(00:00:00) Be honest politicians guide to drug control is of course trading on a title of colleague and I used some years ago. We wrote a book called The Honest politicians guide to Crime Control and it sold well and lawyers like President, you know, it works once you hope it'll work again and we claim no originality for it because it was copied of course from the somewhat sexist book written by George Bernard Shaw not a sexist book its axis title the intelligent woman's guide to Communism and socialism a long while ago. But anyhow, we made no claim to originality originality is generally just the claim of originality is just at the tribute that look poor memory. It creates really it's not egg. (00:00:50) very rarely (00:00:51) true What I'd like to do is to today try to State what I think is a different approach to the problems of drug control and is in the public press of course, I've persuaded myself that it's impeccably correct, but I don't think you would necessarily agree with it. But let me at least state it as from aphoristic form and then try to develop it and then if you want to argue with me later, that will be fine. I'm laying out this plan of what I want to do because my wife tells me that I have many faults as a public speaker, but the main to our tendency to wander away from the topic and then the second one is a tendency to return to it. And in that in that situation, you've got to be fairly precise about what you're hoping to do. All right, so series of propositions sort of school man propositions not school man propositions, but like that, there isn't a drug problem in this country. There are a series of troubling social problems to which drugs differently relate. And it's important part of wisdom to take at least trust me for a moment with the validity of it did it is a fundamental error to talk of a drug problem. To defer to Dev Define A diversity of problems as a Unity is a fundamental error an error. This this red book drugs are dramatically makes (00:02:30) Secondly (00:02:31) the great debate between the prohibitory orders and the legalizes which you see in the newspapers every day is profoundly misguided. The former prohibition is unachievable in practice. The latter legalization certainly in less heavily qualified is unachievable politically and in its more ample form is undesirable. Third proposition the present all-embracing prohibitory policy with its pervasive Reliance on the criminal law should give way to a complex system of prohibition and regulation backed up in some instances. But by no means all by the criminal law the inner theme Here is that it is impossible to regulate that. Which you (00:03:20) prohibit. And I think that is true (00:03:25) the conclusion that will follow if I can establish all those earlier aggressive propositions is that we need no new criminal laws regarding the ingestion of presently prohibited drugs, nor any repeal of our existing laws. (00:03:40) We need (00:03:42) no new resources of men money or materials to enforce those laws. We certainly need no drugs are even if he were competent what we need. No. No, seriously what we need over you will all hate him more later save it. What we need is a redirection of existing resources to those aspects of certain social problems, which are now exacerbated by the prevalence of the abuse of drugs. Well, I hope can't hope exhaustively to develop all of those dogmatism Xin the short space. Anyhow short to me probably eternity to you of a of a lecture in the book that Hawkins and I will achieve I don't know when there's no hurry. This problem isn't going to go away. We will be able to defend all that impeccably. I have no doubt but not this afternoon. But to give some more substance to the argument. Let me clear the ground a little and then offer you a practical program for rational drug policies in this (00:04:47) country. (00:04:51) Let me start by asking you to recall a photograph that you must have seen in your newspapers. They are said certainly occurred in the Chicago newspaper a few weeks ago and then at me follow it with a 12th Century Chinese proverb the photograph depicted a table or about the size of that section of this desk there and on it is stacked. a large amount of currency greenbacks wrapped in plastic bands and next to it a packets brown paper or cellophane of allegedly drugs and often they are and next to it as a sort of a mini armamentarium of guns automatics and handguns and standing behind the table was the representative of the US attorney's office representative The Drug Enforcement Administration and if he can get himself in there the chief of police and and and the caption is biggest drug bust ever and underneath it the (00:05:57) story tells it (00:05:59) In remarkably High numbers the value of the drugs that have been seized in this elegantly run rate and that at last they think we're turning the corner and the drugs are being brought under control because this mr. Big has been caught. My problem with that picture is I've been seeing it for 25 years about monthly and that is not an exaggeration and I'm prepared to bet you'll see it within the next month. It is a regular photograph the Chinese proverb to express the truth behind that picture is much noise on stairs. Nobody comes. Well there really has been much noise on on stairs about drug interdiction successes. But so far nobody has arrived. I don't think many people really believe that the frequently declared war on drugs will lead to the unconditional surrender of the enemy. Yet we're offered no alternative other than the politically unacceptable policy of an ill-defined legalization. So let me leap into this vacuum of ideas and offer an outline of a rational and achievable policy. If you think this reflects foolhardiness rather than sound sense, you are certainly right, but I might as well fall this way as any other Put it on another way if the Comstock laws and the Mann act didn't make us all sexually pure inward indeed. If the false Ted act didn't dry up our thirst for the demon rum, and it's a surrogate if the Harrison acts and their state and federal legislative progeny have failed uninterruptedly for 80 years to inhibit our consumption of addictive drugs or even to increase their price when you correct for inflation and adulteration. (00:07:50) What (00:07:50) principle should not guide at should now God our drug policy federal state and local? Well, the present policy guidelines that clear aren't they are more determined interdiction to reduce Supply more vehement preachments to reduce demand and perhaps somewhat grudgingly an increase in drug treatment resources also to reduce demand if these medicines have failed in the past as they have the solution is simple increase the dosage nothing could be simpler or more futile except for the demagogue seeking votes. And I met one such this summer in Aspen or so-called Za demagogue who came to dislike me over a week almost as much as I came to dislike him. He told me on meeting that he knew my work well and then he proceeded to miss State some of the writings of the philosopher Herbert Morris in return. I in return I congratulated him on his withdrawal from that most addictive of drugs nicotine, but wrist The View that he couldn't afford to cure we couldn't afford to cure all addicts my making the members of the Russian aristocracy. We got along very well indeed. Well from my careful attention to the propaganda coming from the front of the war against drugs daily the new war I don't mean the Nixon War. I don't mean the Reagan more. I mean the Bennett Bush War I conclude that they all fail to appreciate that here as elsewhere. The business of government is the allocation of priorities in relation to existing resources. Trying to be all things to all men wins elections that's clear, but it doesn't win drug wars. In Aspen Bennett put this to me. Are you saying that because we failed in the past? We should now try to succeed. (00:09:45) Well, of course not (00:09:47) but surely we shouldn't try the same strategy the same tactics and even the identical rhetoric it is so dull (00:09:55) so (00:09:56) so far. I've been somewhat negative 4, I think I may have been fractionally on the negative side, but I better soon offer some affirmative ideas. But I'm sorry. I've been a little more ground clearing. It is my wife said, you know returns to the topic well. Academic caution compels me to say that the drugs what drugs I'm talking about properly developed drug policies will in time deal differently with marijuana and cocaine with heroin and PCP and a variety of other prohibited mind-altering drugs. And of course differently with alcohol nicotine coffee Valium digital is rat poison. You keep going with the lift. Though you appreciate their obvious diverse effects and the implications of the differences between these drugs for shaping policies for their control. Not everyone seems to but for today, let me put aside those differences and to put it just for the time being and think about one group of drugs, hashish and marijuana the Opium derivatives the derivatives of the cocoa plant cocaine and crack PCP the amphetamines and the increasingly threatening designer drugs, which together form the Grist of the middle of the street drug dealer and are the target of our present drug interdiction efforts. (00:11:22) So there is a (00:11:24) diversity but let's think about that group as a Second Sweep of ground clearance. I am not dealing with drugs such as steroids in sports. I have enough trouble without the with the subject without taking on that most powerful special group athletic coaches. Athletic Endeavor. Anyhow is rapidly becoming merely a branch of chemistry and should be so soon a third group a third group of ground third sweep of ground clearance the drug alcohol cannot be ignored. Gore Vidal in an essay on drugs off of the proposition that Americans forget everything that happened before last Tuesday. I think he's right. Let me give you some of the experience of the past. Because I think the experience of First State first state and then Federal prohibition of the sale of alcohol as has inescapable lessons for drug policy, generally. Between 1851 and 1863 a majority of the state's not federally of the state's first tried and then abandoned various forms of alcohol prohibitory legislation. By 1919 and the ratification of the 18th Amendment there were only five dry (00:12:47) States (00:12:47) majority of states in reducing 25 went before we move to Prohibition. And as you know in 1933 the twenty-first amendment repealed The Volstead Act these experiments one lasting 12 years the other 14 years must teach us something but what do they teach? The usual answer the answer. I suspect you expect from me is prohibition failed. Well, I'm not sure did at all. Let's think about it together from did it fail. Before 1919 the annual per capita consumption of alcohol in this country was reducing. During the currency of the Volstead Act and until the passage of the 21st amendment the consumption of alcohol from legal and illegal sources remained well below what it had previously been there is really no doubt that the claim of the prohibitionists in alcohol that they could reduce the ingestion of alcohol in this country was so and was successful. And more than its effect on the total alcohol consumption prohibition. Did everything its protagonists claimed for it? It reduced the ingestion of alcohol and the best evidence. These are not as strong League based of the first statements, but they're pretty strong is that it also reduced deaths from cirrhosis of the liver reduced admissions to Mental Hospitals reduced industrial industry injuries and absenteeism reduced Road accidents and reduced Family Violence. There was certainly fewer arrests for drunkenness and disorderly Behavior. Prohibition did not create organized crime in this country that had happened much earlier in the link between politics and gambling, but it did greatly fill the coffers of organized crime. It did what the people who wanted it said it would do in all of these particular now on the other hand the Volstead Act also fulfilled the claims of its antagonists as well as its protagonist. It intensified police corruption. It was heavily class biased HL Mencken said that and I'm sure he's correct that they were only two occasions during prohibition when he couldn't immediately get the drink he wanted it was hypocritical and it was certainly criminal genic. The short point I'm trying to make is not an easy one. It is that long-term cost benefit of analysis of prohibitory legislation is not easy to make they are in commensurable is in a way that you are balancing. It's rather like the practice of John Dewey's Texas farmer who weighed his Pigs by putting them on one end of a plank that was balanced in the middle and then putting rocks on the other end of the plank until they balance and then guessing the weight of the rocks that that the sort of balancing program that has gone on here in relation to cost benefits a don't say prohibition failed prohibitions. Exceeded ain't true in either aspect. It all depends what you want out of these law and and all sorts of countervailing values intersect. Oh, I did forget to mention one fascinating consequence of prohibition a wave of religious devotion, engulf the country it must have must've there was an astonishing increase in the consumption of sacramental whines now, so so these are difficult balance. Seriously, if I'm at like you to bear that in mind when you think about the drug prohibition I can because these are weighing different things. So now the fourth ground clearing point in its near the end of these I promise the data debate between the prohibitors and the legalizes has impressive names on both sides Steven against Mill Nixon Reagan Bush Bennett, Jesse Jackson and most politicians against Herbert Packer Milton Friedman William Buckley Thomas as Thomas schelling and recently a few more allies that you know about with different levels Bob sweet and and Antarctica many other less prominent Scholars and a very few courageous politicians the mayor of Baltimore few are beginning to take different position. The claims of each like those in Conflict prior to the Volstead Act are probably true. They are all probably speaking accurate. What is mere guesswork is the extent of the increase in the consumption of marijuana or heroin or cocaine which would certainly follow a legalization policy and the consequent Judgment of social cost accounting whether that disadvantage is sufficient to outweigh the many advantages that would flow from a late legalization policy. For this reason Jon Kaplan is a good like Ian Kaplan is a good example his excellent book on marijuana favors a policy of legalization and his equally excellent book on heroin favors a policy of prohibition. There is here neither contradiction nor change of mind. He may be wrong on both but there's no contradiction. Well now to present our present to plan positive affirmative ideas rather than to continue to dance the usual law teachers Gavotte on the one hand and on the other hand sort of stuff, right my economic colleagues at the law school of University of Chicago harass me with their Relentless search for what they inelegantly call the bottom line. It's unattractive phrase and they use it all the time. They insist on quantifying and costing moral values. They totally reject intergenerational effects because they don't know how to handle it but for a while let us trust them. What is the realistic bottom line of drug policy? Where would we be led by Adam Smith's Invisible Hand of unadulterated self-interest just self-interest. Well, is it a confession? Am I alone in the room? I don't care all that much of adult Americans kill themselves with drugs. I really don't I don't entirely like sympathy. I'm a generous Spirit but their deaths from an overdose of drugs or from the debilitating effects of long-term addiction stir me, but they don't stir me any more than the death of say children south of the Sahara from starvation and malnutrition. Am I the only one who is not agitated by the penchant for drug dealers to murder one another I feel anguish for the innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire, but the drug dealers fall frequently doesn't doesn't it seems me all in all a good thing rather than a Bad Thing certainly not anything to get anxious about As one concerned like John Howard with the state of the prisons. I am troubled that they are bursting at the seams with drug dealers and many low-level use a drug dealers are in but I don't regret at all that one who seeks to make his living this way should be in prison. I mean, these are interesting things. There are things that would be better. Otherwise But their entertainment their public talk in the newspapers in of the serious matters. My concerns are else me elsewhere. Let me State them curtly in the hope that they'll attract your agreement here. They are there are seven things I care about in this area and about only seven first crimes committed by those on drugs not the crimes of dealing or consuming drugs, but rather robberies and burglaries Street crime crime that injures us and our (00:20:44) neighbors (00:20:47) that matters to me. There is here one of those rare opportunities actually to do something practical to reduce predatory crime. I'm not going to give what should be done about these. I just want to make these as the main concerns. Secondly, I care about injury to Children and Youth by addictive drugs. I think great harm is done their great home. Thirdly. I care about the destruction of neighborhoods by rampant drug dealing by rampant drug dealing and some neighborhoods are beset by (00:21:19) drug dealer. Fourth (00:21:22) the use of drugs by those in a few occupations who endanger our lives or safety seems to be a matter of concern V highway safety sixth the spread of AIDS by intravenous drug use and because of my own particular interests, which I wouldn't expect you to share. I care a lot about the availability of drugs in prison, but that's a rather specialized and (00:21:47) personal interests. (00:21:49) Well now if that list or something like it is what concerns you mainly Then my submission is this the great debate between the prohibitors with their dream of a drug-free America and the legalizes were their abundant confidence in Freedom of Choice should be put aside since the former prohibition is unachievable in practice and the latter is unachievable in political reality and and we should consent concentrate on what matters to us those six or seven areas. To achieve substantial change in those clearly defined purposes. No sup no changes in the law and necessary. We already have ample legislative Authority for a rational drug policy too much nor a more resources required. They're already substantial resources devoted to drug control sufficient for our purposes if they were slowly but steadily redirected to focus on those seven concerns or whatever number is on your list that are political process would TJ out Now it's clear that the give priority some aspects of drug control involves neglecting or ignoring (00:23:05) others. (00:23:10) To give priority to some necessarily involves posterity or t to others that it is an important part of the plan. I'm offering to you that police resources should be steadily withdrawn from enforcing the law against the adult user or abuser of drugs. I'm talking about the adult not otherwise criminal user of drugs. Such a user may get caught in the attack on one of the seven priority areas for example in a police sweep to clear a neighborhood of open drug-dealing you might get a recreational user. And if so fine that is convicted doesn't bother me too much but no law enforcement resources should be specifically targeted as they are now being targeted against the adult recreational non-criminal user if he forces himself upon us or get involved in one of our priority areas, we may have to enforce the law against him but not otherwise not otherwise now this is not heresy within the long tradition of law enforcement the way that ineffective and unpopular laws have historically gone off. The statute books is by gradual non-enforcement gradually falling into this way acute and it's not in heretical or original proposition. It's a Hackney proposition. Like other unwise laws which exaggerated the reform of power of the criminal law the laws prohibiting the ingestion of drugs by adults not active in one of those seven priority areas of social control should be allowed to fall into this way at you. Well all that may sound trite obvious dull, but it would in practice spell a revolution in drug control policies in this country. One advantage of framing a drug policy and they use more complex purposive terms narrower purposes. Is I think that the results can be measured it is possible to make measurements in those seven areas to see if you fail or succeed over time. We can learn if we are winning or have won one of those battles. Whether and to what extent one or other of our seven purposes are being achieved but who knows whether the War on Drugs in its more ample moralistic Bennett form is now being won or lost the news from the battlefield is not encouraging but you can't be sure so like the war in Vietnam. Let us now declare the War on Drugs one finished over. I mean, it has been reducing within middle class. That's fine through use all attributable to Bennett and Bush and see if we can get ahead with a few battles to reduce predatory crime by drug users to reduce the levels of drug use by youths and children to make the highways safer to save lives and reduce injuries in some occupations to reduce the spread of AIDS to use violence and write in prisons and to reclaim some of our destroyed inner city neighborhoods or by more effective and focused drug policy. Another General point about this proposal better to Define our priorities and to allocate existing resources in relation to that definition is that it produces a better understanding of who are the fighters in these diverse battles. If you've got to pursue the metaphor of War policy should relate to Resource allocation Bennett's War looks like a federal war with leadership from on high and some funds to encourage the police in the states and cities to win the war for him as my suggested 7 battles involve a variety of different Fighters. Let me demonstrate you the difference here think for a moment about the difference in strategy and tactics if our plan of resource reallocation were pursued. The traditional Drug law enforcement on the streets pattern goes like this find a street level dealer. This is usually easy since he has to be visible to a degree to sell his Wares and many of you in the audience know how to find the street level dealer on free if he is elusive one of his customers can be coerced to reveal his source of supply. So make an undercover buy that we do arrest the dealer or threatened to do so, but turn him rather than charge him. Press him by one means or another to set up his supplier prolong this ladder like series of stings and threats until mr. Baig or even mrs. Big big and beg bigger are inside and thus aim at one of those photo opportunities. I told you about behind that table Laden with drugs money and (00:27:49) guns but (00:27:53) Bertrand Russell said if he could only take one word to the island, you know, like you take the works of Shakespeare or Mozart or something the one word he would take would be but I think it's the most valuable language word in the English language. But if your aim is to prevent sales to use and children that is a futile strategy. Mr. Big doesn't care at all to whom his products of Soul. He doesn't sell them to Children the only realistic Target the only realistic Target fought inhibiting chair sales to Children and Youth must be the lowest level Street dealer adult or as he frequently regrettably is juvenile. A quite different strategy must be pursued. It has many other important differences because to the problem of the use of drugs by youths and children. There are other strategies requiring disproportionate allocation of treatment support and proper control programs to provide them with ways of (00:28:50) Escape. (00:28:52) from their tendency to experiment And it's a ways of escape and not only interdiction and support and disproportionate allocation of treatment and educational resources that are significant not this climbing up the ladder of Supply, which is an utter futility in relation to Children. Let me take another example suppose. What you care about is a neighborhood plagued by drugs bypass pervasive and open dealing the is unacceptable and that exists in many cities of this country including Washington, DC. Again, quite different strategies are appropriate The Sweep becomes a weapon of choice police saturation of an area mass arrests, even if many of those arrests fail to send stand up when subjected to judicial scrutiny move the dealers and their customers off the streets off those particular streets in that particular neighborhood. Oh, but people say that's no good all that merely displaces their activity puts them somewhere else. It's only displacement. It's not reduction of Supply but that isn't quite true displacement never seems to be complete for some time. It seems to be a reduction of Supply until they get reorganized. And in any event if reclaiming a particular neighborhood is your purpose it does it when does it for a time it gives the citizens a better sense of being protected and of having increased safety and it lays the possibility of alliances between Community organizations and police for the inhibition of rampant drug sales. It may not be permanent, but it helps. And it can be the basis of better police-community relationship a profoundly different strategy from the other two. And if you will consider the troops and tactics for all of those seven areas, you will agree. I think when you think about it yourselves that the differences between them are very great. Some need Federal policing some don't some need state and local police some don't some depend on neighborhood support. Some don't know single strategy is appropriate to these areas. The unity of the drug war is again misleading. I'm not suggesting that the effort to close our borders to the entry of drugs should be abandoned merely that we should not continue to add more resources to those already deployed at or beyond our borders by the DEA the FBI Customs Authority. And now the Army the Navy the Coast Guard many other we cannot seal the borders, but we shouldn't continue to but we should continue to try to inhibit the free flow of drugs into this country. senior federal and state local officials state and local law enforcement officials tend to share this view that I've just offered the in any of the inutility of the expenditure of more funds on Border interdiction not so much when they speak in public, but when they have a few drinks with you in private, there is not much to be gained from even sharply increased disruption of smuggling networks from efforts at crop eradication from attacks on the various. Mr. Biggs who figure in the Press stories. It's not a very it doesn't each dollar spent doesn't return (00:32:12) much. (00:32:14) That is the popular view. Let me be there for praying a the Judgment of James Q Wilson a major scholar of the criminal law who with my colleague Michael tonry has just completed editing a volume in our crime and Justice series a book called drugs and crime that really is excellent and is soon to be published Wilson is generally regarded as a conservative and cautious scholar not a Sentimental character like me on this topic. He concludes after a (00:32:42) serious sa (00:32:44) additional money for Supply reduction. Maybe you're more usefully spent on the city streets than overseas or at our balls 909 of no serious scholarship to the (00:32:55) contrary. So (00:32:56) again Garvey dolls proposition about last Tuesday applies. We should remember the failure of past efforts that crop eradication overseas particularly in turkey and Mexico to reduce the flow into these countries, they succeeded in turkey and to a substantial degree. Texaco but they didn't reduce the flow of drugs into this country. They didn't even push up prices here. It is. Most unlikely that our efforts in Peru and Colombia will have any effect here. You get very little return for each dollar spent. So trying to draw the general argument together and back to the originals. There is not a drug problem in this country. There is a series of serious social problems to which drugs differently relate the overall aim should be neither to remake man nor to indulge his weaknesses, but rather to use governmental and Community Resources to minimize the damage that the drugs do in those areas where they most forcefully impinge on the decencies of life in a Democratic Society. Now I lack the time and I'm sure you like the inclination for me to unpack in detail each one of those seven concerns. Let me have a make a brief comment on one of them and I offer a general reflection on the first three and then give you peace to shout abuse or questions at me depending on what you'd like. The one I choose is probably the not the most important of the seven but the one I happen to know most about reducing predatory crime by drug policies, and I'm Sorry by drug abusers whenever the relationship between drugs and crime is interested researchers for two decades. There are shelves of reported studies. They tend strongly to controvert the simple proposition the drugs cause crime. The product of research is counter-intuitive should come as no surprise to you truth often contradict conventional wisdom Winston Churchill put that very, well. He said man often stumbles against truth, but he usually picks himself up and Carries right home. Well, of course, the pressure for funds to purchase drugs. The pressure of funds to purchase drugs. Does Drive some addicts to predatory crime, but the relationship has been much exaggerated much more frequently drugs and crime go together as an in the Life relationship. So that urine samples of felony arrestees in our city test positive in from 60 to 80% of those treated the drug czars red book. If you have a look at it, it's worth looking at shows for about twelve cities extraordinarily High positive urine samples for the drugs. We have talked about of all arrestees ranging from just under 60 percent to over. 80% it's formidably Heights higher than we any of us thought until those series were Pursuit. Regrettably few research studies, give clear guidance to Crime Control policy. We know there's a relationship but but two important series of findings do open the door wide to more effective control of Street crime. (00:36:12) High levels (00:36:13) of drug use among those who do commit crime and those who persist in crime are clearly correlated with high frequencies and increased severities of criminality. There is a group of offenders with very high drug ingestion and very high frequency and incidence of crime of criminality Again. Jim Wilson puts the point crisply whether one looks at drugs or crime. The key distinction to make them on people involves not between people but the rate at which misconduct occurs. The frequency of crime during a times B. Let me illustrate comparing burglars and robbers who use drugs and those who do not. But people are bugs and Robin some use drugs some do not. When at large, they commit burglaries and robberies and other predatory crime overall at about the same rate. The users in the non of Grizz has roughly the same number of criminal days and non-criminal days and the same frequencies of crime over a given period (00:37:20) but (00:37:21) compare both of those groups with burglars who use and robbers who use drugs that are high level of frequency. The latter commit predatory crimes at rates varying between five and six times the frequency of the other two groups within the drug user criminal group. There is a small nucleus of very high frequency drug and drug users and crime committees. Very much higher than others. These findings have been confirmed in many different places and by a variety of research methods. I regard them as a reliable. They carry the imprimatur of the National Academy of Sciences as well as many reasons researchers from medicine sociology criminology. And they're validated by another series of studies. When under controlled treatment conditions, the ingestion of drugs by high-frequency drug unit has uses is eliminated or greatly reduced their Commission of predatory crime is also greatly reduced or eliminated. that is to say one can take the high incidence group the most serious group and if you under controlled conditions Eliminate or prevent the ingestion of drugs and we can do that. They will say some will commit crime but nothing like at the rate that they did when they were drug use drug treatment and control programs in the community have an encouraging level of success and to this I must admit Czar Bennett agrees. I better be nasty to him a bit of right read something from him, but I think he gets right generally speaking treatment for drug addiction can and often does work. If one made in one major study of users who receive treatment for three months or longer about half of those treated for cocaine or heroin addiction were not using these drugs one year later and additional 22 additional twenty to thirty percent had greatly reduced their drug use And so these are not arguments of the left or right. I'm offering now the facts about drug treatment are pretty secure. He's basing these conclusions mainly on the Californian civil commitment program and on a similar Federal program unlike alcohol treatment programs where success is closely related to the sincerity of the desire to cease using disease drinking treatment programs for drugs seem not to be so conditioned. What is collated with success is not motivation? Apparently it's merely the duration of retention in the treatment program whether the drug user is there voluntarily or (00:40:08) not (00:40:11) for book we worked on recently we gather together to meetings of about 20 each drug treatment programs across the country different modalities different philosophies, but all reported that duration of retention the key matter and they didn't weren't able to tease out difference between the volunteers who wanted to be there and those who were coerced to be there. That's profoundly different from alcohol tree. The other thing that is correlated with success in these programs is related to to retention in them regular random (00:40:46) unpredictable urine testing. (00:40:50) Giving us the means to ensure that people in community-based treatment programs are not ingesting drugs. We can know that we can know that simple proposition if you use you lose and you test regularly (00:41:03) and if you lose you go back to prison. (00:41:06) Well those two facts high-crime frequency by criminals who abuse drugs in the established capacity of compulsory drug treatment and control program to reduce the frequency and severity of their crime lead to this conclusion one convicted of a predatory crime who also uses heroin cocaine or its derivative crack or any of its designer drugs at a high level and we have to Define that and it's definable should always as part of his sentence be required to become drug-free in the community for a period of at least two years. This should be enforced by intensive Supervision in the community and be a by the requirement that he be involved in the drug treatment program, which may or may not have been initially involved some in prison or in jail launching pad. The main point is that the treatment has to be Community Based. He should be informed that he will be tested regularly in randomly should be further informed that persistence in the use of drugs will lead to his imprisonment and to his subsequent release on precisely the same terms. It's a (00:42:04) crowd of this. (00:42:07) Well, I'll spare you the further suffering of my commenting on the other six areas of concern in some of the same way. Let me simply assure you that they all create these different techniques different strategies and more modest (00:42:19) achievable ends. (00:42:24) You don't have to buy or borrow the book if it ever gets written to do that. But but let me try to comment on the first three of my areas of concern from a different perspective and then give you merciful. (00:42:34) Peace. (00:42:37) the effect of drugs on crime on children and our neighborhoods Czar Bennett's War on Drugs May well be of assistance to the middle class. I'd even be prepared to yield him that went over the more generous move there not to like you. In a period when middle-class use of drugs anyhow is reducing for same reasons of health and social values that are using the use of nicotine and and harder alcohol the middle class may not suffer much from his idiocy, but to the other America increasingly locked into the post-marital family if it can be called a family and neighborhood increasingly characterized by the low birth weight of its infants by high infant mortality rates by children damaged almost irretrievably before they enter first grade by Dreadful schools with increasing Dropout rates by increasing Literacy By increase in gang activity by increasing unemployment of Youth and Young adults by formidably high crime and delinquency rates. We're the criminals in their victims live in locked in close proximity. Where violence is endemic and drug abuse pervasive it is terribly damaged. for those to the north literate move by considerations of Health buoyed by aspirations to succeed Bennett's educative and hortatory policies backed up by the criminal law and by Nancy Reagan's just say no campaign a probably helpful by eminent your husband, but for those to the South they are harmful rather than helpful to apply a policy of increasing the impact of law enforcement against drugs to the South is to exacerbate their overall problem. It is so violently to attack One symptom of the disease that the disease itself is worsened. It is some mistake short-term intervention Against One symptom as a mitigation of the disease it is to use a fancy word are tro genic a disease worse than by its tree. Over the past 30 years in this country. We virtually eliminated poverty from the lives of the agent and have grossly and disproportionately imposed poverty on children and on other underclass women and their children for whom it is hope they will care Scholars from my University of precisely charted these Dreadful Waters, and I'm sure it's true in Minnesota William. Julius Wilson is done a superb book on the truly disadvantaged studies of schools studies of the child in Illinois and many support the thesis. I'm offering it is not so bad here, but there are similarities, but the problem is allowed to grow worse. Is it Paranoid on my part to wonder whether Wars on drugs are not designed to draw attention away from the problem to which drugs about a symptom. Well, I become excessive. I had better give you peace bring this harangue to an end in more moderate terms. Well, do I believe these Brave things that I talked about will come to pass there will be a focus drug policies that rational policies will supplant the powerful symbolism of the present War to lift the scourge of drugs from the shoulders of the American people. I don't know I think it may but I'm not sure in what is now not really a brief life. I've seen extraordinary retrenchment in the moralistic role of the criminal (00:46:13) law (00:46:15) when I first went to Chicago I went to make a speech about the Illinois criminal code of 1961 when it would had been launched and one big issue then hotly disputed was that codes abolition of Control addict adult homosexuality as a crime, Illinois was of course the first state to repeal that Prohibition in those days in England. It was not thought of miscarriage of Justice twice to imprison John gielgud as he then was for solicitation. Now the gay rights movement presses for the elimination of any official prejudice against their sexual predilections. And those have that inclination of become a political force to be reckoned with and with the death of Olivia. The now Sir John gielgud is not only the senior actor of the British street, but he also straddles the PV waves of America selling in different Californian wines with profound gentlemanly, aplomb the homosexuality amount it would be crass for anyone to mention. That's a remarkable changes remarkable change. Imprisonment and now, you know very well, so I don't know what the future holds here or elsewhere in order you some much of the criminal law is symbolic having impact only only on a few who are sacrificed to the powerful passion of symbolism capital punishment to prove you're not soft on crime desecration of the flag to prove your loyalty through to American values. It's mad punishing those who injure themselves with drugs to prove our solicitude for them. So I hope rationality soon prevailed over symbolism until it does we will not know use our knowledge of the impacts of drugs on prime or neighborhoods on my seven problems let alone on your list of priorities to advance human happiness. Thank you for your tolerance of my All right, I used a metaphor because it's a metaphor. That is so popular and it but it is only for me a metaphor. I disliked it as a metaphor. I think it misleading because it assumes that same Unity where there's a diversity. Where it you may wish to press me and where we met part company is that I think to say it's a war then get rid of it is equally stating the problem as a Unity because you see I think that the area's I tried to mention I do care about and I think we should use social policies sometimes backed up by criminal law and Regulatory policy to minimize the harm done in those areas. So I hate the War battle metaphor. I agree with you. It's mistaken, and I'd like another metaphor, but I was simply accepting the current (00:49:14) one there. (00:49:16) But I don't think you should let it delude you the other way to reject the metaphor shouldn't push you to say there aren't some serious social problems here because I think there are. Yeah, I think that it depends what people mean by legalization. If by legalization, they mean no regulations and no prohibition. Then I think it's profoundly misguided. I think we're captains of History what we've done in the past about alcohol and have gradually been doing about nicotine a sensible processor Pro alcohol isn't quote legalized heavily taxed is it's pure food legislation controls it same cigarette tax and tried to control educated requirements attached to each and so I would have thought that if you're asking me where would I wish to end up if I lived for the next 20 years it would be in a position in which there were strong and enforced regulations against sales to minors. Against public sales of any drugs strong educative programs available treatment program, but it wouldn't be a complete abolition of law regulation probably so I think it's I basically I am on political reality because I think that's so I don't think it'll change politically, but in fact what lies behind it for me is I wished to gradually reduce the Reliance on law enforcement, but it will be there. I'm no good at that. I'm no good at that at all. Now. I mean, you know you can I think I can do some things. You can't do others. I think I think I've given you a different way of approaching the problem that tries to get behind the symbolism to what are the realities of certain genuine social problem and to say think about them in that context thinking of Public Health way thinking it in a political organization way thinking a community elevation way backed up by criminal law. I just confess myself, but will did by the political processes of change because you say I'm The thing that really bothers me in behind this is when I talk to people who are involved in policy making they seem to understand very clearly probably better than I do some of the viewpoints. I'm trying to offer you. They're not taken in by their own rhetoric yet. They keep uttering the rhetoric. They keep uttering their intelligent people. What do I conclude? I conclude only that this is either a substitute for preventing other processes taking place or it's deliberately misleading (00:52:07) people. (00:52:10) I really do not think that the people at the head of the Defense Forces think that they're going to make a difference to the rate of importation of drugs into America. But they won't say that I went to this is a long while ago. So it's safe to say to a sub-cabinet level meeting in Washington with all the relevant heads of departments when Edward Levy who was previously been my present the university and his friend was the attorney general and Peter bensinger is a close personal friend was head of the DEA and they took me there somewhat like it takes, you know a clown it sort of comic relief. We had a lovely weekend the wines were excellent. The tennis was good and they were telling me how they were going to stop this brown heroin coming from from Mexico and by squirting the fields and I was able look, you know about these sources of Supply can control them to a degree and pick people up. Why the hell do you want to make it harder for yourself and they thought that was funny but that's exactly what happened now, they are not stupid people. So I think the symbolism is used deliberately to my sleeve. (00:53:21) I don't know how else to conclude. (00:53:26) I think you underestimate the use of recreational drugs in America. I think they're very widespread and it might depopulate much of the rest of the country.