40 YEARS OF WAR ON DRUGS FAILURE: RETHINK THE WAR-FIGHTING MODEL

Forty years ago today, President Richard Nixon declared our nation's
War on Drugs. That is more than enough time to evaluate the war's
costs and benefits: In dealing with the problems of drug abuse, it
has failed. It is time for a new approach.

The most recent assessment of this war came this month from the
Global Commission on Drug Policy, a group of 19 political, business
and cultural leaders including Reagan-era Secretary of State George
Schultz and former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker. Calling for an
end to the war-fighting model, they wrote:

"Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures
directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs
have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption.
Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health
measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful
consequences of drug use. Government expenditures on futile supply
reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective
and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction."

The commission noted that current policies have generated massive
violence and undermined political stability in drug-producing and
distributing countries. At the same time, such countries as
Switzerland, Portugal and the Netherlands, which have replaced
repression with harm-reduction, have seen significant public health
benefits and, in the case of heroin, reductions in use and addiction.

Of particular concern, the War on Drugs has led to widespread
violations of constitutional and human rights, racially skewed
enforcement, and an explosion in the U.S. prison population, by far
the world's largest. In 2008, four out of five arrests were for mere
possession of drugs, one-half of those for marijuana. Due to
selective enforcement, those imprisoned are primarily minorities.

While there is no evidence to support that African-Americans use
drugs at a higher rate than white Americans, and although they make
up only 12.6 percent of the general population, African-Americans
account for 37 percent of total drug arrests annually and 56 percent
of incarcerations. As Georgetown University law Professor David Cole
put it, were whites being arrested at the same rate as blacks, "We
would almost certainly see this as an urgent national calamity, and
demand a collective investment of public resources to forestall so
many going to prison."

Florida's drug laws, which require minimum mandatory sentences, are
among the nation's most punitive. As a result, nonviolent drug
offenders make up one-third of our prison population. In a time when
the state cannot adequately fund education and social services, the
fiscal consequences of rampant, unnecessary levels of incarceration
have drawn overdue attention to drug policy.

In Florida, a more sensible approach is slowly coming. This year, the
Legislature approved a pilot drug court program to divert some
first-time offenders from the lifelong revolving door of the criminal
justice system. A bill was also filed to eliminate or restructure
minimum mandatory prison sentences for drug possession. The
governor's law and order transition team joined Florida TaxWatch, the
Collins Center for Public Policy and others in calling for numerous
changes in our drug policies.

We urge citizens to read the Global Commission report
(www.globalcommissionondrugs.org), separate propaganda from science,
and compare the harms of drug abuse to the even greater harms of
prohibition. We ask everyone to support those who are working to
amend Florida's unjust, costly, failed drug policies.

It has often been said that the definition of insanity is doing the
same thing over and over and expecting different results. After 40
years of failure, it's past time to bring some sanity to the problems
of drug abuse.