Our next focus will be on drug policy and crime.  Walker has an excellent chapter on this which you should study thoroughly.  Some points.
 

• "Hysteria" about drugs.  Are irrational, emotional factors at work here.  Is this similar to a "witch hunt"?  Are we using drugs and drug dealers as scapegoats for other problems?
• How widespread is drug use?  NHS says 36% have used an illegal drug at some point, 11.2% in the last year, 6.4% current users.  NHS trends are down.
• Serious use leading to hospital admissions seems to be increasing, see the Drug Abuse Warning Network.  Trends are up.  Drugs may be more of a problem in ghetto communities, less in the rest of society.
• ADAM, Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring reports on urine and blood samples from arrestees.  A large percent test positive, but this may be declining.
• Complex connection between drugs and crime.
• just using is a crime
• using may lead to other crimes by inhibiting judgment or as a means to pay for drugs
• the large majority of drug use does NOT lead to crime.  It is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause, except in the tautological sense that drug use itself is criminal.
• Policy Choices:  Hawks/Doves/Owls.  Most people like to think they are owls, i.e., smart.  Owls focus on demand reduction as opposed to supply reduction.  Treatment vs. punishment.
• National Drug Control Strategy has five goals, on page 257.  Including both demand and supply reduction.
• How effective are these strategies?  The War on Drugs has put a lot of people in jail, especially poor and minorities, and provided work for a lot of people in criminal justice.  It involves crackdowns on users and sellers and interdiction and eradication efforts.  All are ineffective, yet we continue them, which is why it seems likely that there is an emotional component to the War on Drugs.
• Is the War on Drugs bound to fail as other uses of the law to improve people's behavior have largely failed:  prohibition, gambling, gun control, abortion, sodomy, fornication, adultery, prostitution.  History shows that as long as people are willing to pay for a service, it will be provided.  Efforts to suppress it lead to building of criminal syndicates and increases in secondary crime.
• Demand Reduction:  "Just Say No".  Giving information is good, but may not change behavior.  Can we make people afraid, or appeal to their moral beliefs, strengthen their self assertiveness to resist peer pressure.  Unfortunately, there is no evidence that these problems, such as DARE - Drug Abuse Resistance Education- actually lower illegal drug use.  Education works with a motivated population, e.g., anti-smoking campaigns.
• Drug Treatment.  Some studies claim they work, but the problem is that so many people drop out.  The ones who make it through the program are the more motivated ones.  Many relapse.
• Drug use is down, despite evidence that programs do not work.  This may simply be a generational cycle.  Drugs are "cool" for awhile, then become old.  There is a cycle of enthusiasm for each drug.  Look at Blumstein, "Tables" on electronic reserve in the library.
• Should drugs be legalized?  Public opinion is soft and perhaps changing, depending on the drug and how it is used.  Support for legalizing medical marijuana.  Ethically, we can approach this deontologically - do people have a right to use drugs?  Or we can approach it consequentially - what would the effect be on drug use, would it go up?  or down?  Would drug related crime go up or down?  This involves making a future prediction, which is difficult. There are varieties of legalization or decriminalization, it is not all or nothing.

We might begin by reviewing some of the principles of causal analysis, from the Methods Course:  See Methods Notes for Feb 25.

Two dependent variables:  Demand for Drugs, Supply for Drugs.

They set goals, with Congress, to make regular progress in achieving these goals.

They  have a complex logic model that explains each of the policy elements that they believe will help to achieve these goals.

These are in five categories:

1. Prevent Drug Use Among Youth
1. Research on prevention
2. educational programs - say no to drugs, zero tolerance
3. involve the media
2. Increase Safety - reduce drug-related crime
1. Reduce specified drug-related crimes
3. Reduce the Health and Social Costs
1. Oppose legalization
2. Support treatment and research
3. drug free workplaces
4. more drug counselors, etc
4. Shield America's Air, Land and Sea Frontiers
1. Seize more smuggled drugs
2. coordinate better with other countries
5. Break foreign and Domestic Sources of Supply.
1. Disrupt trafficking organization
2. reduce worldwide production of drugs

While crime is going down, drug use is unaffected.  Past month use by youths 12-17 increase from 1994 to 1995 and has remained constant since then.  Age of average use of marijuana, cocaine and heron are unchanged.
None of the interdiction or supply goals are being met.  The trend lines show that usage has been unaffected by their efforts, they have continued stable.  Why?

• These policies are ineffective, production can be increased to compensate for any increased interdiction efforts.  This is a market model, supply and demand.  If there is demand, the supply will be produced.
• Things would have been a lot worse without their efforts.  James Q. Wilson argues that without the efforts to suppress heroin, we would have had millions more heroin addicts.
• There are other factors, out of their control, that counteracted their efforts.

Drug prohibition as a social movement.  Collective effort to change something about society.  Civil rights, feminist, prohibitionist movement, labor movement, anti-war movement.  Abolitionists...

Elements that go into a social movement:

1. Discontent with something.  People have to be unhappy about something.
1. Who is discontented?  Usually one social group or class.
2. Leaders or "rabble rousers" or "agitators" who articulate and mobilize the discontent
1. Offer alternatives, solutions, strategies.
3. Organizations are formed to lead the struggle, to legislate changes to get changes within institutions
4. Backlash against change - people who liked it the way it was, or who thought the cure was worse than the disease
5. Institutionalization of change.  Part of the bureaucratic system.

Reefer Madness as an example:

• Purpose of film is to mobilize discontent, scare people
• Discontent has to be focused on a target, a devil or witch or demon of some sort, e.g., communists, drug pushers
• Experts are used to offer an explanation of the causes of the problem
• Marihuana is an ideal enemy because it is pervasive, grows everywhere, difficult to suppress
• A group that has an interest in leading the crusade:  The Department of Narcotics in Washington.  Who are these people?  (Former Prohibition Agents out of work?)
• Evil is exaggerated.  The Menace of Marijuana is worse than other drugs...
• Idealized family life, "children" excited about a cup of hot chocolate, studying, memorizing Shakespeare
• Evil dealers who are plotting against the community, subverting the kids
• Hero abandons his "goody goody" girlfriend to go to wild party...

The war on Marijuana is a cultural war... A dispute about life style, a way for one group to criticize or suppress the way another lives.  Generational war, older people against youth.  Majority white population against minorities.

The police and prosecution is out of hand, it is causing more harm than the original drug.

Backlash against the war on drugs, NORML.  Legalization of Medical Uses of Marijuana, passed by referendum in Oregon, California?  Federal is opposed, arresting doctors that prescribe marijuana.

Treatment, vs. punishment, people should go into treatment programs instead of to jail.

Policies Alternatives:

1. Suppression of Use
2. Discouraging Irresponsible Use
3. Complete Legalization, leave it up to the adult individual

Arguments against that:

1. The policy is unfairly administered, imposed mostly on minorities
2. simply too much punishment for the crime, too costly to keep people in jail

March 4.

Review of arguments for and against drug legalization (see assignment page).

Movement for legalization is small and is likely to make only small gains on specific policies.

There is a range of options between total suppression of drugs and total legalization, as we saw with the 1973 Marijuana commission recommendations.  We can be "owls" instead of "hawks" or "doves"

Writing Options Memoranda as a means of articulating policy options.

Some sample policy options developed in class:

1. Nonprofit rehabilitation for drug users - Stacy Walter, Johnathon Randolph, Christie, Chris
1. If users admit they have a problem there will be less cost to society
2. More federal resources will be needed
2. Legalization of Marijuana for people over 21 - Brent Cossaboon
1. tax money could be used for better purposes to help society and quality of marijuana could be regulated
2. widespread use of marijuana, use would increase
3. Legalize a weakened grade of marijuana - Nick Katz
1. people won't get high so they won't stop using it
2. black market for quality marijuana will still exist
4. Apply zero tolerance at all levels of use, sale and distribution - Tanya Scott
1. will serve as a deterrent to limit use
2. prison overcrowding
5. Limit legal marijuana to that grown in one's own residence - Deborah Kinzer
1. cut the black market of marijuana
2. people will break the law by growing more than the amount allow
6. Early intervention with educational programs - Rich Fontano
1. teach children when they are impressionable
2. might not pay attention

March 6:  Race, Profiling and Police/Citizen Interactions.
 

• Is the War on Drugs really a War on the African-American Family?
• The DEA says no (referring to "low income families").  Which is convincing?
• Does the criminal justice system greatly exaggerate crime in the black community by using arrest statistics instead of conviction statistics?  Are far too many black men in jail?
• Or is the criminal justice system largely unbiased?  Does the large number of black men in jail reflect the fact that they do more than their share of the crime?
• Is the racial profiling issue, in New Jersey and elsewhere, an inevitable consequence of the War on Drugs?
• Is the evidence of racial profiling irrefutable?
•  Is profiling protected by the "code of silence" of the N.J. State Police?
• What did the legal case against the New Jersey State Police show?
• What do State Police say?  Video interview with Colonel Carl Williams, former superintendent of the force, fired by Governor Whitman (not available online).
•  NJ State Troopers Email Letters.

What does this report conclude?  What conclusions could we draw from it?

• War on Drugs Failing to Achieve Goals
• Imports of Drugs are increasing.
• Drug Use...
• Use of Drugs by youth....
• Drug Related Crime.......

• 21% had a contact with the place
• about half were traffic stops
• racial differences were small in terms of number of stops
• 16 % of stops were illegitimate in the opinion of the motorists
• Black Respondents more likely to experience.........[physical violence, searcher,
• About half resulted in a ticket..
• Only a few encounters involves searches, handcuffing or violence
• Black citizens were more likely to suffer searches, handcuffing or violence on encounters with the police..