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Fat chance of 'Change'
in the Drugs War

War on Drugs

institutionalized racism, legalization, obama, Obama's war on weed, war on drugs

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If not drug legalization, what, Mr. President?

By Leonard Pitts Jr.
The Miami Herald

If President Obama had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. So the president famously said.

And the president�s son would thereby find himself at significantly greater risk of running afoul of the so-called �War on Drugs� than, say, a son of George W. Bush. Depending on what state he lived in, a Trayvon Obama might be 57 times more likely than a Trayvon Bush to be imprisoned on drug charges.

This is not because he would be 57 times more likely to commit a drug crime. To the contrary, white American men commit the vast majority of the nation�s drug crimes, but African-American men do the vast majority of the nation�s drug time. It is a nakedly racial disparity that should leave the U.S. Department of �Justice� embarrassed to call itself by that name.

So it is difficult to be anything but disappointed at President Obama�s recent declaration at a summit in Colombia that �legalization is not the answer� to the international drug problem. The president argued that drug dealers might come to �dominate certain countries if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint.� This dominance, he said, �could be just as corrupting if not more corrupting than the status quo.�

One wonders if the president forgot to engage brain before operating mouth.

Dealers might �dominate certain countries?� Has Obama never heard of Mexico, that country on our southern border where drug dealers operate as a virtual shadow government in some areas? Is he unfamiliar with Colombia � his host nation � where, for years, the government battled a drug cartel brutal and brazen enough to attack the Supreme Court and assassinate the attorney general? That scenario Obama warns against actually came to pass a long time ago.

Similarly, it is a mystery how the manufacture and sale of a legal product could be �just as corrupting if not more corrupting than the status quo.� How could that be, given that there would no longer be a need for drug merchants to bribe judges, politicians and police for protection? What reason is there to believe a legal market in drugs would be any more prone to corruption than the legal markets in cigarettes and alcohol? Or, popcorn and chocolate?

The president�s reasoning is about as sturdy as a cardboard box in a monsoon. Even he must know � who can still deny? � that the drug war has failed. When it comes to quantifying that failure, several numbers are stark and edifying:

Forty-one. That�s how many years the �War� has raged.

Forty million-plus. That�s how many Americans have been arrested.

One trillion-plus. That�s the cost.

Two thousand, eight hundred. That�s the percentage by which drug use has risen.

One-point-three. That�s the percentage of Americans who were drug addicted in 1914.

One-point-three. That�s the percentage of Americans who are drug addicted now.

The numbers come from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of cops, judges, DEA agents and other drug warriors who are demanding an end to the drug war. Their statistics call to mind an old axiom: the definition of crazy is to continue doing the same thing but expecting a different result.

That said, it is not difficult to understand why the president � or anyone � might flinch at the notion of legalizing drugs. It is a big, revolutionary idea, an idea that would change the way things have been done since forever. If someone feels a need to pause before crossing that line, that�s understandable.

But let none of us do as the president did � hide behind a specious argument that offers no solution, no way forward and, most critically, no leadership.

Drug legalization is not the answer? OK, Mr. President, fair enough.

What is?

Read original here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/17/2754331/if-not-drug-legalization-what.html#storylink=cpy