Solving America’s Crime and Drug Problem

Legalize Addicts, Not Drugs
by
Clifford Lazar and Judge Richard Mednick (ret.)

Copyright, © 1997 by Clifford W. Lazar

What follows is a novel approach to solving America’s drug problem that considers all the major pushes and pulls of the illicit drug industry.

Where We are Now
Who Suffers
Who Benefits Now
Goals
The Politics of Drugs
What Shouldn’t be Done: Don’t Spend More Money
Don’t Decontrol
What Should be Done:
Break the Links
Confidentially Self-Register Addicts
Isolating the Users in Happy Rooms
Destroying the Drug Culture
Strengthen the Penalties
Offer Rewards to Increase Paranoia
How to Get There

Where We are Now
America is gripped by a drug problem that seems without solution. Federal, state and local jurisdictions have spent billions of dollars to fight drugs at the source and at the destination and the level of usage and damage related to usage, have just continued to escalate over the decades.

We have a major crime problem. Nearly every city dweller has been robbed or burglarized or knows someone who has. Over $25 billion worth of drugs are imported into the United States every year. At least half of them are paid for by theft. Since stolen goods are fenced for about 25% of their value. That means $100 billion of Americans’ property are stolen every year to support drugs. This raises our home insurance and business insurance bills and the cost of everything we buy.

We also pay taxes for police and correction officers and the costs of prisons. Half of the inmates in prisons are for drug related offenses. That’s 500,000 inmates. At $20,000 each, the bill comes to $10 billion a year. Thirty-two percent of all young black men have criminal records of some level, and the majority are for drugs.

Who Suffers
The average annual cost of the drug culture to each of the 120 million households in the United States is about . That doesn’t count the psychological damage, the fear, and the impact of the actual robbery on the family and the ripple effect on extended family and friends. Innocent children are killed every year in drug-related shootings. In impacted neighborhoods, children sleep in bathtubs as a protection from stray bullets.

Who Benefits Now
The current drug enforcement system gives a monopoly to the Mafia, the gangs and the drug cartels. As a result, drug kingpins collect monopoly profits. The drug dealers can collect hundreds of times the production costs of the drugs. Normal mark ups for legal products are five to ten times production costs.

In addition to the drug dealers, the other the law enforcement and corrections officers who make a living fighting drugs are, in an ironic manner, benefactors. While they risk their lives and work in dangerous conditions, they have employment. They see the drug dealers and users as evil and want to keep fighting them.

If there were no laws against dispensing drugs to addicts, then thousands of police and corrections officers would be reallocated to murder-homicide, fraud and theft. If there were no laws against dispensing drugs to addicts, then the profits from illegal drugs would disappear.

If there were no laws against dispensing drugs to addicts then the crime rate would be cut in half.

Goals
When we consider solutions to America’s crime and drug problem what should our goals be?

Drug Use Down: The amount of drug use should decrease every year to no more than 10% of today’s level.

Drug Related Theft Down: The amount of drug related theft should drop from $50 billion a year to less than $2 billion in ten years.

Drug Deaths Down: The thousands of drug related over-dose deaths and turf war murders should drop to a couple hundred.

Drug Corrections Costs Down: The hundreds of thousands of inmates should drop to thousands and then hundreds.

Crack Baby Birth Rate Down: The thousands of crack babies and the hundreds of thousands remediating them should drop to a couple hundred and then to zero.

The Politics of Drugs
Drugs, drug users and drug dealers are seen as evil. . Guns are banned in Northern Ireland and there are still guns. Because evil drugs are banned, the government creates a monopoly for drug dealers. Drugs are banned in the United States, and the number of drug users goes up - not down.

How does it work? No one buys their first drugs. They are given drugs free, to create a new user, or a new drug using friend.

Only after the new user becomes hooked is the user charged for drugs. Then the user typically can’t afford the drugs, and he/she must steal or embezzle to pay for the habit.

What Shouldn’t be Done: Don’t Spend More Money
Many people use drugs and yet their employers, parents and even their spouses don’t know it. The cost of drugs, and the necessity to steal, destroy families, causes addicts to lose jobs they could often otherwise perform.

So what is evil about people who use drugs when their families and employers don’t know they are using drugs? The evil is they give money to illicit drug dealers, who buy influence from law enforcement and government officials.

The evil is that some drugs result in dangerous behavior such as unsafe driving. So does alcohol.

What follows is a program that would will eliminate most, but, not all drugs and crime and drug dealers from the American landscape. The current $20 billion our governments spend each year hasn’t come close. If amount government spends fighting drugs were doubled drug use and drug related crime would not be reduced by 10%.

Don’t Decontrol
Like it or not, decriminalizing drugs will not fly with the American public. The public doesn’t want crack babies and 15 year-old heroin addicts. Groups have been preaching for years for decriminalization and have gotten nowhere. We need an approach that the public can understand and support.

What Should be Done:

Break the Links
To eliminate the evils of drugs, the linkage between drug dealers and drug users must be broken. The linkage between addicts and drug free children must be broken.

Confidentially Self-Register Addicts
Addicts should be allowed to confidentially register as addicts. Their names should not be available to anyone but the registrar at the time of registration.

Neither law enforcement nor insurance companies should get access to their names. The addicts would be issued difficult-to-forge photo ID cards. To screen out non-addicts and pregnant women, all registrants would be required to take urine and/or blood tests. Pregnant women would not be allowed to register. The object of this program is to let the current drug users quit or die off while the drug dealers go out of business.

Isolating the Users in Happy Rooms
Pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and drug stores should be certified to dispense drugs to registered addicts. In order to be certified, drug dispensers should also provide rehabilitation, free to drug addicts on a voluntary basis. The addicts would not be required to take rehabilitation. Possibly 10% would. The drug users would be required to take their drugs in happy rooms, like the executive waiting rooms provided by the airlines. This would limit the drug culture to registered addicts. They would get to hang out with other users so the social aspect would not be negative to the addicts.

Destroying the Drug Culture
As the social structure that promotes drug use dies, so will the peer pressure to keep up addictions and start new addicts. To successfully reduce drug use the peer pressure and role models must be eliminated. Letting the drug users hang out with other drug users fulfills their social needs. But they will be off the streets and will not be role models to young kids or non-addicts.

With registered users getting their drugs in happy rooms, at certified dispensaries, there would be no "behind-the-gym" peer pressure to start a habit. Potential users would not see role models using drugs.

Strengthen the Penalties
The penalties for dispensing drugs to non-users should be increased.

Offer Rewards to Increase Paranoia
Money rewards and amnesties should be offered for turning in dealers and non-registered users. This will drive a wedge between the users and dealers. Trust between users and dealers is an critical component of the drug trade. Dealers would know they can’t trust financially desperate users. Users would know they can’t trust desperate dealers who need amnesties. Neither users or pushers would trust the other. Paranoia will become the great tool in reducing drug use.

The risk of being caught and doing time would be greater than the financial reward, because creating new users will not assure a long term financial relationship.

How to Get There
The "Legalize Addicts, Not Drugs" program must be approved on a state-by-state basis. Some international treaties about drugs need to be amended. Ideally, state legislators need to sponsor bills that would effectuate the program.

Failing rational activity of legislators, initiative petitions can be mounted by committees of concerned citizens.

Foundation support is needed to sponsor symposia of experts in law enforcement, rehabilitation, drug substitution programs and drug trade economics.

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