As a retired naval officer I know that war is serious business. War involves loss of life, and should be fought to win using all available resources to win quickly, and with minimum casualties.
President Richard Nixon declared a “war” on drugs just prior to extracting the United States from the Vietnam War. Both “wars” employed a no-win defensive strategy. Both cost the taxpayers billions of dollars, and thousands of American lives. Overdose deaths now number just under 40,000 per year, not even accounting for thousands more so-called “accidental” drug deaths. Both “wars” have neither been declared won nor lost. The parallel is stark.
Thousands fight the nearly 40-year-old “war” on drugs just as thousands fought in Vietnam, with faith in their government to deploy a winning strategy. When it became clear that our government was not in it to win it, military officers began viewing a combat tour in Vietnam as just another “ticket to punch” for promotion. Opponents of the war decried the corrupt influence of the military-industrial complex. With the “war” on drugs, taxpayers are funding an enormous “treatment, enforcement and incarceration complex.” In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and moms and dads are lost to overdose ... with no end in sight.
As we see drug legalization initiatives sprout up all over, it appears that the public is growing just as weary of the “war” on drugs as it similarly grew weary of the “war” in Vietnam. Just as the voters rose up and said “enough” to our government’s failed Vietnam “war” strategy, voters are on the verge of demanding an end to what is seen as a failed “drug war.” As evidence, so called “medical marijuana” is now the law in California, 14 other states and the District of Columbia.
“Medical marijuana” is de facto legalization. It is a hoax perpetrated by greedy drug profiteers and corrupted politicians. Marijuana is classified by the Food and Drug Administration as a Schedule I illegal narcotic with no medicinal value. Although Proposition 19 failed in November 2010, California will likely pass a finely honed recreational drug-use initiative in 2012, mostly because voters are weary, and with no way to shift the drug war strategy to offense (prevention at the adolescent level through nonpunitive random drug testing) from defense (supply interruption).
There has always been, and there always will be, a strong inclination for human beings to seek out intoxicating substances. And economic theory teaches us that supply will always rise to meet demand. If supply is interrupted, a temporary increase in price will occur, until supply increases. The only logical strategy for combating drug demand is a balanced one. For every dollar spent on supply interruption, there should be a dollar spent on prevention and demand reduction. Currently, only 2 percent of the “drug war” budget is spent on demand reduction.
Prevention must be concentrated where almost all substance addiction begins, with adolescents ages 12 to 21. Prevention is an action. To win the war, random nonpunitive drug testing is an imperative, as is education about the severe damage done to young undeveloped brains by adolescent drug use. In the military, in safety-sensitive transportation industries and elsewhere, random drug testing reduces use by 90 percent or more.
Whenever an unbalanced or losing strategy is employed to ostensibly win a war, it is wise to follow the money. We know that treatment is very costly and over an addict’s lifetime is barely successful 10 percent of the time. Could it be that there is just too much money being made in the fields of treatment, enforcement and incarceration to shift our strategy to win the war? Could it be that huge taxpayer-funded industries have sprung up to serve individuals suffering from the adolescent onset, epidemic disease of addiction? Prisons, public transportation boondoggles, taxpayer-subsidized housing, women’s shelters, drug rehabilitation facilities, and hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats operating public-assistance programs for the homeless all benefit by a failed drug “war” strategy.
Unless we refocus and reallocate 50 percent or more of our resources toward prevention and drug demand reduction, the voters will have no choice. They will vote to end this costly “war.” If this happens, we all lose.
— Retired Navy Cmdr. Ron Cuff is a board member of the Coalition for a Drug-Free California and associate national director of the Navy and Marine Corps’ Campaign for a Drug-Free America. He is the founder of American Investments, a real-estate investment company in Paso Robles, a decorated former Navy pilot and was the commanding officer of a Naval Reserve Unit at Naval Air Station Point Mugu. Click here for more information on the Coalition for a Drug-Free California.
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