FireWall
March 31st, 2008, 11:30 PM
I just finished writing this paper for an undergraduate sociology class. Some of you might find it interesting.
The Social and Economic Ramifications of Drug Policy in the United States
In the United States, the use of illegal drugs is closely related to the social and economic status quo. It is indicative of problems of social organization (Wilson, 1996), and it often occurs under conditions of poverty. In 1996 Wilson pointed out that drug trafficking and other problems in the community are triggered by high rates of joblessness. He illustrated that statement with the testimony of individuals who live under those conditions, including a 35-year-old unemployed male from a neighborhood in Chicago who attempted to justify his involvement in drug trafficking:
And what am I doing now? I’m a cocaine dealer—’cause I can’t get a decent-ass job. So, what other choices do I have? I have to feed my family . . . do I work? I work. See, don’t . . . bring me that bullshit. I been working since I was fifteen years old. I had to work to take care of my mother and father and my sisters. See, so can’t, can’t nobody bring me that bullshit about I ain’t looking for no job. (Wilson, 1996, p. 58)
Due to the relationship between the use of illegal drugs and the current social and economic state of affairs, the elimination of illegal drug activity through the intense enforcement of prohibitionist legislation is unfeasible (Bertram, Blachman, Sharpe, & Andreas, 1996; Nadelmann, 1989). Under conditions of socioeconomic malfunction, the incentive to participate in drug trafficking is not outweighed by the threat of legal consequences. In 1990 Letwin suggested that “apprehended dealers are replaced from a seemingly bottomless pool, for jail is not a deterrent to those who daily risk death in the drug trade" (23). Bertram et al. (1996) made a similar claim: “This punish-to-deter fallacy is the fatal flaw in the war against drug users. . . . Evidence indicates that its deterrent effect—particularly on addicted drug users—is dubious at best” (p. 28). Despite the shortcomings of the aforementioned punitive paradigm, however, contemporary drug policy in the United States is deeply rooted in it; and more importantly, its preservation is destructive in both social and economic terms.
Because psychoactive drugs have the potential to inflict enormous individual and social harm (Goldstein & Kalant, 1990), the curtailment of their use is a matter of significant governmental concern. However, the initial development of drug policy in the United States was not stimulated by scientific facts; it was stimulated by racism. In 1875 the city of San Francisco passed an ordinance that prohibited the consumption of opium in opium “dens” because there was widespread fear that Chinese men intended to lure white women into their opium dens and deprave them (Brecher, 1972, p. 42; Gray, 2001, p. 23). The prohibition of marijuana was also strongly associated with racial prejudice. During the 1920s immigrants from Mexico and Central America were associated with stories of violence that involved the consumption of marijuana (Gray, 2001). Because the Great Depression produced a prodigious influx of legal and illegal Mexican immigrants, “the identification of Mexicans with both crime and marijuana deepened” (Bertram et al., 1996, p. 80). The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was the first legislative attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana, and it was passed without the support of the American Medical Association (Brecher, 1972; Gray 2001). According to Gray (2001), “there was no medical testimony at all that favored the bill. In fact, the only medical witness that appeared at the hearing was a doctor who recommended that the bill be defeated” (p. 25). Since that time, the refusal of the U.S. government to confront the realities of drug use or to engage in a serious reevaluation of drug policy has come to be called the “politics of denial” (Bertram et al., 1996, p. 3).
U.S. drug policy changed dramatically after World War II. In the 1970s Richard Nixon initiated the War on Drugs, which expanded the role of the federal government in the enforcement of drug policy. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 consolidated antecedent drug legislation and established schedules of illegal drugs. In 1973 the Nixon administration combined several federal bureaus into a new drug superagency called the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 increased the severity of punishments for drug offenders. All of the aforementioned political developments contributed to the nascence of a federal “narco-enforcement complex” (Bertram et al., 1996, p. 105). According to Gray (1996), “this bureaucracy has been funded by unimaginable amounts of money and has become jealous of its power and scornful of people who ask questions about it” (p. 19).
As with any other war, the War on Drugs is accompanied by significant social and economic costs; consequently, “the harm produced by excessive drug use must be weighed against the costs, both monetary and social, of enforcing whatever degree of regulation is imposed” (Goldstein & Kalant, 1990, p. 78). According to the New York Lawyers’ Association (1996), the adverse effects of U.S. drug policy have a disproportionate impact on urban centers where problems of social organization are prevalent, and they often exacerbate the situation. The imprisonment of individuals for illegal drug activity contributes to the detriment of those individuals and their families because it erodes family cohesion and undermines rehabilitation efforts (New York Lawyers’ Association, 1996). When the primary caretakers of children are subjected to long-term imprisonment for drug-related offenses, the children are more likely to manifest symptoms of anxiety, depression, juvenile delinquency, and miscellaneous behavioral abnormalities, which may develop into adult criminal activity (ibid.). When the primary caretakers of children are released from prison, it is often difficult for them to secure employment because they are stigmatized by their criminal record. Consequently, their families experience financial instability, which contributes to the decline of the neighborhood.
The punitive paradigm of the War on Drugs also generates crime. According to Bertram et al. (1996), “drug-related crime is actually the result not of taking drugs but of the conditions under which people buy and sell drugs. And these conditions are the product of drug policies” (p. 33). With respect to the present discussion, the crimes that warrant the most attention are those that are perpetrated by drug users and those that are perpetrated by drug dealers; and in both cases the crimes “are a consequence of the black market created by the war on drugs and of the incentives the war creates for both buyers and sellers to commit crimes” (Bertram et al., 1996, p. 34). The violent crimes that accompany illegal drug activity are particularly noteworthy because they are extraordinarily detrimental to neighborhoods. In the presence of prohibition, illegal drug activity creates an environment that is conducive to the perpetration of violent crimes because the possession of guns among drug dealers encourages others to arm themselves, which increases the presence of firearms in the community (Wilson, 1996). In 2001 Gray explained:
Another serious consequence of our drug prohibitionist policies is that entire blocks of our inner cities have been abandoned by the police because drug-related crime has made them too dangerous to enter except with heavily armed forces. As a result, drug dealers make and enforce their own laws in these ghetto neighborhoods, and the primary victims are women and children. (p. 69)
The New York Lawyers’ Association expressed a similar sentiment in 1996 when it argued that “contemporary drug policy has failed to deter or reduce the prevalence of violent crime in our communities, notwithstanding harsh treatment of drug offenders under present ‘penal’ or ‘law enforcement’ based policy.” A less overt consequence of the aforementioned violence is that innocent bystanders become more reluctant to leave the safety of their homes, which decreases their involvement in voluntary associations and informal social control networks that are necessary for the proper organization of the neighborhood (Wilson, 1996). Unfortunately, it is that same kind of social capital that contributes to the deterrence of illegal drug consumption (Zelvin, Barber, Coleman, & Philip, 2002).
In addition to the disproportionate impact that contemporary U.S. drug policy has on urban centers where the presence of poverty is acute, empirical evidence indicates that African-Americans are also unfairly targeted (Laniel, 2003). In 2001 Gray reproduced the thoughts of a judge who explained that “I sit there on the bench and send these small dealers, who are black, off to prison for years and years and years. And they look at you almost uncomprehendingly. They don’t even know why we’re mad at them” (p. 20). In 2006 the National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicated that the rate of illegal drug use was 8.5 among whites and 9.8 among blacks. However, there are five times as many whites as there are blacks in the United States, which means that the vast majority of illegal drug users are white (Boyd, 2002). Although the vast majority of illegal drug users are white, blacks constitute 90% of drug prisoners in the United States, and they are up to 57 times more likely than whites to be incarcerated for illegal drug use (Human Rights Watch, 2000). In 2002 Boyd addressed the aforementioned disparity:
The brutality of slavery was justified on economic and paternalistic grounds. Jim Crow pretended that separate but equal treatment sufficed, even as Blacks faced daily lynchings and every form of overt discrimination. The drug war claims morality and protection of our nation’s children as its goals, while turning a blind eye to the racial injustice it promotes. . . . The war on drugs offers surprising continuity with the most shameful episodes of our past. (pp. 845-46)
African-Americans are also disproportionately deprived of educational opportunities by the War on Drugs. Under the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1998, federal financial aid is denied to any student who is convicted of a drug-related offense. Because 55% of those who are convicted of drug-related offenses are black (Mascharka, 2001), it follows that African-Americans are unfairly targeted by the HEA. According to Boyd (2002), “slaves were kept purposefully illiterate and uneducated. . . . Under the war on drugs, Congress has once again moved to close the gates of education to many African-Americans and other minorities” (p. 848).
In purely economic terms, the cost of contemporary U.S. drug policy is staggering. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the federal budget for drug control funding was $13.8 billion in 2007, which does not take into account the money spent by state and local governments. But despite the enormous amount of money that the narco-enforcement complex spends on drug control, it is unable to demonstrate that its policies are effective. According to a former Budget and Planning director at the ONDCP, "the drug war has fallen flat on its face. They are spending huge amounts of money, and they can't tell you if their program is working" (Adams, 2005). That claim is supported by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which released a report in 2005 that questioned the reliability of federal performance measures. The GAO report stated that “agencies’ performance measures for transit zone interdiction operations vary and data for assessing their performance is problematic.” Additional economic costs imposed by the punitive paradigm of contemporary U.S. drug policy include increased strain on court budgets, increased costs for federal and state prosecutors, and increased costs for court-appointed public defenders (New York Lawyers’ Association, 1996). These costs are not reflected in federal and state budgets for drug control funding.
According to Boyd (2002), “a declaration of war, now as at other moments in our national history, invites us to disregard the normal rules of conduct under the imperative of a higher goal assumed to trump all other considerations” (p. 839). In the case of contemporary U.S. drug policy, that higher goal is formulated in moral terms. Because the use of illegal drugs is said to threaten the fundamental social fabric of the United States, a distinct moral obligation is established that is strong enough to arouse feelings of unease and distaste in response to the mere mention of illegal drugs. But if moral engagement is reducible to emotional involvement, then the tenacious moral support of a higher goal does not justify the goal in a rational manner. Consequently, in addition to being disastrous in both social and economic terms, the War on Drugs is a grave illustration of the lunacy of belief: when people want to believe something, no confrontation with logic or facts will deter them.
References:
1. Adams, D. (2005, December 24). GAO: Data too fuzzy to measure drug war. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved March 25, 2008, from http://www.sptimes.com/2005/12/24/Worldandnation/GAO__Data_too_fuzzy_t.shtml.
2. Bertram, E., Blachman, M., Sharpe, K., & Andreas, P. (1996). Drug war politics: The price of denial. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
3. Boyd, G. (2002). Collateral damage in the War on Drugs [Electronic version]. Villanova Law Review, 47, 839-850.
4. Brecher, E.M. (1972). Licit and illicit drugs: The Consumers Union report on narcotics, stimulants, depressants, inhalants, hallucinogens, and marijuana—including caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
5. Goldstein, A. & Kalant, H. (1990). Drug policy: Striking the right balance. In R. Bayer & G.M. Oppenheimer (Eds.), Confronting drug policy: Illicit drugs in a free society (pp. 78-114). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Gray, J. P. (2001). Why our drug laws have failed and what we can do about it: A judicial indictment of the War on Drugs. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
7. Government Accountability Office. (2005). Drug control: Agencies need to plan for likely declines in drug interdiction assets, and develop better performance measures for transit zone operations. Retrieved March 31, 2008, 2008, from http://www.gao.gov/new.items/ d06200.pdf
8. Human Rights Watch. (2000). Punishment and prejudice: Racial disparities in the War on Drugs. Retrieved March 30, 2008, from http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/
9. Laniel, L. (2003). Drogas y criminalidad: breve exploracion de las relaciones entre las ciencias sociales y la politica antidrogas en Estados Unidos [Drugs and criminality: A brief exploration of the relation between the social sciences and anti-drug policy in the United States] [Electronic version]. Sociologica, 18, 247-278.
10. Letwin, M. Z. (1990, October 6). Wrong way to fight crime. New York Times, p. 23.
11. Mascharka, C. (2001). Mandatory minimum sentences: Exemplifying the law of unintended consequences. Florida State University Law Review, 28, 935-944.
12. Nadelmann, E.A. (1989). Drug prohibition in the United States: costs, consequences, and alternatives [Electronic version]. Science, 245, 939-947.
13. New York County Lawyers’ Association. (1996). Report and recommendations of the Drug Policy Task Force. Retrieved March 25, 2008, from http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/ Library/studies/nycla/nycla.htm
14. Office of National Drug Control Policy. (2008). National drug control strategy: FY 2009 Budget summary. Retrieved March 31, 2008, from http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/ publications/policy/09budget/index.html
15. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2006). Results from the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National findings. Retrieved March 30, 2008, from http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nsduh/2k6nsduh/2k6Results.cfm
16. Wilson, W. J. (1996). When work disappears: The world of the new urban poor. New York: Vintage Books.
17. Zelvin, E., Barber, J., Coleman, B., & Philip, G. (2002). Legalization of drugs: Perspectives from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia [Electronic version]. Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions, 2, 137-144.
The Social and Economic Ramifications of Drug Policy in the United States
In the United States, the use of illegal drugs is closely related to the social and economic status quo. It is indicative of problems of social organization (Wilson, 1996), and it often occurs under conditions of poverty. In 1996 Wilson pointed out that drug trafficking and other problems in the community are triggered by high rates of joblessness. He illustrated that statement with the testimony of individuals who live under those conditions, including a 35-year-old unemployed male from a neighborhood in Chicago who attempted to justify his involvement in drug trafficking:
And what am I doing now? I’m a cocaine dealer—’cause I can’t get a decent-ass job. So, what other choices do I have? I have to feed my family . . . do I work? I work. See, don’t . . . bring me that bullshit. I been working since I was fifteen years old. I had to work to take care of my mother and father and my sisters. See, so can’t, can’t nobody bring me that bullshit about I ain’t looking for no job. (Wilson, 1996, p. 58)
Due to the relationship between the use of illegal drugs and the current social and economic state of affairs, the elimination of illegal drug activity through the intense enforcement of prohibitionist legislation is unfeasible (Bertram, Blachman, Sharpe, & Andreas, 1996; Nadelmann, 1989). Under conditions of socioeconomic malfunction, the incentive to participate in drug trafficking is not outweighed by the threat of legal consequences. In 1990 Letwin suggested that “apprehended dealers are replaced from a seemingly bottomless pool, for jail is not a deterrent to those who daily risk death in the drug trade" (23). Bertram et al. (1996) made a similar claim: “This punish-to-deter fallacy is the fatal flaw in the war against drug users. . . . Evidence indicates that its deterrent effect—particularly on addicted drug users—is dubious at best” (p. 28). Despite the shortcomings of the aforementioned punitive paradigm, however, contemporary drug policy in the United States is deeply rooted in it; and more importantly, its preservation is destructive in both social and economic terms.
Because psychoactive drugs have the potential to inflict enormous individual and social harm (Goldstein & Kalant, 1990), the curtailment of their use is a matter of significant governmental concern. However, the initial development of drug policy in the United States was not stimulated by scientific facts; it was stimulated by racism. In 1875 the city of San Francisco passed an ordinance that prohibited the consumption of opium in opium “dens” because there was widespread fear that Chinese men intended to lure white women into their opium dens and deprave them (Brecher, 1972, p. 42; Gray, 2001, p. 23). The prohibition of marijuana was also strongly associated with racial prejudice. During the 1920s immigrants from Mexico and Central America were associated with stories of violence that involved the consumption of marijuana (Gray, 2001). Because the Great Depression produced a prodigious influx of legal and illegal Mexican immigrants, “the identification of Mexicans with both crime and marijuana deepened” (Bertram et al., 1996, p. 80). The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was the first legislative attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana, and it was passed without the support of the American Medical Association (Brecher, 1972; Gray 2001). According to Gray (2001), “there was no medical testimony at all that favored the bill. In fact, the only medical witness that appeared at the hearing was a doctor who recommended that the bill be defeated” (p. 25). Since that time, the refusal of the U.S. government to confront the realities of drug use or to engage in a serious reevaluation of drug policy has come to be called the “politics of denial” (Bertram et al., 1996, p. 3).
U.S. drug policy changed dramatically after World War II. In the 1970s Richard Nixon initiated the War on Drugs, which expanded the role of the federal government in the enforcement of drug policy. The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 consolidated antecedent drug legislation and established schedules of illegal drugs. In 1973 the Nixon administration combined several federal bureaus into a new drug superagency called the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 increased the severity of punishments for drug offenders. All of the aforementioned political developments contributed to the nascence of a federal “narco-enforcement complex” (Bertram et al., 1996, p. 105). According to Gray (1996), “this bureaucracy has been funded by unimaginable amounts of money and has become jealous of its power and scornful of people who ask questions about it” (p. 19).
As with any other war, the War on Drugs is accompanied by significant social and economic costs; consequently, “the harm produced by excessive drug use must be weighed against the costs, both monetary and social, of enforcing whatever degree of regulation is imposed” (Goldstein & Kalant, 1990, p. 78). According to the New York Lawyers’ Association (1996), the adverse effects of U.S. drug policy have a disproportionate impact on urban centers where problems of social organization are prevalent, and they often exacerbate the situation. The imprisonment of individuals for illegal drug activity contributes to the detriment of those individuals and their families because it erodes family cohesion and undermines rehabilitation efforts (New York Lawyers’ Association, 1996). When the primary caretakers of children are subjected to long-term imprisonment for drug-related offenses, the children are more likely to manifest symptoms of anxiety, depression, juvenile delinquency, and miscellaneous behavioral abnormalities, which may develop into adult criminal activity (ibid.). When the primary caretakers of children are released from prison, it is often difficult for them to secure employment because they are stigmatized by their criminal record. Consequently, their families experience financial instability, which contributes to the decline of the neighborhood.
The punitive paradigm of the War on Drugs also generates crime. According to Bertram et al. (1996), “drug-related crime is actually the result not of taking drugs but of the conditions under which people buy and sell drugs. And these conditions are the product of drug policies” (p. 33). With respect to the present discussion, the crimes that warrant the most attention are those that are perpetrated by drug users and those that are perpetrated by drug dealers; and in both cases the crimes “are a consequence of the black market created by the war on drugs and of the incentives the war creates for both buyers and sellers to commit crimes” (Bertram et al., 1996, p. 34). The violent crimes that accompany illegal drug activity are particularly noteworthy because they are extraordinarily detrimental to neighborhoods. In the presence of prohibition, illegal drug activity creates an environment that is conducive to the perpetration of violent crimes because the possession of guns among drug dealers encourages others to arm themselves, which increases the presence of firearms in the community (Wilson, 1996). In 2001 Gray explained:
Another serious consequence of our drug prohibitionist policies is that entire blocks of our inner cities have been abandoned by the police because drug-related crime has made them too dangerous to enter except with heavily armed forces. As a result, drug dealers make and enforce their own laws in these ghetto neighborhoods, and the primary victims are women and children. (p. 69)
The New York Lawyers’ Association expressed a similar sentiment in 1996 when it argued that “contemporary drug policy has failed to deter or reduce the prevalence of violent crime in our communities, notwithstanding harsh treatment of drug offenders under present ‘penal’ or ‘law enforcement’ based policy.” A less overt consequence of the aforementioned violence is that innocent bystanders become more reluctant to leave the safety of their homes, which decreases their involvement in voluntary associations and informal social control networks that are necessary for the proper organization of the neighborhood (Wilson, 1996). Unfortunately, it is that same kind of social capital that contributes to the deterrence of illegal drug consumption (Zelvin, Barber, Coleman, & Philip, 2002).
In addition to the disproportionate impact that contemporary U.S. drug policy has on urban centers where the presence of poverty is acute, empirical evidence indicates that African-Americans are also unfairly targeted (Laniel, 2003). In 2001 Gray reproduced the thoughts of a judge who explained that “I sit there on the bench and send these small dealers, who are black, off to prison for years and years and years. And they look at you almost uncomprehendingly. They don’t even know why we’re mad at them” (p. 20). In 2006 the National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicated that the rate of illegal drug use was 8.5 among whites and 9.8 among blacks. However, there are five times as many whites as there are blacks in the United States, which means that the vast majority of illegal drug users are white (Boyd, 2002). Although the vast majority of illegal drug users are white, blacks constitute 90% of drug prisoners in the United States, and they are up to 57 times more likely than whites to be incarcerated for illegal drug use (Human Rights Watch, 2000). In 2002 Boyd addressed the aforementioned disparity:
The brutality of slavery was justified on economic and paternalistic grounds. Jim Crow pretended that separate but equal treatment sufficed, even as Blacks faced daily lynchings and every form of overt discrimination. The drug war claims morality and protection of our nation’s children as its goals, while turning a blind eye to the racial injustice it promotes. . . . The war on drugs offers surprising continuity with the most shameful episodes of our past. (pp. 845-46)
African-Americans are also disproportionately deprived of educational opportunities by the War on Drugs. Under the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1998, federal financial aid is denied to any student who is convicted of a drug-related offense. Because 55% of those who are convicted of drug-related offenses are black (Mascharka, 2001), it follows that African-Americans are unfairly targeted by the HEA. According to Boyd (2002), “slaves were kept purposefully illiterate and uneducated. . . . Under the war on drugs, Congress has once again moved to close the gates of education to many African-Americans and other minorities” (p. 848).
In purely economic terms, the cost of contemporary U.S. drug policy is staggering. According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the federal budget for drug control funding was $13.8 billion in 2007, which does not take into account the money spent by state and local governments. But despite the enormous amount of money that the narco-enforcement complex spends on drug control, it is unable to demonstrate that its policies are effective. According to a former Budget and Planning director at the ONDCP, "the drug war has fallen flat on its face. They are spending huge amounts of money, and they can't tell you if their program is working" (Adams, 2005). That claim is supported by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which released a report in 2005 that questioned the reliability of federal performance measures. The GAO report stated that “agencies’ performance measures for transit zone interdiction operations vary and data for assessing their performance is problematic.” Additional economic costs imposed by the punitive paradigm of contemporary U.S. drug policy include increased strain on court budgets, increased costs for federal and state prosecutors, and increased costs for court-appointed public defenders (New York Lawyers’ Association, 1996). These costs are not reflected in federal and state budgets for drug control funding.
According to Boyd (2002), “a declaration of war, now as at other moments in our national history, invites us to disregard the normal rules of conduct under the imperative of a higher goal assumed to trump all other considerations” (p. 839). In the case of contemporary U.S. drug policy, that higher goal is formulated in moral terms. Because the use of illegal drugs is said to threaten the fundamental social fabric of the United States, a distinct moral obligation is established that is strong enough to arouse feelings of unease and distaste in response to the mere mention of illegal drugs. But if moral engagement is reducible to emotional involvement, then the tenacious moral support of a higher goal does not justify the goal in a rational manner. Consequently, in addition to being disastrous in both social and economic terms, the War on Drugs is a grave illustration of the lunacy of belief: when people want to believe something, no confrontation with logic or facts will deter them.
References:
1. Adams, D. (2005, December 24). GAO: Data too fuzzy to measure drug war. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved March 25, 2008, from http://www.sptimes.com/2005/12/24/Worldandnation/GAO__Data_too_fuzzy_t.shtml.
2. Bertram, E., Blachman, M., Sharpe, K., & Andreas, P. (1996). Drug war politics: The price of denial. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
3. Boyd, G. (2002). Collateral damage in the War on Drugs [Electronic version]. Villanova Law Review, 47, 839-850.
4. Brecher, E.M. (1972). Licit and illicit drugs: The Consumers Union report on narcotics, stimulants, depressants, inhalants, hallucinogens, and marijuana—including caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
5. Goldstein, A. & Kalant, H. (1990). Drug policy: Striking the right balance. In R. Bayer & G.M. Oppenheimer (Eds.), Confronting drug policy: Illicit drugs in a free society (pp. 78-114). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. Gray, J. P. (2001). Why our drug laws have failed and what we can do about it: A judicial indictment of the War on Drugs. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
7. Government Accountability Office. (2005). Drug control: Agencies need to plan for likely declines in drug interdiction assets, and develop better performance measures for transit zone operations. Retrieved March 31, 2008, 2008, from http://www.gao.gov/new.items/ d06200.pdf
8. Human Rights Watch. (2000). Punishment and prejudice: Racial disparities in the War on Drugs. Retrieved March 30, 2008, from http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/
9. Laniel, L. (2003). Drogas y criminalidad: breve exploracion de las relaciones entre las ciencias sociales y la politica antidrogas en Estados Unidos [Drugs and criminality: A brief exploration of the relation between the social sciences and anti-drug policy in the United States] [Electronic version]. Sociologica, 18, 247-278.
10. Letwin, M. Z. (1990, October 6). Wrong way to fight crime. New York Times, p. 23.
11. Mascharka, C. (2001). Mandatory minimum sentences: Exemplifying the law of unintended consequences. Florida State University Law Review, 28, 935-944.
12. Nadelmann, E.A. (1989). Drug prohibition in the United States: costs, consequences, and alternatives [Electronic version]. Science, 245, 939-947.
13. New York County Lawyers’ Association. (1996). Report and recommendations of the Drug Policy Task Force. Retrieved March 25, 2008, from http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/ Library/studies/nycla/nycla.htm
14. Office of National Drug Control Policy. (2008). National drug control strategy: FY 2009 Budget summary. Retrieved March 31, 2008, from http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/ publications/policy/09budget/index.html
15. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2006). Results from the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National findings. Retrieved March 30, 2008, from http://www.oas.samhsa.gov/nsduh/2k6nsduh/2k6Results.cfm
16. Wilson, W. J. (1996). When work disappears: The world of the new urban poor. New York: Vintage Books.
17. Zelvin, E., Barber, J., Coleman, B., & Philip, G. (2002). Legalization of drugs: Perspectives from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia [Electronic version]. Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions, 2, 137-144.