We Can’t Win a Drug War : Law Enforcement Won’t Cut Supply or Demand

We must stop deluding ourselves about the war on drugs. Although drug abuse is a national scourge, we cannot reduce it to a tolerable level through law enforcement.

Consider the history. The drug-abuse problem surfaces in the public consciousness periodically and without any necessary relation to actual changes in the level of drug use. Each time politicians, law-enforcement officials and the public demand that something be done--that money be spent to disrupt international and domestic producers, to interdict imports at our borders, to punish the sellers, to punish the users, to treat the users, to educate the public, or to do all of the above.

After something is done, critics then point out that the legal, governmental and medical response is a failure because unacceptable levels of drug abuse continue. The authorities retort with statistics about arrests, confiscations and the like to prove that the war is being won. The issue fades temporarily from view, and when it inevitably resurfaces we recognize that the reality remains depressingly the same: Drug abuse persists. Although the level of use fluctuates because of variables beyond our control, the never-ending war is inexorably being lost.

Despite the cycles of alarm, action and reassurance, current estimates of the yearly value of the illicit drug trade range as high as $110 billion . Cities large and small are awash with cocaine; treatment centers are overloaded; drug-related crime appears to be increasing; U.S. troops are at one front line, Bolivia. And now President Reagan has declared a “new” crusade against drugs, and Congress is proposing “new” expensive legislation to escalate the never-ending, unwinnable war.

Criminal laws and enforcement cannot reduce the supply of, or the demand for, illicit drugs at an acceptable cost.

There are many reasons, starting with this undeniable fact: People want drugs. They give many people substantial satisfaction, pleasure, a sense of escape. It is very hard to reduce demand for substances or activities that produce satisfaction or pleasure.

Reducing demand is further hampered by hypocrisy. Our society is not nearly as anti-drug as we claim. We are already floundering in a sea of recreational and dangerous but legal drugs such as alcohol and nicotine, abetted by government subsidization of the tobacco industry. And we view over-the-counter drugs as entirely acceptable remedies for life’s problems, ranging from anxiety to constipation.

Given the powerful factors that fuel the desire for drugs, the criminal sanction is ineffective against demand. The police cannot arrest and prosecutors cannot prosecute more than a tiny fraction of the enormous number of users unless the justice system massively diverts resources from the criminal behavior--robbery, rape, burglary--that is more harmful to innocent citizens. Only relatively lengthy imprisonment is likely to deter the use of drugs, but this expensive, painful punishment is neither cost-effective nor just. Our jails and prisons are already overcrowded with increasingly higher proportions of serious multiple offenders. And many people perceive users as victims rather than as dangerous criminals.

Not only is criminal prohibition ineffective to deter demand, it also paradoxically encourages use among those who feel rebellious or like risks; it creates a drug-outlaw subculture that is highly attractive to those alienated from the dominant values of our culture.

Law enforcement’s effort to reduce the supply of drugs has been as fruitless as its battle to curb demand, for a variety of practical reasons.

For one thing, criminalization of drugs makes them enormously costly to users and profitable to suppliers, who in turn use the gains to challenge law enforcement in myriad ways.

Attacking drugs at their sources abroad is a favorite recommendation, but it creates unresolvable economic and political problems. The production of the raw materials is often central to the economy or way of life in other cultures. Only at great financial and political cost to us and to the other governments can we induce them to limit or eradicate their production. And even if we succeed the raw materials grow, or can be manufactured, so easily that production simply moves elsewhere--often to a country that is beyond our influence, like Iran. We can barely control marijuana cultivation in the United States; it is fanciful to believe that we can control it in the rest of the world.

Preventing the importation of drugs, especially those that are easy to hide because they are compact, is no easier than eradicating their source. Too many persons enter the United States each year, and our borders and coastlines are too long, to permit adequate interdiction. More aggressive use of both drug-courier profiles and border and coastline patrols will make some difference, of course, but to be effective these techniques are unacceptably costly. Further, to the limited degree that they succeed, they only drive up both the price of the drugs and the consequent profits to the importers. In turn, the drug traders invest in more manpower and sophisticated technology, making further successful evasion more likely.

Law enforcement is equally stymied in attacking the next step: domestic manufacture or refinement of raw materials and distribution. Again, to many people the profit potential outweighs the risk. And there is no complaining victim to direct law enforcement to the distributors; misguided though they may be, drug users are consenting victims. Flashy arrests requiring skill and courage deserve our admiration, but they have no lasting effect on supply. As soon as one drug ring is broken by arrest, or one “rock house” is rammed, another takes its place. Thoroughly effective law enforcement would require so many police, prosecutorial, judicial and correctional resources that society could not afford the cost.

Another, less obvious, obstacle to winning the “drug war” is the corruption of law enforcement itself, an inevitable byproduct of the immense size and profits of the drug trade--as J. Edgar Hoover well knew when he prevented the FBI from being involved in drug enforcement. The amount of money available to buy off law enforcement or to involve officers in the drug trade is so staggering that corruption is inevitable, even in fine police departments and in the higher reaches of government. Moreover, drug enforcement is such a “dirty” and frustrating enterprise that demoralization and burn-out are common.

Finally, law enforcement cannot stop drug supply on the necessary scale and still be consistent with the constitutional values of privacy and dignity that we all cherish. Because the drug trade is consensual and its secrecy can be protected so easily by its ready cash, law enforcement must routinely use the most worrisome, intrusive legal methods, such as undercover work that tends toward entrapment and electronic surveillance. Too often illegal means are used unwittingly--or, in frustration, wittingly. The result: understandable but disquieting intrusions on civil liberties and pressure to expand the state’s right to intrude on the privacy of all of us.

There is nothing new about the most recent proposals to wage a war against drugs. What could be new is our response. For once we should ask: What possible reason is there to believe that spending more money now, even lots of it, on the usual programs is likely to have more than temporary, limited success, if any?