Operation Pipeline Express was an action carried out by Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Photo Courtesy of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Department of Homeland Security)/Wikimedia Commons)
Correction: This article originally cited the United Kingdom Drug Policy Commission as the organization for the study in question. The study was released by the Home Office department of the United Kingdom.
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Last week, the United Kingdom government department Home Office released a study asserting that the majority of drug eradication efforts have failed. After examining controlled substance laws from 11 different countries, the HO deemed most of them costly and ineffective. The study sought to prove a sentiment felt across the globe: given its failures, isn’t it time to end the War on Drugs?
President Ronald Reagan started our own country’s war on drugs. Upon entering office in 1981, he announced that a crackdown on narcotics was imminent, and eventually established a set of laws that included massively increased penalties for minor drug possession and education policies demonizing experimentation. At the time, no one thought this was a bad idea – after all, how could an extremely religious man who sought advice from an astrologist ever be wrong?
More than three decades later, the justice system has been completely altered. The legal penalties of the War on Drugs can strip people of their futures – being arrested on a felony drug charge is as detrimental as being arrested on a felony bank robbery charge. It’s shocking Americans still stand for the $51 billion-per-year program, though opinions are changing; 60 percent of citizens no longer support the harsh penalties for possession of “hard” drugs like cocaine and heroin.
So how do powerful Western nations go about legalizing drugs without turning choir girls and Eagle Scouts into addicts? The first step is to outline treatment solutions for those who might be prone to having “a little too much fun,” if you will. At present, one of the greatest challenges to drug rehabilitation is that it’s hardly an option for most street addicts. Treatment is expensive, often religious in connotation and rarely even given as an option by the courts. Instead, drug offenders are sent to prison, where taxpayers are billed for the time junkies spend writhing on the floor, waiting for release to get their next fix.
Rather than punishing those who choose to use and abuse, it would be more beneficial to implement effective methods of treatment and offer educational programs promoting moderation, instead of demonizing drugs altogether. To punish those who are harming no one but themselves is counterintuitive. By deeming all drug users criminals, governments gloss over the millions of contributing members of society who enjoy their own recreational vices in moderation.
Ending the War on Drugs may only be the first step toward the solution, but it’s certainly the longest. Legalizing the recreational usage of most drugs doesn’t open the door to more addiction, as the aforementioned study has found. Instead, it allows people to decide how they want to handle their own lives, exchanging substance control for self-control. Let’s stop telling people what they can’t do, and instead start teaching them how to do what they want to do, responsibly.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Sam Schanfarber at samuel.schanfarber@colorado.edu.
