Are drugs "intrinsically evil"? Panelists debate the cost and consequence of exporting the Drug War.

Titled “Exporting the Drug War: Historical and Geographical Perspectives,” the panel included Dr. David Courtwright, professor at the University of North Florida and president of the Alcohol and Drug History Society; Dr. Craig Reinarman, professor of sociology and legal studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz; and Anthony Placido, assistant administrator and chief of intelligence for the Drug Enforcement Administration’s intelligence program. UTEP political science professor Tony Payan moderated the panel and the question and answer session following the presentations.

Courtwright’s presentation focused on the historical perspective of the global drug trade and what current issues have resulted from it.

He also referred to whether or not a supply will create a demand as the “elephant in the room” of the conference. “Yesterday several speakers made the point that if you have a demand, that will stimulate a supply. That’s certainly true. But it’s also the case historically that over the long time, a supply of drugs will stimulate demand, particularly in certain populations, namely those who are young, male, socially marginal, and heavily stressed.”

He said that global drug commerce rose in conjunction with the rise of trans-oceanic empires in Europe. He said that historical statistics don’t represent the actual amount of drugs consumed because of the high level of smuggling because of tax evasion. “Like the arms race, drug abuse exemplified a, maybe the, central problem of modern history, which is how do you prevent the same technologies that are advancing civilization from simultaneously undermining or destroying civilization.”

International treaties, prescription requirements, and restrictions in retail distribution were among the regulations. “When people criticize the U.S. drug war, often what they are referring to is the penal aspect of the drug war.”

“What changed, especially in the 1980s, was the punishment,” he said.

On U.S. policy, he talked about a brief liberalization in the late 1960s and early 1970s, then a veer to the right with the Rockefeller laws in 1973. While European governments opted for harm reduction policies, Courtwright said that criminal sanctions were increased for drug users in the U.S. He attributes this to the culture wars that rose to prominence in the political landscape in the later part of the 20th century, with drug abuse having opponents rather than treatments.

He also said that although the current administration is left of center, it has avoided moves on drug policy to focus on central issues such as health care reform. “If drug policy reform happens at all at the federal level, it will happen later in the Obama administration, which isn’t to say that it might not happen at the state level, where the fiscal crisis has been most acute.”

Offering the comparative perspective, Reinarman spoke of his time spent in the Netherlands, where coffee shops allow patrons to smoke marijuana. He compared statistics of drug use in Amsterdam to that of San Francisco. “The striking thing about this is it shows Amsterdam, where you can say you can’t throw a brick without hitting a place that sells cannabis, has a starkly lower rate, or prevalence rate, and that includes lifetime prevalence, last year prevalence, and last month prevalence,” he said. “It’s quite paradoxical, because we’ve always been led to believe that availability is destiny.”

Reinarman said that as signatories on U.N. treaties on drug control, the Dutch have still have laws against marijuana. The level of incarceration was the point of departure. “The Dutch don’t call their drug policy a drug war. They do not incarcerate hundreds of thousands of low level drug users.” He added that they have regulated use, which has included a ban on advertising, increased minimum age of purchase, decreased the amount that can be sold and closed some coffee shops.

Reinarman also included a slide with his presentation that indicated that usage of illicit drugs including cocaine and methamphetamine were higher in San Francisco than in Amsterdam. He says that the Netherland’s drug policy could serve as an alternate paradigm for our drug policy, but warned of neglecting the unique nature of U.S. drug policy. “When you have conditions like you have in the United States with people without health insurance, people who live in desperate poverty and so on, it’s going to tend to magnify the nature of your drug problem.”

Placido said the pessimism roots from the phrase “war on drugs”. “We can’t go to war with inanimate objects. Wars have beginnings and ends. Perhaps a better analogy for this is to talk about the government’s ongoing responsibility to protect society and to really go after those who would peddle poison for profit.”

He explained why he thinks the drug war has not impacted the United States in the same way as it has in South America, where the term "war" is less metaphorical than in the U.S. “The drug flow largely comes from outside the United States. The reason is that we have aggressive law enforcement here,” he said.

He said that law enforcement cannot act alone, and should be combined with education, treatment and prevention. “Most of the people who go into treatment don’t go there voluntarily. The highest problem is that the people who go into treatment go there because they’ve been arrested.”

Talking about his perception of progress made in the past 40 years, Placido referenced Plan Colombia and gave an opinion that contrasted from panelists in other presentations. “Many would argue that Plan Colombia was a dismal failure, that we spent millions of dollars and cocaine is still coming out of Colombia,” he said. “Fifteen years ago if someone were to tell me that Colombian national police were a model of law enforcement in the hemisphere, I would have probably been belly laughing on the floor; they are today.”

When the panel was asked if decriminalization would decrease crime and violence, it was said that there are no lower level street dealers for marijuana in the Netherlands. The panelists had departures of opinion among themselves.

“Some would argue that we could regulate the use of other illicit drugs like heroin and methamphetamine. It sounds fine intellectually until you actually try and implement it,” said Placido. “When you start walking down this line, it becomes very difficult when you realize it’s as expensive to regulate, if not more so, than it is to enforce the laws, and ultimately, we the taxpayers end up underwriting this whole thing."

In a later question, Courtwright referenced Placido’s presentation. “With apologies to [Placido], I think it’s not correct to say that drugs are intrinsically evil. Drugs can be lifesaving in appropriate circumstances. The problem we all face is how to deal with these substances that have this lifesaving potential on one hand, but can destroy lives on the other.”