You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (67 page)

In 1995 the DEA testified before Congress that Mexican drug cartels were corrupting American police agencies “on a systematic basis” with bribes of about a million dollars per week.
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Tucson FBI Chief Steve McCraw said that the border corruption was so “pervasive . . . it’s a national disgrace.”
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Although corruption has not been discovered at senior levels that does not mean that it is not present. One hint is provided by the experience of Mike Horner, a United States Customs inspector.
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He flagged a Mexican truck driver in the computer system as being suspected of drug trafficking. This driver was later stopped at the border and searched due to a fluke—and over a supervisor’s objections—and was found with four tons of cocaine. When Horner checked the system he discovered that a number of his warnings had been erased.

When Horner later passed along a tip on a group of major traffickers out of Tijuana, the top man in his region asked for his informants. This was an odd and unnecessary request and Horner objected at first. Four days after Horner capitulated, one of his informants was found with a tire iron in one ear and out the other. The other informant was stabbed sixteen times. When Horner requested an internal investigation from the Treasury Department, the top man took an early retirement and the investigation was dropped.

Another hint is provided by CIA activities. After some brazen investigative journalism, government officials finally acknowledged there has been CIA involvement with rebel organizations active in drug trafficking.
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This should not be surprising either, as drug profits have made drug kingpins some of the most powerful people in the third world.

Where the lines are drawn in this involvement may never be known. In the murky and off-the-record world of international power-brokering the words “national
security” can stop any investigation cold. Decorated former DEA undercover agent Michael Levine has alleged the drug war is an illusion in
The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic
. In the book he writes that major drug traffickers targeted by the DEA were repeatedly regarded by the CIA as “assets,” terminating the DEA’s investigations.
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A major prong in the American government’s drug policy is to scare the crap out of its population. A tenet of this approach is that any letdown in the drug war will result in the nation’s children being inundated with drugs, or to use the words of a United Nations drug director, a “heroin tsunami.”
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It is practically unknown in America that numerous countries have decriminalized the adult possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use. This is not surprising, as the American media largely ignores it. When Portugal decriminalized personal possession in 2001 no major media outlets gave it coverage.
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The few media outlets that do acknowledge other countries’ approaches give them extremely biased coverage. For example, the
Christian Science Monitor
in 1995 ran the story “Legalization Increases Drug Use by Colombians.” The article itself revealed that there had been no studies on usage rates and that a Colombian counselor admitted she had not seen a rise in applicants to her rehabilitation center.
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Colombia is a great example of decriminalization because the United States of America spends billions attempting to keep out Colombian cocaine. Cocaine is plentiful in Colombia and cheap. Cocaine in America costs roughly twenty-five times more.
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Not only that, but Colombia has decriminalized possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use since 1994. By drug war logic, Colombians should be drowning in addiction, and yet an international 2008 study showed that four percent of Colombians have tried cocaine, compared to sixteen percent of Americans.
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Note: Three of the following four foreign countries have decriminalized possession of small amounts of
any
drug. Netherlands has not decriminalized but unofficially overlooks.

Two scholars who have studied decriminalization policies found that enforcement has “surprisingly little measurable consequence,”
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and no study has ever shown that decriminalization affects consumption.
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Americans no longer remember that when drugs were legal in this country there was no drug “problem.” Cocaine and heroin addicts accounted for a small percentage of the population, as they do now, but they were usually treated by their doctors and did not commit crimes.
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This is arguably why the federal government has so fiercely imposed its will regarding marijuana on the states and on other countries.
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When marijuana is legalized and Suzie does not become a heroin junkie and pot smoke doesn’t fill the streets, their sham drug logic will be revealed to people firsthand, and no amount of silly marijuana ads will put it back together again.

One country that has had the financial strength and political courage to tell America’s drug warriors to fig off has been the Netherlands. In Holland, drug laws are still on the books (in part to obey the international treaties pushed through by America), but possession of small amounts of marijuana, heroin, and cocaine are
disregarded. Dutch police support this system.
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It leaves their prisons available for violent criminals and drug traffickers, and their drug clinics available for people who actually want to use them.

For this policy, which began in 1976, Dutch officials have had to weather decades of slander from American suits.
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This barrage is filled with ridiculous lies that drug warriors assume, usually correctly, their audiences will not catch. One slanderous lie of former drug czar Barry McCaffrey’s was that the Dutch policy of giving free heroin to addicts caused its murder rate to become twice America’s. (The Dutch murder rate is half ours and heroin maintenance has been shown to
reduce
crime.)
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Another drug czar, Lee Brown, was once bad-mouthing the Dutch at a Los Angeles town hall meeting. To Brown’s chagrin a Dutch ambassador happened to be present, and he politely refuted everything Brown had said.
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In 2008 the top American cable news program for eight years running,
The O’Reilly Factor
, had a commentator state:

In 2009, when shown an Amsterdam clip refuting these statements by demonstrating that their marijuana usage rate is almost half America’s and their murder and drug overdose rates are mere fractions of America’s, host Bill O’Reilly responded dismissively, “The way they do the statistics in the Netherlands is different plus it is a much smaller country, much smaller place to do the stats on.”
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One of the issues that has arisen with decriminalizing “soft” drugs in small areas is the influx of drug tourism. Young adult foreigners can flood these zones, bringing the same issues young adults bring when they overrun spots that only allow alcohol, such as spring break destinations.

The same can happen with drug addicts when small areas are decriminalized for “hard” drugs, for example Needle Park. Needle Park was an isolated 1980s Swiss attempt to allow all drug users in one park.
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It was a disaster because of overcrowding and poor planning, for instance using a park rather than a public
health clinic. If Europe outlawed dance clubs everywhere but in tiny zones in the Netherlands, similar problems would ensue.

Overall the Dutch approach has been a success. In Holland, between 1979 and 1994 the percentage of people under twenty-two years of age who used hard drugs dropped from fifteen percent to two-and-a-half percent. In the 1980s when cocaine hysteria enthralled America, Reagan launched a domestic and international war. At the same time the Dutch explicitly mandated that their police
not
arrest people for possession of hard drugs. The results? In 1987 only 1.7 percent of adults in Amsterdam said they took cocaine in the previous year, while six percent of adults in New York City said that they had used cocaine in the previous six months. In the 1990s drug usage across the board was two to ten times lower in all relevant categories in the Netherlands than in the United States.
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The Dutch are not uniquely capable of handling freedom and other countries are following their lead. In 2001 Portugal decriminalized personal possession of all drugs. A 2009 study found that there was no serious push to reverse policy as by virtually every metric it had been a “resounding success.” Since 2001 drug usage rates in many categories had decreased. Most notable was the large decrease in the thirteen- to nineteen-year-old age group. From 2001–2005 Portuguese marijuana usage rates were the lowest in the European Union.
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Decriminalization has not been the only success. Maintenance programs in which addicts are
provided
with drugs have been successful as well. Swedish heroin maintenance programs (where heroin addicts are provided heroin by prescription) have been effective in reducing crime and homelessness. They have also greatly improved the rates of addicts’ employment, self-sufficiency, and success in ending addiction.
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In Widnes, England, Dr. John Marks was having success providing heroin, cocaine, and amphetamine addicts with maintenance doses. In the program’s first five years Widnes enjoyed a ninety-six percent reduction in thefts and break-ins. Even more startling was that new addiction rates dropped by ninety-two percent.
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It appeared that since addicts were no longer in the streets, dealers left the area.

Then Marks made a mistake. In 1992 he allowed the American news show
60 Minutes
to feature his success. It focused on Julia Scott, a heroin addict of ten years, who was a prostitute and a single mom. During three years with Marks, she
held down a job as a waitress, paid her taxes, and took good care of her three-year-old daughter.

Soon after the show aired, the British embassy in Washington, DC was “getting heat over the broadcast,” and a “high-level meeting” was arranged in which Americans asked the English to “harmonize” their drug policy with the United States.
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In 1995 the funding for Dr. Marks’ clinic was pulled and given to a new organization featuring the American method of forced withdrawal. Many of Dr. Marks’ 450 patients ended up on the street committing crimes and abandoning their families to support their habits . . . and of course, dying like Scott soon did. However, no longer could
60 Minutes
send the wrong message to America’s children.

The more money poured into fighting the drug war the more profitable it will become. Marijuana is the largest cash crop grown in America. At the turn of the millennium, the international illicit drug business was generating roughly $400 billion in trade annually—eight percent of all international trade. This is roughly the same percentage as tourism and the oil industry.
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All of the profits are unregulated, untaxed, and going to criminals.

In the United States this money makes ethnic gangs powerful organizations. Even worse is that it funds rebel and terrorist organizations worldwide.
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The power of domestic gangs is only visible in the open-air drug markets where entire city blocks have been abandoned by police, but in other countries—such as Afghanistan and Colombia—these organizations are more powerful than their governments and entire regions have fallen into anarchy.

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the White House had the arrogance to spend $3.4 million to run two advertisements during the 2002 Super Bowl accusing America’s recreational drug users of supporting terrorism.
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This is the same government that in the year prior to 9/11 oversaw the arrest of 750,000 people for marijuana possession and the arrest of only one terrorist.
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