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democractic participation / social movements
President George W. Bush has a plan for winning the “War on Drugs”. In a statement released by the White House earlier this year, “The National Drug Control Strategy proposes a ten-year conceptual framework to reduce illegal drug use and availability by 50 percent by the year 2007.”
With 2007 just nine months away, are we moving in the direction President Bush foresees? Has the US made significant success with the “War on Drugs?”
Activists like Dean Becker, host of nine radio shows which share an unvarnished perspective about the current drug policy and drug prohibition, urge politicians to reconsider legalization and decriminalization of illegal substances, sighting that laws against drugs are unconstitutional and the “War on Drugs” can never be won.
Becker has even offered money to politicians, police officers and other government officials if they would just agree to talk about the “War on Drugs” on his radio shows. To this day, no one has agreed to come on a radio show and share their opinion against the legalization of the “War on Drugs.”
“The War on Drugs is a sham. It has no basis in medical data or in scientific observations,” says Becker. “It has no social benefit. It is economically upside down. It just has no basis in reality.”
The reality is the US Drug War has burnt more than a trillion dollars of American money. Drug prohibition began in 1875 with an anti-drug law passed to monitor opium. Since then, the federal government has made cocaine, marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines illegal along with many other drugs on the basis the drugs cause harm and possibly death.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse’s research shows that the substance, which causes the most deaths per year, is tobacco with 390,000 deaths; alcohol is second with 80,000 deaths and then cocaine with 2,200 deaths per year. The difference between deaths caused by tobacco and deaths caused by cocaine is 387,800—an extreme difference.
But advocates for the “War on Drugs” say progress is made every time drugs are seized and dealers are thrown behind bars.
Steve Robertson, public affairs official for the DEA headquarters in Washington D.C., says the war on drugs is “a long struggle, but we win every time we take an individual off the street or bust drug traffickers trying to pass through our borders.”
The Rio Grande Valley, the southern most point of Texas, sits along the US-Mexico border. The Rio Grande Valley is home to more than 1,000 border patrol agents who patrol 17,000 square miles of land. US Border Patrol public affairs officer Roy Cervantes says it’s a tough job, but he and his team in the RGV has made trafficking drugs into the US much harder.
In 2004, the RGV division seized more than $409 million of illegal substances. Within the first two months of 2006, the RGV division have seized more than $89 million of narcotics. If Cervantes and his team continue to seize as much drugs as they have within the past two months, at the end of the year, the RGV division will have seized $534 million of narcotics—an increase of $125 million within a two-year period.
Agents like Cervantes say you can measure the success of the “War on Drugs” with the amount seizures.But Becker says seizures don’t mean a thing. In fact, we are helping increase drugs and their value.
“By trying to stem the flow [of drugs], what they actually do is increase the value of the product they are trying to stop. They say they bust ten percent of the drugs being trafficked, but the truth is, they produce so much of these drugs, they send it through so many different ways, through so many different smugglers, that when it gets busted [the drugs] they really don’t care. They have to be busted once in a while, or the price would go down,” says Becker.
Robertson says illegal drug use for the most part has gone down. The DEA focuses on three tiers: education, enforcement, and rehabilitation. Robertson says the 222 DEA offices across the US are currently focusing on Methanphetamine users and labs. Drug dealers can make the narcotic locally, sell it cheap and make a large profit because the substance is highly addictive. He adds that meth—as it is known on the streets—is the leading cause of emergency room admissions across the country, beating out crack-cocaine and other abusive substances.
The DEA measures their success with the “War on Drugs” “every year when the they go and talk about their accomplishments, says Robertson. “We talk about drug trafficking organizations that are dismantled.”
Robertson attributes the dismantling of drug cartels to the amounts of drugs they seize, the amount of cash or assets they seize. Robertson explained a key tactic used by agents: follow the money.
“Normally, drugs are handled by the mid-level managers and the people on the street,” says Robertson. “The head of the organization doesn’t get his hands on the drugs. But the profit, if you follow the money, eventually will make it back to the head.”
© Copyright World Internet News 2006-07
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