Rethinking Tactics in War on Drugs. After 30 years of fervent support by the church-at-large for the war on drugs since
the Nixon administration declared war on
drugs in the late 1960s–a war pressed by each succeeding
administration–growing numbers of religious leaders are breaking
ranks.
Not only are they questioning the war’s effectiveness and its
burgeoning costs–they also charge that its execution violates
biblical imperatives of justice and mercy.
Rather than reducing the threat to society posed by illegal
narcotics trafficking, the war is making orphans of tens of thousands
of children by unnecessarily jailing their parents and
disproportionately targeting people of color, religious critics charge.
A new group, Religious Leaders for a More Just and Compassionate Drug Policy, counts many of the U.S.’s most influential religious leaders among its founding members. They focus on disparities in policing drug offenses by race and class; the decreasing opportunities for prosecutorial or judicial discretion in sentencing in face of “get-tough” policy pressures; and the lack of rehabilitative efforts in the penal system. (Update: Human Rights Watch report cites disparity in race-based drug offense sentencing in the U.S. [New York Times]) “When it comes to addiction, the rich go to Betty Ford, the poor
go to county jail,” the Rev. Scott Richardson, of All Saints
Episcopal Church in Pasadena, said recently.
A Rand Corp. study in 1997 found that treatment reduces 15
times more serious crime than mandatory minimum sentences and
that residential treatment programs cost a little more than half of the
$30,000 annual cost of housing a prisoner, Richardson notes.
Gen. Barry McCaffrey, “czar” of the White House Office of National Drug Policy, warns that if the public begins to think the war on drugs is unfair, it will lose crucial momentum and support. [LA Times]
In other WoD (War on Drugs) news, powerful U.S. anti-drug forces in Congress and the corporation supplying the raw goods are compelling Colombia to apply fusarium, a fungus that acts as an herbicide, to the coca crop in their country. Trouble is, it can destroy other crops and farm animals and may cause overwhelming infection to immune-compromised humans. Years of U.S.-backed aerial spraying of other herbicides has been at best useless against the coca and opium crops, and at worst harmful. “The New York Times reported in early May that US-funded
spraying of the herbicide glyphosate (marketed as Roundup by
Monsanto Company) may have exposed scores of Colombian
villagers to harmful toxins and damaged nondrug crops. But the
proposed Fusarium program, experts say, could unleash far
worse consequences.” [The Guardian]
