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New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie recently admitted that the war on drugs has been a “failure” in a speech at The Brooking Institution. From Huffington Post:
“The war on drugs, while well-intentioned, has been a failure,” Christie said Monday during a speech at The Brookings Institution. “We’re warehousing addicted people everyday in state prisons in New Jersey, giving them no treatment.”
Christie stressed the merits of legislation recently passed by New Jersey state lawmakers that institutes a year of mandatory treatment for first-time, nonviolent drug offenders instead of jail time. The mandatory treatment program, slated to be put in place in at least three counties during its first year, will eventually expand statewide over the next five years.
This is an important statement coming from one of the most prominent Republicans governors. Open declarations that the drug war is a failure are something you more expect from Alan St. Peirre the Executive Director of NORML, than from a top Republican leader considered to be a potential Vice Presidential pick.
Simply admitting the drug war is a failure is not enough. Christie’s solution for addressing this failure, mandatory drug treatment for first time offenders is only barely an improvement over the status quo. The reality is that the overwhelming majority of people who use marijuana aren’t abusing it or becoming addicted to it. They don’t need to be forced into unnecessary and costly treatment programs.
That said, though, the very first step towards changing a bad policy is getting most people to agree the currently approach has failed. Only after getting agreeing on that basic point can you even start to have a productive debate about what is the best way to reform the situation.
If we are entering an era where the political debate is no longer whether or not we should maintain the war on drugs; but instead, a debate on how best to replace the war on drugs that all sides agree has failed, that is a positive step forward.
10 Comments
Forcing people into uneeded “Treatment” is like forcing people into incarceration.
Without clear distinctions between responsible use and actual drug abuse there can be no reasonable, realistic mental health policy.
But the Treatment For Profit industry is like the Prisons For Profit industry.
Declaring millions of people to be either criminals or crazy feeds their coffers, and those coffers will donate to political campaigns.
What a racket.
Are these “Treatment” facilities the equivalent of re-education camps? Surreal.
When it is uneeded and dictated by an arbirtrary standard imposed by Prohibition Policy, it is.
Jello Biafra has called it Ethnic Cleansing. Good respectable boozers run free unless they step outside certain legal standards of behavior like drunk driving, drunk and disorderly, MIP, etc.
Otherwise, they are not “Abusers” in any clinical sense.
Surreal indeed. Pot policy is more of a witch hunt than a realistic response to a plant and its euphoric properties.
For people who are convicted of cocaine, heroin and related substances possession crimes, this is big step in a positive direction. Moving away from incarceration and towards treatment could help reduce unnecessary damage currently being done to American communities (e.g., prevent breaking up families and improve employability prospects).
While I know a lot of people here are focused on marijuana crimes, those crimes are not the whole picture of the War on Drugs. Last I checked, DEA statistics showed that approximately 23% of all arrests are for cocaine/heroin possession crimes, and I would assume the conviction and incarceration rates are much higher than that.
Long story short, this could help a lot of people and communities. Hopefully other Republicans (and Democrats) start taking a more serious look at the costs of the current War on Drugs.
The PTB never admit to failure because the system has already been fixed to make them wealthy beyond belief at the expense of the 99ers. That’s the reason the policies have failed from the onset. Real reform is impossible under our current corrupt system of government.
Pre-trial diversion into mandatory treatment for non-violent first-time offenders? Routine in a number of other jurisdictions, and not remotely an end to the War On Drugs. A Republican prosecutor devised and helped set up my city’s “drug court” diversion program 18 years ago, and his Republican successor strongly supports it. Christie’s announcement is pretty small beer.
rhetoric is important. It shapes how we think and talk about issues.
Decriminalization or legalization of all “drugs” would result in the death of the profit motive and the violence associated with the drug trade. Unless ingesting drugs results in one person harming another, the government has no justification in any involvement with victimless crimes. The government approved methods for dealing with this non-problem that they’ve created, whether it is through the incarceration industry or the treatment industry, is just another effort to repay those who bankroll the clowns making and enforcing the laws.
That’s one way to deal with it.
I will disagree with you though that the harmful and anti-social effects of crack and methamphetamine usage are entirely localized within the user.
Read the second sentence in my comment @8.