Thinking Clearly

A New Prescription For The War On Drugs

 by: Howard Rahtz at The Weed Blog.  Howard is a retired Cincinnati Police Captain, a former drug rehab counselor and author

 

 

The history of efforts to control the drug problem show a stubborn denial of the failure of the “War on Drugs” approach and as the problem persists the cries for more law enforcement, stiffer penalties and bigger jails drowns out the voices seeking a more rational approach.

I have spent my professional life as a foot soldier in the war on drugs. I began as a counselor in a methadone program, the first stop in a twenty-year career working with addicts and their families. At age 42, I switched careers, becoming a Cincinnati Police Officer, rising through the ranks and finishing my career as Commander of the city’s Vice Unit, responsible for city-wide drug enforcement. I may be the only person in the country who has worked directly on both the demand side and the supply side of the illegal drug market.

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To me, the choice we face is clear. We continue the body count, we continue to fill the jails, with drug offenders, and we periodically arrest the local or international “drug kingpin” who is quickly replaced and market continues onward. Or, we take significant steps to cut off the revenue to the cartels, depriving them of the engine that fuels the violence.

There is another way. A historian, writing on alcohol prohibition, noted that for the first time in American history, the federal government took a giant piece of the legal economy away from farmers, distillers, wineries, brewers, truck drivers, bars and restaurants and turned over billions of dollars to “thugs and murderers.” We are in a position to reverse drug prohibition, taking the billions of dollars now in the hands of the thugs and murderers running the drug cartels, and move it into the real economy, creating jobs, emptying jails and making our communities safer.