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Experiment with drugs, Mr Bush
May 3rd 2001
From The Economist print edition

America’s drugs policies don’t work.
Alas, the Bush administration seems to want more of the same

BY ANY reasonable measure, America’s “war on drugs” is a disaster. At home, ferocious “mandatory sentencing” laws are the main reason for the country’s huge prison population. Almost one in four of the country’s 2m prisoners are there for drug offences, with only a limited chance of becoming productive members of society when they are released (see article). Abroad, America is being sucked into domestic conflicts, notably in Colombia; and recently its forces shot down a “drugs” plane in Peru that turned out to be carrying missionaries. Meanwhile, drugs have never been easier to get in the United States, with prices lower, purity higher and experimentation among schoolchildren as rampant as ever.

The Economist has long argued that drugs should be decriminalised. Few politicians will go that far, but many have edged in that direction. Back in January, George Bush, who was once busted for drink-driving and has always danced around the question of whether he took drugs in his misspent youth, seemed to be one of them. He argued that long minimum sentences for first-time drug users were not the best way “to occupy jail-space”. He also worried about the disparities between the sentences handed down for possessing crack and those for powdered cocaine—disparities that help explain why so many more blacks go to prison than whites.

The distant hope that a pragmatic conservative might yet change policy in a way that a liberal Democrat might not dare have now been dashed. First, Mr Bush announced that he would enforce a law that will deprive drug offenders of federal grants or loans for college education (one of the better ways of getting them back on the straight and narrow). Now the White House is strongly hinting that it will appoint John Walters as the new drugs “tsar”.

Mr Walters is to the drugs war what first world war generals were to trench warfare. He does not lack experience (he was a deputy drug tsar under Mr Bush’s father), but his basic reaction to the heavy losses sustained so far seems to be merely to increase the size of the attack. Mr Clinton’s drug policy, in his view, was too soft. The idea that American sentences are too harsh is “among the great urban myths of our time”. He points out that only 8.8% of those in state prisons are there for possession (which is true, but ignores the fact that many of the 11.3% who are there for drug-trafficking are there for being little more than lowly mules in the production process). Another “urban myth” is the idea that the “criminal justice system is unjustly punishing young black men.”

In policy terms, Mr Walters opposes the idea of distributing syringes to drug addicts as a way of controlling the spread of HIV. He dislikes even the thought of limited legalisation and various sorts of treatment. “If anything,” he wrote recently, “the trend of anti-drinking and anti-smoking efforts today is to criminalise certain aspects of use and to attack availability.”

It would be hard for Mr Bush to claim that he had no choice other than to be a hardliner. Voters have passed eight state ballots calling for marijuana to be legalised for medical purposes since 1996; Californians have also voted for an initiative requiring treatment instead of incarceration for a person’s first two drug offences. Tommy Thompson, Mr Bush’s secretary for health and human services, and several prominent Republican governors, have suggested that America should rethink its drugs policy. The shooting down of the aircraft in Peru, which killed an American missionary and her baby (and may have delayed Mr Walters’s appointment), has served as a powerful reminder to Americans of the cost of the overseas drug war.

Of course, Mr Walters may change his views once he is in office. But a policy of increased repression will surely result in thousands of people being thrown in prison for sins that are little worse than those alleged of the youthful George Bush: being young and irresponsible. An older and more responsible Mr Bush should reconsider his choice.