Part Two
The fight against drugs has been lost. Yet the US right continues to squander
vital resources on a worldwide, irrational crusade to rein in the 'evil perpetrators'
THE 25-year-old war against drugs has been lost but there are still
bitter-enders on both sides of the Atlantic who want to fight on. Like American generals
in Vietnam, they believe they see a light at the end of the tunnel. Realists know that,
rightly or wrongly, the campaign is over.
Imagine a courtroom scene in Oklahoma. The prosecutor is
suggesting to the jury the sentence it should recommend for a man who has been found
guilty of possession of cannabis. "Two hundred years, two thousand years . Just pick
a number and see how many zeros you can add on," he says. "Put this druggie away
and God will bless you all." They did, and Will Foster, a computer software
consultant, married with two children, is now serving 93 years for growing marijuana
plants for cigarettes to relieve his chronic rheumatoid arthritis.
There are other examples of the draconian nature of American drug laws: anyone
convicted of drug dealing, or even an intention to do so, faces not only imprisonment and
a heavy fine but confiscation of almost all their possessions, including their house - a
display of wartime zeal, one commentator said, that was the legal equivalent of a My Lai
massacre.
And yet such harsh policies have simply not worked, and it is not
"wishy-washy liberals" who are leading the fight to recognise that the war is
lost but the backbone of the American right. The magazine National Review, William F
Buckley Jr's "keeper of the conservative tablets", says: "The war on drugs
has failed, it is diverting intelligent energy away from the problem of how to deal with
addiction; it is wasting our resources and it is encouraging civil, judicial and police
procedures associated with police states . it is time to go home and to mobilise fresh
thought on the drug problem in the context of a free society."
At a conference last year at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University,
hardly a hotbed of drug-takers, Milton Friedman, the economist and Nobel Prize winner, and
George Schultz, former Secretary of State, agreed that the war on drugs had not only
failed miserably, but did not even have a moral dimension.
Friedman says: "Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads
to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect that it destroys our
inner-cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable individuals and brings death and
destruction to foreign countries?"
Yet it is this bankrupt policy that the United States seems determined to
export to the rest of the world. And it is prepared to wage war, overt and covert, to do
so. The overt war is high- profile - raids, shoot-outs, boardings and seizures on the high
seas, crop destruction, invasions by American troops. Even here though, the might of
American fire-power is meeting its match. A recent search-and-destroy operation on the
border between Afghanistan and Pakistan was co-ordinated by the new chief of the United
Nations Drug Control Programme, Pino Arlacchi, whose qualifications for the job included a
tour of duty fighting the Mafia in Italy.
But Arlacchi discovered that it is no longer a matter of taking on a few
primitive farmers who protect their crops with antiquated firearms. The flood of weapons
into the area during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan means that these farmers now own
machine-guns, rocket launchers and anti-aircraft missiles and they are prepared to use
them. It is not surprising, therefore, that opium production in Afghanistan has soared -
400 tons in 1980; 2,800 tons in 1996.
The covert war has been successful in a way that bodes ill for Britain's new
drugs tsar, Keith Hellawell. Britain is a signatory to long-standing international
treaties, some going back to the League of Nations, others the work of the United Nations,
that, whether we like it or not, tie us to the American policy of total prohibition, of a
world free of all recreational drugs except alcohol and tobacco.
If any country wavers a little, or begins to suggest an easing of the laws on
marijuana as an experiment, or wants to try weaning addicts off heroin by prescribing it
for them, or even proposes having a debate on drugs policy, then the covert battle will
begin in earnest. The United States' presence is President Clinton's chief international
drugs enforcer, Bob Gelbard, who is known to his friends and enemies as the State
Department's "diplomatic Doberman".
Two years ago this month, Gelbard flew into Australia. He had been alerted to
some worrying "backsliding" there by a State Department officer in the United
States embassy in Canberra, the Australian capital. Every American embassy in most major
countries now has an officer with a drugs intelligence role, who is specially charged with
keeping the Washington authorities informed of any significant local developments.
The officer in Canberra was a woman in her late forties who had been seen at
every public meeting in Australia where drugs policy had been discussed, and she reported
two important developments to her masters in Washington DC. The first was that an
experimental scheme was being considered in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) under
which doctors would prescribe heroin for addicts (as once happened in Britain) and,
secondly, that the Prime Minister of the state of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, had appointed a
Drug Advisory Council to reconsider the state's laws on drugs which, by general consensus,
were not working.
GELBARD'S mission was meant to be secret, but American drugs warriors are not
very popular in Australia, where they are blamed for the country's heroin problem, which
did not exist until the 1970s. The accusation is that when the war in Vietnam was over,
the Drug Enforcement Administration managed to stop heroin following the GIs home. Forced
to find alternative markets, the South-East Asian drug barons diverted heroin intended for
the United States to Australia and Britain.
So when Gelbard waved his big stick, some Australians working in the drugs
field were so outraged by what had happened that they have since spoken out (principally
to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Four Corners programme and to writers David
Marr and Bernard Lagan). Thanks to them, we have details of a chilling example of
Clinton's drugs enforcer in action.
It is the only case study I have come across - although we may assume that
similar missions have been sent secretly to this country, and will be sent again if we
happen to stray from the rigid American line.
Gelbard, an avuncular figure with grey hair and glasses, is a veteran of the
drugs war. He wrote the speech for Clinton in which the President said that now that the
Cold War was over, the next frontier was the war on drugs. Gelbard was in Bolivia when the
United States sent troops there in order to try to wipe out the cocaine industry. He
pushed for cutting off US aid to Colombia because of its failure to curb its drug barons.
He was behind the American decision to cut trade with Burma over its opium business. And
he warned Nigeria's ruler, General Sani Abacha, about the dangers of being involved in the
drugs business.
Gelbard is a pragmatic diplomat who knows he is representing the most powerful
nation on earth and he is experienced at using that power to crush any other country's
attempts to liberalise its drugs laws. He wants to make it clear that no nation can go it
alone on drugs - as far as he is concerned, the United States sets the agenda.
When Gelbard flew into Australia, the US embassy had already arranged for him
to meet Professor David Pennington, one of the country's leading medical experts, who has
accumulated widespread knowledge about drugs and who is chairman of Victoria's Drug
Advisory Council. Pennington was perfectly willing to see Gelbard but he was puzzled that
the US embassy set up the meeting in Hobart, capital of the island state of Tasmania,
rather than in Canberra or Melbourne, the state capital.
The reason soon become apparent. Tasmania, the poorest of the Australian
states, has a licence from the American-dominated International Narcotics Control Board
(INCB) in Vienna to grow opium poppies under a quota system for the legal manufacture of
medicinal morphine and codeine. Tasmania employs some 700 growers and two processors in
this industry, between them earning A$80m (£33m) a year, an important part of the
island's economy. For years the Australian federal government has hoped that the
INCB could be persuaded to lift Tasmania's quota for poppy production and therefore, to
keep in its good books, notified it of the proposed "heroin on prescription"
trial in the ACT.
The INCB replied that it would allow the trial to go ahead "provided it is
part of a genuine commitment by the Australian government to achieve a drug-free society
rather than a concession to living with drugs". The INCB sticks to the American line
that trials are dangerous because of the message they send to heroin-producing countries -
set up trials and behind them you can do what you like. But like the drugs warriors, it
too is fighting a losing battle.
It has attacked both California and Arizona for allowing easy use of cannabis
"for alleged medical purposes"; it has congratulated Washington for its firm
stand against "such indirect attempts to legalise the drug"; and it has
expressed its concern that reputable foundations have provided sums of money in the United
States for institutions that are "developing strategies for the legalisation of
drugs". But the INCB is a UN agency set up to supervise drug treaties signed by some
158 nations and it has the power to cut off the supply not only of morphine-based drugs
but of many essential pharmaceuticals to any nation that incurs its displeasure.
So when the Tasmanian government received the INCB response to the proposed
"heroin trial" in Australia, it did not regard it as very reassuring, and began
to campaign against the trial in Canberra, claiming it was a foolish exercise that could
jeopardise a valuable local industry. Its concern turned out to be justified. Gelbard's
meeting with Pennington took place in the office of Ron Cornish, the Tasmania state
Minister for Justice. Gelbard began by saying that he was on the island simply to check
out the opium industry, one he understood to be "the most efficient producer of crude
morphine and morphine-based drugs in the world". Pennington was too polite to ask: if
that's all you're here for, why invite me to attend this meeting?
But then Gelbard moved on to a general discussion about the ACT heroin trial
and heroin trials in other parts of the world. He was scathing about the Swiss decision to
try prescription of heroin and contemptuous of the Dutch attitude to all drugs. He took a
very traditional law enforcement position - heroin was too dangerous a substance to play
about with. It was imperative that the United States and its allies held the line. But, of
course, a heroin trial in the ACT was purely an Australian issue.
Washington would not dream of interfering in the affairs of a friendly country.
Then, in private conversations with Pennington, Gelbard suddenly raised the prospect of a
bigger quota for the Tasmanian opium poppy industry. He had been impressed with what he
had seen in Tasmania and might be prepared to push the Tasmanian poppy growers' case.
"Let's wait and see," he said.
The message seemed clear - toe Washington's line on drugs and you will be
rewarded; go your own way and you will be punished. And Gelbard had played on the rivalry
between the Australian states and the Federal government like a master diplomat. The state
of Victoria and Pennington could plan what drug reforms they liked, but they would come to
nothing; the real decisions on drug policy would be taken in Canberra, which had all the
authority because of its international treaty obligations.
In August last year the ACT heroin trial was abandoned, and instead the Prime
Minister, John Howard, launched a new, hard-hitting "National Illicit Drug
Strategy". Special strike teams would target drug syndicates, there would be a
concerted effort to make Australia a much more difficult target for drug traffickers.
Australia was going to get tough on drugs, real tough. Some listeners thought that the
Prime Minister's speech sounded as if it had even been written for him by Bob Gelbard.
What is behind the irrational passion that the United States brings to the war
on drugs? What is it that motivates one American anti-drugs campaigner, William Bennett,
to call for the beheading of drug dealers, and the former police chief of Los Angeles (Ed. Note: Daryl Gates was still the LA police chief when he made this
statement -- and he didn't say anything about waiting for conviction.) to suggest
that even casual users should be taken out of the courtroom after conviction and
immediately shot?
In the early years of this century drugs were legal (or as the American right
says: "There was a free market in drugs"). In Britain and the United States
there were many recreational users of opium and cocaine and some addicts, few of whom
needed to finance their habit by crime. A far greater number of people took their cocaine
in highly-diluted forms, such as patented medicines sold over the counter at chemist's
shops and in Coca-Cola. (Today's Coca-Cola contains caffeine instead of cocaine.)
But an anti-opium lobby had been around in the United States ever since the Californian
gold rushes. American racial contempt for the Chinese became focused on their
opium-smoking habits, and the Protestant missionary societies in China, the Women's
Christian Temperance Union, and other such organisations set out on a crusade to protect
the world, especially the white world, from the horrors of opium.
In 1909 America called a conference in Shanghai to fight drugs through
international co-operation and in 1914, against the wishes of most of the police forces in
the United States, the Harrison Act criminalised drugs. With the Treaty of Versailles
after the First World War, Britain - which had fought wars to protect its opium trade -
tightened up to try to make the world drug-free.
That this was a religious crusade rather then a law-and-order issue is obvious
by the rhetoric of today's anti-drug lobby. It speaks of drug-taking as "immoral . a
sin . an offence against God". A leading American conservative supporter of the drug
crusade, an intelligent, rational man, conceded in debate that, yes, alcohol and tobacco
were unhealthy and could even cost lives. But illegal drugs were different because
"addiction to illegal drugs can result in the loss of your soul". MANY
anti-drugs crusaders believe that even the use of drugs to relieve pain in the terminally
ill is morally wrong. Leading drugs realists say that the most pervasive drugs scandal in
the United States today is the refusal of many doctors to prescribe pain-killers for their
patients in case they come to the attention of the Drug Enforcement Administration for
over-prescribing.
Ethan A Nadelmann, director of the Lindsmith Center, a New York drug-policy
research institute, says: "The only reason for the failure to prescribe adequate
doses of pain-relieving opiates is the "opiaphobia" that causes doctors to
ignore the medical evidence, nurses to turn away from their patients' cries of pain, and
some patients themselves elect to suffer debilitating and demoralising pain rather than
submit to a proper dose of drugs."
Such is the moral conviction of the drugs war warriors that it is difficult to
engage them in rational debate. Dr Thomas Szasz of the department of Psychiatry at
Syracuse University suggests that it is a waste of time presenting facts to the anti-drug
lobby to convince them that the war is lost.
He says that the war on drugs is a mass movement characterised by the
demonising of certain objects and persons - "drugs", "addicts",
"traffickers" - as the incarnations of evil. Hence it is foolish to dwell on the
drug prohibitionist's failure to attain his avowed aims. "Since he wages war on evil,
his very effort is synonymous with success."
Supported