In an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008.
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Several years ago I sat on a extended Federal Grand Jury in the Middle District of Florida. During those years we jurors heard a hundred or more drug cases. Every single one of those cases to be prosecuted by the U.S. Assistant Attorney's General were street users and low level dealers with just barely enough illegal substance to satisfy requirements for prosecution.
The local police were busting every user they could find in a Palmetto ghetto. They popped a man sitting on a park bench in Robles Park who had a couple of rocks of coke but was too stoned to realize there was a uniformed cop standing next to him.
None, absolutely none, of the people we indicted were higher up the drug chain.
It is way past time to end the war on drugs. It isn't working.
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