Steve Chapman Of The Chicago
Tribune Says
Drug Czar "shows no capacity to learn from his mistakes."
See Go
Dutch! for several related articles.
(Ed. note: This is one of the few comments in the mainstream media on the Drug
Bizarro’s Dutch fiasco. He has basically gotten away with it.Steve Chapman is one
of my favorite columnists. He really understands marijuana prohibition and how it works.
Unfortunately, there is a limit on how much someone like him can write about it, without
seeming to be, you know, "pro-drug."
I grew up in the "old South," and anyone who wrote too often about the
injustices of segregation was branded as a "radical" – and, privately, as a
"nigger-lover." Prohibitionism is the last acceptable form of bigotry. Recently
a front page article in the Dallas Morning News carried a story about an elderly middle
class white man who died of a heroin overdose after taking up with "druggies."
The saying goes that "discretion is the better part of valor." In the present
atmosphere a writer may be less effective if he or she writes "too much" about
"drugs" – especially marijuana. In any case, when Steve does hit on the
topic, he is devastating.)
From the Chicago Tribune
tribletter@aol.com
http://www.chicago.tribune.com/
By Steve Chapman <schapman@tribune.com>
July 23, 1998
IN THE DRUG WAR, FANTASY BEATS FACTS
It’s been said that any prosecutor can convict a guilty defendant—it takes a
great prosecutor to convict an innocent one. But any responsible prosecutor confronted
with convincing evidence that he indicted the wrong person would immediately move to
dismiss the case.
Drug czar Barry McCaffrey doesn’t follow the same practice. He issued an
indictment the other day and, after learning the charges were false, insisted that the
suspect was guilty nonetheless. Nothing is going to get in the way of the drug war, least
of all mere truth.
McCaffrey was about to take a trip to Europe that was billed as a "fact-finding
tour" but in practice seems to have been a fact-dodging tour. Among the destinations
on his itinerary was the Netherlands, where the sale and possession of marijuana and
hashish are permitted and police rarely make arrests for possession of hard drugs. Shortly
before traveling to the Netherlands, he said Dutch drug policy was an "unmitigated
disaster," claiming it has turned the country into a pit of violence and depravity.
"The murder rate in Holland is double that in the United States," he said.
"The overall crime rate in Holland is probably 40 percent higher than in the United
States. That’s drugs."
This news came as a shock to the peaceable citizens of the Netherlands, who do not live
in the same constant fear of crime as residents of, say, Washington, D.C. And their surprise was justified. It turns out the drug czar’s claims
were wildly inaccurate. Instead of being double the U.S. rate, the Dutch homicide rate is
about one-fifth as high. With 16 million people, the entire country has fewer murders each
year than Houston.
Crime is not unknown there, but it mostly involves theft and other property crimes, as
in Britain. Violent offenses, however, are exceedingly scarce by American standards.
"When it comes to life-threatening robberies, we’re
talking about a difference of 15 to 1 between the United States and the Netherlands,"
says Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
"You’re just as likely to lose your bicycle in Amsterdam as in Chicago, but
you’re much less likely to lose your life."
Crime is not the only comparative success story in the Netherlands. Despite its
laissez-faire approach to cannabis—or perhaps because of it—marijuana use is
lower in the Netherlands than in the United States among both adults and adolescents.
See
Legalize
Marijuana and Reduce Use?
New Survey Puts Estimate of Dutch Marijuana Use Even More Below DEAland
McCaffrey, however, saw no need to make amends for his error. He attributed his murder
statistics to the international police agency Interpol and said that if the Dutch have a
gripe, they should take it there. After he visited the Netherlands, the czar softened his
comments only slightly, praising the government for some of its actions. Asked if he still
thought the Dutch approach to drugs was an "unmitigated disaster," McCaffrey
replied, "You can say it’s a mitigated disaster."
The problem here is not that the nation’s leading official in the war on drugs
provided grossly inaccurate information about an important issue, though that is bad
enough. The problem is that the U.S. government is making policy
based on terrible misinformation and that our top drug official shows no capacity to learn
from his mistakes.
When he thought the Dutch murder rate was higher than the American rate, McCaffrey had
no doubt that Dutch drug policy was the reason.
But now that he knows the Dutch rate is far lower, he cannot even consider the
possibility that the Netherlands’ permissive drug policy is not so harmful after all.
He’s like a guy who jumps off a building in the belief he can defy gravity and
then, when he hits the ground, insists that gravity had nothing to do with it.
McCaffrey’s devotion to ignorance was on display even after this embarrassment.
Before visiting the Netherlands, where pot may be sold and consumed openly in small
"coffee shops," the drug czar spurned suggestions that he take a look at this
experiment with his own two eyes. "I’m not sure there’s much to be learned
by watching somebody smoking pot," he said. Trouble is, he shows no sign of being
able to learn in other ways, either.
McCaffrey can depict the Netherlands as a disaster, but he might as well depict the
Zuider Zee as part of the Alps: Anyone who cares to look can see it’s not so. The
Dutch are trying something different on drugs, and the results are not an endorsement of
the U.S. drug war. Apparently, that is of no interest to Barry McCaffrey,
who doesn’t realize that wisdom is what you acquire after you know it all.
Supported