Rand and American Enterprise Institute Studies - Indictments of Federal Drug Policy Even with Blinders On, Two New Studies Can See the Rotting Carcass of our Drug Policy Are We Losing the War on Drugs? An Analytic Assessment of U.S. Drug Policy By David Boyum and Peter Reuter American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (Released March 25, 2005) How Goes the "War on Drugs"? An Assessment of U.S. Drug Problems and Policy By Jonathan P. Caulkins, Peter H. Reuter, Martin Y. Iguchi and James Chiesa RAND Drug Policy Research Center, funded by The Ford Foundation (Posted March 21, 2005) Two major scholarly research sites, two almost identical critiques of the drug war (note that one of the authors worked on both). In both cases, the studies are grossly flawed in that they operate under the assumption, for the purposes of the study, that prohibition can be the only model. Therefore they almost completely ignore: Side-effects of prohibition itself such as prohibition-fueled violence The impact of other potential models, such as legalizationa and regulation, on their recommendations. (Imagine a doctor recommending a course of treatment for obesity, and being able to recommend surgery or drugs, but not exercise or dieting. Such a limited diagnosis would be quackery.) Despite the fact that the flawed studies depend upon a continuation of some mix of prohibition and treatment, both were extremely harsh in their evaluation of current drug policy. These are not radical think tanks. They're solid, well-respected, and often called upon to testify in Congress. These devastating attacks on the current administration's policies could be quite powerful. Both had very nasty things to say about the reliance on incarceration, and both criticized the emphasis toward marijuana prohibition. Before I give you highlights from the studies, there's one point that I found particularly interesting. I'd often wondered why the administration is so obsessed with marijuana, yet I hadn't thought it through. It's really quite simple. After getting failing grades in the past because of an inability to show results in the drug war, the government set a goal of reducing drug use by 10%. How do you do that? Work on treating hard-core drug addicts that cause the most trouble? No, they're too small a number and take too long to affect. However, the largest number of actual drug users are casual marijuana users -- it's easy for them to quit, so that becomes a great target for reaching stupid goals like a reduction of 10% in drug users. So the administration has consciously and intentionally crafted a policy that specifically goes after casual marijuana users who are not a problem, while neglecting drug addicts who have a problem. It also affects other aspects of their policy: Harm Reduction? No, that's good for long-term health, but doesn't give them immediate reduction of numbers. Better to go for abstinence only policy for potential short-term numbers gain even if it's worse in the long-run (and if an addict dies, that helps the numbers too). Reality-based education? No, that's better for long-term, but abstinence-only education gives them short-term numbers gain. Medical marijuana? No, those people still count as drug users under federal statistics. So, as both studies note, the very numbers-based approach to goals encourages drug policy that is completely backward and counter-productive.   Drug Use So, what do Rand and AEI have to say about patterns of drug use? Rand: The course of drug use plays out differently in different people. Most people who try any drug, even heroin, use it only experimentally or continue use moderately and without ill effect. The problem (among others) with drug use is not that it will inevitably lead to addiction but that it can lead to addiction. Some fraction of people who begin using any drug move on to heavy use of that drug, with all the ill consequences specific to that drug that heavy use entails. How big a fraction of experimenters or casual users become heavy users? It has been estimated that 23 percent of those who try heroin, 17 percent of those who try cocaine, and 9 percent of those who try marijuana become clinically dependent on the drug (the rates for tobacco and alcohol are 32 percent and 15 percent, respectively). [Clinical dependence rates are from Anthony, Warner, and Kessler, "Comparative Epidemiology of Dependence on Tobacco, Alcohol, Controlled Substances, and Inhalants."] Marijuana has the lowest rate of dependency of everything listed (and even then it's a very mild dependency. AEI: Most Americans who try drugs use them only a few times. If there is a typical continuing user, it is an occasional marijuana smoker who will cease to use drugs at some point during his twenties. ... Desistance. Most who start using illicit drugs desist of their own volition, without treatment or coercion, within five years of initiation. Marijuana dependence is more prevalent than dependence on either cocaine or heroin. A few million Americans smoke marijuana daily, indeed, several times each day. There is little research, however, about these users, and only a very small fraction of them seeks treatment. It seems that although most of them would like to quit and have been unable to do so, their dependence does not produce great damage to themselves or others. Some Critiques of federal drug policy AEI on approaches: American drug policy, rather than focusing on reducing demand among chronic abusers, has emphasized efforts to limit the supply of drugs through vigorous law enforcement. Yet despite the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of drug dealers and steadfast attempts to stop overseas cultivation and trafficking, drugs have become substantially cheaper, casting doubt on the effectiveness of this strategy. Enforcement, which dominates both the budget and rhetoric of American drug policy, is not the only approach to drug control that has proved disappointing; as we will explain, there is little evidence justifying existing programs to prevent childhood and adolescent drug use. Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE), the only widely adopted prevention program, has been repeatedly demonstrated to be ineffective. By contrast, treatment programs, despite high dropout rates and difficulty in retaining good staff, have shown both effectiveness, as measured by reductions in crime and illness associated with their clients, and cost-effectiveness. But treatment programs, particularly those focused on criminally active heavy users, receive only modest funds. On the whole, then, there is now less reason than ever to believe that current policies are an efficient and effective response to the problem of illicit drugs. Harsh. Now check out what they have to say about marijuana and treatment (you know, the Drug Czar's pet statistics): Curiously, although marijuana is a much smaller contributor to crime than heroin or crack, 58 percent of treatment admissions where the primary drug of abuse was marijuana were criminal justice system referrals. By comparison, only 13 percent of heroin treatment admissions and 26 percent of crack admissions were criminal justice system referrals. The likely explanation for the higher marijuana figure is the large number of young individuals who enter treatment programs as part of a plea bargain or pretrial negotiations. The unfortunate irony is that many of these individuals do not have serious drug problems; at the same time, arrestees who abuse cocaine and heroin are less likely to be referred to treatment. When arrested, cocaine and heroin abusers often have long and serious criminal histories that make them ineligible for drug courts, which are the source of a growing share of treatment referrals. ... The second problem is that over half of those classified as being in need of treatment are users only of marijuana. There is no question that frequent marijuana use generates dependence in many users, and that dependence creates substantial problems. But there is a dearth of evidence showing that treatment for marijuana dependence is effective. Meanwhile, the gap is deflated by the admission to treatment of numerous marijuana arrestees who do not have a serious drug problem but rather are attempting to deal with their current legal problem by entering treatment instead of being processed in court. Rand attacks the tendency of the federal government to want to overrule the states (although they're way too weak in their recommendation). Some state policies conflict with the federal approach. Not surprisingly, as it has in other domains in which it has claimed primacy, the federal government has sought to bring states into line with federal policy, through means ranging from jawboning to executive orders and litigation. We wonder whether both federal and state policy might benefit from a more flexible federal response. While continuing to challenge egregious departures from national policy, the federal government might seek to learn from state variations that do not seriously undermine the intent of the federal strategy. Marijuana Enforcment [A Call for Decriminalization] AEI: Marijuana Enforcement. Marijuana is by far the most widely used illicit drug. It's also the most readily available and cheapest--a marijuana habit costs much less to support than a cocaine or heroin habit. Plainly, marijuana enforcement has a limited deterrent effect. Yet precisely because the drug is so widely and casually used, marijuana enforcement is particularly intrusive, nabbing many more non-problem users than cocaine or heroin enforcement. Much marijuana enforcement is simply unjustifiable-- it does little to prevent problem use, but imposes great costs on non- problem users. We believe that the case for imposing criminal sanctions for possession of small amounts of marijuana is weak. At least a dozen states have decriminalized marijuana possession to some degree, and analysis of their experience suggests very modest effects on marijuana use, though recent research by Rosalie Pacula and colleagues has thrown doubt on the strength of the findings and suggested that decriminalization may increase by 2-3 percentage points the probability that an adolescent uses marijuana (Pacula, Chriqui, and King 2003; Hall and Pacula 2003). (Note that "decriminalization," as the term is customarily used in discussions of drug policy, implies the retention of civil penalties. Marijuana possession is still against the law in all states where it is decriminalized.) The arrest of 700,000 users each year should require a careful justification, given the minor harms of most marijuana use. Criminal convictions, even without serious penal sanctions, can cause great harm, as when an immigrant is deported solely on that basis. The much higher arrest rates for black as opposed to white users in recent years increases the urgency of the case for decriminalization. There is also a reasonable argument for shrinking the black market for marijuana by allowing users to grow their own, an approach that has been adopted in a number of Australian jurisdictions. (For more details, see MacCoun and Reuter 2001, 356-64.) Moreover, like many other observers, we believe that although there is no empirical evidence one way or the other, drug prevention programs aimed at adolescents might be more effective following decriminalization. These programs could make a clearer distinction between marijuana and other drugs in terms of their dangers and thus increase the credibility of their messages about more dangerous substances. Eradication Both studies talked quite a bit about the economics of the drug war, with some interesting discussions. Here's an interesting chart that was used in the discussion of the economic impact of eradication. Check out the profitable increases through the system. [AEI] Now imagine that eradication efforts end up doubling the cost at the first stage, so the price goes up by $300. Now if that's passed on and you add $300 to the final price of $150,000 -- not much of a problem, is it? Prison AEI criticizes the over-use of jail in drug policy -- particularly what it calls Retail Enforcement: Retail Enforcement. Most people locked up for drug offenses are streetlevel offenders, apprehended and punished by local police and prosecutors and imprisoned in county jails or state prisons. Punishment of drug users and sellers has increased greatly since 1981, when concern about cocaine became prominent. Arrests have more than doubled, rising from 581,000 in 1980 to nearly 1,600,000 in 2000 (from 5.5 percent to 11 percent of total arrests). But a much greater increase has occurred in the extent of imprisonment and other penalties. The number of commitments to state and federal prison, for example, has risen approximately tenfold. Sentencing. Given limited prison capacity, it makes sense to give priority to housing the most active and violent offenders. Current sentencing policies fail to do this. Recent work by Sevigny and Caulkins (2004) shows that the vast majority of those incarcerated for drug offenses say that they were involved in distribution of some sort, even if convicted only of a possession offense. Nonetheless, only one-quarter of state drug inmates have a prior conviction for a violent crime, while nearly half have no prior nondrug conviction and were involved only in a minor role in their current offense. Long sentences for minor, nonviolent drug offenders are perhaps the least defensible aspect of current drug policy. Such sentences are wasteful of scarce prison space, have especially disparate racial impacts, and are particularly traumatic for the families of the incarcerated. Sentencing laws and guidelines should be reformed to reduce total drug incarceration and to concentrate long sentences on those who engage in violence or recruit juveniles into the drug trade. Sentencing reform is especially important at the federal level, where prison terms are often determined more by the weight of the drugs involved than the conduct of the offender. Drugs and Crime Here you start to really see the flaws in the studies AEI: Drugs can lead to crime through a variety of mechanisms (U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice 2003). Intoxication and addiction can induce violent behavior or otherwise lead to crime by weakening judgment and self-control. Users commit crimes to obtain drug money, in part because their habits reduce opportunities for legitimate work. Drug markets--and particularly open drug markets--contribute to homicides and other violent crime, partly as a result of competition among dealers, but also because of gun acquisition related to dealing (Cork 1999). Drug selling also involves hurried transactions without documents to back up uncertain memories and has no civil justice system to peacefully resolve the resulting disputes among a population with weak self-control. Lastly, involvement in drug use and drug selling can change people's lifestyles and social ties in various ways that make criminal activity more likely. ... Crime and criminal justice are the central elements of the costs of illicit drugs in contemporary American society, so reducing them must be an important goal of drug policy. While the fact that prohibition is the cause of much of the evils is evident in their statements, the AEI study is constrained from really acknowledging that crucial bit of information. Rand really seems confused in this area: Drug control policy cannot, however, be evaluated solely on the basis of whether it has achieved its stated aims. It has had side effects, both good and bad. Though it has not always been a formally stated aim, reduction of the crime associated with drug use and sales would be regarded by many people as an important (and expected) "bonus." Drug control may indeed have been partly responsible for the decline in crime rates in general that the nation experienced during the 1990s. If the additional resources devoted to enforcement have decreased consumption, as the cost-effectiveness studies suggest, then crime by persons under the influence should have gone down. Moreover, greater emphasis on incarceration may have kept persons off the street who may otherwise have committed crimes other than drug offenses, either because of their expensive drug habits or because of their other characteristics.1 On the negative side, it has been argued that the drug war has imposed "collateral damage" in several realms, for example, erosion of civil liberties erosion of police integrity exacerbation of drug-related harms such as the spread of HIV infection generation of consequences beyond the criminal justice system; such sanctions have negative effects on families and communities. Where's the connection between prohibition and criminal activity? Study Limitations The Rand study ignores its own limitations -- the inability to consider sane alternatives to prohibition. AEI at least acknowledges it: Our approach to assessing the effectiveness of policy is chiefly economic: We consider, above all, identifiable costs and benefits. As such, we do not discuss the morality of drug use or its prohibition, issues that many Americans regard as decisive, since these are questions of values that cannot be quantified. Nor do we explore the merits and demerits of legalizing drugs, even though legalization is perhaps the most prominent and hotly debated topic in drug policy. Our analysis takes current policy as its starting point, and the idea of repealing the nation's drug laws has no serious support within either the Democratic or Republican party. Moreover, because legalization is untested, any prediction of its effects would be highly speculative. MacCoun and Reuter (2001) provide a systematic account of the available data and develop projections of the consequences of various forms of legalization of cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, emphasizing their uncertainty. For the purposes of this book, we think it is more productive to concentrate on policy alternatives that are politically imaginable, and for which it is possible to reach more confident conclusions about likely consequences. Sad. Here's an important study that correctly identifies serious deficiencies in drug policy, yet is unable (or unwilling) to actually consider the alternatives. The ironic thing is that the AEI study recognized that it is unreasonable to too high a burden on any recommendations for change. Check out their conclusion: We have offered a series of suggestions for reducing the damage that drug use and drug control inflict upon American society... For none of them can we offer strong empirical evidence of substantial effectiveness. However, we think that placing the burden of proof on those who argue for such policy changes favors a status quo that demonstrably harms some groups substantially and has little moral or empirical foundation. Tough enforcement, the centerpiece of American drug policy in terms of rhetoric, budget, and substance, has little to show by way of success. If, instead of putting 450,000 drug sellers and users into local jails and state and federal prisons, the nation were to lock up only 225,000, a great many people (both inmates and their families) would suffer less. It is surely reasonable to ask that those who would maintain the status quo offer some basis for believing the additional expense and suffering are justified. Exactly. [Note: There's lots more in these studies -- this was just a partial overview.]