Can Less Punitive Prosecution Actually Win War on Drugs?

American hard drug policy is a catastrophic failure. When I was deputy general counsel to President Reagan’s White House Conference for a Drug Free America I gazed deeply into the belly of that policy beast.

And learned that to win the war on drugs we must religiously abide by Nietzsche’s aphorism 146 (from Beyond Good and Evil). “Anyone who fights with monsters should make sure that he does not in the process become a monster himself.”

I have said it before. It bears repeating.

Lesson learned? By me, yet not yet by America.

Drug-overdose deaths have intensified a lot since the Reagan era, largely due to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. What to do?

The only way to end the deadly drug-overdose pandemic is by systematic user prosecution. Such prosecution, however, is only ethically and politically sustainable if the penalty for possession is reduced to a misdemeanor or violation … one carrying a whopping fine instead of a felony and its career-destroying stigma.

This is no call for drug legalization. That’s not victory.

That’s surrender. That has decisively failed to end this humanitarian catastrophe.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Legalization of hard drugs, where tried, has conjured Hell on Earth from the Opium Wars forward.

The tragedy’s scope? Huge.

Per the National Immigration Forum, “Border officials seized 4,600 pounds of fentanyl along the southern border in 2020, a number that skyrocketed to 26,700 pounds in FY 2023 – a 480 percent increase.”

By far the most fentanyl smuggling is done by U.S. citizens. Not “illegal aliens.”

Claiming that the migrants are the fentanyl smugglers is merely a way to demonize them. Don’t fall for demagoguery.

Per a Cato Institute study, “Just 279 of 1.8 million arrests by Border Patrol of illegal border crossers resulted in a fentanyl seizure — too small of a percentage (0.02%) to appear on a graph. ...”

Militant American Teddy Joseph Von Nukem (née Teddy Landrum), one of the neo-Nazi instigators of the heinous Charlottesville “Unite-the-Right” riot, later was accused of smuggling 15 kg of fentanyl, almost $400,000 worth (NYC street value), in from Mexico.

He was paid a paltry $215. And took his own life before sentencing.

Allowing fentanyl demand to boom made a mere 33 pounds worth $400,000. The opulent profits overwhelm efforts to suppress the drug trade by just going after the “kingpins.”

Great theater. Terrible policy.

There are 100 wannabe kingpins lining up, irrespective of the danger, for each one the cops take down. Human nature.

The damages? Per the CDC, we now are losing around 100,000 Americans every year to drug overdoses, 70% from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

That’s four  times as many American deaths per year than the deaths of the women and children, per the current U.N. estimates, to date in Israel’s front-page war to eradicate the barbaric Hamas.

Almost two times as many Americans die each year by synthetic opioids than total American troops killed in action over the 20 years of the Vietnam War.

Per Pew Research, America lost almost five times as many people per year to overdoses than to nonsuicide gun violence in 2021.

This humanitarian tragedy is not confined to the United States.

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote up a kerfuffle in Canada over its adjacent “wacko” drug policy. Mary Anastasia O’Grady scores a bullseye:

“The war on drugs, in the U.S. or in Canada, is a colossal failure because it’s aimed at interdicting supply even as demand remains robust.”

Ending the drug pandemic requires a demand-side solution. Full stop.

Why is that so politically difficult? Making possession of synthetic opioids a misdemeanor, maybe even a violation, coupled with a brutally stiff fine — not a felony — makes the crusading politician politically vulnerable to a charge of being “soft” on drugs.

Malarkey! Hyper-punitive penalties for hard drug possession makes systematic user prosecution politically impossible. The “war on drugs” eventually catches some of the children of the political elites.

A felony conviction record destroys the kids’ professional futures. The cop who (following orders) busted the mayor’s son gets mysteriously reassigned to foot patrol in the worst part of town.

Systematic prosecution for possession grinds to a halt.

A misdemeanor, or even civil violation, carrying a whopping fine — one proportionate to the family’s income — would deter … without destroying the kid’s life, aborting the enforcement process.

Hard drug legalization? No.

Legalization failed to ameliorate the overdose-deaths tragedy when tried in Vancouver and Oregon.

Scaling back the severity of the penalty and associated stigma? Yes.

Systematic user prosecution is viable if we eliminate the cruel and unusual punishment. “Anyone who fights with monsters should make sure that he does not in the process become a monster himself.”

To win the war on drugs, bring on systematic, less punitive, prosecution for possession of fentanyl.