The War on Drugs
Win or Surrender
I’m not a cop or a politician. I’m just some kid. I’m some kid who was in Seattle with his friends, just walking and talking. I love the city so much. I love the diverse places to get food, the various museums to visit, and the very colorful individuals. That day while walking the streets, I saw a young man headed my way on the sidewalk. He had baggy, torn-up jeans and short, scraggly brown hair. He was shaking, moving his hands all over the place at a rapid pace, and then switched to a slow pace, but the style of the movements remained the same. He was incredibly thin. It was obvious that he was a drug addict. I felt a strange sense of nervousness as he got closer. I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I have just watched too many crime dramas. The man walked past me, still acting strangely as he crossed the street. He didn’t seem to acknowledge my presence. He went on his way, and I went on mine. I never saw this man again.
This is one of many encounters I have had with drug addicts in my life, if you can even call that an encounter. But, as that was my first time back in Seattle in a long time, it has made me question the War on Drugs and more specifically, whether or not it has been effective. The man I encountered didn’t seem intent on causing harm to anybody but possibly himself. However, could he be a danger? Whenever I go to Seattle, I see numerous people who look like that man, thin, unsociable, and not very happy. Drugs are illegal, but that sure hasn’t stopped thousands of people in Washington from abusing drugs. On the other hand, if drugs were legalized, would the number of drug addicts I encounter be even higher?
“The government has always viewed drug use as detrimental to people’s health and detrimental to society so it’s been illegal,” said Officer Robert Inn of the King County Sherriff’s Department. Robert Inn has been a cop for 23 years. He worked as a patrol officer before joining S.W.A.T. In the last few years, he became a detective, mainly dealing with property crimes, but also crimes against persons. However, he recently decided to return to patrol.
Jeffrey Miron, an Economist professor at Harvard, believes the War on Drugs has had a negative effect on crime because people still use drugs, saying “naïve people believe that if something’s illegal, people won’t do it anymore. That clearly isn’t true” (Miron). I was curious as to whether Robert Inn agreed or disagreed with that statement.
“Has the War on Drugs, in your opinion, had a positive or negative effect on crime?” I asked him, extremely curious to hear the answer.
“It’s hard to say whether the War on Drugs had an effect on crime,” Inn responded. “I will say that I believe there is a direct correlation between drug use in general and criminal activity. Certainly there are people who can use drugs and not commit crimes. However, when I was working property crimes, over 90% of the cases I investigated on burglaries, thefts, credit card fraud, and felony shoplifting involved people trying to fund a drug problem. In certain crimes against persons, the crimes were committed because the person was under the influence of drugs or alcohol. There was a trend I saw that drug use was part of, if not most of, the reason people were committing crimes. “
This was something new. I already knew that there were people who committed crimes to support drug habits, but I never figured that they accounted for the majority of crimes in the area. I would have thought that just as many burglaries and thefts were simply fueled by greed.
“With the War on Drugs, there’s no bright line on when it started,” Inn continued. “However, as a society and the justice system in Washington State, there is a much more permissive attitude about drug use. As a result of this, I’m seeing an increase in dealing with people using drugs.” Indeed, drug use in America has been increasing. In 2012, 9.2% of the U.S. population had reported using drugs in the past month, up from 8.3% in 2002 (NIDA).
I thought back to the last time I visited Seattle. Although it was rare to see someone publicly using drugs, the idea that many people carried drugs with them in public didn’t seem too farfetched, considering how strung out many of them looked. I tried to shuffle past an apparently homeless man with a long, scraggly gray beard, but the man got in my face and started mumbling gibberish. I just walked around him without saying a word, but I did feel a brief sense of apprehension. The homeless man diverted his attention to another man listening to his IPod, who made no attempts to acknowledge the homeless man, for who I felt a bit sorry. It seemed pretty clear that he was a heavy drug user, but what was he using?
“One drug that’s really making a huge comeback is the use of heroin. I’ve seen an increase in drug related incidents that are causing harm and other crimes to be committed and less of a willingness to prosecute the drug crime itself,” said Inn.
It made me wonder if the individuals I encountered while in Seattle had a criminal record besides drug possession. Did they ever steal or use violence while high? What caused them to start using in the first place? The next time I went to Seattle, I began pondering these questions, not that I would get any answers to them.
On the other end of the spectrum, drug dealing is a crime of its own. People are murdered over the drug trade and profits are raked in. Norm Stamper, the former Seattle Chief of Police, has compared the War on Drugs to the Prohibition of alcohol, an era of policing that is commonly thought of as a failure. “Instead of bringing whiskey from Canada, organized criminals deliver illegal drugs from Mexico via a sophisticated network whose tentacles extend from our southwestern border to more than 1,000 American cities,” Stamper explains. “Our drug laws have given rise to a new generation of gangsters with names like Sinaloa, Los Zetas and La Familia. These evil and greedy cartels are raking in profits that [Al] Capone and his ilk could only have dreamed of” (Stamper). Was Stamper correct? If drugs were legal, would these drug dealers still have any power? Because of Washington’s legalization of marijuana, in the future, we will have more evidence to speculate on whether or not legalizing drugs would be effective.
Robert Inn feels like marijuana has basically been legal for a long time, even before it was official. “There are still a lot of ways people can violate the marijuana laws in Washington, but hardly any of those ever get prosecuted,” he explained. “As far as I’ve seen in practice, there is no regulation on the use of marijuana. The prosecutor’s office will not prosecute any marijuana related crimes. Over the last five years, there’s even been a reluctance to prosecute people doing marijuana grow operations.”
“Really?” I said, thoroughly shocked by his answer. “Why not even touch grow operations?”
“Even though the grow operations are not legal, the prosecutor’s office is afraid to touch them because there are a lot of grey areas and changing case law,” Inn explained. “So without any control over it, people basically have free reign to do whatever they want with marijuana.”
I see Officer Inn’s point. Marijuana is barely enforced as it is, so why legalize it? Well, one of the biggest arguments for legalizing marijuana is the idea that we could tax it.
“Yes, the initial idea was that they would tax marijuana dispensaries and tax growers,” said Officer Inn. “That was one of the big arguments for legalizing marijuana. Well, the IRS refuses to collect tax money on marijuana operations or anything that has to do with the marijuana industry because federally producing and possessing marijuana is still a violation of federal law. A lot of growers are saying that they want to pay their federal taxes, but the federal government won’t accept that.”
“So you don’t think the legalization of marijuana was a smart idea?”
“I don’t think the state did enough research on how to implement this decriminalization and start up on marijuana industries and businesses,” replied Officer Inn.
The common argument for legalizing marijuana and other drugs is that it will lower crime. Norm Stamper has argued this idea by pointing out that “legalizing alcohol shut off a major source of funding for organized crime and took the violence out of the market” (Stamper). Professor Miron believes that making drugs illegal leads to an inevitable black market and generates “violence because the conflicts between the parties involved in the drug trade can’t be solved by legal means” (Miron).
Robert Inn doesn’t think that’s the case as the drug trade has “traditionally been an industry that is tied in with organized crime and criminality, so a lot of the people who are growers have associates who are criminals.” Rather than crime decreasing, Robert Inn has dealt with a huge spike in cases involving burglaries and armed robberies of marijuana dispensaries and grow operations, sometimes even violent home invasions. According to Robert Inn, crime didn’t decrease when marijuana was legalized. The types of crime simply changed. In the eyes of Officer Inn, the legalization of marijuana will be a failed experiment. It wasn’t thought out strongly enough. Crime hasn’t gone down and there’s a huge disparity between state law and federal law as there are agencies like the IRS that have to abide by federal law.
In contrast, Professor Miron claims the United States “could save $85 billion to $90 billion per year” if drugs were legalized, since law enforcement could then use the money to focus on more important crimes (Miron). Inn disagrees with this, citing the increase in robberies as an example of how legalizing marijuana changed nothing and legalizing other drugs wouldn’t change anything either.
“Do you think that if executed differently, the legalization of marijuana could have worked or do you think there’s no way it could have worked?”
Inn said that it’s hard to know for sure, but he thinks it could possibly work. The problem is that “there are a lot of things that go into researching drugs and other pharmaceuticals, but there hasn’t been an equivalent amount of research into marijuana use and the way it’s prescribed.” However, Inn also noted once more that prohibiting marijuana is no longer a priority. As a patrol officer, if he sees someone smoking marijuana in public, all he does is tell them to stop and then walks away. Inn explained that in spite of claims by certain marijuana users that cops would rather arrest potheads than murderers and rapists, the truth couldn’t be more different.
“I’m sure there are a large number of drug users out and about who I’m sure wish they could take drugs every day and have no legal consequences,” Inn explained. “It’s just that with the sample of the drug population that I’ve talked to, I’ve not found one who’s said they thought legalizing drugs is a good idea.” They prefer the simplicity of finding a dealer and buying from them, rather than having to worry about regulations that legalization brings.
When I visited Seattle again, once again seeing a homeless drug addict, I was almost tempted to go up and ask him his opinion on the War on Drugs. I walked a little closer to the man, who was just standing, not really doing anything. I wondered if he wished drugs were legalized or if he’s committed crimes to fuel a drug habit. I tried to walk a little closer once again. The man said something, but it was complete gibberish. It sounded like a foreign language except not a language I had ever heard before. I decided to keep on walking. The man clearly didn’t have anything to say, but as I kept walking, I thought about him. Perhaps legalizing drugs is a bad idea, but what do we do about people like that man? The cops didn’t seem intent on arresting him or any other addict on drug possession alone and perhaps that is simply the best way to keep moving. I’m not a cop. I’m not a politician. I’m just some kid, so I might not have much of a say in this. What I did understand is that the War on Drugs is very complicated and there are perfectly valid arguments for legalizing drugs and keeping drugs illegal. There’s tons of room for speculation, but as I thought about everything I read, well maybe the current system in Washington, even with its flaws, is the best thing we’ve got. Drugs are never going away, but I don’t think it’s advantageous to lock up someone simply for using drugs as if they were a common criminal, so I think the fact cops are backing off of a Zero tolerance policy on drugs is beneficial. However, bringing drugs into the open is also dangerous, so the best option might be to target the dealing and reach out to the users. I wasn’t sure if I believed what I was thinking because it’s hard to be certain with an issue so complex, but I had to believe something. I got into my car and left Seattle, wondering what new revelations would cause my opinion to change next time. It’ll be fascinating to see what transpires as a result of these new laws.
