War on Drugs Negative
NAUDL 2015-16
War on Drugs Negative Case
Summary .................................................................................................................................. 2
Glossary ................................................................................................................................... 3
Solvency Answers
1NC Solvency Answers (1/2) ................................................................................................... 4
Extensions: Movements Turn ................................................................................................... 8
Answers to: Reform Impact is Worth It ................................................................................... 10
Extensions: Non-Drug Surveillance Remains (1/2) ................................................................ 11
Racism Advantage Answers
Racism Advantage Answers (1/5) .......................................................................................... 13
Extensions: Current Reforms Solve (1/3) ............................................................................... 18
Extensions: Marijuana Legalization Solves (1/2) .................................................................... 21
Answers to: Marijuana Legalization Isn’t Inevitable ................................................................ 23
Extensions: Utilitarianism (1/2) ............................................................................................... 24
Topicality
1NC Topicality Shell ............................................................................................................... 26
Extensions: Limits .................................................................................................................. 27
Decriminalization CP
1NC Decriminalization Counterplan ....................................................................................... 28
Solvency Extension – Policing (1/3) ....................................................................................... 29
Solvency Extensions – Challenges Institutional Racism (1/2) ................................................ 32
Solvency Extension – Mandatory Minimum Sentencing ......................................................... 34
Answers to: Links to the Net Benefit ...................................................................................... 35
Answers to: Permutation do both ........................................................................................... 36
Answers to: Permutation do both – Extensions ...................................................................... 37
Answers to: Policing Continues .............................................................................................. 38
Answers to: Federal Action Key ............................................................................................. 39
Answers to: Increases Use .................................................................................................... 40
1
War on Drugs Negative
NAUDL 2015-16
Summary
There are 3 main strategies to answer the war on drugs affirmative:
The first strategy is topicality, which argues that the phrase “domestic surveillance” in the
resolution ought to be interpreted as only referring to government surveillance in the context of
terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda. If we allow domestic surveillance to refer to anything the
government does to monitor things, that can lead to affirmatives that end government surveillance
of library systems and other small affirmatives that are unpredictable for the negative team to
research.
The second strategy is the states decriminalization counterplan – it argues that the states should
end criminal penalties for prohibited drugs at the state level. This keeps drugs like marijuana,
cocaine, and heroin on the books as illegal and allows the federal government to continue to
pursue cartels but prevents local law enforcement from arresting people because the use of
marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. is no longer a crime. This solves the affirmative’s harms about
policing communities of color and the net benefit is the organized crime disadvantage from the
other file.
The third strategy is the drug surveillance reform criticism – this argues that locating the problem
of mass incarceration and racism in the war on drugs is a misdiagnosis that can be particularly
harmful. First, less than 25% of people incarcerated are there because of drug crimes and
second, the war on drugs isn’t the source of racism, it is flawed public consciousness and racist
ideology that is responsible for violence against communities of color.
Ending the war on drugs and relying on the law to correct these injustices creates a flawed belief
that progress has been made but allows racism to be pushed underground and emerge in new,
insidious forms. In other words, unless we change the fact that racism is still deeply embedded in
society, racism will not end, no matter how much legal change or administrative tinkering occurs.
The alternative advocates for a shift in public consciousness in an attempt to change peoples’
racist beliefs and then positive change can follow after that.
Some important case arguments are that the affirmative doesn’t end all instances of institutional
racism or surveillance, therefore other surveillance tools will continue to police communities of
color. Another important case argument is that many efforts to end the war on drugs are occurring
in the status quo. Marijuana is being legalized and decriminalized on mass scale which is a large
tool used to police communities of color.
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War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Glossary
Decriminalization- the abolition of criminal penalties in relation to certain acts, perhaps
retroactively, though perhaps regulated permits or fines might still apply, as opposed to
legalization
Topicality- debate argument that the contends the affirmative should lose because the case
presented is not an example of the resolution
Utilitarianism- is a theory in normative ethics holding that the best moral action is the one that
maximizes utility. Utility is defined in various ways, but is usually related to the well-being of
sentient entities.
3
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
1NC Solvency Answers (1/2)
Ending the War on Drugs actually makes it harder for social movements to fight the prison
industrial complex by naturalizing certain forms of incarceration.
Forman, Professor of Law at Yale, 2012
(James Jr, Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 3599. "RACIAL CRITIQUES OF MASS
INCARCERATION: BEYOND THE NEW JIM CROW" April,
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/3599)
In making this point, I do not mean to suggest that discrimination in the criminal justice
system is no longer a concern. There is overwhelming evidence that discriminatory practices in
drug law enforcement contribute to racial disparities in arrests and prosecutions, and even for
violent offenses there remain unexplained disparities between arrest rates and incarceration rates.
Instead, I make the point to highlight the problem with framing mass incarceration as a new
form of Jim Crow. Because the analogy leads proponents to search for disparities in the
criminal justice system that resemble those of the Old Jim Crow, they confine their
attention to cases where blacks are like whites in all relevant respects, yet are treated
worse by law. Such a search usefully exposes the abuses associated with racial profiling
and the drug war. But it does not lead to a comprehensive understanding of mass
incarceration. Does it matter that the Jim Crow analogy diverts our attention from violent
crime and the state’s response to it, if it gives us tools needed to criticize the War on
Drugs? I think it does, because contrary to the impression left by many of mass incarceration’s
critics, the majority of America’s prisoners are not locked up for drug offenses. Some facts
worth considering: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2006 there were 1.3 million
prisoners in state prisons, 760,000 in local jails, and 190,000 in federal prisons.97 Among the
state prisoners, 50% were serving time for violent offenses, 21% for property offenses, 20% for
drug offenses, and 8% for public order offenses.98 In jails, the split among the various categories
was more equal, with roughly 25% of inmates being held for each of the four main crime
categories (violent, drug, property, and public order).99 Federal prisons are the only type of facility
in which drug offenders constitute a majority (52%) of prisoners, but federal prisons hold many
fewer people overall. Considering all forms of penal institutions together, more prisoners are
locked up for violent offenses than for any other type, and just under 25% (550,000) of our
nation’s 2.3 million prisoners are drug offenders.101 This is still an extraordinary and appalling
number. But even if every single one of these drug offenders were released tomorrow, the
United States would still have the world’s largest prison system. Moreover, our prison
system has grown so large in part because we have changed our sentencing policies for all
offenders, not just drug offenders. We divert fewer offenders than we once did, send more of
them to prison, and keep them in prison for much longer. An exclusive focus on the drug war
misses this larger point about sentencing choices.
4
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
(___) Police forces will continue to find ways to criminalize communities of color
Burns, editor at the Times, 2014 (Rebecca, Associate Editor at In These Times, “The
Unbearable Whiteness of Marijuana Legalization”, [SG])
One worry has been that the high price of legalized marijuana will encourage a black market and
that arrests for illegal distribution could actually increase. Mariame Kaba: I’m very concerned
about how this is going to play out on the ground. Young people who are selling drugs
because they have no other job opportunities are definitively not going to be able to
participate in the formal economy through the dispensaries. Is law enforcement going to go
after those young people 20 times harder now? AW: Yes, I am concerned that distribution
charges will increase. Whenever you make change, especially against law enforcement’s
status quo, it often finds a way to circumvent that change and maintain its budget. But we
haven’t seen anything that will lead us to believe that is taking place right now. And you have to
realize that these new marijuana laws are part of a much broader reform movement: Colorado has
also been revising its criminal justice laws. The first thing we did once Amendment 64 passed [in
Colorado] was to lower criminal penalties for those [between the ages of] 18 and 20 possessing
marijuana. So we are already working on preempting any type of net-widening. ITT: What impact
will marijuana legalization have on the War on Drugs as a whole? David J. Leonard: Any
changes in the War on Drugs will require continued organizing and agitation, because
history has shown that one step forward has also resulted in two steps back [for]
communities of color. New York decriminalized marijuana in 1977. That clearly did not lead to
the end of the War on Drugs in New York, or lessen its effects on communities of color. Instead,
the way the law was written provided the foundation for stop-and-frisk, because the law
made it a misdemeanor for marijuana to be in public view, which basically fostered
incentives to stop blacks and Latinos and tell them to empty their pockets. So I have a
number of concerns about the impact of these reforms on the War on Drugs. To give just one
other example: Does decriminalization apply to those who are on probation and being drugtested? MK: Another concern is whether, as the prices of marijuana start climbing [because of
legalization] and [poor] people turn to using other kinds of drugs, those drugs then get
painted as the worst possible drugs on the planet. The people who are doing the “worst”
drugs somehow always happen to be the most marginalized people within our culture.
That’s why it’s so important that we focus on uprooting the whole architecture of the War
on Drugs. If we’re not talking about the root issues of racism and classism, there are
bound to be unintended consequences.
5
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
1NC Solvency Answers (2/2)
(___) Policing and racism are too entrenched
Kundnani and Kumar 2015—Arun Kundnani teaches at New York University and Deepa Kumar
is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University “Race,
surveillance, and empire” in International Socialist Review http://isreview.org/issue/96/racesurveillance-and-empire
In what follows, we argue that the debate on national security surveillance that has emerged in the
United States since the summer of 2013 is woefully inadequate, due to its failure to place
questions of race and empire at the center of its analysis. It is racist ideas that form the basis
for the ways national security surveillance is organized and deployed, racist fears that are
whipped up to legitimize this surveillance to the American public, and the
disproportionately targeted racialized groups that have been most effective in making
sense of it and organizing opposition. This is as true today as it has been historically: race
and state surveillance are intertwined in the history of US capitalism. Likewise, we argue that
the history of national security surveillance in the United States is inseparable from the history of
US colonialism and empire.
(___) Stopping the drug war does very little to spillover and cause larger movements
against the prison industrial complex
Ball, 2012 Jared, “WHY SOME LIKE THE NEW JIM CROW SO MUCH by Greg Thomas,”
http://imixwhatilike.org/2012/04/26/whysomelikethenewjimcrowsomuch/, Vitz
It should be no surprise that the political action proposed in The New Jim Crow is pitched
as a plea for “love,” Christian love, and of course “forgiveness.” In closing, “crazy” and
“absurd” “activists” in the distance, this law professor comes to speak the language of
“movement,” but only to ask for a “new civil rights movement” (223), in spite of the gross
limitations of such liberal reformism and her unrelenting avoidance of every other kind of
movement in recent history, nationally and internationally. This is the classic sado-masochistic
attachment to white racist Americanism of the Negro or “African-American” elite, the Black
“lumpen-bourgeoisie.” The absence of any critical class analysis in Alexander is a
reflection of this uncritical paradigm of “civil-rights” reformism, a class-specific liberalism
of U.S. settler nationalism in a scorch-and-burn age of U.S. imperialism worldwide.¶ Her last
chapter is entitled “The Fire This Time.” The only James Baldwin in The New Jim Crow is the one
attached to the old “civil rights movement.” It is never the one who said the term “civil rights
movement” is “an American phrase which … upon examination means nothing at all”; or the one
who wrote No Name in the Street (1972) and The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985); or the one
who said in the midst of the Black Power Movement that he had formerly been “the Great Black
Hope of the Great White Father.” As an ‘exile’ or ‘expatriate,’ he represented hard and long for
George Lester Jackson and the Black Panther Party at large. Nonetheless, politically selective
and cliché,
6
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
7
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Movements Turn
[___]
[___] Temporary solutions like the Affirmative make it more difficult to have a national
conversation about the history of American racism.
Alexander, acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar, 2014
(Michelle, Drug War Chronicle, "The New Jim Crow" Author Michelle Alexander Talks Race and
Drug War, Issue #825
If we're going to do this just to save some cash, we haven't woken up to the magnitude of
the harm. If we are not willing to have a searching conversation about how we got to this
place, how we are able to lock up millions of people, we will find ourselves either still
having a slightly downsized mass incarceration system or some new system of racial
control because we will have not learned the core lesson our racial history is trying to
teach us. We have to learn to care for them, the Other, the ghetto dwellers we demonize.
Temporary, fleeting political alliances with politicians who may have no real interest in
communities of color is problematic. We need to stay focused on doing the right things for
the right reasons, and not count as victories battles won when the real lessons have not
been learned.
[___] Band-Aid solutions like the Affirmative tell communities of color to “move on” while
white men get rich selling weed.
Alexander, acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar, 2014
(Michelle, Drug War Chronicle, "The New Jim Crow" Author Michelle Alexander Talks Race and
Drug War, Issue #825
As we talk about legalization, we have to also be willing to talk about reparations for the
war on drugs, as in how do we repair the harm caused. With regard to Iraq, Colin Powell
said "If you break it, you own it," but we haven't learned that basic lesson from our own
racial history. We set the slaves free with nothing, and after Reconstruction, a new caste
system arose, Jim Crow. A movement arose and we stopped Jim Crow, but we got no
reparations after the waging of a brutal war on poor communities of color that decimated
families and fanned the violence it was supposed to address. Do we simply say "We're
done now, let's move on" and white men can make money? This time, we have to get it
right; we have to tell the whole truth, we have to repair the harm done. It's not enough to
just stop. Enormous harm had been done; we have to repair those communities.
8
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Movements Turn
[___]
[___] Sequencing – We have to address America’s culture of racism, BEFORE we
dismantle the War on Drugs or we will reproduce mass incarceration.
Nakagawa, Lifelong political activist, community organizer, organization builder, 2012
(Scot, , RaceFiles, Legalizing Marijuana May Be A Good Idea, But It Is Not A Racial Justice
Strategy, 12-10, http://www.racefiles.com/2012/12/10/legalizing-marijuana-may-be-a-good-ideabut-it-is-not-a-racial-justice-strategy/)
Here’s why. The war on drugs is a war on people. It is not now nor has it ever been just about
drug enforcement. The war on drugs was declared under the Nixon administration and drug
enforcement expanded dramatically under the Reagan administration at a time when illegal drug
use was dropping, and before crack made it’s way into the public consciousness. The war is and
always has been specifically targeted at destabilizing Black communities, from its
beginnings as a strategy to confound the Black Power movement and other radical
movements. African American men have ever since been filling up our prisons, making the U.S.
into the leading country on earth when it comes to incarcerating our own. When crack hit the
media, the war on drugs became part of the U.S. political culture, but the war didn’t start in
order to address the crack problem in the U.S. If it did, it would have targeted the largest
group of crack consumers who are white. Of course, nothing like that happened as is
evidenced by the grossly disproportionate rates of arrest and incarceration of African American
men in particular. It is true that African-Americans and Latinos are arrested for marijuana
possession at rates wildly out of proportion to their percentages in society, much less the rates of
African American and Latino marijuana usage. But the fact that Blacks and Latinos are
disproportionately punished while federal data shows that whites are more likely to use
marijuana is just more evidence that the war on drugs isn’t about cracking down on drugs
as much as it is about cracking down on certain people. And the Black and Latino (and in
some states Native American) racial profile of drug prisoners isn’t just about where law
enforcement is active, as some have suggested, asserting that racial animus is less a factor than
pressure to make arrest and prosecution quotas. It’s also about plain, old fashioned racism. A
2002 University of Washington study of Seattle law enforcement practices showed that it is antiBlack stereotypes, not location, public safety priorities or citizen complaints that drives
disproportionate targeting of Blacks in the war on drugs. And there, at this site, they targeted far
more Blacks than whites even though whites were just as visibly dealing drugs. So before we
celebrate the end of the war on drugs, let’s consider why it started. Given that reason, we
can hope that decriminalizing marijuana will cut down on drug arrests, but making it a
priority strategy toward ending mass incarceration of Blacks and Latinos is a mistake.
Ending mass incarceration will require us to address the racism that allowed our prisons to
become warehouses for men of color in the first place.
9
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Reform Impact is Worth It
[___] Good intentions aren’t enough – reforms can actually make things worse. While it is
important to respect the perspective of people on the ground, it is just as important to
make sure we get things right
Goodman, Center for a Stateless Society, 2014
(Nathan, Center for a Stateless Society, STIGMERGY: THE C4SS BLOG, The Weekly
Abolitionist: Abolish Criminalization, Abolish the State, http://c4ss.org/content/25934)
These are important concerns. It is vital to remember that the prison system as we know it
emerged out of reform. For example, solitary confinement, a brutal method of control and
psychological torture, was initially developed by Quakers and intended as a humanitarian reform.
The criminalization of blacks in this country emerged from a loophole in the 13th
Amendment, which said that slavery and involuntary servitude were unlawful “except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The reformist
abolition of slavery was piecemeal, allowing the reestablishment of slavery through the
penal system.
To avoid these pitfalls, Deborah Small recommends a broader emphasis than simply ending
mass incarceration. Instead, she proposes a framework that emphasizes ending mass
criminalization. She explains the distinction as follows: Mass incarceration is one outcome of
the culture of criminalization. Criminalization includes the expansion of law enforcement and
the surveillance state to a broad range of activities and settings: zero tolerance policies in schools
that steer children into the criminal justice system; welfare policies that punish poor mothers and
force them to work outside of the home; employment practices that require workers to
compromise their basic civil liberties as a prerequisite for a job; immigration policies that
stigmatize and humiliate people while making it difficult for them to access essential services like
health care and housing. These and similar practices too numerous to list fall under the rubric of
criminalization.
When people talk about mass incarceration they’re usually referring to the more than 2
million Americans behind bars in local jails or state and federal prisons. That number, as
high as it is, obscures the fact that on any given day an additional 4 million people are
under some form of correctional supervision — generally, probation or parole. According to
the Wall Street Journal, studies reveal American men have a 52 percent likelihood of arrest over
their lifetime — that’s basically a 50/50 chance. Either American men have an extraordinarily high
rate of criminality or we’ve cast the police net way too wide and caught way too many in it.
I’m inclined to agree with this. While prisons are particularly repugnant institutions, people
will not be free if they are released from prisons but then subjected to mass surveillance,
police harassment, invasive searches, prison-like schools, incarceration within “halfway
houses,” stultifying state-secured structural poverty, or other forms of systemic coercion
and control. This why my abolitionism is holistic. Rather than merely looking at the institutions of
prisons, I look at the entire state apparatus and social order.
10
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Non-Drug Surveillance Remains (1/2)
(___)
(___) The affirmative only removes a tool for police to pursue the war on drugs without
removing the financial incentives. Police will continue to harmful policies against
communities of color, just with less information.
Lopez, writer at VOX, 2015
(German, “How does the US enforce the war on drugs??”, 7-15 http://www.vox.com/cards/war-ondrugs-marijuana-cocaine-heroin-meth/war-on-drugs-enforcement-america)
On the domestic front, the federal government supplies local and state police departments
with funds, legal flexibility, and special equipment to crack down on illicit drugs. Local and
state police then use this funding to go after drug-dealing organizations."[Federal]
assistance helped us take out major drug organizations, and we took out a number of them in
Baltimore," said Neill Franklin, a retired police major and executive director of Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition, which opposes the war on drugs. "But to do that, we took out the lowhanging fruit to work up the chain to find who was at the top of the pyramid. It started with
low-level drug dealers, working our way up to midlevel management, all the way up to the
kingpins."Some of the funding, particularly from the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program,
encourages local and state police to participate in anti-drug operations. If police don't use
the money to go after illicit substances, they risk losing it — providing a financial incentive
for cops to continue the war on drugs.
11
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Non-Drug Surveillance Remains (2/2)
(___) Marijuana legalization only eliminates one instance, policing and control of
communities of color will continue.
Enojado ’13 (Opaque Critical Theorist, “Three Good Reasons Why People of Color Should
Question the Drug Legalization Movement”, [SG])
There are three good reasons for people of color to question the drug legalization
movement.
1.) Drug legalization does not change the nature of policing. As tom dispatch and many
others acknowledge, there are problems with budgets and prisons. No one disputes this
issue. A pathological obsession with mandating long sentences and death penalties in the
U.S. has reached unmanageable proportions. Everything from the law of parties to
legalized brutality such as castration shore up the public’s basest desires for justice at any
cost. For people of color, however, the issue is not merely out-of-control drug policy, but a
racist criminal justice system few are simply willing to say is racist and needs immediate
redress. The drug legalization movement, for people of color, represents a classic
quandary as far as long term political strategy: focusing on dealing with symptoms of a
problem rather than taking on the problem (in this case, white racism and, more broadly,
white supremacy and neocolonialism) directly. Most of these good, sincere efforts are not
grounded in history, or
(___) Communities of color are also surveilled through social services
Eubanks 2014—Virginia Eubanks teaches in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality
Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY, and is a fellow at the Rockefeller Institute of
Government, January 15, “Want to Predict the Future of Surveillance? Ask Poor Communities.”
https://prospect.org/article/want-predict-future-surveillance-ask-poor-communities
But I wasn’t surprised. A decade ago, I sat talking to a young mother on welfare about her
experiences with technology. When our conversation turned to Electronic Benefit Transfer
cards (EBT), Dorothy* said, “They’re great. Except [Social Services] uses them as a tracking
device.” I must have looked shocked, because she explained that her caseworker routinely
looked at her EBT purchase records. Poor women are the test subjects for surveillance
technology, Dorothy told me ruefully, and you should pay attention to what happens to us.
You’re next.
12
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Racism Advantage Answers (1/5)
(___) The status quo solves – the federal government is curbing the war on drugs and
states are changing drug policies
Desilver 2014—correspondent at the Pew Research Center, “Feds may be rethinking the drug
war, but states have been leading the way” April 2, http://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2014/04/02/feds-may-be-rethinking-the-drug-war-but-states-have-been-leading-the-way/
Attorney General Eric Holder recently called for reduced sentences for low-level drug
offenders in federal cases, with the aim of reducing the growth of the federal prisoner
population. (About half of the nearly 200,000 federal inmates have been convicted of a drug
offense.) Earlier, he said low-level drug offenders wouldn’t automatically be charged with offenses
that carried strict mandatory minimum sentences, and gave Washington and Colorado the goahead to implement marijuana-legalization initiatives. This month, the U.S. Sentencing
Commission is expected to vote on a set of amendments to the sentencing guidelines used by
federal judges. The interest in sentencing reform now spans Washington D.C.’s normal
partisan and ideological battle lines. The Smarter Sentencing Act of 2014, now pending
before the Senate, would cut mandatory minimums for a host of federal drug crimes. Its
sponsors include Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, liberal Democrats Patrick Leahy and
Sheldon Whitehouse, Maine independent Angus King, and libertarian Republicans Rand Paul and
Mike Lee.The federal moves come after years of similar changes at the state level. Between
2009 and 2013, 40 states took some action to ease their drug laws, according to a Pew
Research Center analysis of legislative data provided by the National Conference of State
Legislatures and the Vera Institute of Justice. Twenty-seven states moved only in the direction
of easing, while 13 other states eased some laws and toughened others — often as part of
a broader rethink of their drug policies. State-level actions have included lowering
penalties for possession and use of illegal drugs, shortening mandatory minimums or
curbing their applicability, removing automatic sentence enhancements, and establishing
or extending the jurisdiction of drug courts and other alternatives to the regular criminal
justice system. Some have been minor tweaks, such as Idaho’s 2011 change that allowed
people convicted of violent felonies to participate in drug courts under certain circumstances.
Other states have taken very different approaches to drugs: New York, for instance, moved
away from its harsh Rockefeller-era drug laws in 2009. Last year, Vermont decriminalized
possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, while Oregon (where possession of less than
an ounce has been a noncriminal violation since 1973) made possession of more than an
ounce a misdemeanor rather than a felony. All told, 16 states have passed laws
decriminalizing marijuana; Maryland, which reduced penalties for marijuana possession
and use in 2012, is now considering decriminalization legislation. State-level policy
changes may not get the attention of federal moves, but they can affect many more people.
State prisons house more than six times as many prisoners as federal prisons — more
than 1.35 million in 2012, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And for 16.6% of all
state prisoners, a drug crime is their most serious offense (down from 20% in 2006).
13
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Racism Advantage Answers (2/5)
(___) Most people behind bars in the War on Drugs were distributing or using hard drugs.
These crimes harm communities and offenders should be punished.
Caulkins and Sevigny 2009 - Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz School of Public Policy AND
Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh (July 31, Jonathan P.
and Eric L., “How Many People Does the US Imprison for Drug Use, and Who Are They? ”
http://ibhinc.org/pdfs/CaulkinsSevignyHowanydoestheUSimprison2005.pdf)
The vast majority (85%) of the 274,324 people in prison in the U.S. in 1997 for drug-law
violations were clearly involved in drug distribution in one way or another. Many of the
remaining 15% (41,047) had at least some suggestion of possible current or past involvement
in distribution. The precise proportion of drug offenders in prison solely because they
used drugs is thus hard to pin down, but appears to be somewhere in the range of 2%-15%,
representing 5,380 to 41,047 individuals. Furthermore, only about one- third of the 41,047
individuals were in prison as new court commitments; most were already on parole or probation
before the infraction that led to their current incarceration. Almost half had a current nondrug
infraction that may have contributed to their incarceration. Even taking the upper bound
figure of 15%, the number of people in prison for their drug use is far lower than would be implied
by naively assuming that everyone convicted of drug possession was not involved in distribution.
Incarceration for drug use/possession thus appears to be a very modest contributor (0.5%3.6%) to the total sentenced U.S. prison population (1,137,210 in 1997). One reason is that
the expected time served by these individuals is about half that for those who were clearly
involved in drug distribution. It is also worth noting that 50-80% of arrestees test positive for
some illicit drug and -15% of drug arrests are for possession (Maguire and Pastore, 1997), so
presumably if the criminal justice system wanted to incarcerate many more drug users, that
would be possible. Among those in prison for drug use, almost 90% were involved with
cocaine, heroin, and/or (meth)amphetamines. Just 5-7% possessed only marijuana. Hence,
the number of marijuana users in prison for their use is perhaps 800-2,300 individuals or on
the order of 0.1-0.2% of all prison inmates. This figure is roughly consistent with ONDCP (2005)
and is well below Thomas' (1999) estimate of 9,700 based on the same survey because Thomas
assumes that all inmates convicted of possession were not involved in trafficking. An implication of
the new figure is that marijuana decriminalization would have almost no impact on prison
populations, although it might well have a bigger effect on other components of the criminal
justice system.
14
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Racism Advantage Answers (3/5)
(___) Marijuana legalization is happening now which decreases policing of minority
communities
Cooper 2015—Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at The Week, “The Beginning of the end
of the war on drugs” March 30 http://theweek.com/articles/546750/beginning-end-war-drugs
Something similar might be happening with the War on Drugs. Though the change has been
longer in coming, and like gay rights the battle is far from over, there are some recent
developments that would be absolutely incomprehensible to a time traveler from 2004. And
I'm not just talking about marijuana. No, this is news about hard drugs in conservative
states. In Kentucky, the legislature passed a bipartisan bill advancing a harm-reduction
approach towards heroin addiction, while in Indiana, Republican Gov. Mike Pence
authorized a needle-exchange program in response to an outbreak of HIV. The experiments
with full marijuana legalization in Colorado, Washington, D.C., and Washington state are
vital and long-overdue measures. But marijuana poses relatively simple political and policy
challenges, since as a drug it is relatively harmless and now widely known to be so. Harder
drugs like heroin, meth, and cocaine, by contrast, are much more dangerous and addictive, and
thus pose more difficult political and policy questions. On the other hand, hard drugs are also
behind the very worst part of the War on Drugs — the gruesome violence it foments in Latin
America, where gangs massacre each other and everyone else over the ability to sell drugs to
Americans. Reforming drug policy has the potential to make the world a dramatically better
place.
15
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Racism Advantage Answers (4/5)
(___) Utilitarianism and consequences ought to come first – the only ethical option is to
save the most lives
Isaac 2 — Jeffrey C. Isaac, James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science and Director of the
Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life at Indiana University-Bloomington, 2002
(“Ends, Means, and Politics,” Dissent, Volume 49, Issue 2, Spring, Available Online to Subscribing
Institutions via EBSCOhost, p. 35-36)
As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have
taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The
concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three
fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one’s intention does not ensure the
achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with
morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail
impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean
conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and
injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of
complicity in injustice. [end page 35] This is why, from the standpoint of politics—as opposed to
religion—pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it
refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that
politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the
effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the
alignment with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good” that
generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that
one’s goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects
of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically
contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are
not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
16
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Racism Advantage Answers (5/5)
(___) The War on Drugs is woefully insufficient and ineffective at addressing mass
incarceration – the aff does very little to address systemic racism
Forman 2012 James Jr, Clinical Professor of Law, Yale Law School. Faculty Scholarship Series.
Paper 3599. "RACIAL CRITIQUES OF MASS INCARCERATION: BEYOND THE NEW JIM
CROW" April, http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/3599
To this point, I have focused principally on crimes of violence and the state’s response to such
crimes. I part company with the New Jim Crow writers in this regard. They focus almost
exclusively on the War on Drugs. This approach made sense for early ACLU advocates such as
Glasser and Boyd, whose only objective was to curtail the drug war.88 It makes less sense for
more recent proponents of the analogy, who attack the broader phenomenon of mass
incarceration but restrict their attention to punishments for drug offenders.89 Other
crimes—especially violent crimes—are rarely mentioned.90 The choice to focus on drug
crimes is a natural—even necessary— byproduct of framing mass incarceration as a new
form of Jim Crow.91 One of Jim Crow’s defining features was that it treated similarly situated
blacks and whites differently. For writers seeking analogues in today’s criminal justice system,
drug arrests and prosecutions provide natural targets, along with racial profiling in traffic stops.
Blacks and whites use drugs at roughly the same rates, but African Americans are significantly
more likely to be arrested and imprisoned for drug crimes.92 As with Jim Crow, the difference lies
in government practice, not in the underlying behavior. The statistics on selling drugs are less
clear-cut, but here too the racial disparities in arrest and incarceration rates exceed any disparities
that might exist in the race of drug sellers.93 But violent crime is a different matter. While rates of
drug offenses are roughly the same throughout the population, blacks are overrepresented
among the population for violent offenses. For example, the African American arrest rate for
murder is seven to eight times higher than the white arrest rate; the black arrest rate for
robbery is ten times higher than the white arrest rate.94 Murder and robbery are the two
offenses for which the arrest data are considered most reliable as an indicator of offending.95 In
making this point, I do not mean to suggest that discrimination in the criminal justice system is no
longer a concern. There is overwhelming evidence that discriminatory practices in drug law
enforcement contribute to racial disparities in arrests and prosecutions, and even for violent
offenses there remain unexplained disparities between arrest rates and incarceration rates.96
Instead, I make the point to highlight the problem with framing mass incarceration as a new form
of Jim Crow. Because the analogy leads proponents to search for disparities in the criminal
justice system that resemble those of the Old Jim Crow, they confine their attention to
cases where blacks are like whites in all relevant respects, yet are treated worse by law.
Such a search usefully exposes the abuses associated with racial profiling and the drug war. But
it does not lead to a comprehensive understanding of mass incarceration. Does it matter that
the Jim Crow analogy diverts our attention from violent crime and the state’s response to
it, if it gives us tools needed to criticize the War on Drugs? I think it does, because contrary to the
impression left by many of mass incarceration’s critics, the majority of America’s prisoners are
not locked up for drug offenses.
17
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Current Reforms Solve (1/3)
(___)
(___) Specifically, the DEA has changed its policy on profiling
Barrett 2014—Devlin Barrett is from the Wall Street Journal, December 8, “Justice Department
Issues New Guidelines Barring Racial Profiling by Federal Agents”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-to-issue-new-guidelines-barring-racial-profiling-byfederal-agents-1418036401
Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday laid out new guidelines against racial and other
types of profiling, citing law-enforcement cases that have sparked protests even as the
new federal policy wouldn’t affect local police. The federal government since 2003 has
banned profiling on the basis of race or ethnicity, though it has made an exception for
national-security investigations. The new policy also will bar profiling on the basis of religion,
gender, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity, according to officials.
18
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Current Reforms Solve (2/3)
(___) Current movements exist in the status quo that lead to the reforms the affirmatives
main author, Michelle Alexander, is advocating for
Kilgore, Professor at the University of Illinois, 2014
(James, “Mass Incarceration: Examining and Moving Beyond the New Jim Crow”, Crit Sociology
March 18 2014, http://crs.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/03/18/0896920513509821)
In The New Jim Crow, Alexander argues that mass incarceration cannot be reversed by
piecemeal reforms or ‘isolated victories in legislatures or courtrooms’ (2010: 218). She presses
for the creation of a social movement on the scale of the civil rights mobilization of the ’60s to
take on this task. However, her book offers little detail about the process for building such a
movement. Since that time, she has offered a few more clues on this issue which I will address
below. However, by unpadcking some of the class, race and gender dimensions of mass
incarceration noted above, a number of observations surface about such a movement. First of all,
embryonic forms of this social movement already exist in the self-organization of formerly
incarcerated people, in the massive mobilizations against harsh immigration laws, and in
the wide array of non-profits, churches and community organizations involved in lobbying
and advocacy work on issues such as sentencing laws, isolation cells, the War on Drugs,
racial profil ing, halting the spred of private prisons, re-entry, opposing criminal
background checks by employers, and other concerns. An effective social movement would
need to bring these groupings together and add others which seem to have an interest in
opposing mass incarceration but have thus far remained on the sidelines. Key to creating a
viable movement would be the participation of the incarcerated, the formerly incarcerated
and their families and communities. Some moves in this direction have already taken place with
the formation of organizations in various parts of the country such as All of Us or None,
The Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples’ Movement, the Fortune Society, A New
Way of Life, the Formerly Convicted Citizens Project, Legal Services for Prisoners with
Children, Families Against Mandatory Minimums and Citizens with Conviction. Moreover,
for the first time in a long while, major strike action has occurred in several prisons highlighted
by the work stoppage in four Georgia prisons in 2010 (Hing, 2010) and the 2011 hunger strike in
the Pelican Bay SHU and other California penitentiaries (Lovett, 2011). However, to expand the
base for such a movement would necessitate making an ideological link between mass
incarceration and the general shifts toward inequality and cutbacks in state social
services. A concrete example of this approach is the Boston Workers’ Alliance, an
organization of unemployed workers who operate under the slogan ‘Fighting for Job and
CORI (Criminal Offender Record Information) Reform’. While combatting joblessness is their main
objective, they clearly see the link between mass incarceration and unemployment. As a result,
one of their main cam paigns was to pressure Massachusetts to pass a ‘Ban the Box’ law
outlawing the use of questions on employment applications about an applicant’s criminal
background. Massachusetts is one of only a handful of states with such legislation. The United
Workers’ Organization, a national forma tion of excluded workers, follows a similar track,
including the ‘formerly incarcerated’ as one of the seven sectors which they organize (Excluded
Workers’ Congress, 2011). In the same vein,
19
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Current Reforms Solve (3/3)
(___) Current movements exist to reform the criminal justice system
DAVIS & GONZÁLEZ 2014 Juan, Democracy Now, Angela Davis on Prison Abolition, the War on
Drugs and Why Social Movements Shouldn’t Wait on Obama, 3-6,
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/6/angela_davis_on_prison_abolition_the#
The struggle to overhaul the criminal justice system in the United States has reached a
pivotal moment. From the Obama administration’s push to reform harsh and racially biased
sentencing for drug offenses to the recent decision by New York state to reform its use of
solitary confinement, there is a growing momentum toward rethinking the system. But new
battles have also emerged, like the fight over Stand Your Ground laws in states like Florida, where
a number of recent court cases have highlighted the issue of racial bias in the court
system. Marissa Alexander, an African-American woman of color who fired what she says was a
warning shot into a wall near her abusive husband, is facing up to 60 years in prison at her retrial.
Michael Dunn, who shot and killed an African-American teenager in a dispute over loud music in
the same state of Florida, is facing a minimum of 60 years for attempted murder, but the jury failed
to convict him of the central charge in the case: the murder of Jordan Davis, a case that, for many,
recalled the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. AMY GOODMAN: To talk more
about these issues, we spend the rest of the hour with the world-renowned author, activist,
scholar, Angela Davis, professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. For over four
decades, she has been one of the most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States.
She’s speaking here in New York on Friday at the Beyond the Bars conference up at Columbia
University. It’s great to have you here, Angela. ANGELA DAVIS: Thank you, Amy. Thank you.
Thank you, Juan. AMY GOODMAN: Do you sense progress? ANGELA DAVIS: Well, yes. I think
that this is a pivotal moment. There are openings. And I think it’s very important to point out
that people have been struggling over these issues for years and for decades.
20
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Marijuana Legalization Solves (1/2)
(___)
(___) Marijuana legalization occurring in the status quo diminishes police profiling and
militarization
Sibilla, 14 [04/02/14, Nick Sibilla is a writer for the Institute for Justice., “The Shame of “Equitable
Sharing””,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/04/equitable_sharing_legalize
d_marijuana_and_civil_forfeiture_the_scheme_that.html]
Legalization now threatens that forfeiture revenue for the police departments that have
relied on it. Legal cannabis and the subsequent drop in forfeiture have already caused one
drug task force in Washington to cut its budget by 15 percent. That’s great news for due
process and property rights. But marijuana is still illegal under federal law, so local
legalization has created ambiguity in civil forfeiture proceedings. Even in states where
recreational or medical marijuana is legal, property owned by innocent people is still at risk
thanks to “equitable sharing.” This federal program lets local and state law enforcement do an
end run around state law and profit from civil forfeiture, simply by collaborating with a federal
agency. Equitable sharing is a two-way street: For the federal government to “adopt” a forfeiture
case, cops can approach the feds and vice versa. The U.S. Department of Justice has
applications online for agencies to apply for adoption and to transfer federally forfeited property.
Crucially, criminal charges do not have to accompany a civil forfeiture case. The proceeds
from federal forfeitures are deposited into the DOJ’s Asset Forfeiture Fund. After the DOJ
determines the size of the cut for the feds, equitable sharing allows the local police to take up
to 80 percent of what the property is worth. In fiscal year 2012, the federal government paid
out almost $700 million in equitable sharing proceeds to local and state law enforcement
agencies. Equitable sharing tempts cops to become bounty hunters, even in states with
legal marijuana. Tony Jalali is living proof of this travesty. Jalali almost lost his business over four
grams of marijuana. After immigrating to the United States from Iran in 1978, Jalali became a
successful small business owner
21
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Marijuana Legalization Solves (2/2)
(___) Marijuana legalization has tangible effects for communities of color
Franklin, 14 [Neil, Executive Director of Law, Enforcement Against Prohibition, "3 Reasons
Marijuana Legalization in Colorado Is Good for People for Color", 1/23,
www.huffingtonpost.com/neill-franklin/marijuana-legalization-race-racismminorities_b_4651456.html]
Here are three concrete ways that Colorado's law is good for people of color. 1. The new law
means there will be no more arrests for marijuana possession in Colorado. Under Colorado's
new law, residents 21 or older can produce, possess, use and sell up to an ounce of marijuana at
a time. This change will have a real and measurable impact on people of color in Colorado,
where the racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests have been reprehensible. In the
last ten years, Colorado police arrested blacks for marijuana possession at more than three times
the rate they arrested whites, even though whites used marijuana at higher rates. As noted by the
NAACP in its endorsement of the legalization law, it's particularly bad in Denver, where almost
one-third of the people arrested for private adult possession marijuana are black, though they
make up only 11% of the population. These arrests can have devastating and long-lasting
consequences. An arrest record can affect the ability to get a job, housing, student loans and
public benefits. As law professor Michelle Alexander describes, people (largely black and
brown) who acquire a criminal record simply for being caught with marijuana are relegated
to a permanent second-class status. When we make marijuana legal, we stop those arrests
from happening.
22
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Marijuana Legalization Isn’t Inevitable
(___)
(___) Marijuana legalization is coming now
Wyatt 2014—Kristen Wyatt is from the Associated Press, April 2, “Poll: Marijuana legalization
inevitable”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/02/poll-marijuana-legalizationinevitable/7210215/
Marijuana legalization in the U.S. seems inevitable to three-fourths of Americans, whether
they support it or not, according to a new poll out Wednesday. The Pew Research Center
survey on the nation's shifting attitudes about drug policy also showed increased support
for moving away from mandatory sentences for non-violent drug offenders. The telephone
survey found that 75 percent of respondents — including majorities of both supporters and
opponents of legal marijuana— think that the sale and use of pot eventually will be legal
nationwide. It was the first time that question had been asked.
23
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Utilitarianism (1/2)
(___) Death is the only irreversible impact – quality of life is subjective and reversible but
the judge should prioritize the existence of bodies first
Tännsjö, rofessor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University, 2011
(Torbjörn, “Shalt Thou Sometimes Murder? On the Ethics of Killing,” online:
http://people.su.se/~jolso/HS-texter/shaltthou.pdf)
I suppose it is correct to say that, if Schopenhauer is right, if life is never worth living, then
according to utilitarianism we should all commit suicide and put an end to humanity. But
this does not mean that, each of us should commit suicide. I commented on this in chapter
two when I presented the idea that utilitarianism should be applied, not only to individual
actions, but to collective actions as well.¶ It is a well-known fact that people rarely commit
suicide. Some even claim that no one who is mentally sound commits suicide. Could that be taken
as evidence for the claim that people live lives worth living? That would be rash. Many people are
not utilitarians. They may avoid suicide because they believe that it is morally wrong to kill oneself.
It is also a possibility that, even if people lead lives not worth living, they believe they do.
And even if some may believe that their lives, up to now, have not been worth living, their
future lives will be better. They may be mistaken about this. They may hold false expectations
about the future.¶ From the point of view of evolutionary biology, it is natural to assume that
people should rarely commit suicide. If we set old age to one side, it has poor survival value (of
one’s genes) to kill oneself. So it should be expected that it is difficult for ordinary people to kill
themselves. But then theories about cognitive dissonance, known from psychology, should warn
us that we may come to believe that we live better lives than we do.¶ My strong belief is that
most of us live lives worth living. However, I do believe that our lives are close to the point
where they stop being worth living. But then it is at least not very far-fetched to think that they may
be worth not living, after all. My assessment may be too optimistic.¶ Let us just for the sake of
the argument assume that our lives are not worth living, and let us accept that, if this is so,
we should all kill ourselves. As I noted above, this does not answer the question what we
should do, each one of us. My conjecture is that we should not commit suicide. The
explanation is simple. If I kill myself, many people will suffer. Here is a rough explanation of
how this will happen: ¶ ... suicide “survivors” confront a complex array of feelings. Various forms of
guilt are quite common, such as that arising from (a) the belief that one contributed to the suicidal
person's anguish, or (b) the failure to recognize that anguish, or (c) the inability to prevent the
suicidal act itself. Suicide also leads to rage, loneliness, and awareness of vulnerability in
those left behind. Indeed, the sense that suicide is an essentially selfish act dominates many
popular perceptions of suicide. ¶ The fact that all our lives lack meaning, if they do, does not
mean that others will follow my example. They will go on with their lives and their false
expectations — at least for a while devastated because of my suicide. But then I have an
obligation, for their sake, to go on with my life. It is highly likely that, by committing suicide, I create
more suffering (in their lives) than I avoid (in my life).
24
War on Drugs Negative
Case Answers
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Utilitarianism (2/2)
(___) Maximizing all lives possible is the only way affirm the quality and dignity of life
Cummiskey 1990 – Professor of Philosophy, Bates (David, Kantian Consequentialism, Ethics
100.3, p 601-2, p 606, jstor,)
We must not obscure the issue by characterizing this type of case as the sacrifice of individuals
for some abstract "social entity." It is not a question of some persons having to bear the cost
for some elusive "overall social good." Instead, the question is whether some persons must
bear the inescapable cost for the sake of other persons. Nozick, for example, argues that "to use a
person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate
person, that his is the only life he has."30 Why, however, is this not equally true of all those that
we do not save through our failure to act? By emphasizing solely the one who must bear the
cost if we act, one fails to sufficiently respect and take account of the many other separate
persons, each with only one life, who will bear the cost of our inaction. In such a situation,
what would a conscientious Kantian agent, an agent motivated by the unconditional value of
rational beings, choose? We have a duty to promote the conditions necessary for the
existence of rational beings, but both choosing to act and choosing not to act will cost the life of
a rational being. Since the basis of Kant's principle is "rational nature exists as an end-in-itself'
(GMM, p. 429), the reasonable solution to such a dilemma involves promoting, insofar as one can,
the conditions necessary for rational beings. If I sacrifice some for the sake of other rational
beings, I do not use them arbitrarily and I do not deny the unconditional value of rational
beings. Persons may have "dignity, an unconditional and incomparable value" that transcends
any market value (GMM, p. 436), but, as rational beings, persons also have a fundamental
equality which dictates that some must sometimes give way for the sake of others. The
formula of the end-in-itself thus does not support the view that we may never force another to bear
some cost in order to benefit others. If one focuses on the equal value of all rational beings, then
equal consideration dictates that one sacrifice some to save many. [continues] According to
Kant, the objective end of moral action is the existence of rational beings. Respect for rational
beings requires that, in deciding what to do, one give appropriate practical consideration
to the unconditional value of rational beings and to the conditional value of happiness. Since
agent-centered constraints require a non-value-based rationale, the most natural interpretation of
the demand that one give equal respect to all rational beings lead to a consequentialist
normative theory. We have seen that there is no sound Kantian reason for abandoning this
natural consequentialist interpretation. In particular, a consequentialist interpretation does not
require sacrifices which a Kantian ought to consider unreasonable, and it does not involve doing
evil so that good may come of it. It simply requires an uncompromising commitment to the
equal value and equal claims of all rational beings and a recognition that, in the moral
consideration of conduct, one's own subjective concerns do not have overriding
importance.
25
War on Drugs Negative
Topicality
NAUDL 2015-16
1NC Topicality Shell
1. Interpretation –domestic surveillance is only for human terrorism
Department of Justice, 2006 (U.S. Department of Justice, “The NSA Program to Detect and
Prevent Terrorist Attacks Myth v. Reality”, justice.gov/.../nsa_myth_v_reality.pdf, January 27th,
2006)
Myth: The NSA program is a domestic eavesdropping program used to spy on innocent
Americans. Reality: The NSA program is narrowly focused, aimed only at international calls
and targeted at al Qaeda and related groups. Safeguards are in place to protect the civil
liberties of ordinary Americans. The program only applies to communications where one
party is located outside of the United States. The NSA terrorist surveillance program
described by the President is only focused on members of Al Qaeda and affiliated groups.
Communications are only intercepted if there is a reasonable basis to believe that one
party to the communication is a member of al Qaeda, affiliated with al Qaeda, or a member
of an organization affiliated with al Qaeda. The program is designed to target a key tactic of al
Qaeda: infiltrating foreign agents into the United States and controlling their movements
through electronic communications, just as it did leading up to the September 11 attacks.
2. Violation – they don’t curtail surveillance related to terrorism, they eliminate War on
Drugs surveillance efforts
3. Reasons to prefer our interpretation –
a. Limits – there are hundreds of different wiretapping, meta-data programs, and
surveillance technologies related to a number of diverse areas, only crafting the topic
around terrorism creates predictable research areas
b. Ground – core negative offense revolves around questions of human terrorism
D. Topicality is a voting issue for fairness and education – vote against them to set a
precedent
26
War on Drugs Negative
Topicality
NAUDL 2015-16
Extensions: Limits
(___)
(___) Even the Patriot Act gives the government surveillance capabilities in a number of
tangential fields like libraries – limiting domestic surveillance to only terrorism is the only
predictable limit to the topic
Small, Lieutenant in the United States Air Force Academy, 2008 (Matthew Small, United
States Air Force Academy, “His Eyes are Watching You: Domestic Surveillance, Civil Liberties
and Executive Power during Times of National Crisis”,
cspc.nonprofitsoapbox.com/storage/documents/Fellows2008/Small, 2008)
The USA Patriot Act provided much of the latitude under which President Bush operated.
Section 203 of the act allowed the government to intercept oral, wire and electronic
communications related to terrorism. The act failed to detail what exactly “communications
related to terrorism” are, giving the executive a large umbrella of protection. Section 212
amends section 2702 of Title 18-Crimes and Criminal Procedure allowing government entities
to require communications companies to release customer information. This section superseded
Title II of the ECPA. The Act also expanded the scope of the FBI’s domestic surveillance by
allowing the Bureau to monitor library checkout lists and internet use. More importantly, the
American public favored the act.1 Even today support still remains for the act.2 As such, the
president did not act outside the public mandate but merely did what he saw fit to ensure national
security.
A Gallup Poll taken in 2002 and 2003 asked the question, “Do you think the Bush administration has gone too far, has
been about right, or has not gone far enough in restricting people's civil liberties in order to fight terrorism?” In 2002 60%
responded “about right” and 55% responded the same in 2003.
2
A poll conducted by ABC News showed 59% of respondents in favor of extending the USA Patriot Act.
1
27
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
1NC Decriminalization Counterplan
Text: The 50 states and all relevant territories should decriminalize marijuana, cocaine, and
heroin and eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing
States decriminalizing hard drugs is the best strategy – it eliminates the worst harms of the
war on drugs by preventing policing from law enforcement but still keeps illegal on the
federal level so the government can prosecute cartels and prevent organized crime.
Morris, professor of Law and Criminology, 2007 Norval, Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and
Criminology, Emeritus, The University of Chicago Law School, “DRUGS: TEENAGE VIOLENCE
AND DRUG USE,” 31 Val. U.L. Rev. 547, Lexis
There is no quick and obvious path leading to a working regulatory system backed up by
the criminal law aiming at minimizing the harm done by drugs. Prudence dictates that we
should move ahead gradually, rectifying our likely mistakes, building on our hope for
successes.¶ For these prudential reasons, it seems to me that the only hope of exorcising the
demon of drugs and eliminating our present unprincipled policy is a course of minor
changes towards rationality. To name a few: no mandatory minimum sentences; no
protracted imprisonment for drug distribution¶ [*548] ¶ of anyone other than those elusive
"drug king-pins" we rarely apprehend; no imprisonment for possessing drugs unless the
amount possessed clearly indicates a substantial business investment directed towards
sales; drug treatment available for all addicts, including residential treatment (and such
treatment should certainly be compulsory in many cases, and backed by the threat and
sometimes reality of imprisonment); no incarceration for a dirty urine when under
treatment (only if repeated tests reveal rejection of treatment should this follow); and so on and
so on. The prudential path is not one of a mindless liberality; rather it is one of a growing
movement to treat drugs and addiction with less moral fervor and more rationality. ¶ Most of my
work nowadays relates to prisons and jails. Currently there are 2.1 million, mostly fellow
citizens, in our prisons, jails and institutions for juvenile offenders; the figures being
prison over 1.1 million; jail over half a million; and institutions for juveniles also more than
half a million. These are enormously large numbers, grossly higher both absolutely and in
terms of a percentage of population than any other country with which we would like to
compare ourselves, particularly when it be remembered that our crime statistics are quite
ordinary when compared with those of Western European countries, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. Only in homicides and crimes of serious personal violence do we lead the pack and lead
it far ahead we do and those crimes produce, of course, only a small proportion of the
incarcerated. Roughly a quarter of those in prison, in my view, should not be there they are
there for low level crimes of consumption or distribution of drugs. I have in mind, therefore,
about half a million unfairly and unwisely incarcerated individuals.
28
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
Solvency Extension – Policing (1/3)
(___)
(___) Decriminalization is a useful strategy to stop the imprisonment of people of color
Morris, professor of Law and Criminology, 2007 Norval, Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and
Criminology, Emeritus, The University of Chicago Law School, “DRUGS: TEENAGE VIOLENCE
AND DRUG USE,” 31 Val. U.L. Rev. 547, Lexis
As George Bernard Shaw affirmed, it is one mark of a sensitive mind that it can be moved by
statistics.¶ I recently worked as a Special Master for a federal court for three years in Stateville
prison in Illinois, a maximum security institution mainly serving Chicago. Prisoners and guards
agreed on the ready availability of drugs, and this reality was regularly demonstrated to me in
a variety of ways. The same is true of all the larger state maximum security prisons. Our
prisons are not "drug free"; it is likely, therefore, that prohibitory deterrent laws will not
result in a drug free society at large.¶ I recently wrote a satirical piece in the op-ed pages of the
Chicago Tribune urging the retention of our drug laws in their present form since they
provide the only remunerative training in entrepreneurship for minority youth in our
destroyed inner city. I further developed the theme that those who failed in this business
received further entrepreneurial training in the only truly free market in Illinois, that operating in
Stateville in which anything other than a gun is at a cost available. I added that our drug laws
provide welfare for the Drug Enforcement Agency and a wide variety of police enforcers,
and I should have¶ [*549] ¶ noted that they also serve as a useful cloak for much of our
foreign policy, given the link we have established between certification of drug collaboration with
us and a country's receipt of foreign aid funds.¶ Each year nicotine kills some 300,000; alcohol kills
at least 30,000; the other drugs kill fewer than 3000. And nicotine and alcohol far outdistance the
other drugs in the social suffering they inflict on others who do not use them. My epiphany on
this matter came a few years ago at a three- day conference I chaired in Bellagio, beside
Lake Como, in Northern Italy. (The character of academics is strengthened by this type of
suffering). It was a well-planned conference drawing together fourteen countries to consider
their domestic drug policies. Papers had been circulated by scholars in each country on their
country's policies. Then the conference was convened of participants at subcabinet level from
each country. The United States was represented by the deputy to our Drug Czar, and by the
head of the White House Office of Drug Policy. One conclusion of the conference, published
in its report, stays steady in my mind. It is at a level of policy that the United States stands
apart from all the other industrialized countries: they favor a principle of harm reduction; they
hope to minimize the injury that drugs do to the individual and to society; they do not, as
we do, embrace a policy that hopes to make their county drug free; they do not rely on the
criminal law as the first line of defense. And they certainly do not devote funds outside
their borders seeking to influence policies and practices in other countries.¶ Putting these
differences in practical terms reveals the key to what we should be doing.
29
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
Solvency Extension – Policing (2/3)
(___) Decriminalizing removes criminal penalties and prevents policing of people for lowlevel crimes but still allows the government to combat cartels
Blumenson and Nielson, professors of law, 2009 (Eric – Professor of Law, Suffolk University;
J.D. Harvard Law School, and Eva – Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Boston University; J.D.,
University of Virginia, “NO RATIONAL BASIS: THE PRAGMATIC CASE FOR MARIJUANA LAW
REFORM”, 2009, 17 Va. J. Soc. Pol'y & L. 43, lexis)
What is needed most, of course, is a sea change in marijuana law, not least in order to end the
destructiveness of present policy. There should be major government-funded efforts to devise the
most promising alternative legal regime. Our aim in this article is to underscore the need for policy
reform, not to argue for a particular policy. But we do want to offer a few provisional thoughts
on three possibilities, any one of which would constitute a vast improvement on present
policy. The first is the one that currently exists in parts of the United States: decriminalization of
use and possession. Decriminalization does not end the ban on use or sale of marijuana,
but does remove criminal penalties for individuals found possessing a small amount.
Decriminalization was a successful reform strategy in the 1970s but its momentum ran out soon
after. Several states decriminalized possession of small quantities of marijuana in the
1970s, after President Nixon's commission on marijuana recommended it as national policy. n118
These laws, for the most part, remain in effect and take several forms. n119 [*74] Other states
have stopped short of decriminalization, but offered ways to avoid a criminal record, for
example by deferring a first offender's prosecution for a period of time and then dismissing
the charge if there has been no arrest in the interim. Decriminalization has four important
factors in its favor: (1) it puts an end to the worst excesses of current marijuana policy
(including arrest, imprisonment, and the deleterious effect on law enforcement practices we
have discussed); (2) studies show that decriminalization does not increase the number of
marijuana users; n120 (3) it is arguably more consistent with international drug treaty
obligations than legalization, n121 and (4) it may again have a possibility of success, at
least [*75] more so than any alternatives. As noted, Rep. Barney Frank last year filed a
decriminalization bill for the first time in Congress, saying that after decades of belief in its
merits, he now thinks public opinion supports it as well. n122 Recent polls show more
popular support for marijuana decriminalization than any time in the last three decades.
n123 Decriminalization retains many of the drawbacks of present policy, however, while
jettisoning the worst. It still leaves marijuana production and sale to a black market populated by
criminals, and eliminates any [*76] government control over the drug or its market. And
although removing criminal penalties would liberate marijuana users from the virtually total
loss of liberty that may be imposed under current law, preventing use of the substance raises
separate liberty concerns we address elsewhere. n124
30
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
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Solvency Extension – Policing (3/3)
(___) The criminalization of hard drugs reduces the incarceration by nearly 400,00
Bunker and Bergert 2010, (Robert J. Bunker, Counter-OPFOR Corporation, Claremont, CA, and
Matt Begert, National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC) – West, El
Segundo, CA, Counter-demand approaches to narcotics trafficking, Small Wars & Insurgencies,
21:1, 12 March 2010, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592310903561700) TP
Prison population increase arguments in support of left of center approaches highlight the fact
that:¶ . Drug offenders, up 37%, represented the largest source of jail population growth
between 1996 and 2002.¶ . More than two-thirds of the growth in inmates held in local jails for
drug law violations was due to an increase in persons charged with drug trafficking. . In 2000, an
estimated 57% of Federal inmates and 21% of State inmates were serving a sentence for a
drug offense . . .¶ . [B]etween 1990 to 2000.... drug offenders accounted for 59% of the growth in
Federal prisons.29¶ This is representative of US policies that have resulted in it having more
individuals incarcerated than any other country in the world. According to US Department of
Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, ‘at year end 2007, the total incarcerated population reached
2,413,112 inmates’ for all US territories and possessions.30 Based on an analysis derived from
this data, the underlying report, and their own statistics, Stopthedrugwar.org states that:¶ Drug
offenders made up 19.5% of all people doing time in the states, or roughly 400,000 people.
In the federal system, drug offenders account for well over half of the 200,000 prisoners
(those numbers are not included in this report), bringing the total number of people sacrificed
at the altar of the drug war to more than half a million.31
31
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
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Solvency Extensions – Challenges Institutional Racism (1/2)
(___)
(___) Decriminalization stops incarceration and is a useful tool to challenge institutional
racism and white supremacy
Wallis PhD in Political Science, 2011 Victor, Ph.D. in Political Science, Columbia University,
Liberal Arts Dept., Berkeley College of Music, Managing Editor, JOURNAL OF THE RESEARCH
GROUP ON SOCIALISM AND DEMOCRACY, “Mass Incarceration, Democracy, and Inclusion,”
3-14, http://sdonline.org/43/mass-incarceration-democracy-and-inclusion/
A second, more short- to middle-range goal is the decriminalization of victimless offenses,
such as prostitution among consenting adults, homelessness, and, especially, recreational
drug use. There are nearly half a million people in prison or awaiting trial who are now or
potentially about to be needlessly severed from the body politic solely for drug-related
offenses (Mauer & Chesney-Lind 2002a: 6). There are various arguments for drug legalization
(see e.g. Husak & de Marneffe 2005: 3-105), but it takes little analysis to understand that the
enormous resources now used to police and incarcerate drug offenders could be more
effectively and humanely directed into providing the social services that, first, enable
individuals to fight drug addiction (where treatment is needed at all) and, second, meet their basic
human needs for housing, employment, health care, education, and community, which
would help eradicate the oppressive social conditions that engender drug abuse. The
current “war on drugs” also serves a vital function in preserving white supremacy and
class inequality (Chomsky 2003); drug legalization, as an alternative to current practices,
would therefore prevent the use of this tool to further divide and depoliticize poor people
and people of color.
Contemplating prison abolition at this time in the US, the international center of mass
incarceration, is seemingly utopian given that “It is as if prison were an inevitable fact of life, like
birth and death” (Davis, 2003a, 15). It is essential, however, to reflect on the fact that no
system of punishment (least of all the grotesque deformity of mass incarceration) is natural,
normal, or eternal; rather, it is historically and societally specific (see Mathiesen 2000: 3358; Rusche & Kirchheimer 2005; Foucault 1997). At the close of the fundamental text on prison
abolitionism, Instead of Prisons, this insight is invoked along with an invitation to reinvigorate the
criminological imagination of which Braithwaite spoke earlier. The book concludes: Prison, we
have been taught, is a necessary evil. This is wrong. Prison is an artificial, human
invention, not a fact of life; a throwback to primitive times, and a blot upon the species. As such,
it must be destroyed. What has been worthwhile in human history… has been the work of…
those who believed in the absurd, dared the impossible. Remember… that less than two
hundred years ago, slavery still was a fundamental institution, regarded as legitimate by
church and state and accepted by the vast majority of people, including, perhaps, most
slaves… Like slavery, [prison] was imposed on a class of people by those on top. Prisons
will fall when their foundation is exposed and destroyed by a movement surging from the
bottom up (Critical Resistance 2005: 188). For those who seek to build a society of democratic
32
War on Drugs Negative
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Solvency Extensions – Challenges Institutional Racism (2/2)
<<<<Wallis Continues>>>
inclusion and comprehensive structural equality, the emerging struggle against mass
incarceration is crucial. Few social movements today lie at the intersection of as many
forms of oppression or have the potential to expose and therefore potentially undermine
the deep structural injustices based in the US but benefiting capitalist, white supremacist
interests on a global scale
33
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
Solvency Extension – Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
(___)
(___) Eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing eliminates the worst effects of drug laws
by not disproportionately punishing repeat offenders
Morris, professor of Law and Criminology, 2007 Norval, Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and
Criminology, Emeritus, The University of Chicago Law School, “DRUGS: TEENAGE VIOLENCE
AND DRUG USE,” 31 Val. U.L. Rev. 547, Lexis
For these prudential reasons, it seems to me that the only hope of exorcising the demon of
drugs and eliminating our present unprincipled policy is a course of minor changes
towards rationality. To name a few: no mandatory minimum sentences; no protracted
imprisonment for drug distribution¶ [*548] ¶ of anyone other than those elusive "drug kingpins" we rarely apprehend; no imprisonment for possessing drugs unless the amount
possessed clearly indicates a substantial business investment directed towards sales; drug
treatment available for all addicts, including residential treatment (and such treatment should
certainly be compulsory in many cases, and backed by the threat and sometimes reality of
imprisonment); no incarceration for a dirty urine when under treatment (only if repeated tests
reveal rejection of treatment should this follow); and so on and so on. The prudential path is not
one of a mindless liberality; rather it is one of a growing movement to treat drugs and addiction
with less moral fervor and more rationality.
34
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Links to the Net Benefit
(___)
(___) The counterplan doesn’t link to the net benefit – decriminalization removes smallscale policing by still allows the government to pursue large cartel operations.
Vox, 2015 “What’s the case for decriminalizing drugs” http://www.vox.com/cards/war-on-drugsmarijuana-cocaine-heroin-meth/drug-war-decriminalization-marijuana-cocaine-heroin-meth
Some drug policy reform advocates and experts, however, are critical of decriminalization
without the legalization of sales. Isaac Campos, a drug historian at the University of Cincinnati,
argued that keeping the drug market in criminal hands lets them maintain a huge source of
revenue. "The black market might even be fueled somewhat by the fact that people won't be
arrested anymore, because maybe more people will use," Campos said. "We don't know if that's
the case, but it's possible." The concern for decriminalization supporters is that letting businesses
come in and sell drugs would lead to aggressive marketing and advertising, similar to how the
alcohol industry behaves today. This could lead to more drug use, particularly among problem
users who would likely make up most of the demand for drugs. The top 10 percent of alcohol
drinkers, for example, account for more than half the alcohol consumed in any given year in the
US. Decriminalization, then, is a bit of a compromise in reforming the war on drugs. It
would reduce some of the incarceration caused by the drug war, but it would continue
operations that seek to reduce drug trafficking and hopefully make a drug habit less
affordable and accessible.criminalization-marijuana-cocaine-heroin
35
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Permutation do both
(___)
(___) Decriminalization doesn’t displace the cartels because cartels because there is no
other competitive supply – instead we should focus on hardline efforts to combat them
Redmond, 10 Helen, journalist, “The political economy of Mexico's drug war,”
http://isreview.org/issue/90/political-economy-mexicos-drug-war,
In 2009, over the objection of the US, Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts of
drugs. It had no impact on the drug war. Decriminalization is illogical, making it legal to possess
a certain quantity of a drug but not to produce, sell, or transport it. Decriminalization leaves
untouched the violence of the drug cartels competing for la plaza, and the superprofits that
illicit drugs generate that make it worth murdering people to control market share.
Furthermore, decriminalization continues to stigmatize, criminalize, and incarcerate
hundreds of thousands of workers in the drug trade—from poppy and marijuana farmers, to
drug mules who swallow condoms full of heroin, to smugglers crossing borders. To end the death
and destruction of the drug war, every facet of drug production has to be legalized.
36
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Permutation do both – Extensions
(___)
(___) Decriminalization allows a black market to be sustained
Sullum, 2008 a senior editor at Reason magazine and a nationally syndicated columnist, is the
author of "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use.", “Prohibition didn't work then; it isn't working
now,” http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2008/04/america-on-drugs,
"Decriminalization" does not address any of these problems. As it's generally understood in this
country, decriminalization amounts to treating users leniently while continuing to arrest, prosecute
and imprison producers and sellers. In the states that have "decriminalized" marijuana, for example,
possession of small quantities for personal use is generally a citable offense punishable by a modest fine.
That policy is certainly an improvement over arresting pot smokers and putting them in jail, but it
leaves the black market, with all its attendant problems, in place. What we call decriminalization is not
even as tolerant a policy as the U.S. had during alcohol prohibition, when mere possession and
consumption of alcoholic beverages, as opposed to manufacture and distribution, were not subject to
punishment at all.
37
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Policing Continues
(___)
(___) Cops don’t want to arrest low level criminals if they don’t have to – Chicago proves
Dumke 2014 Mick, Chicago Reader, 4-7, http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-bustblacks-pot-possession-after-decriminalization/Content?oid=13004240
"This is a giant vicious circle," says the veteran. "Do I want to be stopping everybody in these
neighborhoods? Absolutely not. But the craziness almost dictates it." The officers say no
tweaks to the ticketing ordinance will solve the problems. The neighborhoods need
economic alternatives to the drug trade. And both officers count themselves among the
growing number of people who believe the government should oversee the cannabis business.
"Take it out of the hands of the criminals," says the veteran. He won't get an argument from
Alderman Proco Joe Moreno (1st). "We all know the usage is pretty much even among different
ethnicities," he says. "It doesn't seem that the intent of the ordinance is being acted out on the
street." Like the officers, Moreno believes it's time to consider legalizing marijuana, which he
maintains is less harmful than alcohol (a position recently advocated by President Obama as
well). "I think there's broad public support for it," Moreno says. "The City Council gets a lot of
criticism, but on a number of issues we can move faster than the state or the federal government.
It would be tough to pass, but I'd be more than happy to lead that effort."
38
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Federal Action Key
(___)
(___) State action is more important than federal action because state governments
prosecute almost 90% of drug crimes AND they cause changes in federal government
policy
O’Hear, Professor at Marquette University, 2004 Michael, Marquette University Law School,
“Federalism and Drug Control,” Lexis, Vitz
At the same time, there
is good reason to believe that, on the whole, state policies cluster more closely
around federal norms than would be the case in the absence of federal inducements to
conform. 332 If this proposition is true, then the policy diversity that does exist might best be
characterized as a "constrained diversity." What is the evidence of constraint? First, consider
historical trends in marijuana regulation. In the 1970s, when decriminalization was taken
seriously as a policy option by federal officials (and even publicly endorsed by President Carter), eleven states
did, in fact, decriminalize. Since the 1980s, when legalism triumphed in Washington and
federal policy turned decisively against marijuana, only one state has decriminalized and
another has actually recriminalized. 333 These developments occurred despite the absence
of any clear consensus that decriminalization was a failure in the states that adopted it
39
War on Drugs Negative
Decriminalization Cournterplan
NAUDL 2015-16
Answers to: Increases Use
(___)
(___) Increased use from decriminalization is empirically denied – Portugal decriminalized
drugs and use is at a historic low
Duke, Yale professor of Law, 2009 professor of law at Yale (Steven, “Drugs: To Legalize or Not”
Wall Street Journal, 4/25, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB124061360462654683)
A most impressive experiment has been underway in Portugal since 2001, when that country
decriminalized the possession and personal use of all psychotropic drugs. According to a study
just published by the Cato Institute, "judged by virtually every metric," the Portuguese
decriminalization "has been a resounding success." Contrary to the prognostications of
prohibitionists, the numbers of Portuguese drug users has not increased since decriminalization.
Indeed, the percentage of the population who has ever used these drugs is lower in
Portugal than virtually anywhere else in the European Union and is far below the percentage of
users in the U.S.. One explanation for this startling fact is that decriminalization has both freed
up funds for drug treatment and, by lifting the threat of criminal charges, encouraged drug
abusers to seek that treatment.
(___) In fact, decriminalization actually decreases drug consumption by shifting
criminalization to a more public health model.
Greenwald, 10 Glenn, fomer columnist on civil liberties and US national security issues for the
Guardian. An ex-constitutional lawyer, “Drug Decriminalization Policy Pays Off,”
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/drug-decriminalization-policy-pays, Vitz
It may sound counterintuitive that decriminalization can improve drug problems. But
Portuguese drug officials, with a decade of experience with decriminalization, understand the
reasons for that causal relationship. First, when a government threatens to turn drug users
into criminals, a wall of fear divides officials and the citizenry and, thus, prevents effective
treatment and education campaigns. Portugal’s top drug official has said the stigma created
by criminalizing drug use and the resulting fear of government were the biggest barriers to
effective education and treatment programs in the 1990s. Second, treating drug addiction as
a health issue, not a criminal offense, means the right solutions can be found. Counseling
is far more effective than prison in turning addicts into nonusers. Third, when a government
no longer spends inordinate amounts of money on arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning
drug users, that money can instead be used on highly effective treatment programs, as well as
services, like methadone clinics, to limit drug-related harms. Whatever one’s views on liberalizing
drug laws, our debate should be grounded in empirical evidence — not speculation and fearmongering. As California voters make a momentous decision on drug policy, Portugal’s decade
of decriminalization offers exactly the sort of rational examination that has been sorely
lacking.
40