News Release

November 29, 2000

For so many reasons, the drug war is a failure
New Cato Institute book looks at alternative approaches to drug policy

WASHINGTON—In Washington, the drug policy debate extends little beyond deciding how much more money should be pumped into the war on drugs. Outside the capital, however, Americans are concluding that the drug war has been given a chance to work and has failed, as evidenced by the success of a number of drug reform ballot initiatives and by the popularity of governors, such as New Mexico's Gary Johnson and Minnesota's Jesse Ventura, who support some legalization.

A new Cato Institute book, "After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century," edited by criminal justice scholar Timothy Lynch, makes the case that the drug war has done more harm to our society than have the substances it aims to eradicate and that we should now broaden the public policy debate to include alternative approaches. The chapters of the book are a veritable top-10 list of why the drug war has failed:

1. It wastes resources. "For all the money that we're putting into the war on drugs," writes New Mexico Gov. Gary E. Johnson, "it is an absolute failure."

2. It's unconstitutional. Constitutional scholar Roger Pilon shows that the Constitution had to be amended to authorize alcohol prohibition but no such authorization has been given for the war on drugs. The federal government is waging a drug war "without constitutional authority."

3. It violates our rights. Yale law professor Steven Duke argues that the drug war strips Americans of their Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure protections and Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

4. It militarizes the police. Local cops now use military-style tactics and weapons to prosecute the drug war, which has led to unnecessary shootings and killings, according to David B. Kopel of the Independence Institute.

5. It's a failed strategy. Former DEA agent Michael Levine says, "Enforcing criminal laws against dealers has about as much chance of making any impact on the drug problem as a Honda Civic has of breaking the sound barrier."

6. It can't be policed. Most crime victims will report the crime and eagerly help police catch the perpetrator, but former New York police officer Joseph D. McNamara writes that "drug dealing and drug use are consensual transactions between people who treasure their privacy."

7. It's paternalistic. "We cannot protect free adults from their own poor choices," writes former Los Angeles police officer and professor of criminology David Klinger, "and we should not use the force of law to try."

8. Its draconian penalties are unjust. Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, explains how simple possession of drugs can land a person in jail for 5 to 10 years, even in cases in which the sentencing judge would have chosen otherwise.

9. It inflicts collateral damage. Eroding civil liberties, exploding prison populations and continuing violence are just some effects of the drug war, writes Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute.

10. It has unintended consequences. George Mason University law professor Daniel Polsby says the drug war distorts the justice system and has created perverse incentives that attract juveniles to crime.

In the final chapter, former California attorney general Daniel Lungren offers a contrasting view, arguing that the drug war is working and that a change in the current policy will result in greater long-term costs.

"As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started and can be won, if at all, only by converting the United States into a police state."

-Milton Friedman
Nobel laureate in economics
Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
From the foreword to the book

"After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century"

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