At last Thursday’s weekly meeting of the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club, William Martin, Senior Fellow for Drug Policy at James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, delivered a sobering speech outlining why the “drug war” has been a costly failure. And he admitted something that you don’t usually hear at Republican meetings: the underlying cause of blacks being ten times more likely to end up in a state prison on drug charges is racism.
I can already hear the gatekeepers of the Grand Old Party howling about that. But the good news is that we are now talking about it and unless we are willing to talk about it, we can’t correct it.
Dr. Martin noted that for the last century, drug policy has been based upon prohibition and for the last forty years we have used a “war” model, with the typical effects that war has:
- displaced populations
- disrupted economies
- excessive violence
- terrorism
- the use of military force
- the curtailment of civil liberties
- the demonizing of enemies
That was pretty eye opening to tell the truth. I’d never thought about the “war on drugs” in those terms.
One of the things that I enjoyed about Dr. Martin’s speech was that he didn’t come across as a “crusader” but was very pragmatic in his approach. He acknowledged that we do have a drug problem but insisted that prohibition has failed. He also made the point that only about 20{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of the drug problems that we have are based on illicit drugs – the vast majority are from alcohol and prescription drug abuse.
He was also pretty funny, another rarity in Republican meetings. He looked across the room several times and said he’d bet there were some folks in the room that had smoked pot. Police are particularly worried about pot smokers, he said, because the worst that would happen is that they’d be driving four miles per hour, not speeding.
On the financial side, he talked about the cost of incarceration vs. probation – GritsforBreakfast has a detailed post on the latest LBB sentencing recommendations: LBB recommends sentencing commission to enhance consistency, contain costs of criminal sentences. One point he made was that people aren’t stealing and killing to get drugs – they are stealing and killing to get the money necessary to buy drugs at artificially high prices.
And yes, when I cornered him and asked what the underlying factor was in the fact that blacks are incarcerated in Texas prisons at a rate 10 times greater than whites, even though there is no difference in the rate of use between the groups, he acknowledged that the color of your skin matters. Now, if we can only get the majority of Republican primary voters to admit that, we might be able to fix the problem.
Dr. Martin’s speech was not partisan. Drug policy and law enforcement should not be partisan, although we have allowed both to become so. We can do better and with knowledgeable people like Dr. Martin willing to discuss the problems, we might just get there. Much of his speech was based on this report: Conference Report — The War on Drugs Has Failed. Is Legalization the Answer? If you have a club or group of people interested in public policy, I’d highly recommend that you have Dr. Martin speak at one of your meetings.
Mikael Mustonen with the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club captured Dr. Martin’s speech on video:
It's a fact whites and blacks use illegal drugs in the same proportions, or are Whites more apt to use alcohol and prescription? I don't know the answer and figure you do.I had no idea blacks were incarcerated 10 times more frequently! That is just plain wrong.
Ms. Stricklett: The reasons blacks are arrested for small drug offenses ten times more frequently than whites is who gets targeted. I’m a criminal defense lawyer and I’ve seen an awful lot of arrests of blacks, especially youmg males, in the ghetto for “walking in the street where a sidewalk is provided” followed by searches that turn up a bit of dope or even a dirty crack pipe. Bang, that’s a felony arrest. And, the officers who made it get off the street for a couple of hours while they write their report, process the evidence and book the person they arrested.
When was the last time a young male in your neighborhood was arrested for walking in the street where a sidewalk is provided?
And, there are a lot of arrests of minorities for traffic offenses. The police can arrest Texans for any traffic offense except speeding and drinking while driving. How many of your friends have been arrested for failure to wear a seatbelt? I’ll bet not too many.
It costs society more to send a person to prison for a year than it does to send them to college for a year. And once someone gets out, they have a hard time finding work and even apartments. It becomes a never ending cycle of incarceration.
I’m an unreconstructed Goldwater Republican. But, I see the mess we’ve made in the “drug war.” It’s really done only two “positive” things.
First, with better border interdiction, most people don’t smuggle marijuana into the US anymore. It’s too bulky for the profit potential. So, we now have a US-based marijuana growing industry so we’re keeping those jobs at home.
Second, in the late 1980s, cocaine replaced marijuana as the import of choice for drug smugglers. It’s flooding the country. So, like any other commodity, when supply goes up, prices go down. The price of a kilogram of cocaine today is far less than it was in the early 1980s.
I’ll bet the police who patrol your neighborhood aren’t looking for excuses to stop and/or arrest people who gather in their front yards to talk. It happens a lot in minority areas.
When you look further into the types of people who use drugs, a good percentage have mental health issues and are using street drugs to self medicate. That is especially true with clinical depression and bipolar disorder. Yet, we don’t have money to provide mental health treatment for the poor unless they are in jail or on probation. The Harris County Jail is the largest mental health treatment facility in Texas. The Los Angeles County Jail is the largest in the country.
The War on Drugs is as unsuccessful as Prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s. Both have created a class of wealthy criminals — be it the Mafia or the drug cartels — and led to lawlessness. We need to rethink and do things smarter in order to eliminate drug abuse.
Long ago back in my college dorm room I actually almost tried the evil weed, but decided against it because my roommate took the first toke, immediately fell over dead, became a communist, and voted for Jimmy Carter. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
But seriously folks, it’s encouraging to see at least some republicans willing to entertain a rational discussion about less costly and more effective policies on cannabis. Keep an eye on HB 184. It’s a baby step, but at least it’s in the right direction. Similar measures in prior legislative sessions have yet to survive committee discussions. Not to sound pessimistic, but so far, even common sense bills that would allow terminally ill cancer patients to simply offer medical need in their defense of a criminal possession charge have died in committee. That’s just plain immoral, not to mention that it’s the antithesis of fiscal conservatism. HB 184 would help alleviate that nonsense, in addition to preventing the waste of money and of law enforcement’s time that it the hallmark of Texas’ decades long war on a silly plant.
I’ve spent most of the last 3 months on a work assignment in Colorado, where a full decriminalization measure has been in effect since the beginning of the year. Keep an eye on that too.