, Alexander Shulgin, took an interest. In 1977 he gave
some to an old friend, Leo Zeff, who was about to retire from his career in psychotherapy. Zeff was so taken
with the drug that he began traveling the country introducing MDMA to other therapists. MDMA developed a
quiet but loyal following. Besides being euphoric and calm, patients were able to confront fears and anxieties.
It broke down all the barriers between people and was ideal for marriage counseling.
By the 1980s ordinary people had discovered MDMA especially in Dallas, Texas. It was called Ecstasy and
was widely distributed by Michael Clegg who made it in a lab in California. When I used Ecstasy, it was sold in
bars on Cedar Springs in Dallas for about $15/tab. It was everything it was touted to be and more.
No social problems developed because of MDMA use, but an uncontrolled drug is an anathema in the land of
the free. The federal government, lead by Senator Lloyd Bentsen, was able to make MDMA illegal in1985
siting Dr. George Ricaurte’s work showing that MDMA damaged the brains of monkeys. Dr. Ricaurte and his
wife, Dr. Una McCann, quickly became the darlings of NIDA. Over the years Dr. Ricaurte’s lab at Johns
Hopkins Medical School has been given at least $10 million in federal grants, more than any other researcher
of club drugs. Dr. McCann works directly for NIDA and collaborates on his studies.
People in general are very trusting of medical research studies. They want to believe that this is the best
information medical science has but, research studies are only as honest as their funding sources. NIDA
boasts that it "supports over 85 percent of the world's research on the health aspects of drug abuse and
addiction."
Other researchers have been very critical of Ricaurte’s and McCann’s work. They have accused Dr. Ricaurte
of “playing games with his data” to make the drugs look bad (Dr. Julie Holland) and "running a cottage industry
showing that everything under the sun is neurotoxic." (Dr. Richard J. Wurtman) The British publication, New
Scientist, has called his work on MDMA “irretreviably flawed.”
After MDMA was made illegal, and therefore lucrative, it went from being a little known drug used mostly in
one city to the second most popular illicit drug in the world. In every country where young people had money
they used Ecstasy, mostly visibly while they danced to techno music at raves. In the fall of 2002 a
Congressional committee was debating the RAVE Act. The RAVE Act essentially applies crack house
statutes to any large gathering.
In September, 2002 George Ricaurte’s most notorious study was published in the journal, Science. Ricaurte
claimed that a single dose of MDMA could cause brain damage resembling Parkinson’s disease. In spite of
that outrageous claim, drug policy reformers were able to prevent the RAVE Act from leaving committee using
a concerted effort of phone calls, letters and emails. It was later passed without debate when Sen. Joe Biden
(D-DE) attached it to the very popular and totally unrelated AMBER Alert bill.
After a year of harsh criticism Dr. Ricaurte withdrew his study saying he had injected his monkeys and
baboons with massive doses of methamphetamine. Not with MDMA. He later withdrew other studies saying
that methamphetamine had been mislabeled as MDMA. The drug company that furnished his chemicals
denies that any bottles were mislabeled.
MDMA is certainly not the only substance on earth that can be used without risk. Because of political agendas
in medical research, we do not know what the risks are. Allergic reactions, over heating and dehydration are
well known short term risks. Small, privately funded studies have shown no lasting damage. Large scale,
honest, unbiased work has yet to be done.
Defense Industry
In 2000 the US Congress overwhelmingly passed a $1.3 billion bill, Plan Colombia, ostensibly to stop
Colombian heroin and cocaine from reaching the US market. An amendment to divert $400 million to drug
treatment was soundly defeated in spite of the fact that a recent Rand Corporation study had just found that
dollar for dollar, drug treatment is 10 times more effective in stopping drug use than is interdiction. Plan
Colombia provided $1.1 billion to buy helicopters and $200 million to spray crops with glyphosate (RoundUp
Ultra). There had been no public outcry demanding that Congress involve us in Colombia’s 38 year old civil
war. Support for Plan Colombia came from lobbyists working for the Colombian government, Bell Helicopter,
Sikorsky Helicopter and Occidental Petroleum. The only real discussion that took place in Congress was over
whose helicopters to buy, Bell’s or Sikorsky’s. In the end Congress voted to buy some of each and keep both
sets of lobbyists happy.
During 2000, 128,000 acres were fumigated in Columbia. The Colombian government halted the eradication program
for about a year over our strong objection. According to them 12% of the acreage that we sprayed was coca,
88% was food crops. According to a resolution presented to the American Medical Assoc. at its 2004 convention
the spraying is causing “widespread illnesses, destroying pastures, destroying food crops, poisoning livestock,
displacing thousands of small farmers, and killing birds, mammals, aquatic life, and natural plants.”
$104 million was approved for the Colombian military in the 2002 budget and provisions requiring that our
funds be limited to counter-narcotics activities were lifted. $98 million was specifically allocated for training
and equipping a brigade of the Colombia military to guard Occidental Petroleum’s Caño-Limon pipeline from
rebel attacks which occur daily. This amounts to a subsidy of about $3 per barrel for oil carried by the
pipeline.
In August, 2004, drug czar John Walters said, "Thus far, we have not seen a change of availability [of cocaine]
in the United States." He then recommended that the United States continue Plan Colombia.
Jan Egeland, a United Nations humanitarian coordinator, describes Colombia as "The biggest humanitarian
problem, human rights problem, the biggest conflict in the Western hemisphere.”
Pharmaceutical industry
The pharmaceutical industry is a huge player in the drug war. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which
is the Johnson & Johnson fortune, provides the bulk of the funding for the Partnership for a Drug Free
America, $15 million in 1999. The immediate past chairman of the Partnership for a Drug Free America is
James E. Burke, the retired chairman of Johnson & Johnson. Of eleven donors of $30,000 to $1,000,000 in
2002 six were major pharmaceutical corporations.
Modern pharmaceutical corporations are the most profitable corporations in the US. This is not just because
they make a needed product. The pharmaceutical industry spends more money lobbying Congress than any
other industry, $91.4 million in 2002. It spends more money lobbying Congress than it spends on product
research. It employs more lobbyists than there are members of Congress. In debate on the Senate floor,
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said, "PhRMA, (the Pharmaceutical Research and
Manufacturers of America) this lobby, has a death grip on Congress."
The CEOs of pharmaceutical corporations are among the most highly paid corporate executives in the world.
Much of their compensation is in the form of stock and stock options. The value of Eli Lilly & Co. shares fell
more than $35 billion in one day when a court ruled that a generic version could compete with its Prozac
antidepressant in a year. GlaxoSmithKline obtained nine new patents on Paxil, another antidepressant, and
filed five lawsuits to delay generic competition. The company estimated that every day it avoided competition
it earned $4.4 million. Abbott Labs pays Zenith Goldline Pharmaceuticals $2 million a month not to sell a
generic version of Hytrin, a blood pressure medication. It pays Geneva Pharmaceuticals $4.5 million a month
not to compete with Hytrin.
George McMahon, one of the five people who receives Cannabis from the federal government, took 17
different prescription drugs before he began receiving Cannabis. He now uses only Cannabis to treat his Nail
Patella Syndrome. According to a survey conducted by the Australian National Drug and Alcohol Research
Centre in 2004, nearly two-thirds of people using marijuana for medical reasons decreased or stopped taking
other medications.
Cannabis was removed from the pharmacopoeia in 1941 over the objections of the American Medical
Association. At the time it was listed in medical literature as useful for over 100 medical conditions. It
effectively treats problems as divergent as multiple sclerosis, migraine headaches, nausea, glaucoma, Crohn's
Disease, spasticity and Nail Patella Syndrome. Research at the Medical College of Virginia has shown that it
is effective against certain types of cancer. It would compete with literally hundreds of pharmaceutical
products for pennies on the dollar. Cannabis is not only non-patentable; people could grow their own in
flowerpots. The Partnership for a Drug Free America doesn’t campaign against alcohol or Prozac or Paxil or
Viagra or any of the drugs that bombard us during the 6:00 news. It campaigns against marijuana and other
non-patentable drugs.
Medical marijuana critics like to say that its supporters’ real objective is to make personal adult use of
marijuana legal. This is certainly true in some cases. It is also true that the pharmaceutical industry spends
millions of dollars every year to keep marijuana illegal so that it cannot compete as a medicine.
The advertising industry and the media
A bizarre, Orwellian relationship exists between the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (the
Drug Czar’s office), the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the advertising industry and the media.
On November 14, 1996, nine days after California and Arizona passed their medical marijuana initiatives drug
czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey, convened a meeting at his federal government offices. Attendees included
officials from the Drug Enforcement Adm., Dept. of Justice, White House Office of Drug Control Policy, the
Depts. of Treasury, Education, Health and Human Services, the White House, eight senior executives from
private pro-drug war groups including Partnership for a Drug Free America. The purpose of the meeting was
to devise a way to spend money to stop the other 48 states from following California and Arizona. This
required finesse because as a federal agency the drug czar’s office is legally prohibited from interfering with
the legislative processes of the states. As an organization that accepts tax deductible money, the Partnership
for a Drug Free America is legally prohibited from involving itself in legislative or political causes.
Eleven months after the meeting a plan was announced. The drug czar’s office would buy $775 million in
advertising over the next 5 years from major TV networks, magazines, newspapers and Internet providers. For
each ad purchased the medium would be required to donate an additional ad. However, it could be freed of
this obligation and could sell that lucrative TV time or ad space if it ran satisfactory “on strategy” messages in
its editorials or articles or in the content of its programs.
As the media campaign unfolded, ONDCP provided a total of $22 million in financial incentives to the TV
networks for government-vetted anti-drug scripts. The same financial-credit-for-content paradigm was in
place at some of the nation's most prominent nonfiction magazines. This scheme continued until the Federal
Communications Commission ruled in November 2002 in response to a lawsuit filed by NORML that ONDCP
must identify itself as an advertising sponsor.
ONDCP then switched to the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign, a series of anti-drug ads produced
mostly by the Partnership for a Drug Free America. Over the past 6 years, Congress has provided $1.08
billion to the media campaign, making ONDCP one of the country’s largest advertisers and the ads the single
largest public service initiative in the history of advertising.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has issued two reports declaring that the media campaign
doesn't keep kids from drugs; that in fact, it even promotes drug use by girls and younger teens. The Office of
Management and Budget found "no evidence" that the ads "have a direct effect on youth drug-related
behavior.”
Not to be deterred, the drug czar's office has earmarked an additional $1.02 billion to continue funding the ads
through FY 2009. The office does propose to save the cost of third party bi-annual reviews of the
effectiveness of the campaign by dropping them altogether.
Prison industry
In his chilling book Going Up the River, Joseph Hallinan says “Having failed to make prisons effective, we
have learned to make them profitable."
The United States operates the largest prison system in the world. We have 5% of the world’s population and
25% of the world’s prisoners. Over 2 million people are imprisoned. Another 2 million people are employed
catching law violators and keeping them behind bars. In 2001 we spent $57 billion on jails and prisons.
Consider that all of this money winds up in someone’s pocket. That is strong incentive to maintain and expand
the prison system. The prison industry does more than a billion a year in business. It has its own trade
shows, conventions, websites, catalogues and direct marketing campaigns. The firms involved include some
of the nation’s largest architectural and constructions firms. Investment banks handle prison bond issues and
investments in private prisons. Other companies that do business with prisons include plumbing supply
contractors, food-service companies, telephone companies, health care companies and companies that sell
everything from bullet resistant cameras to padded cells.
Prisons are perceived as an economic boon to small towns. Working as a corrections officer is one of the few
ways that under-educated people can earn a middle class living there. The prison is the 3rd largest employer
in Pecos, TX. Campaigning to sell bonds for prison expansion, County Judge Jimmy B. Galindo described it
as “an unpolished jewel of the community.” Federal money for Medicaid, foster care, adoption assistance and
social services block grants is based on the census. Inmates count as residents of the county where they are
incarcerated, not where their homes are. Conversely, this federal money is lost to the inmates’ home
communities which are disproportionately concentrated areas of large cities.
Constructing and operating prisons is not the only way to profit from them. In 1995 US Technologies, Inc., a
PC board assembler, closed its plant in Austin and fired its 150 employees. It reopened 45 days later as
Lockhart Technologies, Inc. in a facility it leased for $1 per year in the prison at Lockhart, TX. Lockhart
Technologies pays minimum wage to its inmate workers, but Wackenhut, the private prison operator, takes
80% of the workers’ pay.
Other companies that use prison labor are Chevron, IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell,
Microsoft, Victoria's Secret and Boeing. Federal wage and safety standards do not apply to prison labor. In
California, inmates who work for the Prison Industrial Authority earn wages between 30 and 95 cents per hour
before required deductions for restitution and fines.
More than half the states utilize private prisons. More than 100,000 Americans are held in prisons for profit.
The guards and prison officials are often shareholders with incentive to hold down costs and oppose early
release. Corrections Corporation of America is the largest private prison operator in the country. It built 3
prisons in California on spec. Its chairman bragged that 38 of 46 crime bills passed the CA legislature due to
its lobbying. These included three strikes. The California Correctional Peace Officers Assoc., the prison
guards union, was the state’s largest donor to legislative races in 1988 and donated $100,000 to support
passage of three strikes. The union puts a third of its annual membership dues into political action
committees.
William Sessions, former director of the FBI, worked as a “special advisor” to the Bobby Ross Group, a private
prison operator based in Austin. At the same time his son, Pete Sessions who then represented the 5th District
of Texas, introduced and worked hard for legislation that would have increased the mandatory minimum
sentence for possession of 100 grams of methamphetamine to life without possibility of parole.
Since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug users, the Federal Bureau of Prisons budget
has increased by 2,091%. Its budget has jumped from $220 million in 1986 to $4.6 billion in 2002. The
federal AMBER Alert bill includes unrelated provisions that limit judicial discretion in sentencing even further
and allow the Justice Department to monitor the rates at which individual judges impose sentences that fall
below federal sentencing guidelines.
The argument for building more and more prisons goes like this. If crime is going up, we need to build more
prisons. If crime is going down, it’s because we built more prisons and building even more will lower crime
even more. This argument ignores several things.
Once released, prisoners are often sicker, angrier and more alienated from their communities. They are
undereducated, unskilled and emotionally ill equipped to deal with life in the free world. Even the lowestpaying jobs prove difficult to obtain with a prison record. Federal laws impose a lifetime ban on student loans
or grants, food stamps and welfare for people convicted of even a single drug felony.
The single most accurate predictor of who winds up in prison is who has a parent who did time in prison.
Over 2.5 million children in this country now have a parent in prison.
More imprisonment does not equal more safety. Other countries have much higher degree of public safety
than we do and imprison a much smaller percentage of their population. The United States has the highest
rate of incarceration on earth, about 700 per 100,000. Russia is next with about 685. The UK imprisons about
125 per 100,000. Canada about 115. Germany and Italy about 85. Holland about 73. Finland, about 60.
The United States has about 500,000 non-violent drug offenders behind bars. That is more people than are
imprisoned in the European Union for all offenses and they have 100 million more people. In August, 2003
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy told the American Bar Association, "Our resources are misspent, our
punishments too severe, our sentences too long.” After a nearly yearlong review, the American Bar
Association Justice Kennedy Commission has concluded in June, 2004 that America's criminal justice systems
rely too heavily on incarceration and recommended a series of reforms including repealing mandatory
minimum sentencing.
It is incumbent upon us to know who our 2,000,000 prisoners are.
Prison statistics2001
courts)
$167 billion spent on police, prison and courts ($57B on jails and prison; $72B on police; $38B on
13.7 million arrests (about $12,000 per arrest)
1,931,000 inmates in jails and state and federal prisons
12/31/02
2,019,234 prisoners
6,500,000 under criminal justice control
Overwhelmingly poor
70% functionally illiterate-i.e. function at the two lowest literacy levels
60% of federal prisoners are non-violent drug offenders, 37% are first offenders, 1 in 6 is incarcerated for a
marijuana offense,
21% of state prisoners are non-violent drug offenders
Overall less than 50% have been convicted of a violent crime
20% are seriously mentally ill
1 in 75 males are imprisoned
Fastest growing segment of prison population-women, 85.1% for non-violent offenses, 80% for drug offenses
When overcrowding occurs violent offenders are often released because mandatory minimum sentencing
applies to drug offenders.
80% of all arrests are for drug possession. 44% are for marijuana possession.
42% of federal prisoners are black. 12.3% of population is black. 13% of regular drug users are black.
38% of those arrested for drugs are black. 74% of those sentenced for drugs are black.
In US blacks are incarcerated at 6 times the rate of whites.
Studies show that blacks are treated more harshly than whites at every stage of the legal process from police
stops to parole.
In Texas
Largest prison system in the free world.
Built 120 prisons between 1980 and 2000.
Has 137 prisons in operation.
2003 – about 165,000 prisoners (about 700/100K pop., 5 times the rate of MN) (TX had 107/100K in 1970)
740,000 under criminal justice control
47% non-violent
About 18% non-violent drug offenders
30% are mentally ill
41% are black
More blacks are imprisoned than are enrolled in colleges and universities.
Blacks are imprisoned at 7 times the rate of whites.
Sources:
History of US drug policyDrug Crazy by Mike Gray
Drug War Facts, www.csdp.org/factbook/
The Netherlands website, 2001
F.E.A.R. Foundation, www.fear.org
The Dallas Morning News
National Institute on Drug Abuse
Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
Criminalization of Drug Use by Joseph D. McNamara, D.P.A., Psychiatric Times Sept 2000 Vol. XVII Issue 9
Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed by Judge James P. Gray
Judge James P. Gray, April 25, 2001 speaking in Austin, Texas
Gov. Gary Johnson, June 2, 2001 to the Drug Policy Foundation Conference
Jan van der Tas and Robert Haeming, June 2, 2001 to the Drug Policy Foundation Conference
DRCNet, #192, 6/29/01and #193, 7/6/01
St. Petersburg Times, July 31, 2001
Time, August 20, 2001, Europe Goes to Pot
The Economist, July 28-August 3, 2001, A Survey of Illegal Drugs
Asia Times, December 13, 2001
NORML Foundation news release, 10-27-02
California NORML survey, 2002
Beth Kelly, RN, Dallas Morning News, 6-15-03
Youth Risk Behavior Survey, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 21, 2004
NATIONAL REVIEW/ JULY 12, 2004, “AN END TO Marijuana Prohibition” by Ethan A. Nadelmann
NewScientist.com news service, 06 July 04, “World AIDS crisis deepens and spreads”
“The Global AIDS Threat,” GREG BEHRMAN & PRINCETON LYMAN / Dallas Morning News, July 31, 2004
“Cannabis 'preferred to other medications,” Miranda Wood, Health Reporter, Sydney Sun-Herald
The defense industryThe Dallas Morning News
Foreign Policy in Focus, March, 2001
Sanho Tree, June 2, 2001 to the Drug Policy Foundation Conference
Noam Chomsky, Z Magazine
Reuters, Monday, May 10, 2004
“Drug czar admits operation is having little impact in U.S.,” Dan Molinski, Houston Chronicle, August 6, 2004
The pharmaceutical industryPDFA, www.drugfreeamerica.org
Salon.com, 27 Jul 2000, Fighting “Cheech & Chong” Medicine
The Nation, The Partnership: Hard Sell in the Drug War, 9 Mar 1992
Molly Ivins, The Fort Worth Star Telegram, Drug industry shenanigans should make us sick
Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine by Lester Grinspoon, MD and James Bakalar
The Dallas Morning News
ABC News; CBS News
New York Times, July, 2000
G. Alan Robison, PhD., Executive Director DPFT
New York Times, 21 Nov 2002, “Drug Industry Seeks Ways to Capitalize on Election Success”
New York Times, 1 June 2003, “Drug companies Increase Spending to Lobby Congress and Governments” by
Robert Pear
Public Citizen, June 2003
New York Times, June 27, 2004, “As Doctors Write Prescriptions, Drug Company Writes a Check” by Gardiner Harris
“Cannabis 'preferred to other medications,” Miranda Wood, Health Reporter, Sydney Sun-Herald
The advertising industry and the mediaSalon.com, 27 Jul 2000, Fighting “Cheech & Chong” Medicine
Salon.com, 31 Mar 2000, The Drug War Gravy Train; 08 August, 2001, American School Kids
The Dallas Morning News
The Houston Chronicle
Rev. Robert Schaibly, First Unitarian Universalist Church, Houston, TX
Salon.com, 3 Jul 2001, The Quiet Death of Prime-time Propaganda
“War on Drugs: The National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign” by Mark Eddy
“BUYING INITIATIVES” by Dan Forbes, 2003-06-01
New York Times, October 16, 2003
The prison industryAtlantic Monthly, Dec. 1998, The Prison-Industrial Complex by Eric Schlosser
Nora Callahan, May 14, 1999 to the Drug Policy Foundation Conference
The Dallas Morning News
“Building More Prisons is Not the Answer” by Hubert Beyer
Shrub by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose
The Netherlands website, 1998
Drug War Facts, www.csdp.org/factbook/
Justice Policy Institute report, August, 2002
Michael Schwartz, Daily Bruin, UCLA, January 31, 2001
Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed by Judge James P. Gray
Judge James P. Gray, April 25, 2001 speaking in Austin, Texas
The Sentencing Project
“Costly, counterproductive, crazy” by Joseph D. McNamara, Nov. 17, 2002 Orange County Register
“Surge in inmates seen on horizon” By ED TIMMS / The Dallas Morning News, 01/15/2003
“Prison not always answer” 05/29/2003 By RAY ALLEN and JOE DESHOTEL , Dallas Morning News
“BEHIND BARS: Too many in prison; too little care and prevention” April 24, 2003,Houston Chronicle
“Why America's prisoners are getting blacker and browner” By SILJA JA TALVI
Michele Deitch:”Prison statistics should make Texans feel uneasy “ 09/08/2002 DMN
The Drug Policy Alliance, Race and the Drug War, www.dpf.org
“America’s Prison Habit,” by Alan Elsner, Washington Post, 24 Jan 2004
“Texas re-examines its throw-away-the-key approach,” by Kate Coscarelli, New Jersey Star-Ledger, 7 Feb
2004
“Lock-'Em-Up Logic Fails On All Fronts,” by CaI Thomas, Tribune Media Services, November 15, 2003
“Study Finds Hundreds of Thousands of Inmates Mentally Ill,” by Fox Butterfield, New York Times, 22 Oct
2003
"The New Landscape of Imprisonment: Mapping America's Prison Expansion," by Jeremy Travis, Urban
Institute,
29 April 2004
America’s Prison Habit, Alan Elsner, 24 January 2004
“Throwing money at this war and losing it” by Lionel Van Deerlin, 22 October 2003
“With Longer Sentences, Cost of Fighting Crime Is Higher” by Fox Butterfield, NYT, 3 May 2004
“It's time to reform the war on drugs,” WALTER CRONKITE, The Daily Herald, 8 Aug 2004
Federal Bureau of Prisons, 24 July 2004