So what do you call a country where the majority oppose a law and where, every year, almost a million people are arrested for opposing the law? What do you call a country that has robbed six million Americans of their voting rights? Certainly not a democracy. Certainly not a place where power flows from the people. It is time for us to stop treating the debate over drug decriminalization as just another political issue. It's not. The drug war has turned the United States into a police state. When the government ignores what the people want and incarcerates them for doing something that harms no one but themselves, we are living in a dictatorship.
Today a dear friend was sentenced to two years in prison for drug possession. The natural impulse upon hearing something like this is to insist that something else must have happened. Must have been a repeat offender. Must have been a violent crime. Nope. There's no justification. And the friend was lucky enough to have the assistance of the best attorney I know -- my husband.
My friend has two children. He has good parents who love him. He has a third child on the way. He is an occasional recreational user of marijuana when his children are not around. Not once has such use ever interfered with his judgment. When we were children, my friend was the voice of reason, always encouraging us not to sneak out, not to lie to our parents, and to please, for the love of God, do our homework.
As a result of the irresponsible, petulant, and frankly evil decisions of the prosecutor and judge today, my friend will lose two years of his life. If he's lucky, he won't be raped or brutalized in jail, but there's a reasonable chance that he will be, and that trauma will compound the already daunting prospects he'll face when he gets out. He will lose his right to vote, robbing him of any ability to voice his opposition to his treatment. He will struggle to get a job, because most employers do not hire convicted criminals. He will be ineligible for student loans. Oh, but don't worry, we'll ensure that despite dismal employment and educational prospects, he also won't be eligible for any help feeding his family, since convicted drug users are ineligible for public assistance. While he is in prison, he will be denied access to education, to communication with his family, to basic amenities.
But it's not just his life that will be ruined. His child will be born to a family without a father, forcing his child's mother to do everything -- including childbirth -- alone and on one income. His children will be without their father for two years, and will suffer all of the trauma and future risk factors that entails. And when he gets out, he will be on probation for 10 years and required to pay money to the state for the privilege of such probation. Because it's totally easy for convicted felons to get jobs, and the little money they make should definitely go to the state instead of to their families. After all, if the state doesn't get more money, then it can't lock more people up. And that would be fucking tragic.
For most of my life, I have prided myself on my friendly nature. I don't back down from a fight, but I want to find ways to agree with people. I want to encourage people to be better. I want to model the right way to treat people. But I can no longer do that regarding the drug war. The cost is too high, and I am unwilling to seek compromise on what has become the civil rights issue of our time. If you support the drug war, you are a modern-day Jim Crow supporter, and you are not worth my time or energy.
I've spent my life attending political functions and supporting imperfect candidates because I liked them, knew them, or thought they were the best of two bad choices. No longer. If you support the drug war, you will not get my time or my money. And I will devote the time and money I have to vociferously opposing you. "But I've known you your entire life!" you might be thinking, "Surely you can't mean me! I'm one of the good guys! I'm progressive/pro-choice/a nice person." Nope. If you are my friend and a politician who supports the drug war, I am speaking directly to you. You are unworthy of my support. You are unworthy even of my acknowledgment.
I'm willing to make one last-ditch effort to sway the anti-drug set, though, so let's have a go at it with some popular drug myths.
The Drug War Isn't Racist
This is laughably false. White Americans are significantly more likely to use drugs than people of color. And I'm not just talking pot. I'm also referring to harder drugs, such as cocaine and methamphetamine. Yet people of color are arrested at 300% the rate of white people. Black people are also more likely to serve time -- and longer sentences -- when they are arrested. You can no longer argue that this is because they use drugs more frequently, so you're left arguing that there's something inherently worse with black drug use. And that is overt racism. The war on drugs is a war on people of color, and anyone who tells you otherwise has no idea what they're talking about.
Illegal Drugs Cost Us Billions of Dollars
Excuse me while I go laugh for a while. Ok, I'm back. There's no denying that drug abuse harms our economy, but the drug war isn't the solution. Illegal drug use costs the economy about $185 billion dollars every year. Alcohol and tobacco? They run up a tab of $378 billion dollars every year. So unless you're going to argue for the criminalization of these drugs, you can't really fall on the "drug abuse is SOOOO EXPENSIVE!" argument.
The Drug War Is a Good Investment
Every credible analyst agrees that the drug war has been lost. And we are losing money that could be put to good use. The drug war costs $39 billion dollars every year. That's $130 dollars from every man, woman, and child in this country. It's also half the discretionary education budget, and I imagine funneling that money directly into education would reduce drug use a lot more quickly and much more humanely than locking up children and young adults has.
Drugs Are Bad
Anyone who makes this assertion needs to define "drug." I don't even drink alcohol, so you won't get much disagreement with me that drugs are bad. My brother is a recovering addict, and drug abuse runs in my family, so I've seen firsthand the ravages of drug use. Not once, though, has arresting a drug user ever made things better. Rehab is typically unavailable in prison. And when someone has no access to jobs, to the right to vote, or to any kind of safety net, it's unlikely that taking away six months, five years, or 20 years of their life is going to make things better for them or for anyone else.
But let's look at the actual numbers, for clarification. Illegal drugs cause fewer deaths than any other drug. 20,000 people die annually from the use of illicit drugs, compared to 20,000 from prescription drugs, 480,000 from tobacco, and 85,000 due to alcohol.
When we talk about marijuana, the anti-drug set looks even dumber (if that's even possible). No one has ever died as a direct result of marijuana, and only 109 people have ever died where marijuana was a secondary cause. If you argue that drugs are dangerous while drinking alcohol or smoking a cigarette, you are stupid. Let's just call you what you are.
Recreational Drug Use Harms People's Lives
Millions of people use marijuana every year without experiencing any deleterious life consequences (unless, of course, they are arrested, which will ruin their lives). Numerous U.S. Presidents have used drugs, and the three most recent presidents we've had were all drug users. It seems pretty clear that recreational drug use didn't ruin their lives. But if they were arrested, they would have been drug war casualties. It is not drug use, per se, that ruins people's lives. It is addiction and incarceration. Addiction is more effectively combated when people aren't held captive in prison and are unafraid to seek help. Incarceration offers no social benefit at all.
Drug Users Don't Get Tough Sentences
If you're white, that might be true, since you're less likely to be arrested for drug use. But if you're a person of color, think again. Drug offenders account for the majority of people incarcerated in federal prisons. Drugs are far from decriminalized. Even in states where marijuana has been legalized, the federal government prefers to spend your tax dollars raiding legal dispensaries.
Incarceration Keeps Us Safe
Every credible study has shown that incarceration makes prisoners worse. It can turn drug users into hardened criminals, and the after effects of incarceration rob convicted felons of their ability to make money legally. There are two million people incarcerated in the U.S., most for drug possession charges. This is quadruple 1980 numbers. Are that many more people criminals? No. Crime has declined significantly since 1980. And that's not because we're locking people up. Remember, someone has to commit a crime before being locked up, so with a 400% increase in the rate of incarceration, crime would have to be increasing for our incarceration rate to reflect anything other than injustice.
Incarceration also costs us dearly. Mass incarceration costs taxpayers $39 billion annually. And that doesn't account for the indirect costs. One in three black men spends some period of time incarcerated. 2.7 million children have a parent in jail or prison. What do you think that does to a child's sense of self-worth? Her support system? Her access to basic necessities?
Do the Crime, Do the Time
This was also the Nazi argument. Authoritarian approaches to justice are correlated with all kinds of unpleasant political outcomes. If you accept this argument, though, you must also be willing to accept going to prison the next time you speed, run a traffic light, fail to get your dog's legally required rabies vaccination, or engage in the wide number of petty crimes we each regularly commit. The law is not the sole source of morality, as Martin Luther King and Gandhi would be thrilled to point out to idiots who make these sorts of arguments.
But really, if you're the sort of person who believes this, you're probably part of the oppressive, repressive older generation who supports repressive anti-drug measures. My generation looks forward to the day when your generation can no longer inflict your idiocy on us. We don't have time to wait for your generation to die off, to lose power, or to finally come around on a fundamentally obvious and simple issue. So please get out of the way. There are millions more people just like my friend, who are suffering right now. Not ready to come around? Then please stop calling the U.S. a democracy.
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