Time to raise the white flag in the war on drugs

A high-level panel has issued a report saying that we have lost the war on drugs.

Duh.

The panel represents a “Who’s Who” of the international establishment. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker are just a few of its members.  Though the scope of the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s “War on Drugs” report is global, its recommendations — that we move toward decriminalization of marijuana and reassess other drug policies — are a direct challenge to conventional wisdom in the United States. (The report was immediately — and unsurprisingly — assailed by the Obama administration. The war on drugs is further evidence that bipartisanship is not evidence of wisdom.)

As the report makes clear, the costs of the war on drugs, in human and financial terms, are astonishing. This should be no surprise here in the United States, where we have developed a vast and expensive apparatus to arrest, prosecute and imprison drug users and dealers. The indirect toll levied on individuals, families and communities is surely even higher. Yet we continue, year after year, decade after decade, pursuing punitive policies of, at best, mixed success.

Tragically, the costs of the U.S. war on drugs are not limited to our own country.  Colombia and now Mexico are collateral damage. Thanks to our inability to suppress domestic demand for drugs, Mexico has been engulfed in a sea of violence. Death is now the major U.S. export to our Southern neighbor. A close second: cheap advice on how Mexico should deal with the violence.

There are signs — tentative as yet — that we are moving toward a more open debate on drugs.  In particular, there has been a fitful, though still welcome, trend toward the decriminalization of marijuana.

Let’s not deceive ourselves. Liberalizing drug laws may well increase consumption both by casual users and addicts. We will not be transported to Utopia; there will still be social costs; and the public will pick up at least some of the tab for increased treatment. But these costs must be measured against the awful price – paid not just in money — but also in death and diminished lives — of our current failed system.

Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.