Forty years ago, when Pres. Richard Nixon publicly declared his intention to wage “a new, all-out offensive” against drugs, many Americans believed that tougher enforcement of drug laws would put an end to drug abuse in the United States once and for all.
However, that isn’t what has happened. When I ran for governor of New Mexico in 1994, I promised to bring a common-sense business approach to government. Everything was going to be a cost-benefit analysis – how much of taxpayers’ money are we spending, and what are we getting for the money we spend?
As governor, I was astonished to learn that half of what we were spending on law enforcement, courts and prisons was drug-related, and yet illegal drugs were cheaper, stronger and more available than ever. After further study, it became obvious to me that the drug war had created a lucrative black market and was enriching and empowering violent gangs and cartels. In many ways, it was like alcohol prohibition all over again, with similarly disastrous results.
I decided I simply couldn’t allow the status quo to continue unchallenged, so in 1999 I became an advocate for legalizing marijuana and adopting harm reduction strategies for dealing with abuse of harder drugs (including prescriptions). I’ve been making these arguments ever since, and in recent months they have been resonating more strongly than ever.
The drug reform movement got a big boost last month when an international commission released a report criticizing the war on drugs. The Global Commission on Drug Policy was a 19-member commission that included Kofi Annan, a former U.N. secretary general; George Shultz, Pres. Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state; and Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve.
The report’s conclusions are clearly stated: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the U.S. government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.”
Study these issues and I bet you’ll agree that the Global Commission on Drug Policy is right. The Department of Justice reported that, in 2008, 2.3 million people were in our country’s jails and prisons. Yet it is clearer than ever that the worldwide supply of drugs can never be wiped out – no matter how strongly prohibitions are enforced.
If Republicans are truly serious when they talk about liberty and fiscal responsibility, and if they truly do their homework on the drug war, many will soon join me in my call for rational drug policy reform in the United States.
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is a candidate for the the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
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