BY IAN G. STRACHAN
Nassau, Bahamas
The United States of America has been, for the at least the last 100 years, the nation the world looks to. Its citizens have been responsible for some of the greatest innovations of modern history: from Bell’s telephone, to Edison’s light bulb, to the Wright brothers’ winged flight, to Ford’s Model T.
And to bring this home for us in today’s Information Age, we can thank a few living Americans for some our current global obsessions: Google, Facebook and Twitter. Of course, bright people the world over have contributed to the medical and technological advances of our age, but few would deny that there has been something special about the American spirit and attitude. The world has watched and been inspired by the courage, sacrifice, creativity, determination, ambition and love of freedom so many American lives have been a testament to.
We in The Bahamas, given our proximity, have been especially fortunate, in most ways, where the U.S.A. is concerned. It is no exaggeration to say that our lives depend upon a close and friendly relationship with the world’s leading nation, our next door neighbor. We import our food, receive most of our visitors, and educate thousands of our children, in the U.S. I am a perfect example of just how true it is that America is a “land of opportunity.”
When there was no such thing as a BA in English in The Bahamas, I went to Martin Luther King’s alma mater and earned one at Morehouse College. I went on to an Ivy League university (that university waived my tuition and paid me to study) and I eventually taught at the University of Massachusetts. I find so much that inspires me and humbles me about American society. But to all coins there’s a flip side.
A country as big and strong as America will help the world when it gets things right and it will hurt the world when it gets things wrong. The War on Drugs is one of the things America has gotten dead wrong and because of it so many people have wound up dead or in prison, especially people who look like me or live in countries like mine. Instead of saying no to drugs, the U.S. should say OK to drugs. I know, that sounds crazy. But I’m just trying to find a catchy, succinct way to say what some other very thoughtful people, leaders in fact, have said in a recent United Nations report.
The Report of the Global Commission on Drugs has just been released this month. Among the commissioners were Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the U.N.; George P. Shultz, former Secretary of State of United States; Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil; George Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece; César Gaviria, former President of Colombia; Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico; and Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland and Minister of Home Affairs. Not a bunch of lightweights or lefty potheads and hippies.
The very first words of the Report are direct and damning: “The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the U.N. Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed. Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption. Apparent victories in eliminating one source or trafficking organization are negated almost instantly by the emergence of other sources and traffickers . Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities and other harmful consequences of drug use. Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction.”
What does this mean? Let me say it in a way that the man on the street will fully understand. Fighting the supply of drugs, instead of addressing the demand for drugs, only makes things worse and causes more human suffering. When you send people to prison who actually need medical or psychiatric treatment, you don’t address drug dependency; you just create angry, criminally minded people. When you criminalize drug use you give power to organized crime and you make getting the drug and selling the drug dangerous. It is better to regulate it. It just is. It is better to engage all the institutions of society to address the needs of those who are dependent and to enable future generations to avoid dependency. Prohibition doesn’t work.
The Report’s recommendation? “End the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others. Challenge rather than reinforce common misconceptions about drug markets, drug use and drug dependence. Encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.”
The Commission report goes on to say that “Repeated studies have demonstrated that governments achieve much greater financial and social benefit for their communities by investing in health and social programs, rather than investing in supply reduction and law enforcement activities [read: policing and jailing]. However, in most countries, the vast majority of available resources are spent on the enforcement of drug laws and the punishment of people who use drugs.”
Now, I know what many of you must be thinking. You’re telling us to legalize drugs, Strachan? You been smoking some of that stuff yourself, hey? Then you trot out the slippery slope arguments. Legalize marijuana and you create a nation of potheads. If that were true, we would also have a nation of alcoholics (don’t exaggerate). We have many, yes, but imagine if beer were illegal. Imagine the absurd criminality and violence that would ensue and the greater fascination with “the drug” because it would be taboo. Do I believe we need to better regulate the sale of alcohol in The Bahamas? Absolutely. Should we make it illegal or cigarettes illegal? Absolutely not.
The Report notes that “decriminalization initiatives do not result in significant increases of drug use” and they give examples of nations who have decriminalized drug use to prove it.
Multiple arrests for drug trafficking do not mean you are eliminating drug trafficking; it means you are changing the players and ensuring new turf wars. This is in large part why our own FNM government has an impressive record thus far of drug seizure and arrest but can do nothing about the murder rate or the availability of marijuana and cocaine on the streets.
“The available scientific evidence suggests that increasing the intensity of law enforcement interventions to disrupt drug markets is unlikely to reduce drug gang violence. Instead, the existing evidence suggests that drug-related violence and high homicide rates are likely a natural consequence of drug prohibition and that increasingly sophisticated and well-resourced methods of disrupting drug distribution networks may unintentionally increase violence.”
The Report quotes U.K. researchers who contend that, “Law enforcement efforts can have a significant negative impact on the nature and extent of harms associated with drugs by (unintentionally) increasing threats to public health and public safety, and by altering both the behavior of individual drug users and the stability and operation of drug markets (e.g. by displacing dealers and related activity elsewhere or increasing the incidence of violence as displaced dealers clash with established ones).”
So what? We in The Bahamas should just legalize marijuana and cocaine use? Yes. And no. Yo. Seriously, we can’t do that. Such a decision would have devastating consequences. Not because of increased drug use but because of the hell fire we would attract from our neighbor to the North. We can’t make this decision in isolation, I’m sorry to say. We are too small and too dependent. The nations of the Americas, all of the Americas, must somehow bring the greatest nation in the Americas, the US, to its senses, and force them to address the demand, not the supply. And address drug use more humanely and constructively. Between 1999 and 2007, 80 percent of all drug arrests in America were for possession, not sale.
The people of this hemisphere, the poorest people of this hemisphere, suffer the most from this war. And the poor of America, particularly blacks in America, suffer disproportionately as well. Human Rights Watch’s 2009 report, “Decades of Disparity” shows that between 1980 and 2007, blacks were as much as 5 times more likely to be charged for drug possession. In 2003 50 percent of those in prison on drug possession are black. This is not because blacks use drugs more but because the establishment pursues them more and the justice system is harsher toward them. One source noted that blacks represent 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions and 74% of people sent to prison for drug possession crimes in the US.
So the next time a D.E.U. officer winds up dead or a young man is killed in a “drug related” incident, remember, they are casualties in a lousy loser’s war.
IAN STRACHAN is Associate Professor of English at The College of The Bahamas. You can write him at strachantalk@gmail.com or visit www.ianstrachan.wordpress.com
Jun 16, 2011
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