“Bad boys, whatya gonna do when they come for you?” While I had plenty of respect for Bob Marley already, during the ‘90s that respect widened, particularly due to that song. I heard it many times, and never tired of it — in fact, I quickly concluded that it was the best part, and perhaps the only good part, of the TV show Cops. I had no interest in the show, but during that decade, all too often those episodes came my way during my frequent visits to my family, because a certain family member — the one who hogged the channel changer — really liked watching it
Early on, I noticed that officers on the screen showed a bit more respect than what I had experienced in a few of my interactions with some local policemen. On the whole, I certainly wouldn’t complain about my treatment, especially because some officers have treated me very well, including one NY State Trooper who gave me a short ride back and forth to a filling station when my van ran out of gas on a four-lane highway. I have met a few bad cops, though, and I definitely know they’re out there, but I didn’t see any of them onscreen in Cops. However, I also don’t want to overemphasize my own bad experiences, because long before I knew the names Eric Garner and Freddie Gray, I was quite convinced that people of color routinely experienced much worse than my own personal worst.
After watching a few more episodes, a different thought popped up: Take away The War on Drugs by making the controlled substances legal and regulated, and then 95% of the activity in the plot line disappears. Cops would have few, if any, reasons to detain, search, frisk, harass, follow, chase, intimidate, handcuff, beat, shoot and arrest the vast majority of those who fall prey to these actions. Clearly, some Cops like this system, and the excuse it gives them to do these things, because they like doing them — those Cops would almost always be the Bad Cops, the real authoritarian types, but many officers do understand that this system does little to serve and protect most citizens. I personally am in no danger from a person smoking a joint, any more than from someone downing a shot, unless they get into the driver’s seat of a car, in which case, just as DWI can trigger serious legal consequences, presumably, in a properly-regulated environment, so would driving under specific kinds of drug influence. I feel quite certain that legal professionals could craft appropriate penalties and standards to address such a situation.
George Soros, through his organization Drug Policy Alliance (which I am a member of), points out that the War on Drugs is a perfect example of authoritarian government policy in action. This authoritarianism has taken its heaviest toll on the black community in the U.S., although it has racked up countless other victims inside and outside of our borders. I had imagined that prior to crafting the War on Drugs policy, the Nixon cabinet had discussed how to create a system to monitor and assert control over those people, and, as it turns out, what I imagined did occur. One of Nixon’s 2 German Shepherds, as identified in All the President’s Men, was John Ehrlichman, who told journalist Dan Baum in an interview, “Look, we understood we couldn’t make it illegal to be young or poor or black in the United States, but we could criminalize their common pleasure. We understood that drugs were not the health problem we were making them out to be, but it was such a perfect issue … that we couldn’t resist it.” The other German Shepherd, H.R. Haldeman, wrote in his diary in 1969, “[President Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes that while not appearing to.”
So The War on Drugs has only been a miserable failure if you believe, as We the People were told, that the purpose was to reduce drug use. If you understand that the purpose of The War on Drugs was to criminalize a lot of black people, plus some other poor and young people, then it absolutely has succeeded in doing that. Plus, it has lowered the competition for tobacco, alcohol and prescription meds, which accounts for why major corporations in those industries fund anti-drug programs, like Drug-free Kids. And, last but not least, it has picked the pockets of the U.S. taxpayers to the tune of well over $1 trillion, creating some very comfortable careers for authoritarian types in law enforcement, the prison system, government bureaucracy and related endeavors.
In theory, conservatives ought to oppose much of this for the same reasons as progressives, but I suspect that, despite what they might say, a significant percentage of those who self-identify as conservative would agree with what Nixon said back in 1969, as recorded in Haldeman’s diary. Still, I take it as a hopeful sign that some conservatives these days do agree that The War on Drugs has failed, that too many nonviolent drug users are currently sitting in jail, and that our tax dollars shouldn’t keep on funding this failed and counter-productive policy. Maybe one day soon the entire War on Drugs edifice will fall, as the Berlin Wall did, and will take its place in the dustbin of history.