Reprinted from the Black World Today Article "War on Drugs or War on US?" by Emery Curtis. The original article can be found here.

Maybe, just maybe, the killing of an American missionary and her daughter by the Peruvian Air Force under the direction of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) will start waking us all up as to the nonsensical actions within and without our borders our government is carrying out under the rubric of a War on Drugs.

In a war, the losers are reflected by the victims of that war. I have a real sympathy for two groups who are losers in the War on Drugs -- poor peasant farmers trying to eke out a living on hard scrabble land and poor black men who populate both the lowest levels of the illegal drug chain and those in prison with those high mandatory minimum drug sentences for their actions.

Naturally I’m concerned about a drug policy that has resulted in about 60% of the soaring federal prison population being there on drug charges. About nine out of ten federal prisoners in on drug charges are black -- yet federal statistics shows that the greatest users of drugs are white.

It is more a War on Us than a War on Drugs if the whites are the users and we are the ones going to federal for violation of drug laws. Also, it is a racist law.

A prison policy that results in whites being the preponderant users of drugs and blacks being the preponderance of those going to federal prison because of U. S. drug use is more a War on Us than a War on Drugs.

Outside of our borders the War on Drugs is a war on peasants scrambling on their hard scrabble land to feed and clothe their family. Our War on Drugs focus outside our borders is to defoliate crops, which wipes out those scrambling peasant’s means of making a living. Those peasants are right when it looks to them as a War on Peasants not a War on Drugs.

Since the real focus of the War on Drugs is to reduce the use of illegal drugs in this country, not Peru or anywhere else, the real measure of its success is how much drug use in this country has been reduced because of the War. In that light, the Office of National Drug Control Policy 2001 report statistics makes the War on Drugs an abject failure.

That report states that according to an extensive household survey, "Since 1992 the number of current users has gradually increased . . ." Actually, illegal drugs are subject to the market place and the immutable rules of supply and demand. Product scarcity increases prices and an over supply decreases prices.

By that measure, our War on Drugs effort to cut this country’s supply of illegal drugs is a failure too. Through a policy of the War on Drugs our country fosters a Peruvian policy that allows Peru’s Air Force enforcers, under our directions, to act as the on-the-spot judge, jury and executioner of those suspected of flying drugs out of the country. That is the policy behind the Peru’s killing of the U. S. missionary and her daughter.

Meanwhile, in this country, the prohibition against drug use is benign, at best. As a result, since 1992, according to the Drug Control Strategy report, the price of methamphetamine, cocaine, marijuana, and heroin have all gone down at both the retail and dealer {street level supplier) levels. That means drug users haven’t faced a supply problem.

The results of the Department of Justice’s household survey probably undercounted the number of illegal drug users. After all, not everyone who uses or used illegal drugs is going to tell a federal government funded researcher that they recently violated federal law.

I wouldn’t, would you?

A better means of determining whether there is an increase in the use of illegal drugs is to note the relative changes in hospital admissions because of illegal drugs and illegal drug-induced deaths. That’s real data.

Both hospital admissions and drug-induced deaths have steadily increased over the 1990s. That data indicates that drug use here has been steadily increasing. That means the War on Drugs has been steadily missing its main target and its reason for existence, the reduction of illegal drug use in this country.

That has happened despite the draconian federal government drug policies over the 90s under president Clinton that has filled federal prisons with our young men and made Latin governments adopt draconian policies against their own citizens whom we suspect are participating in growing or transporting illegal substances, as we define them.

At the same time the federal government didn’t even adopt some pantywaist prohibitions against drug users in this country. That’s the fountainhead of the real source of the drug trade.

There’s an old saying that I remember from my young days -- "It takes money to make the mare run." That drug mare runs on money from U. S. workers. Cut the money off and the mare won’t run.

In terms of military personnel, the federal government has stopped military personnel from feeding that drug mare. The military has a one-offense policy in terms of drug use. Fail once--you are history.

I’ve gotten crying letters from ex-servicemen about that policy. As a result of that policy, researchers have found that military veterans now in state prisons and local jails have a much lower rate of drug use than other prisoners.

The feds should adopt a one-offense policy with random testing for any employee whose paycheck has federal money in it.

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