The long, lost war

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Iraq war (including the occupation) has been going on for a long time, has cost a huge amount of money (and lives), and has been lost (at least based on initial definitions of victory), but there is another war that has been doing on for much longer, has cost much more money and many lives, and that has also been lost.

What war is that? The war on drugs.

Former BBC reporter Misha Glenny has an excellent article at the Post on that war -- and on what has gone wrong. Here's a key passage:

The trade in illegal narcotics begets violence, poverty and tragedy. And wherever I went around the world, gangsters, cops, victims, academics and politicians delivered the same message: The war on drugs is the underlying cause of the misery. Everywhere, that is, except Washington, where a powerful bipartisan consensus has turned the issue into a political third rail.

The problem starts with prohibition, the basis of the war on drugs. The theory is that if you hurt the producers and consumers of drugs badly enough, they'll stop doing what they're doing. But instead, the trade goes underground, which means that the state's only contact with it is through law enforcement, i.e. busting those involved, whether producers, distributors or users. But so vast is the demand for drugs in the United States, the European Union and the Far East that nobody has anything approaching the ability to police the trade.

Prohibition gives narcotics huge added value as a commodity. Once traffickers get around the business risks -- getting busted or being shot by competitors -- they stand to make vast profits. A confidential strategy report prepared in 2005 for British Prime Minister Tony Blair's cabinet and later leaked to the media offered one of the most damning indictments of the efficacy of the drug war. Law enforcement agencies seize less than 20 percent of the 700 tons of cocaine and 550 tons of heroin produced annually. According to the report, they would have to seize 60 to 80 percent to make the industry unprofitable for the traffickers.

Supply is so plentiful that the price of a gram of heroin is plummeting in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom. As for cocaine, according to the UNODC, the street price of a gram in the United States is now less than $70, compared with $184 in 1990. Adjusted for inflation, that's a threefold drop.

The demand is enormous, the supply is there, and law enforcement efforts and military actions have barely made a dent. Whether it's been the police or the military waging the war, whether the U.S. or anyone else, the drug trade has flourished. Seriously, what exactly has been accomplished? By most accounts -- and by that I mean accounts other than those that hold sway in Washington -- hardly anything at all.

So what is to be done? Glenny doesn't have the answers, and neither do I. Simply, there are no easy answers. I can only repeat what I wrote back in March: "The point is to recognize that the war on drugs, the enforcement of illiberal laws that don't work, cannot succeed. Once that line is crossed, it will be possible to discuss in concrete terms what drugs should be legalized and how best to do so -- and to begin to educate ourselves (and our children) honestly about the risks associated with drug use."

I tend to favour broad legalization, but, again, the point is to move beyond the war on drugs. Why continue to wage a lost war that is costing so much?