How the Drug War Harms, Not Helps, Kids

When George W. Bush recently revealed his drug war plan, which would pull another $2.7 billion from federal coffers to end the illegal narcotics trade, his speech was all about the children. "The job of protecting our children falls to us," he pontificated, calling drugs "the enemies of innocence and hope and ambition."

This year the federal government will spend more than $18 billion to, in Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey's words, "protect the lives of 68 million American children." Two-thirds of that money will be spent on interdiction and enforcement, an effort that McCaffrey says is aimed at "keeping drugs out of the hands of young people." State and local governments are expected to spend twice that much.

But is the drug war really protecting our children? Are our tax dollars, our booming prison industry, our international military aid really keeping illicit drugs away from our kids? The evidence suggests that far from keeping kids safe, drug prohibition actually gives kids more access to drugs, and that the drug war makes their world more dangerous in numerous other ways.

Marijuana is unquestionably the most commonly used illicit substance in America. There were more than 800,000 marijuana arrests in 1999, 85 percent for simple possession. Enforcement of marijuana laws accounts for the largest proportion of domestic drug war spending -- McCaffrey has repeatedly touted "a 12 year-old smoking a joint" as "the most dangerous drug in America."

Yet the University of Michigan's "Monitoring the Future" survey of 8th, 10th and 12th graders indicates that despite our best efforts at enforcement, nearly 80 percent of 10th graders and nearly 90 percent of 12th graders rate marijuana as "fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain. Those numbers are up slightly since 1992, the first year for which such data exists. As for other illicit drugs, in 1999 cocaine was "easily" available to 25 percent of 8th graders, methamphetamine was "easily" available to 41 percent of 10th graders, and LSD was "easily" available to 45 percent of high school seniors.

Critics of current U.S. drug policy argue that a system of legal, regulated distribution of currently illicit drugs would place these markets under the control of responsible society. But McCaffrey has ridiculed the idea, telling the House Government Reform criminal justice panel on June 16, 1999 that, "American parents clearly don't want children to use a fake ID at the corner store to buy heroin."

The irony, of course, is that under prohibition there are no enforceable age restrictions on the purchase of illegal drugs. The corner store that sells alcohol might lose its state license if it sells booze to minors. But out on the corner itself, no one gets carded.

A survey conducted in 1998 by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (www.casacolumbia.org), a non-profit organization under the direction of former Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joseph Califano, underscores this point. The survey asked 9th through 12th graders which was easiest for them to buy: cigarettes, beer or marijuana. While each age group listed cigarettes as easiest, twice as many ninth graders and a remarkable four times as many 12th graders listed marijuana as easier to buy than beer.

History shows that we should not be surprised by these statistics. While alcohol prohibition was adopted under the banner of protecting children, its utter failure in that regard was noted most vividly by those on the front lines. In 1925, Salvation Army Colonel William L. Barker told the St. Cloud (Minnesota) Press, "Prohibition has diverted the energies of the Salvation Army from the drunkard in the gutter to the boys and girls in their teens," he said. "The work of the Army has completely changed in the past five years... Prohibition has so materially affected society that we have girls in our rescue homes who are 14 and 15 years old, while 10 years ago the youngest was in the early twenties." Protecting children, in fact, later became a rallying cry for prohibition's repeal.