"Our marriages rarely last, and prisoners are usually shipped far from their homes. Contact with our children is minimal and often lost. Within about two years the lives of all concerned are irrevocably altered, generally for the worst: wives divorce and remarry; children grow up. The prisoner watches it all from the glass coffin of a prison cell. Behind the wire we are subjected to unremitting harassment, degradation, danger and discomfort, separated from virtually everything that makes life worthwhile. The years pass, one into the next, and many men simply go around the bend." - G. Patrick Callahan, co-founder of the November Coalition
Today
we find ourselves at war both abroad and on our own streets here at home.
Most people these days assume when I say that I mean the war on terrorists
and while that is a serious issue the war I’m talking about is a civil war,
A REAL GUNS, BODIES AND PRISONRS TAKEN WAR. A civil war that is ravaging in
our country right now this very minute. Somewhere in
“More people began a prison or a jail term in the
It is no secret that punitive drug laws fuel this terrible
rush to imprisonment. By studying drug law convictions over the past twenty
years, researchers have produced alarming figures. The number of people sent
to jail or prison for drug law violations increased more than tenfold. One
in four prisoners in the
The length of federal prison sentences has increased dramatically due to the
abolition of federal parole in 1984 and the implementation of guideline sentencing
beginning in 1986. These laws were changed without public knowledge, advice
or consultation from any agency with expertise in sentencing or enforcement.
“ The November Coalition
And the most astonishing thing about the civil war is that we all know about, we all accept it is going on but almost no one seems to really realizes this is not a metaphoric war. No some far off war on exotic drug smugglers, no this is real blood and guts civil war going on between our law enforcement and our family members, our friends and our neighbors.
The War on Drugs is the most well spun and amazingly successful deception ever perpetrated on this country. We shrug it off as something happening in Columbia and to those scary bad drug people. We buy the story that we must spend billions of dollars in an admittedly un-winnable war against our own citizens who in fact are for the most part harming no one but themselves, if that.
Detroit Police Chief Jerry Oliver is not convinced that expending more energy — and making more drug arrests — will help win the crusade. "We will never arrest our way out of this problem," he says. "All you have to do is go to almost any corner in any city. It will tell you that. …
"Clearly, we're losing the war on drugs in this country [and] it's insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over again." ABC News
Americans want and will have their drugs regardless of the laws. The Presidents Office of National Drug Control Policy found that in 1998 we spent: $39 billion on cocaine, $12 billion on heroin, $2.2 billion on methamphetamine, $11 billion on marijuana, $2.3 billion on other illegal drugs. A whopping $66.5 billion total!
"The only reason that coke is worth that much money is that it's illegal," argues Father Joseph Kane, a priest in a drug-ravaged Bronx neighborhood in New York City. "Pure cocaine is three times the cost of gold. Now if that's the case, how are you gonna stop people from selling cocaine?"
Kane has come to believe that while drug abuse is bad, drug prohibition is worse — because the black market does horrible things to his community. "There's so much money in it, it's staggering," he says. ABC News
We are taking sick people, people with a recognized disease, closely related to alcoholism and locking them away for being sick. It is a treatable disease but we spend almost nothing on treatment. It’s our official policy to making them criminals and we are locking them away in record numbers.
And we are demonizing anyone in public life foolish enough to point out the madness. McCarthyism was child’s play compared to the way we have been treating anyone who comes out even a little against the War on Drugs.
In 1991, Joycelyn Elders, who would become President Clinton's surgeon general, dared to suggest legalization might reduce crime. Critics almost immediately called for her resignation. "How can you ever fix anything if you can't even talk about it?" Elders says. ABC News
We have the highest percentage of out citizens incarcerated then any modern country. This includes the baldest of the bad, Sadum Hussein. We have far greater percentage of our citizens behind bars then he ever dreamed of. And over 60% of them are there for non-violent drug offenses that occurred behind closed doors between consenting adults.
Approximately 236800 people are expected to be incarcerated for drug law violations in 2004. About 648 are locked up every day. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics
The absurd part is that at every level you find sane reasonable experts that tell us this. The concept of shutting off the supply and punishment doesn’t work. Treatment and education does and it is far less expensive then incarceration. Not even counting the billions that would be saved in law enforcement, that could then be put to what we really need Homeland security.
The
State and local governments spent at least another 20 billion. Drucker, Dr. Ernest, (1998, Jan./Feb.).
Public Health Reports,, "Drug
Prohibition and Public Health."
The cost to put a single drug dealer in jail is about $450,000, composed of the following: The cost for arrest and conviction is about $150,000. The cost for an additional prison bed is about $50,000 to $150,000, depending upon the jurisdiction. It costs about $30,000 per year to house a prisoner. With an average sentence of 5 years, that adds up to another $150,000. The same $450,000 can provide treatment or education for about 200 people. In addition, putting a person in prison produces about fifteen dollars in related welfare costs, for every dollar spent on incarceration. Every dollar spent on treatment and education saves about five dollars in related welfare costs.
The worst unintended consequence of the drug war is drug crime. Films like Reefer Madness told us that people take drugs and just go crazy. But, in reality people rarely go crazy or become violent because they're high. The violence happens because dealers arm themselves and have shootouts over turf. Most of the drug-related violence comes from the fact that it's illegal, argues Kane. Violence also happens because addicts steal to pay the high prices for drugs. ABC News
The enormous cost in dollars and human suffering is what I’m focusing on. The lives and families destroyed. Thousands of children today are growing up in a vicious circle of poverty, drugs and jail. When often the only person that cares about them is gone because we locked them up and left that child to the courts.
We must decriminalize, and fully fund prevention and treatment. That is not only what all the experts tell us is the only way to really deal with the drug problem but it will save us, our nation billions and billions of dollars. Not to mention the devastating cost to our lives and families. By now all of us have been touched by this war, from poets to presidents.
This
is a wake up call
Please, it’s your country, be courageous, be a patriot and stand up now to put and end to this. Together we have the power to stop the madness and heal the broken lives and families.