It's also worth noting, I think, that in many states felons permanently lose their right to vote. And in many of those states, a shockingly large proportion of males have done or are doing time for non-violent felony drug crimes.

Viola, a backdoor Jim Crow!

First, I dispute your premise. One of the consequences of being in prison, it seems to me, would be the inability to be a serial impregnator. But for the sake of discussion only, I'll grant your premise.

Speaking as a socon, I think a false battle line has been drawn. We have this loyalty to the Reagan formula, because we think the War on Drugs represents a fundamental part of the battle for Things That Are Traditionally Good.

And whatever you think about incarcerating otherwise law-abiding drug users and/or dealers, it has definitely coincided with a long period of lower crime rates and lower unemployment. I'm not sure it's worth it, nor even of the cause/effect vectors there, but we need to be aware of the consequences of making a change.

Pinning on my libertarian button, I think the War on Drugs is stupid, maaaan.

It's much more complicated than that. And it has more to do with welfare, pop culture, and the remnants of "black power" than the drug war.

Legalizing drugs would certainly be one step forward, but by itself will not solve the larger social problems.

Obama may do more for the black community by example of his family life than any law. Just as Sarah Palin by example with her family.

Simon,

I've been reading your blog for the last month and this is my first time commenting. I just read you article on Side Effects and as someone with an M.S. in Criminal Justice I half way agree with you.

Yes, we should end the drug war started by Nancy Regan. The drug war is silly. We should legalize all drugs, tax them and use the tax money for drug education, rehabilitation (which we are paying for anyway) and inner city education, not on prisons. I do believe this would help out a lot with things such as abortion rates.

However, I also believe that we need to change the image thats on t.v.; the image that shows a country divided. All I ever see when I turn on the t.v., especially since the election, is pundits and politicians talking about how the country is 'divided' and that 'we are heading in the wrong direction.' How do you think this message resonates in inner cities? Stop talking about the problem and start talking about the solution!

Honestly, I feel that right now, this country as a whole needs to find a way to pull itself out from the toxic mess that's been created during this election and the divisiveness it has forced upon us - and it's really up to each one of us to do something about it...

In fact, just this year, I completed a documentary to show that America might not be as divided as the pundits and politicians would have us believe; over 36 days, we drove 12,000 miles across America and interviewed 33 people at random from all walks of life, just to find out: if America is as divided a country as it's been portrayed to be -- then what exactly is it that still keeps us 'united'?

Originally, we had planned on selling the film - but as this election got more and more divisive, we decided that spreading some message of unity would be much MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROFITS... so we ended up putting it up for free on the web for anyone to see; as a way to aid in healing this false divisiveness.

It just felt like it was the right thing to do.

(BTW, if you'd like to watch the film online, you can visit our website,
www.UnitedTheFilm.com .)

Anyway, thanks for your time - and please keep up the great work!

Best,

-Adam

donna,

I think it is all intertwined. Current black culture reflects the breakdown of the black family rather that being the cause of it. It certainly doesn't help though.

Well of course Loren. And before drugs it was alcohol. How did that alcohol prohibition work out for you?

Here are a couple of thing you may not know:

The NIDA says addiction is a genetic disease:

Addiction Is A Genetic Disease

And it seems to be based on fear memories embedded in the amygdala:

PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System

Now I'd like to know how drug prohibition is going to fix a genetic disease that is triggered by trauma - physical and/or emotional?

==

Well yes. We have lower crime rates for now. What will happen as a generation or two of fatherless males come of age?

Check out the murder rate on the South side of Chicago lately?

Loren,

Let me add that drug prohibition is the change.

Before 1914 opiates were freely available. Before 1937 cannabis was in the pharmacopoeia.

The drug war as originally conceived was a way to oppress minorities. It still seems to be working well in that respect.

Drug War History

M. Simon -- I think that welfare was the most severe blow to the black family.

Also, the Drug War History is a very good read. Very good.

I would guess that Barak Obama (father left to persue own interests) and Clarance Thomas (father left to persue own interests) are more typical. In neither case did the father provide one cent of support.

I don't think people who are involved in drugs would be good fathers.

The problem isn't the drug war, it is the lack of a culture that worships education, language, hard work, God, and family amongst our poorest sectors of our country.

The idea that by legalizing drugs that everything will be wonderful, has always driven me nuts.

People will still steal and murder to support their habit and more than likely, there will be a violent black market that pops up to circumvent the high cost of the government run distribution system.

Blacks are incarcerated at higher rates (and are aborting at higher rates) because certain segments of American society profit from making it that way.

At some point in our history, it became impossible to for the vast majority of well-meaning Americans (both black and white) to insist that black Americans join the rest of America in this noble experiment of a melting pot: Many social cultures but one political culture.

The Balkanizers and race pimps (on the left and right) don't want America to embrace blacks, and vice versa. There's too much of their self-importance wrapped up in keeping everyone hating each other.

All things being equal, white folks are more likely to go to prison than black folk.

Degenerate white folk enjoy a level of abject poverty that degenerate brown folk will never know.

Disparity of behavior never seems to figure into any race based analysis. Racism is the reason. Righteous race crusaders consider non-whites to be inferior forms of humanity. They therefore hold them to a much lower standard. After all, they can't help it. They were born that way.

How many times do forcible interventions have to yield disastrous consequences for us in the anti-statist opposition to stop, as a whole, absolving responsibility [and moral culpability] with the quisling phrase "unintended consequences?"

Mach,

The idea that by legalizing drugs that everything will be wonderful, has always driven me nuts.

Who said everything would be wonderful? We would still have a drug problem.

What would we gain? We wouldn't be financing criminals and terrorists. We might have a few more black men marrying black women. We might have fewer aborted black babies.

==

Yes. Welfare ruined black culture. So we fixed that under Clinton (the R Congress had a hand) and life long welfare is harder to get. And as some predicted the black abortion rate rose.

Every government intervention has its price.

So really - the true anti-abortion party is the pro-welfare party. Sucks don't it?

BTW some Catholics were on to the connection between welfare and abortion and were against Clinton's welfare reforms.

The deal is: you can't do just one thing. Free citizens are the best place to work out the culture. Government just screws things up.

Mach says,

People will still steal and murder to support their habit and more than likely, there will be a violent black market that pops up to circumvent the high cost of the government run distribution system.

I thought those on the right understood economics. How much do you have to steal to support a drug habit that costs 1¢ a dose? How much do you have to steal to support a habit at $10 a dose? If my math is correct: 1,000 times as much.

What is the incentive to murder for $1.00? How about $100.00? True - both happen. But the lower the payoff the lower the murder rate.

Now let me ask you a question: what happened to the murders over alcohol that were so prevalent in the 1920s? Ever hear of a shoot out by rival alcohol gangs lately? How about shoot outs by rival drug gangs? There is something different about the environment. Maybe you could help me with that. I'm trying to figure out what it is.

Oh, yeah. A government run distribution system. More socialism. Why not let liquor stores and ahem DRUG stores handle the distribution?

Dude - are you really a small government Republican? Or are you a Republican Socialist?

==

But I do get your point. Our criminal class deserves our support. Just like farmers they deserve to make a living. And terrorist need money too. Why would we be so heartless as to deprive them? Republican Socialism. You can take it to the bank. In fact as I understand it the banks have already taken it. And the farmers. And the drug dealers. Who will be the next in line?

Ah. The Detroit auto companies. It is all good, no?

"How much do you have to steal to support a drug habit that costs 1¢ a dose?"

Awaiting the Tobacco Wars.

I don't see why abortion is considered to be a "problem".

The PROBLEM is the massive number of babies born to teen mammas who will never be able to care for them properly, whether married or not.

It would be better if people learned effective birth control, but if a woman's decision to abort were strictly private and reporting requirements for this extremely private procedure, it would not be a "problem".

Socons need to stop pretending they give a goddam about "innocent life". If they care so damn much, let them volunteer their time, money, and love to the 26,000 children who are in the system in IL alone, whose parents can't or won't take care of them, and who are tossed on the mercy of the foster care system.

If you end the drug war, you'll have the welfare rolls filled with potheads, crackheads and methheads. You can only end the drug war if you also end welfare.

Roy,

Aren't they already in the welfare system? I mean drugs are not that hard to get.

Besides - we could use the $50 bn a year saved to defray some or all of the costs.

The NIDA says Addiction Is A Genetic Disease.

Every one in the population is not going to turn into an addict and those so predisposed are already using.

The deal is: unlike what you were taught in school - drugs do not cause addiction.

Funny you should have mentioned tobacco wars.

It was predicted by this guy in 1995:

Drug War History

You know the Federal Government has been spending a lot of money since 1968 trying to persuade us not to smoke. And, indeed, the absolute numbers on smoking have declined very little. But, you know who has quit smoking, don't you? In gigantic numbers? The college-educated, that's who. The college-educated, that's who doesn't smoke. Who are they? Tomorrow's what? Movers and kickers, that's who. Tomorrow's movers and kickers don't smoke. Who does smoke? Oh, you know who smokes out of all proportion to their numbers in the society -- it is the people standing in your criminal courtrooms, that's who. Who are they? Tomorrow's moved and kicked, that's who.

And, there it is friends, once it divides between the movers and kickers and the moved and kicked it is all over and it will be all over very shortly.

and:

Let me conclude, and again this is my prediction -- I will tell you I don't think it is subject to opinion. Just look at it. Just take a look at what has happened now and what will happen. I will tell you how inexorable it is. If we get together here in the year 2005, I will bet you that it is as likely as not that the possession of marijuana may not be criminal in this state. But the manufacture, sale, and possession of tobacco will be, and why? Because we love this idea of prohibitions, we can't live without them. They are our very favorite thing because we know how to solve difficult, social, economic, and medical problems -- a new criminal law with harsher penalties in every category for everybody.

The talk was given in California. Marijuana is decriminalized there.

Oh Laura, if Socons didn't give a goddamn about innocent life, then why do they spend so much time wrangling about it?

Where's the benefit to the cost? If the point is that it's something to chirp on endlessly, I think what has to be asserted is that everyone who says they give a goddamn about innocent life is lying, the people who nod their heads are lying, they all probably know one another is lying and yet they're all going along with it for what?

Generally that sort of thing is done to confer or maintain power. But nobody is really sure that anti-abortion is a winning issue.

Should they do more to help unwanted kids? Absolutely. But let's look at it more closely. Pro-abortionists effectively claim that abortion is better than adoption. That is, really, the crux of your argument. At least Progressives are solving the "problem" by offing the would-be orphans.

But if that were actually the case wouldn't we see more suicides among orphans? If death by abortion is really a better option, wouldn't orphans be jumping out of windows by the dozens? Wouldn't they choose death over life?

If they aren't, who do you think you are to choose it for them?

Amos,

If being vocally anti-abortion is such a winning issue why did Palin keep her position secret from the Alaskans until she got the VP nod?

BTW she had an 80% approval rating in Alaska. That must have included a few Democrats.

She is going to have to figure a way to dance around the issue if she is ever going to win the Presidency or VP.

I'm sorry. It is unfortunate. It is bad. It is probably evil to many. It is what it is.

Republicans can either leave it alone - and promise at the top of their lungs to leave it alone or we will continue to lose ground.

You can't fix cultural shifts by law where the people have a vote. You have to do it one individual at a time. That is hard work. There seems to be a lot of folks against hard work.

BTW in Jewish law abortion in the first 40 days of gestation is permissible. So obviously your position is not all encompassing. How do you plan to make room for Jews who voted at a 79% rate for That One? An awful lot of them (my 89 yr old mom) voted for him for that reason alone.

Not only that she only tolerates my Republicanism because I promised to work against the abortion prohibitionists in my party. I'm not making much headway but my voice is heard.

BTW I told her that ∅ would sell out Israel. She didn't believe me.

It has started

==

Also note: Catholics voted for him by a 54% margin. So even among those most pre-disposed to your issue it was not a winner.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Many church leaders speak out against the War on Drugs (there is even a YouTube on it called 'Clergy speak out against War on Drugs') and the discussion of the war on drugs as an element of governmental encroachment is pretty common on social conservative forums, etc.

If I may be so bold, I suspect that the crickets are due to your ignorance of where to listen, not a lack of voices.

I would have thought the issue was related to the government turning poverty into a federally subsidized program. Coupled with Black separatists turning success in anything other than sports into "acting white." Exacerbated by Black "leaders" who expertly manipulate grievances for personal profit and stature.

I won't say drugs are irrelevant, but claiming legalization will fix all social problems is as disingenuous as the hemp aficionados or medical marijuana advocates pretending they aren't really deploying a wedge.

Deep,

I haven't been to those places for a while. If what you say is true (and I don't doubt it - I just haven't verified) then it is a great sea change from 5 or 10 years ago.

I'm going to do some looking around but if you have links post a couple. Don't worry if you get caught by the spam filter. I'll keep an eye out and see that your comment gets an OK.

BTW I can verify that Reform Judaism had a project against the Drug War a few years ago. So maybe the idea is catching on.

Simon

Steve,

Fix all problems. Hell no. However it will no longer finance criminals and terrorists and it will stop an actual War in "certain neighborhoods".

And you know the race baiters hardly ever mention it but the devastation caused by the War in "certain neighborhoods" feeds them and their hate.

I'm a little late to the party here, but I wanted to comment on the idea that blacks are disproportionately imprisoned because of the drug war.

If you mean, a black person who commits a drug crime is more likely to face prosecution and conviction if confronted by law enforcement over drug possession or dealing -- I'd have to see the data and there might be a point there.

But I'm not sure that's your point. I think you're saying that the drug war causes blacks to be imprisoned. No, bad behavior causes imprisonment.

Blacks are disproportionately members of an underclass, with an underclass mentality (similar to that of the white, British underclass on the other side of the pond), and people with an underclass mentality commit more crimes.

So I'm not sure that ending the drug war is the answer ... Theodore Dalrymple argues that he doesn't see otherwise law-abiding heroin addicts become criminals because of the black market costs of their addiction, but just the opposite: People who are already criminals begin to take heroin as another manifestation of their already-criminal mindset and behavior.

My own take on the drug war itself: Give away drugs free in the prisons. Allow prisoners to have no limits on how much they take. Allow people to voluntarily incarcerate themselves. Keep drugs illegal outside the prisons.

It's a harsh solution, yes, and only half a joke, but I'm sure it would eliminate the criminal elements of the underclass in short order, while preserving public order outside the prisons.

If you mean, a black person who commits a drug crime is more likely to face prosecution and conviction if confronted by law enforcement over drug possession or dealing -- I'd have to see the data and there might be a point there.

Yep. You can look it up.

And I'm going to post this link again:

Drug War History

The Drug War at its inception was specifically designed to imprison minorities. It still works that way.

Opiates were illegalized to go after Chinese. Cocaine for Blacks. Marijuana for Hispanics. And don't take my word for it. Read the history.

Here is a bio of the author of that piece:

===

This session is going to be about the history of the non-medical use of drugs. Let me say that, because this is going to be a story, that I think it will interest you quite a bit. The topic is the history of the non-medical use of drugs and I think you ought to know what my credentials are for talking about this topic. As you may know, before I taught at the University of Southern California, I taught at the University of Virginia for fifteen years, from 1968 to 1981. In that time period, the very first major piece that I wrote was a piece entitled, "The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge - The Legal History of Marihuana in the United States". I wrote it with Professor Richard Bonnie, still of the faculty of the University of Virginia. It was published in the Virginia Law Review in October of 1970 and I must say that our piece was the Virginia Law Review in October of 1970. The piece was 450 pages long. It got a ton of national attention because no one had ever done the legal history of marijuana before. As a result of that, Professor Bonnie was named the Deputy Director of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse and I was a consultant to that commission.

As a result of Richard's two year executive directorship of the National Commission in 1971 and 1972 he and I were given access to both the open and the closed files of what was then called the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, what had historically been called the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and what today is called the Drug Enforcement Agency. Based upon our access to those files, both open and closed, we wrote a book called "The Marihuana Conviction- The Legal History of Drugs in the United States" and that book went through six printings at the University of Virginia press before being sold out primarily in sales to my friends at the FBI over the years. It is based upon that work that I bring you this story.

===

So lets see - the FBI knows the story. And yet they persist. How corrupt can you get? Well it is a government operation. Budgets depend on its continuing.

BTW the prisons are already awash with drugs. So your solution is already in effect. It doesn't seem to be having the effect you desire.

The National Institute Of Drug Abuse says Addiction Is A Genetic Disease.

So you think we should be punishing people for their genetics?

Theodore Dalrymple is ignorant of the latest research. I have written him a number of times and he has never responded. Very scientific.

Here is a goodie:

PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System

and just in case it is not clear what the war is about:

Class War

Also see the video I posted in the last hour or so about Clergy Against The Drug War.

IB Bill,

I have an answer to your question about disproportionate incarceration.

Go to this page and watch video #2. The answer you want with percentages starts at about 11 minutes into the video. I do recommend you watch the whole video. It might open your eyes.