Hey Progressives: Why Don't you Care About the "Drug War" Like You Care About Other Issues?

By Ethan Nadelmann, AlterNet. Posted June 12, 2009.

We arrested 1.8 million Americans last year for a drug offense, 800,000 of those for possessing a small amount of marijuana. We now have 13 million Americans living with a felony conviction -- of which approximately 4.5 million were convicted of a drug offense.

When you look at what happened in the elections from 2000 to 2006, I can assure you that simply focusing on the people who are disenfranchised for a drug law violation, if they had not had their voting rights stripped, if they had retained their right to vote like people arrested for similar offenses in other countries, that the election results would have been very different in the Senate, and probably the presidential elections. This has consequences for our democracy.

There is a movement growing, indeed growing quickly, to end this oppressive war on drugs. I want to talk frankly about this. And please excuse me if you begin to feel a little uncomfortable, because I'll tell you from my days as a professor that people often learn best when they start to get a little uncomfortable.

I need to challenge you about your own views and assumptions about all this, because I believe that among the things that most hold back progressive reform in this area are the prejudices and fears and ignorance that persist and that we perpetuate in our own selves.

Some people look at me, and others like me, and ask, "Are you just some white upper-middle-class guy who wants to get high and smoke your pot -- is that all it's really about?"

My answer is, partially, yes.

But that's not my only answer, because this growing movement to end the drug war is not just those of us who enjoy our marijuana and Ecstasy and psychedelics, who don't cause problems for anyone else, and who resent being treated as criminals for doing what we do.

This movement is also the people who hate drugs, who have seen the worst that drugs can do -- people who are living with addiction or holding on to sobriety, who have seen their family members become addicted, who have seen loved ones die of overdoses -- but who nonetheless believe that the war on drugs is not the way to deal with drugs and addiction in our society.

And this movement includes all the people who don't give a damn about drugs one way or the other but who do care about preserving the Bill of Rights and our constitutional liberties, who are angered and embarrassed by the racial injustice of our prison system, who hate what the government is doing with our tax dollars, who are horrified by what the global drug war is doing to Mexico and Colombia and Afghanistan, and other nations as well.   

So when people ask, "Who is this emerging drug policy reform movement?" I respond that we are the people who love drugs, we are the people who hate drugs and we are the people who don't give a damn about drugs, but every one of us believes that the war on drugs is not the way to deal with the reality of drugs in our society.

Now, the fact of the matter is, there has never been a drug-free society in human history, and there never will be one. Our challenge therefore is not how best to build a moat between our children and drugs; our challenge rather is how to learn to live with drugs -- the reality of drugs -- so that they cause the least possible harm and the greatest possible benefit.

How do we do that in ways that are consistent with our values about freedom and justice, fairness and human rights? How do we do that? I know that in this audience here, many of us are still afraid to reconcile our political values with our personal lives and viewpoints.

How many of us used to smoke pot but now fear our children smoking it? How many of us used to think it should be legal but now no longer do? Why do we become hypocrites? It's not because we're afraid our kids are going to do things that we never did -- it's because we're afraid our kids are going to do the same dumb things we did do, but that they won't be so lucky.

But that's not a basis for keeping the drug laws the way they are. I am astounded at times at the hypocrisy of the people whom I went to college with and got high with, and now we all have teenagers, and oh my god, we start sounding like right-wing reactionaries when push comes to shove on this issue.

The issue of removing marijuana from the criminal justice system has to be a progressive issue. Forty percent of Americans now say that marijuana should be regulated like alcohol, and it's closer to 50 percent among Democrats, independents, people under the age of 30 and the electorate in a growing number of western states. 

Just last month, [California] Gov. [Arnold] Schwarzenegger said it's time for a real debate on making marijuana legal -- and he's not the only elected official saying this. The time to move forward on this issue is now.

When we look at the rest of the criminal justice system, I'm happy to see the movement in Congress to eliminate the crack-cocaine sentencing disparity. I'm happy to see Republicans and Democrats, President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, all saying the time is now. It took 20 years, it was a tragedy, it wasted uncountable numbers of lives -- but at least we can count on major reform sometime soon.

But let's understand the more profound racial injustice of this drug war. Let's understand that when you look at the question about why some drugs are legal and some drugs are illegal today, it doesn't have to do with the relative risks of these drugs.

See more stories tagged with: racism, war on drugs, social justice, criminal justice system, ethan nadelmann, crack-cocaine disparity

Ethan Nadelmann is founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

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