Friendly Fire
Rethinking The War On Drugs From A Quaker Perspective

By Eric Ernst
Haverford Alumni Magazine (PA)
Spring 2000


What should we do about the growing number of drug overdose deaths? What can we do to prevent the crime committed by drug users? Can we control the violence and corruption that are intrinsic to the illegal drug trade? Can we prevent the environmental destruction in the Amazon and the Andes, in U.S.  National Parks and Forests, and even in our own neighborhoods, that results from illegal drug processing? What can we do about paramilitary forces, revolutionary armies and global criminal gangs who finance themselves through their involvement in the drug traffic? As our nation and the United Nations address these issues, do we have a strategy likely to succeed?

More to the point, how should Friends, and those whose values are shaped by Quaker testimonies, consider these issues? Can Friends' teachings and approaches guide us as we think about them?

Quakers, as many readers know, have long-standing testimonies against intoxication, the traffic in intoxicating liquors, and the use and abuse of narcotics.  While founder George Fox and his contemporaries were not teetotalers, there was from the beginning a concern about the abuse of alcohol.  A 1755 document reveals a concern about the "excessive use of spirituous liquors, [and] the unnecessary frequenting of taverns." By the nineteenth century, Friends were leaders in the temperance movement and many supported total abstinence.  This strict position has softened in many Friends quarters in the last third of the twentieth century. 

Friends have taken similar approaches toward intoxicating or mood-changing drugs.  By the mid-twentieth century, even the use of narcotics for medical purposes was frowned upon.  The use of drugs and alcohol, it is believed, interferes with the spiritual life and one's ability to faithfully attend to the Inner Light.  Drug addiction leads to conflict in families and the failure to carry out one's responsibilities to family and society. 

However, Friends have always recognized that it is wrong to use immoral or hurtful means to achieve worthwhile ends, and have traditionally opposed war in all its forms.  They were among the first groups to oppose slavery.  They have historically been social reformers, inventing penitentiaries and supporting equal rights for women and black Americans well before many other groups did the same.  Friends, since before the founding of Pennsylvania, have been similarly concerned about honesty in the administration of government and about protecting the natural environment. 

Taken altogether, I believe that Quakers must balance their concern about the serious problems of drug use and abuse with the egregious problems created by the efforts to control such use and abuse.  Examining our national anti-drug strategy in the light of Friends' traditional concerns -- respecting the individual, abhorring violence, advocating justice, caring for the community, and protecting the environment -- reveals a strategy dramatically inconsistent with these views; in short, the worthwhile social objectives of reducing drug use and drug abuse around the world are being pursued by means that are very hurtful to individuals, to society, and to the environment. 

In March, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting approved a minute explicitly addressing this issue.  "Today our country is engaged in a `war on drugs,'" it states, "which bears all the hallmarks of war: displaced populations, disrupted economies, terrorism, abandonment of hope by those the war is supposedly being fought to help, the use of military force, the curtailment of civil liberties, and the demonizing of `enemies'....Our federal, state and local governments need to put much greater emphasis on strategies that act to remove the causes of drug addiction and provide for education, treatment, and research into the causes of addiction."

While few will argue that drug use and abuse should not be strongly discouraged, this strong stance by our Quaker leaders only underscores the urgency of finding new techniques of controlling the global drug crisis.  But can Quaker teachings point us in the direction of these solutions as well? I believe they can.  But first some background. 

FIGHTING A LOSING BATTLE

Perhaps there is no problem.  Perhaps, some might argue, we don't need a new anti-drug strategy.  That's certainly what White House drug czar General Barry McCaffrey says in the 1999 National Drug Control Strategy.  There is no bigger claim in that glossy 138-page report, where big red letters splashed across two-pages proclaim that our "National Anti-Drug Policy is Working." In Congressional testimony in March 2000, McCaffrey reiterated that "we are winning" the war on drugs. 

But the facts suggest otherwise.  Overdose-type deaths from cocaine, heroin, stimulants, depressants, and hallucinogens -- just shy of 16,000 in 1997 -- have steadily climbed for two decades, and are now twice the 7,101 deaths reported in 1979.  Illegal drugs such as heroin and marijuana were more easily available to high school seniors in 1998 than at any time in history.  Prices for heroin and cocaine are near their historic lows, suggesting that traffickers are continuously discounting the risks and costs they face from law enforcement.  This while the purity of those drugs in the street is near historic highs, which indicates that traffickers are actually competing for market share, and thriving. 

At the same time, the number of addicts needing treatment -- the most effective way to reduce the costs and severity of the drug problem by reducing the number of hard core addicts -- has been increasing, yet we are failing to significantly increase our treatment capacity.  Almost three million hard core drug addicts remain untreated each year.  "[Drug] treatment reduces about 10 times more serious crime than conventional enforcement and 15 times more than mandatory minimums," according to a detailed RAND Corporation analysis.  In another study, commissioned by the Office of National Drug Control Policy ( ONDCP ) and the U.S.  Army, RAND found that cocaine treatment is 23 times more cost-effective than source eradication.  Yet it is the dimension that our drug strategy most profoundly fails to address.  The people who most need our help are not getting it. 

Not only are we not succeeding, we are failing to merely hold steady.  On the most important criteria -- saving lives, keeping drugs out of the hands of kids, hindering illegal drug traffickers, and treating those who are addicted -- the failure of our current strategies is escalating.  Meanwhile, our expenditures have grown enormously, meaning we're actually paying to achieve this failure.  Federal expenditures have increased from $683 million in 1975 to $17.7 billion in 1999 ( see chart ).  The federal government will spend at least $18.4 billion this year, and $19.2 billion has been requested for 2001.  In 1995, over $33 billion was spent by state and local governments to fight drugs, a sum that also grows steadily. 

There is no doubt that use and abuse of drugs such as cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, and depressants present serious problems to societies around the world.  The criminal traffic in drugs generated about $63 billion in criminal income in the U.S.  in 1999.  And while the economic value of the social costs of drug abuse is hard to accurately estimate, one 1995 estimate set the total cost from premature death, illness and the costs to crime victims at $77 billion.  Urinalyses of persons arrested for crimes in 1998 show evidence of some illegal drug use at rates ranging from 60 to 80 percent, depending upon the city. 

The personal costs are just as great.  Hard core users of illegal drugs spend most of their time looking for money to buy drugs ( which remain extremely expensive ), finding the drugs in illegal markets, ingesting them, and enduring the effects of their drug use.  The time available for constructive labor, for family and domestic responsibilities, and for healthy pursuits is often nearly non-existent.  Hard core users typically live in a world of pain, domestic chaos, contagious disease, ill-health, degradation, self-loathing, and crime. 

Yet it is that last word-crime-which receives both the headlines and the bulk of legislative, judicial, and law enforcement attention when it comes to the drug crisis facing our country.  The anti-drug effort is overwhelmingly an effort of police, prisons, and, outside the United States, the military, intelligence agencies, and other law enforcement agencies. 

RETHINKING THE WAR

Several aspects of the war on drugs are particularly troubling when viewed through the lens of Quaker teachings:

Current American anti-drug policy is founded primarily on coercion and violence; it is thus directly antithetical to the Friends' beliefs in the dignity of each person and every person's innate capacity to see the Light within. 

For two decades, two-thirds of federal funding has been devoted to criminal justice and supply control measures.  The emphasis on law enforcement is seen in the arrest and incarceration data.  Over 1.5 million persons have been arrested annually on drug charges since 1996, more than twice the number arrested annually for the major violent crimes ( murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault ) combined.  This is the largest class of criminal arrests in the U.S.  each year, and almost 80 percent of these arrests are for simple possession.  Over 400,000 persons are in state and local prisons and jails for drug offenses alone.  Hundreds of thousands are imprisoned for having used drugs while on parole or probation for non-drug offenses.  Sixty percent of the federal prison population, which now exceeds 140,000, are serving sentences for smuggling, distribution, manufacturing or possession of drugs. 

Almost every time there is a drug arrest, the police officers draw their firearms and point them at the suspects.  Nearly every American has seen the photograph of the armed INS officer pointing an assault rifle in the direction of Elian Gonzalez during the raid at his relatives' Miami home on the morning before Easter.  Raids exactly like this are a universal experience in poor neighborhoods, and in neighborhoods of racial minorities, when police forces execute search warrants for drugs in "dynamic entries." Like the Elian raid, they are typically conducted before dawn when suspects can be caught sleeping.  Homes are broken into by teams of officers dressed in armor, masks, helmets, and equipped with assault weapons.  Explosive devices are detonated to stun and disorient the occupants.  Doors are smashed by battering rams.  Children are awakened in their beds by screaming, masked men pointing assault rifles at them, and to the shrieks of their hysterical parents.  Half-naked adults are forced onto the floor, and children are held at gun-point.  Booted, hooded men shout at them and ransack their homes looking for evidence of drug use or sales.  This is an extraordinary level of violence directed at "suspects" and their families -- persons constitutionally considered innocent.  In 1996, 90 percent of the 690 largest local police departments in the U.S.  had militarily-trained "Special Weapons and Tactics" ( SWAT ) teams.  Drug raids comprised 75 percent of the activity of those teams; at 200 to 700 raids per team per year, that's 10,000 to 70,000 such drug-related raids annually.  Imprisonment, of course, is one of the most powerful forms of coercion.  And most Americans disregard the reality that life within American prisons is rife with violence.  Rape, fights, extortion and other threats are the daily experiences of American prisoners.  The number of American prisoners in custody has grown rapidly -- from 196,092 in 1972 to 503,794 in 1986 to two million persons this year.  One of the major factors in that growth has been drug enforcement and drug prohibition related crime.  Roughly one-third of new prisoners each year and one-quarter of the national prison population are there for drug offenses: possession, cultivation, distribution, manufacturing, or for using drugs while on probation or parole.  Federal expenditures to imprison 84,000 drug offenders this year exceed $2.61 billion, while federal drug treatment funding for non-Veterans and those outside the criminal justice system amounts to $2.09 billion.  Treatment and prevention funding by state, federal, and local agencies is less than a quarter of the total effort.  Sadly, if you lack health insurance, frequently the coercion of the criminal justice system is the only drug treatment available.  Enter a drug treatment program or go to prison.  ( It is often said that drug abuse is a health problem if you're white, and a criminal justice problem if you're black.  More on that in a minute.  )

Current anti-drug strategy contributes to violent conditions within the drug marketplace.  Because drugs are illegal, they are phenomenally valuable.  A troy ounce of gold currently sells for $276, or $8.87 per gram.  Platinum is about twice as valuable.  Cocaine, selling at $44 a pure gram in 1998, is five times more valuable, while heroin sells at around $318 per gram.  But these valuable commodities can only be purchased for cash.  Illegal drugs are also fungible: unlike other stolen goods, drugs can always be sold for 100 percent of their retail value.  Drug markets, with enormous cash receipts and inventory five to 35 times more valuable than gold, are ideal targets for theft. 

Conflicts arise in this marketplace as they do in every business.  But unlike in other arenas, the conflicts cannot be resolved non-violently.  Disputes about payments, product quality, timeliness of delivery, conditions of employment or unfair competitive practices cannot be resolved in the courts, which would refuse to hear such cases because of the illegal nature of the underlying business.  By prohibiting the use and sale of all of these drugs, these inevitable disputes are resolved by violence. 

Thus drug retailers, more than any other retailers, need security.  Drug retailers cannot hire security guards or off-duty police officers.  They must hire persons who will carry firearms and who can be expected to use them.  How does the job applicant demonstrate his qualifications? By proving that he has committed previous acts of violence.  Indeed, having a reputation for violence is attractive to employers since that reduces the likelihood of robbery. 

To sum it up, our anti-drug strategy of total prohibition encourages violence in the drug marketplace and prevents non-violent dispute resolution.  Our anti-drug strategy creates especially tempting targets for violent crime, and blocks any lawful agency from preventing such crime.  Our anti-drug strategy encourages the potential victims of drug-market robbery to recruit the most violent offenders to work for them.  The omnipresence of this violence in many neighborhoods and cities has the added effect of encouraging law-abiding citizens to obtain firearms for their own protection. 

And it has profound international dimensions.  Illegal drug trafficking finances covert action programs, insurgencies, paramilitary armies, and enormous violent criminal gangs.  Today the news reports from Mexico and Colombia are dominated by the violence caused by criminal gangs labeled "cartels," or revolutionary armies who are financed by the profits of the illegal drug trade.  Less well reported is the role of illegal drug money financing the Taliban in Afghanistan, the military insurgency in Burma, or the narcotics money relied upon by the Kosovo Liberation Army. 

The political and rhetorical climate surrounding drug enforcement reinforces and perpetuates our systemic reliance upon coercion.  Drug enforcement results in the seizure of billions of dollars worth of property-cash, cars, real estate, etc.  -- that goes directly to law enforcement agencies.  Police officers get paid overtime to process drug arrests and to testify at court hearings.  For candidates for election and re-election, no issue is more attractive than fighting drugs and crime; tough talk on drugs will always trump treatment or a call for accountability and effectiveness.  Taking a tough anti-drug position is politically unassailable.  Since 1984, almost every federal election cycle has been influenced by last minute anti-crime, anti-drug legislation which grows more coercive with each legislative session.  ( U.S.  Rep.  Barney Frank ( D-MA ) once quipped that anti-drug legislation is the "crack cocaine" of politics.  )

For political speech writers and press secretaries, few issues have the rhetorical zing of the "scourge" or "epidemic" of drug abuse, with its dastardly cartels and kingpins.  The scary and exotic argot of drugs -- crack, crank, date rape drugs, club drugs, designer drugs, ice, ecstasy, and on and on -- is ideal to spice up an otherwise boring speech, and attracts more public interest than the details of taxation, appropriations, or regulation. 

For every other serious and complex issue -- the environment, tax policy, health care, trade, foreign relations, etc.  -- there are legitimate competing interests and organized lobbying groups and associations on all sides.  But there is no organized opposition to increasing the war on drugs.  Drug users or drug dealers who are explicitly targeted by tough-on-crime politics do not have political action committees to raise funds or fight legislation. 

More generally, drug users are inevitably portrayed as social outcasts.  Without regard to whether their individual lives are successful or not, they are stereotyped as vermin, as insidious corrupters of society and its morals.  Drug users are not allowed to be responsible drug users.  Parents who use drugs can have their children taken away without any proof that their children are being harmed.  A child who seeks help for his or her parent and calls the police ends up with the state sending the parent to prison, leaving the child parentless.  This is inhumane. 

Discussion of drug policy is subject to political correctness.  The principal government argument against discussing "legalization" of drugs or permitting seriously and chronically ill medical patients from using marijuana is that to do so would "send the wrong message" to our youth.  In fact, the war on drugs is supported by an enormous government propaganda effort to the contrary.  The ONDCP is buying $2 billion in advertising on television, in magazines, newspapers, billboards and bus shelters.  Sadly, much anti-drug education in schools has been proven ineffective at reducing drug use, although programs such as D.A.R.E.  carry a national price tag of almost $750 million. 

Drug enforcement as practiced is racially discriminatory.  In Illinois, for example, the rate of incarceration for drug offenses for black men is a staggering 57 times ( 5,700% ) greater than for white men.  While African Americans constitute about 12 percent of the U.S.  population and 13 percent of drug users, they make up 38 percent of persons arrested for drug offenses, 59 percent of those convicted of drug offenses, and 63 percent of those convicted of drug trafficking.  In addition, blacks convicted of drug offenses get sentenced to prison at much higher rates than whites convicted of the same offenses: In 1994, 33 percent of the white convicts and 50 percent of the black convicts were sentenced to prison.  Furthermore, blacks who are sentenced to prison get longer sentences than whites sentenced to prison for the same crimes: For state drug defendants, the average maximum sentence length in 1994 was 51 months for whites and 60 months for blacks.  Federally, last year, less than one of four federal drug defendants sent to prison was white. 

Part of the reason for the gross disparity in prosecution and punishment is the systematic profiling of racial minorities as likely drug traffickers.  For example, recent records showed that black women were being disproportionately targeted by the U.S.  Customs Service for drug searches at Chicago's O'Hare airport.  Police targeting minorities for drug searches in traffic stops has become so commonplace that the offense has been mockingly termed "driving while black." Seventy-six percent of the motorists stopped along a 50-mile stretch of I-95 by Maryland's Special Traffic Interdiction Force ( STIF ) were black, according to an Associated Press computer analysis of car searches from January through September 1995.  ( STIF's six officers were white.  ) Yet blacks constitute only 25 percent of Maryland's population, and 20 percent of Marylanders with driver's licenses.  Last year, New Jersey's Attorney General admitted that the New Jersey State Police were engaged in racial profiling -- in violation of their stated policies -- because of the ideology of drug enforcement. 

Federal crack cocaine defendants are disproportionately black: 88.3 percent African American, 7.1 percent Hispanic, and only 4.1 percent white in 1993, a typical year.  Many observers blame this gross disparity on federal mandatory minimum sentences, which are triggered for much smaller quantities of crack cocaine ( 5 grams ) than powder cocaine ( 500 grams ).  However, the fact that 95 percent of federal crack cocaine defendents are low and medium offenders ( often poor minorities ) suggests another problem: failure to focus on the high-level traffickers who actually drive the drug trade.  I believe a more accurate explanation of the racial disparity is improper case selection practices by DEA and U.S.  Attorneys Offices, tolerated by high-level officials at the Department of Justice, and reflecting unconscious racial discrimination.  Congress has failed to reform the sentencing disparity, despite the U.S.  Sentencing Commission's recommendation to do so. 

Racially disproportionate outcomes in drug cases are a major factor in the massive disenfranchisement of black men.  Approximately 1.4 million black men ( 13 percent of black males in the U.S.  ) have had their right to vote taken away because of felony convictions.  Blacks constitute more than one-third ( 36 percent ) of the approximately 3.9 million people nationwide who are temporarily or permanently unable to vote because of felony convictions.  The rate of black voter disenfranchisement is seven times the national average. 

Prohibition approaches conflict with public health policies and lead to the spread of disease.  Tens of thousands of ordinary Americans suffer pain that could be relieved because physicians' prescriptions and choices of medication are made in fear of DEA investigation and license revocation, not solely on medical grounds.  HIV and AIDS are spreading more rapidly through the sharing of injection equipment by drug users than by any other activity.  Overwhelmingly, pediatric AIDS is a result of needle sharing.  Almost every public health authority has recommended needle exchange programs to get used and infected needles out of the environment, and to stop the spread of HIV.  This public health strategy is blocked by prohibition ideology that insists that clean needle programs support the idea that drug use is okay.  This is absurd -- with the every-day risk of arrest and imprisonment, every drug user or potential drug user knows that drug use is not okay. 

Prohibition approaches lead to environmental degradation.  The unregulated cultivation and processing of drugs is a major environmental problem.  ( I wrote the federal law in 1988 that punishes environmental crimes on federal land in connection with growing or producing drugs.  ) Enormous acreage in Latin America is cleared to grow coca, marijuana and opium.  The hundreds of tons of chemicals used to process coca into cocaine are dumped into the watersheds of the Amazon River and other Latin American watersheds.  If drugs were not prohibited, environmental controls could be applied to these processes.  In the U.S.  there are thousands of operations manufacturing methamphetamine, which results in toxic releases into the environment.  Marijuana is illegally cultivated in national parks and forests to avoid property seizure penalties and to hide in remote areas.  These are the result of the prohibition approaches and hearken to the era of moonshining. 

It is known that paper made from hemp may be substantially less harmful to the environment than the production of paper from wood pulp, an extremely dirty enterprise.  Although hemp is not a drug, law enforcement officers fight its cultivation because of its botanical similarity to marijuana.  As with clean needle programs, it is argued that permitting hemp cultivation would send the wrong message about drugs to our youth. 

ANOTHER MODEL

In the face of the problems with our drug policy, discussion of alternatives has been stymied.  Frequently, the only alternative presented is a full-scale "legalization" of drugs like cocaine and heroin in the same manner as tobacco and alcohol -- a term suggesting widespread and easily availability, easily-evaded regulation, extensive commercial promotion, and serious morbidity and mortality.  The necessary discussion of what to do quickly breaks down because the choices presented are mutually awful: continue the status quo or adopt the extreme libertarian position. 

But Quakers have dealt with difficult problems of this nature before.  I'd like to suggest that one case -- that of nuclear weapons -- can serve as a useful analogy for the development of drug policy.  Although this might seem a stretch, consider for a moment what would happen if the elimination of nuclear weapons were undertaken with the coercion and violence promulgated by current drug policy.  What would happen if a majority of the U.N.  General Assembly were to pass a resolution outlawing nuclear weapons possession, manufacture and distribution, and authorized a global police force to enforce such a law? In the absence of agreement by most of the nuclear weapons states, what would happen? Clearly all monitoring, evaluation, and inspection would be impossible, because no nation could admit that it had nuclear weapons.  The legal supply of these weapons would be eliminated -- but the demand for illegal nuclear weapons would continue not only among the current nuclear powers, but in the aspiring or suspected nuclear powers as well. 

Friends understand that the only way to eliminate nuclear weapons is by persuasion, by moral example, by diplomacy, and by obtaining agreement and common consent by concerned parties on goals addressing the elimination of nuclear weapons.  While totally opposed to war and the use of nuclear weapons, Friends nonetheless support systems which regulate, monitor, and control the development, testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.  They recognize that if global policy regarding nuclear weapons were completely divorced from the desires and policies of the nations with the technology and will to build and deploy nuclear weapons, there would be no controls.  Such a policy would be a fig leaf policy.  Friends recognize that regulation is preferable to an unenforceable and unrealistic de jure outlawing of nuclear weapons. 

Developing a drug policy is of course not easy, and drugs, in general, should not be legalized like tomatoes, or even like tobacco or alcohol.  Yet such a pragmatic, regulatory approach to the problems of drugs offers, I would argue, the greatest likelihood that the many problems of drugs in our society, and around the world, can be minimized.  At the end of the 20th century, Americans have demonstrated a genius for regulation.  We regulate everything -- except illegal drugs. 

The transition from a black market to a legal market involves enormous unknowns and should be undertaken gradually and with a willingness to experiment.  The enormous variety of drugs would require a sophisticated regulatory scheme, and questions remain to be answered.  Can addicts be regulated? Can their intense drive to acquire drugs be channeled into pro-social behaviors? ( The experience with many heroin addicts in the United Kingdom, and more recently in Switzerland, suggests that it might be possible.  ) Can powerful psychedelics be used safely, under regimes of supervision and control? ( The Council on Spiritual Practices has published a protocol for organizations that might use such materials in worship, to avoid exploitation.  ) Can marijuana use be legally regulated without increasing the number of young people using marijuana in a manner that interferes in their lives, their growth, and their schooling? Can marijuana be legally regulated without substantial increases in drug addiction and misconduct?

These questions can only be answered by careful experimentation with provisional new laws.  But what must be acknowledged is that prohibition has itself been an experiment that not only has failed, but is too expensive to further endure.  It operates in a manner that is loathsome to Friends sensibilities.  We and other religious communities must engage in the rejection of our current anti-drug policy and work to develop one that reflects our deepest values. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

At his 1973 graduation ceremony, President John Coleman introduced Eric Sterling as sometimes the "conscience of the college." Little in that respect has changed since the days when Sterling toiled for an underground war-resistance printing operation and was arrested after chaining himself to the door of the draft board to protest the Vietnam War. 

Sterling is president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation ( www.cjpf.org ), a non-profit educational organization he founded with philanthropist Robert Linnell in 1988.  The CJPF promotes innovative solutions to criminal justice problems.  It assists policy makers, criminal justice professionals and the public by disseminating information about preventing crime and improving the quality of justice through education programs, publications, and the news media. 

An acknowledged expert on the nation's "war on drugs," Sterling lectures frequently at colleges and universities, and his opinion is regularly sought by top officials.  He has been quoted on the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers.  He traveled to Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, and Jamaica, in the company of members of congress, to examine crime and drug problems first-hand and discuss them with the countries' top officials. 

Sterling, who received his J.D.  from Villanova Law School in 1976, was Counsel to the U.S.  House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary from 1979 until 1989.  On the staff of the Subcommittee on Crime, he was responsible for drug enforcement, gun control, money laundering, organized crime, pornography, terrorism, corrections, and military assistance to law enforcement, among other issues.  He was a principal aide in developing the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts of 1986 and 1988. 

He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with his wife, June S.  Beittel, and their daughter, Maya Rebecca Sterling.