In a week in which Governor Joe Manchin was getting tough on drug crimes, The American Prospect was reporting that the drug war is over. The new drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said: “I’m ending the phrase, ‘the war on drugs’…. People see a war as a war on them…. We’re not at war with people in this country…. The addiction problem, the drug problem in this country is much more complex than a 40-year-old metaphor for a war on drugs.”
Today there are 500,000 people in prison for drug offenses. That number is larger than the entire prison population of this country in 1980. Despite this, half of all Americans report trying illegal drugs. With a market that large, it is unsurprising that nothing, from mandatory minimum sentences to $6 billion coca defoliation efforts in Columbia, has worked, and neither will this state’s latest effort: “Operation Eviction.”
What do we need to do? First and foremost, eliminate the federal sentencing disparities for crack cocaine, which have sent a disproportionate percentage of African Americans to prison for ridiculous amounts of time. Second, focus more on education and treatment.
We’ll have a lot of money to devote to these and other efforts if we stop locking up drug dealers and throwing away the key – at an estimated cost of almost $24,000 per prisoner per year.