Category Archives: War On Drugs

The Cannabist

To understand the Trump administration, look at their renewed war on drugs The Cannabist This adherence unifies his policy actions: not only the appointment of drug-war hard-liner Jeff Sessions as attorney general but also his approach to immigration and the wall, his calls for a revival of stop and frisk and law and order policies ...

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To understand the Trump administration, look at their renewed war on drugs - The Cannabist

The Impact on Public Health & Mass Incarceration

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has emerged as the most malignant figure in the Trump administration. His role in the burgeoning Russian investigation aside, Sessions efforts to aggressively renew the War on Drugs has grave consequences for the overall health of our nation and the disparities therein. Sessions has already demonstrated concerning and regressive stances on various issues of public health, including gun control, LGBTQ rights, sexual assault, abortion, and protections for individuals with disabilities.

On May 12, Sessions released a policy memooverturning Former Attorney General Eric Holders efforts to reduce sentencing for lower-level drug offenders. In this memo, Sessions calls for thousands of U.S. attorneys across the nation to charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense, limiting the ability of prosecutors to use their discretion in cases where mandatory minimums would be triggered. This move builds upon his decision to reverse the federal ban against using private prisons for federal inmates and his ongoing review of police reform efforts.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Civil rights organizations continue to speak out against the efforts of the Justice Department. Eric Holder describes Sessions policy change as cookie cutter. He argues it will exacerbate unfairly long sentences without a benefit in public safety or reduction in federal spending.

The development of an apartheid-like criminal justice system is methodically described by Michelle Alexander in her 2010 book The New Jim Crow. In short, over the past 35 years, the number of incarcerated individuals has risen to over 2.2 million with serious racial disparities. She notes that the majority of illegal drug users are White. The majority of the incarcerated are African-American or Hispanic-American. In fact, White students were found to use cocaine at a rate 7x higher, crack cocaine 8x higher, and heroin 7x higher than African-American students.

The disproportionate incarceration of minorities in the United States has serious implications for social justice, but it also represents a public health crisis that will worsen under the Trump administration. Incarcerated individuals suffer higher rates of medical disease, across the spectrum, including substance use disorders, infectious disease, and chronic disease.

Vera Institute of Justice, 2014

Special attention should be given to substance use disorders. The Trump Administration has already stood in the way of adequately addressing the opioid crisis in several ways. Most recently, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Dr. Tom Price, dangerously disregarded the evidence-based use of medication-assisted treatment by incorrectly claiming that it is akin to substituting one opioid for another.

The quality of healthcare delivered in correctional facilities is also of great concern. Many correctional facilities do not meet the same accreditation standards that regular hospitals uphold. Moreover, Sessions seeks to increase the use of private prisons. There have been hundreds of lawsuits filed against private, for-profit prisons claiming substandard care. There is indeed evidence that such arrangements are associated with higher mortality.

Moreover, private prisons are even worse in terms of perpetuating racial disparities. African-American males are overrepresented in private prisons compared to public prisons. To run a profit, these prisons try to keep healthcare costs as low as possible. Young, relatively healthy, African-American men are viewed as high-profit compared to older, more unhealthy White men. Perhaps it is unsurprising that a man who was denied federal judgeship because of statements in support of the Ku Klux Klan would seek to commodify African-Americans as Attorney General.

Whether in a public or private prison, multiple studies also indicate that the health implications of incarceration propagate throughout the community. Children with incarcerated parents have higher rates of poverty, grow up to have higher rates of disease in adulthood, and incarceration is associated with greater racial disparity in infant mortality. More broadly, individuals with felony convictions and their families often face loss of federal housing and food stamps, Medicaid termination, and difficulty finding employment. Finally, creating incentives to arrest and prosecute more individuals would likely increase aggressive policing tactics, which has been associated with higher rates of mortality for minorities. The further decimation and disregard of minority communities keeps with the overall tenor of the Trump administration.

The evidence shows that the health consequences of an individuals imprisonment extend beyond that individual and beyond the time of incarceration. The data we have from the past 50+ years demonstrate health consequences for entire communities with real racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions and sentencing lengths. The evidence fails to show that returning to aggressive policing and prosecution for minor drug offenses would improve public safety yet alone public health. There is simply no merit for Mr. Sessions failed approach.

The chaotic nature of the Trump administration only serves to mask the concerted assault on public health by his appointees. While there is a high degree of awareness and outrage by the public and the medical community regarding the AHCA, these lesser known efforts by the Justice Department must be a focus of coordinated response.

It is rare to find areas of bipartisan agreement in Washington, but it seems like opposing Mr. Sessions plans may be an opportunity for unity. The medical community has historically played a significant role in the establishment of our punitive, racially unjust criminal justice system. Now, we must speak out and organize against its perpetuation.

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Jeff Sessions' Malignant War On Drugs - HuffPost

Theres a Standard Story that many Americans, particularly on the left, believe about mass incarceration: During the 1970s and 80s, the federal government dramatically escalated its war on drugs. This alone led to millions of people getting locked up for fairly low-level drug offenses, causing the US prison population to spike. This new prison population is predominantly black, leading to massive racial disparities in the criminal justice system. And all of this happened, not coincidentally, right after the civil rights movement showing the rise in incarceration was a ploy to oppress black Americans just after they made huge gains.

But in a new book, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, Fordham University criminal justice expert John Pfaff offers a trove of evidence that this narrative is by and large wrong or, at the very least, misses much of the real story.

The Standard Story of mass incarceration, as Pfaff calls it, was largely popularized by a 2010 book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. Pfaff goes through many facts and statistics to show that this Standard Story gets a lot wrong about the causes and realities of mass incarceration, from the types of crime that people are locked up for (in reality, largely violent offenses) to the areas in which reform is truly needed (with a focus on state and local, not federal, reform).

The core failing of the Standard Story is that it consistently puts the spotlight on statistics and events that are shocking but, in the grand scheme of things, not truly important for solving the problems we face, he writes. As a result, it gives too little attention to the more mundane-sounding yet far more influential causes of prison growth.

The story that Pfaff carefully describes is different from the standard narrative: Its not drug offenses that are driving mass incarceration, but violent ones. Its not the federal government thats behind mass incarceration, but a whole host of prison systems down to the local and state level. Its not solely police and lawmakers leading to more incarceration and lengthy prison sentences, but prosecutors who are by and large out of the political spotlight.

The book dampens much of the excitement around the progress weve seen in the past few years. Starting in 2010, the incarceration rate began to fall in the US for the first time in decades. But the drop has been slight, driven mostly by changes to sentencing laws for low-level drug and property crimes.

And based on Pfaffs work, this drop wont continue at least in a dramatic fashion as long as reformers and the public remain focused on a Standard Story thats almost entirely about the federal war on drugs.

Simply stopping the rise in incarceration has been a huge accomplishment, Pfaff notes. If the goal is real decarceration, however, it is time to shift focus to the much broader, much more confounding issues that keep us locked in to our current predicament.

To this end, Pfaff agrees that, for example, we should strive to get low-level drug offenders out of prison. He just says its not enough that the real issue is much bigger.

Its an uncomfortable read, not least because it suggests America will have to make some very tough choices if it wants to seriously cut the incarceration rate: Are we really okay with locking up fewer violent offenders? Does the country really have the ability to sustain a focus on local and state politics to ensure that the real sources of mass incarceration come down? If America does stumble upon a new crime wave or drug crisis, will all the work thats already been done be pulled back as politicians resurrect tough on crime rhetoric (like President Donald Trump has)?

All of this is a reason for reformers to be pessimistic about their ability to undo mass incarceration. The bright spot, if there is one, is that work like Pfaffs can help expose the real problems in the system, leading to more sustainable solutions.

No misconception wraps the Standard Story more than the belief that mass incarceration was caused by the war on drugs. This was widely popularized by Alexanders The New Jim Crow. That book argues that, facing the success of the civil rights movement, racist lawmakers shifted to another regime to try to control black Americans: the criminal justice system. So the federal government launched the war on drugs, locking up black people for low-level drug offenses and driving incarceration rates in the US to astronomical highs.

The impact of the drug war has been astounding. In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million, with drug convictions accounting for the majority of the increase, Alexander writes. She later claims that the uncomfortable reality is that arrests and convictions for drug offenses not violent crime have propelled mass incarceration.

Pfaff demonstrates that this central claim of the Standard Story is wrong. In reality, only about 16 percent of state prisoners are serving time on drug charges and very few of them, perhaps only around 5 or 6 percent of that group, are both low level and nonviolent, he writes. At the same time, more than half of all people in state prisons have been convicted of a violent crime.

By the numbers, Pfaff is correct: The latest data by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that in state prisons, where about 87 percent of US inmates are held, nearly 53 percent are in for violent offenses (such as murder, manslaughter, robbery, assault, and rape), while only about 16 percent, as Pfaff said, are in for drug offenses.

These figures are at best a minimum for the number of violent offenders in prison. Its not rare for violent offenders to plea down their charges to nonviolent crimes; this lets offenders get a lower sentence, and it lets prosecutors and judges skip a costly trial. So at least some of the supposedly nonviolent offenders have likely committed violent crimes.

This context is crucial to understanding why mass incarceration happened: It really was a reaction to a massive violent crime wave. From the 1970s to 90s, violent crime rose dramatically across the US and lawmakers responded, in what Pfaff characterizes as an overreaction, with mass incarceration.

That doesnt rule out the role of racism. One reason that policymakers overreacted to the crime wave, Pfaff acknowledges, is likely prejudice, given that our durable history of racism may make rising crime seem more frightening to white voters than it is to Europeans [who didnt react to their own crime waves with similar bouts of incarceration], or at least it may ensure greater rewards (or fewer risks) for politicians who crack down on poor minority communities.

But the statistics indicate that violent crime played a huge role in mass incarceration. It wasnt just or even mostly the war on drugs. Until we accept that meaningful prison reform means changing how we punish violent crimes, true reform will not be possible, Pfaff writes.

Yet the opposite has happened. Over the past few years, local and state lawmakers have enacted criminal justice reforms. But these efforts almost always focus on low-level drug and property offenses. In some cases, lawmakers and reformers will argue that low-level offenders need to be kept out of prison so more violent offenders can be locked up a framework that could lead to more incarceration, not less. (Consider the common line that we need to focus expensive prison beds on those who deserve them the most.)

Pfaff cites Georgia, often celebrated as a success story in criminal justice reform, as one example: Georgias lauded 2011 reforms have cut prison populations, but hidden in that decline is a rise in the absolute number of people serving time for violent crimes people whose sentences tend to be longer, and whose rising imprisonment may, in the long run, undo the short-run declines.

This wont work, Pfaff argues: Freeing every single person who is in a state prison on a drug charge would only cut state prison populations back to where they were in 1996-1997, well into the mass incarceration period. Thats not to say we shouldnt think about releasing a lot of those who are in prison for these sorts of crimes, but we need to be realistic about what doing so would accomplish more broadly.

A fundamental problem with how the Standard Story approaches mass incarceration is the narrative poses the greater rates of imprisonment as the work of one system, working to perpetuate mass incarceration as a singular response to civil rights gains. As Alexander writes in The New Jim Crow, We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.

The reality is that there are many systems at play more than 3,100, representing every county and county equivalent in America. As Pfaff writes, [T]he term criminal justice system is a misnomer; criminal justice is, at best, a set of systems, and at worst it is a swirling mess of somewhat antagonistic agencies.

Despite the perennial focus on the federal criminal justice system in the media, most incarceration and law enforcement take place at the local level. About 87 percent of all prisoners are held in state systems, Pfaff writes. The federal government runs the single largest prison system, but several states have systems that are fairly close to the federal one in size, and if we look at total populations under some sort of correctional observation (not just prison, but also jail, parole, and probation), the federal government quickly falls out of first place.

The focus on the federal prison system may explain why many in the media and other experts think that drug offenses are such a huge driver of incarceration. In the federal system, about half of prisoners are in for drug crimes more than three times the rate of the state systems.

But given that the state systems contain a much larger bulk of the prison population, Pfaff argues the fight to end mass incarceration should focus at the local and state level and that means focusing on crimes that go far beyond drugs.

Emphasis on local. Take New York, a state that has experienced one of the longest sustained decarcerations in recent history, with prison populations falling by about 25 percent since 1999, Pfaff writes. This looks like a state success story, but the entire decline between 2000 and 2011 took place in just twelve of the states sixty-two counties, with the other fifty counties adding inmates to state prisons during that time.

The federal government does have some sway over local and state prison systems. But Pfaff argues that this influence is perhaps not as strong as people think.

To demonstrate this, he looks at the federal governments main tool for driving criminal justice policies at the local and state levels: grant money. These funds are supposed to encourage local and state government to adopt certain policies, but theyre just not sizable enough to make a big impact.

Between 1993 and 2012, eight major grant-making arms of the US Department of Justice awarded about $38 billion to state and local governments, Pfaff writes. As a percentage of annual criminal justice spending, these grants consistently hovered (in total) around 2 percent for the states and under 1 percent for local governments.

In short, the federal governments war on drugs never played much of a role in incarceration because the federal government just doesnt play much of a role in incarceration overall.

Typically, discussions of the criminal justice system focus on lawmakers, prisons, the police, and maybe judges. Rarely, however, is the most powerful actor in this system mentioned: the prosecutor.

Local and state prosecutors are enormously powerful in the US criminal justice system, in large part because they are given so much discretion to prosecute however they see fit. For example, former Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson in 2014 announced that he would no longer enforce low-level marijuana arrests. Think about how this works: Pot is still very much illegal in New York state, but Brooklyns district attorney flat-out said that he would ignore an aspect of the law and its completely within his discretion to do so.

Prosecutors make these types of decisions all the time: Should they bring the type of charge that will trigger a lengthy mandatory minimum sentence? Should they bring a charge thats only a misdemeanor? Should they strike a deal for a lower sentence, but one that can be imposed without a costly trial?

Courts and juries do, in theory, act as checks on prosecutors. But in practice, they dont: More than 90 percent of criminal convictions are resolved through a plea agreement, so by and large prosecutors and defendants not judges and juries have almost all the say in the great majority of cases that result in incarceration or some other punishment.

Many prosecutors are also elected. This, too, is supposed to keep prosecutors in check. But in practice, prosecutors try to appease the electorate by looking tough on crime and that means imposing harsh prison sentences, as well as locking up as many bad guys as possible. (This may go against voters wishes, but another problem is voters dont actually do much to hold prosecutors accountable: When Ronald Wright of Wake Forest University School of Law looked at data from 1996 to 2006, he found that about 95 percent of incumbent prosecutors won reelection, and 85 percent ran unopposed in general elections.)

Pfaff has even found evidence that prosecutors have been the key drivers of mass incarceration in the past couple of decades. Analyzing data from state judiciaries, he compared the number of crimes, arrests, and prosecutions from 1994 to 2008. He found that reported violent and property crime fell, and arrests for almost all crimes also fell. But one thing went up: the number of felony cases filed in court.

Prosecutors were filing more charges even as crime and arrests dropped, throwing more people into the prison system. Prosecutors were driving mass incarceration.

Pfaff provides a real-world example of this kind of dynamic: Take South Dakota, which in 2013 passed a reform bill that aimed to reduce prison populations. The law did lead to prison declines in 2014 and 2015, yet at the same time prosecutors responded by charging more people with generally low-level felonies, and over these two years total felony convictions rose by 25 percent. In the long term, this could lead to even larger prison populations.

To combat this, Pfaff argues that states could enact, for example, prosecutorial guidelines that limit the amount of discretion these officials have.

Almost all stages of the criminal justice system now operate under some sort of guideline or actuarial regime, he writes. The lone exception is the prosecutor. Although prosecutors need room to exercise discretion, their job is not so uniquely different from the other parts of the criminal justice system that they alone cannot do it if they are subjected to some sort of guidance.

Yet, he explains, No major piece of state-level reform legislation has directly challenged prosecutorial power (although some reforms do in fact impede it), and other than a few, generally local exceptions, their power is rarely a topic in the national debate over criminal justice reform.

Piece by piece, Pfaff paints a more nuanced picture of the criminal justice systems in America than that of the Standard Story. In the end, its not that the war on drugs or the federal system doesnt matter; its that they both play a much smaller role than they are typically given credit for. Pfaff goes through similar data on private prisons, the length of certain prison sentences, and other Standard Story tropes showing that they all tend to get outsize attention given their actual impact on incarceration.

It all points to one conclusion: To truly eliminate mass incarceration, reformers will have to at some point shift more attention to dealing with the mass incarceration of violent offenders, not just low-level drug offenders, and do so with a focus on the state and local levels, particularly prosecutors in these areas.

This puts reformers and lawmakers who want to end mass incarceration in a much more difficult situation. For one, its going to be way more challenging to advocate for lower sentences and fewer admissions for violent offenders.

A poll conducted by Morning Consult for Vox last year, for example, found that nearly eight in 10 US voters support reducing prison sentences for people who committed a nonviolent crime and have a low risk of reoffending. But fewer than three in 10 backed shorter prison sentences for people who committed a violent crime and have a low risk of reoffending.

Pfaff tries his hand at some of the messaging that will be needed here: He argues that incarceration is simply an ineffective way to combat crime, while it imposes all sorts of costs on individuals and society that likely outweigh its benefits.

Its true that crime is costly but so, too, is punishment, especially prison, he writes. The real costs are much higher than the $80 billion we spend each year on prisons and jails: they include a host of financial, physical, emotional, and social costs to inmates, their families, and communities. Maybe reducing these costs justifies some rise in crime.

Its hard to imagine Americans buying Pfaffs suggestion that we should accept more crime. But hes certainly right that prison is an ineffective way of dealing with crime, based on much of the research in this area.

A 2015 review of the research by the Brennan Center for Justice estimated that more incarceration and its abilities to incapacitate or deter criminals explained about 0 to 7 percent of the crime drop since the 1990s. Other researchers estimate it drove 10 to 25 percent of the crime drop since the 90s.

More incarceration can lead even to more crime. As the National Institute of Justice concluded in 2016, Research has found evidence that prison can exacerbate, not reduce, recidivism. Prisons themselves may be schools for learning to commit crimes.

Meanwhile, criminal justice experts have come up with all sorts of other solutions to combating crime. There are new police strategies such as hot-spot policing and focused deterrence that have measurable impacts on crime, including violence. There are other ideas focused more on socioeconomic issues, such as stricter alcohol policies, raising the age for dropping out of school, and some behavioral intervention programs.

Besides prison, crime is shaped by the number of police, the unemployment rate, wage levels, the number of crime-aged young men in the population, immigration levels, cultural attitudes toward violence, technological improvements, and so much more, Pfaff writes.

This creates a lot more room to enact policies that are less brutal and much more efficient at dealing with crime than prisons are. Hiring a police officer is probably about as expensive as hiring a prison guard, for example, but investing in police has a much bigger deterrent effect and avoids all the capital expenditures of prisons, Pfaff argues. Steven Levitt has estimated that $1 spent on policing is at least 20 percent more effective than $1 spent on prisons.

In an ideal world, maybe America would spend infinite money on these programs and stop all crime forever. But resources are limited. So the US and the different criminal justice systems within it could see better results if they put the money they do have toward anti-crime policies other than prison.

Adopting this sort of perspective on criminal justice issues, Pfaff argues, is crucial to undoing mass incarceration. The important thing here isnt just to pass laws that cut prison sentences or make it harder to lock someone up, but to fundamentally alter the way that Americans and their leaders think of crime in America. Only then can the US adopt the kind of mentality that will push against tough on crime attitudes even as the crime rate goes up.

After all, even if the US did enact a bunch of reforms now, theres always the fear of a future crime wave, Pfaff explains: If crime starts to really rise again, which almost certainly will happen at some point, theres nothing to prevent legislators from rolling back the current reforms and overreacting once more. He later added, It is a change in attitude, more than anything else, that will prevent legislatures from bringing back tough laws they earlier repealed.

Thats why work like Pfaffs is so important: Only by understanding the real causes of mass incarceration can the public and policymakers be prepared to undo and resist it now and in the future.

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Why you can't blame mass incarceration on the war on drugs - Vox

While Rodrigo Duterte was campaigning to be elected president of the Philippines last year, he said on many occasions that he would arrange, if elected, for people who sold or used drugs to be killed. Extrajudicial killings began even before his inauguration, with victims usually shot and then drugs and guns planted to make it look like the assailants had acted in self-defence. A 77-page application last month by a lawyer, Jude Sabio requesting the international criminal court to commence a preliminary investigation estimated that at least 9,400 people have already been killed by police and vigilantes. According to Sabio, most of the victims were poor young men, but also bystanders, children and political opponents. The killings were briefly halted in January after police killed a South Korean businessman, but have since restarted.

Governments in many countries carry out extrajudicial killings, almost always for military or national security reasons and rarely targeting people who use or sell drugs. An exception is what happened in Thailand in 2003, when Thaksin Shinawatra was prime minister, and an estimated 3,000 people accused of using or selling drugs were murdered without legal process. More than a decade later, under the current rule of a military junta, the legal and military elite is slowly reforming Thailands drug laws. The painful memories of the extrajudicial killings of 2003 are a major factor in the drug law reform now taking place in Thailand.

So far, with the exception of praise from the US president, Donald Trump, there has been strong international condemnation of the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, including from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The United Nations human rights council voted 45-1 to urge the Philippines to desist.

Yet while extrajudicial killings have received international attention, the extremism of Dutertes other drug policies measures including the reinstatement of the death penalty for drug offences, the lowering of the age of criminal responsibility to as low as 10, and mandatory drug testing in schools and workplaces have been largely ignored.

The unpalatable fact for policymakers everywhere is that extrajudicial killings of people who use drugs would never occur without the sanction of a global drug prohibition, a system that started with an international meeting convened by the US in Shanghai in 1909. A series of such meetings culminated in three international drug treaties (in 1961, 1971 and 1988) approved by almost every nation. The US president Richard Nixon intensified what he called the war on drugs in 1971 to help him win re-election in 1972 despite the deeply unpopular Vietnam war.

Global drug prohibition was expected to reduce the international drug market and make it less dangerous. But this is the opposite of what happened. Instead, production and consumption of drugs such as heroin and cocaine increased and their price fell by 80% over a quarter of a century. More than 100 new psychoactive drugs are identified within the EU every year, some of them much more dangerous than older drugs.

Drug prohibition was also supposed to protect the health and wellbeing of communities. But drug-related deaths, disease, violence and corruption have in many places increased rather than decreased. In Australia, where I spent three decades providing alcohol and drug treatment and advocating public health and human rights , while based in a Sydney teaching hospital, the rate of heroin overdose deaths allowing for the growth in the population over time increased 55-fold between 1964 and 1997.

In most western countries, property crime taking money or property without threat has skyrocketed from the 1960s to the present day. Drug prohibition is not the only factor, but its certainly a major one. The number of homicides has also increased in many countries, and this too is linked to the prohibition of drugs and the market this creates for organised crime.

But the effects on producer countries and trafficking countries such as Mexico are far worse than anything experienced in rich countries. When Felipe Caldern became president of Mexico in 2006 he declared a war on drugs. By the time he left office six years later, drug traffickers, the army or police had killed at least 80,000 Mexicans. In some countries drug prohibition has encouraged rampant corruption in policing, courts and up to the highest levels of government. Major drug producing or transit countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Mexico have risked becoming unstable failed states, even posing threats to the national security of some other countries.

Global drug prohibition has turned out to be an expensive way of making a bad problem much worse

It isnt that the world has not implemented its war on drugs the right way. A war on drugs will always fail. When correctional authorities cant keep drugs out of prisons, how can we expect drugs to be kept out of our cities and suburbs? When 1kg of heroin or cocaine multiplies in price several hundred-fold from its country of origin to its city of destination, how can we stop it from being transported? When drug traffickers are better resourced than police, how can we expect our authorities to stop drugs being trafficked?

In the past few years, former world leaders and even some in office have started calling for drug law reform. The essential elements are clear. First, redefine drugs as primarily a health and social issue. Second, improve treatment. Third, start reducing and, where possible, eliminating sanctions for drug use and drug possession. Fourth, regulate as much of the drug market as possible, starting with recreational cannabis. And fifth, shrink extreme poverty, which exacerbates drug problems.

Countries implementing at least some of these measures have seen a decrease in deaths, disease, crime and violence. In Switzerland, illicit drug seizures fell in the 1990s, suggesting that the drug black market may have contracted. And like Switzerland, the Netherlands in the 1970s and Portugal in 2001 benefited from redefining drugs as primarily a health issue. Now some countries are starting to try to regulate parts of their drug market. Eight states in the US, A encompassing 20% of the population, have approved the taxation and regulation of recreational cannabis. Uruguay was the first nation to regulate recreational cannabis. And in July 2018 Canada should become the first G7 nation to do so. Clearly, global drug prohibition is starting to unravel.

But there is a significant risk that Dutertes campaign of extrajudicial killings and the lack of any serious international response may encourage other countries to instead follow his example. Duterte, who declared martial law in parts of the Philippines last week following gun battles between security forces and Islamic State militants, was recently quoted as saying: Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now, there is [sic] 3 million drug addicts. Id be happy to slaughter them. Hitler noted the lack of an international response to the Ottoman governments genocide of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1917 and that emboldened him to proceed to his own Holocaust of six million Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. It would be ironic as well as tragic if the extrajudicial killings of people who use drugs started to spread just when the international drug control system has started collapsing.

It should not take extrajudicial killings in the Philippines in 2017 to make the world realise that global drug prohibition has turned out to be an expensive way of making a bad problem much worse. When Mikhail Gorbachev realised in the 1980s that communism in the USSR had failed, he called for glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring). We now need more openness about drug policy, along with a major restructuring of our response to drugs. The only winners so far have been drug traffickers and the many politicians who found that bad policy made good politics. The longer change is delayed, the more difficult the transition will be.

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We have waged war on drugs for a century. So who won? - The Guardian

After descending that Trump Tower escalator in July 2015, Trump made headlines when he kicked off his campaign by proclaiming that Mexico was sending us "rapists." Less noted has been that he began his list of woes coming from the South by castigating Mexican immigrants for "bringing drugs." Already in that speech the solution he offered to this caricatured problem was "the wall." Almost two years later, the wall is still meant to solve the problem of drugs, as in this tweet from April: "If the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be!"

Trump's well-received joint address to Congress in February also explained his desire to limit immigration by focusing on drugs: "We've defended the borders of other nations while leaving our own borders wide open for anyone to cross and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate."

No surprise, then, that Sessions has been working steadily, since his confirmation, to restore the building blocks of the War on Drugs that political leaders from both parties have been quietly removing for the past five years. He has ordered a review of federal policies on state legalization of marijuana and appears to be seeking an end to the policy of federal non-interference with the cascade of legalization efforts. He has ordered a review of consent decrees, whose purpose is to spur police reform, and sought to delay the implementation of Baltimore's. He has recently handed down guidance requiring federal prosecutors to seek the stiffest possible sentences available for drug offenses.

To support these efforts, Trump has proposed hiring 10,000 immigration officers and 5,000 Border Patrol agents and beefing up support for police departments. According to the White House website, "The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration" for a country that "needs more law enforcement."

The Obama administration had begun to drive toward replacing criminal-justice strategies for drug control with public-health strategies. It wasn't whistling in the dark but following, at least in part, the innovative model of drug control pioneered by Portugal. Use and modest possession of marijuana and other drugs have been decriminalized, but large-scale trafficking is still criminal. The criminal-justice system focuses on those large-scale traffickers, while public-health strategies and harm-reduction techniques pinpoint users and low-level participants in the drug economy. Adolescent drug use is down, the percentage of users seeking treatment is up, and Portugal is interdicting increased quantities of illegal narcotics.

Countries across Central and South America would like to follow Portugal and transition from a criminal-justice paradigm to an individual and public-health paradigm for drug control. They have advocated for this change at the United Nations but have been blocked by Putin's Russia. Indeed, Putin is one of the world's most steadfast advocates for the 1980s War on Drugs concept.

Of course, Trump has expressed a strange affinity for Putin and also for Duterte, the president of the Philippines. Duterte has called for the "slaughter" of the Philippines' estimated 3 million addicts. The death toll from extrajudicial killings that he seems to have sparked has already reached into the thousands. The response from the United States? Trump praised Duterte for doing an "unbelievable job on the drug problem" and invited him to the White House.

Yet Trump's initial budget plan involved proposing nearly complete defunding of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which was founded by congressional legislation in 1988. How does that square?

The Obama administration deployed that office to "restore balance" to U.S. drug-control efforts, increasing emphasis on treatment, prevention and diversion programs, and fostering a move toward a health-based strategy. The expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and requirements that insurers support mental-health and addiction treatment undergirded this effort, supporting the emergence of programs designed to divert low-level drug offenders out of the criminal-justice system and into treatment. This has made for the very promising beginnings of a health-based approach to drug control.

The Trump administration has painted a bull's eye on this new policy strategy and is firing away. While the White House has backed off defunding the Office of National Drug Control Policy, it continues to pursue the reversal of the Medicaid expansion. The administration appears to think narcotics control can be achieved entirely through the tools of criminal justice.

But we tried that in the 1980s, the decade of "Miami Vice," the era when the Los Angeles police chief, Daryl Gates, could testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee that casual drug users "ought to be taken out and shot." We know where that story ends: with increased incarceration, further degradation of urban neighborhoods, no durable change in rates of drug use and a failure to address addiction.

So, yes, Trump has a vision, and he's moving steadily toward it, wrongheaded though it is, dragging us along with him, as if into a wall.

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Allen is a political theorist at Harvard University and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post.

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Washington Post Op-ed: The war on drugs explains the Trump ... - Salt Lake Tribune

Whats the standard line on President Trump these days? That hes an erratic creature of no fixed commitments and no stable policy objectives? Not so fast. In fact, Trumps entire administration can be understood through the lens of his weird, consistent, unwavering adherence to a 1980s concept of the War on Drugs.

This adherence unifies his policy actions: not only the appointment of drug-war hard-liner Jeff Sessions as attorney general but also his approach to immigration and the wall, his calls for a revival of stop and frisk and law and order policies, key features of the Republican House health-care bill, the bromances with Rodrigo Duterte and Vladimir Putin, and even the initial proposal to defund the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

After descending that Trump Tower escalator in July 2015, Trump made headlines when he kicked off his campaign by proclaiming that Mexico was sending us rapists. Less noted has been that he began his list of woes coming from the South by castigating Mexican immigrants for bringing drugs. Already in that speech the solution he offered to this caricatured problem was the wall. Almost two years later, the wall is still meant to solve the problem of drugs, as in this tweet from April: If the wall is not built, which it will be, the drug situation will NEVER be fixed the way it should be!

Trumps well-received joint address to Congress in February also explained his desire to limit immigration by focusing on drugs: Weve defended the borders of other nations while leaving our own borders wide open for anyone to cross and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate.

No surprise, then, that Sessions has been working steadily, since his confirmation, to restore the building blocks of the War on Drugs that political leaders from both parties have been quietly removing for the past five years. He has ordered a review of federal policies on state legalization of marijuana and appears to be seeking an end to the policy of federal non-interference with the cascade of legalization efforts. He has ordered a review of consent decrees, whose purpose is to spur police reform, and sought to delay the implementation of Baltimores. He has recently handed down guidance requiring federal prosecutors to seek the stiffest possible sentences available for drug offenses.

To support these efforts, Trump has proposed hiring 10,000 immigration officers and 5,000 Border Patrol agents and beefing up support for police departments. According to the White House website, The Trump Administration will be a law and order administration for a country that needs more law enforcement.

The Obama administration had begun to drive toward replacing criminal-justice strategies for drug control with public-health strategies. It wasnt whistling in the dark but following, at least in part, the innovative model of drug control pioneered by Portugal. Marijuana has been legalized there. Use and modest possession of other drugs have been decriminalized, but large-scale trafficking is still criminal. The criminal-justice system focuses on those large-scale traffickers, while public-health strategies and harm-reduction techniques pinpoint users and low-level participants in the drug economy. Adolescent drug use is down, the percentage of users seeking treatment is up, and Portugal is interdicting increased quantities of illegal narcotics.

Countries across Central and South America would like to follow Portugal and transition from a criminal-justice paradigm to an individual and public-health paradigm for drug control. They have advocated for this change at the United Nations but have been blocked by Putins Russia. Indeed, Putin is one of the worlds most steadfast advocates for the 1980s War on Drugs concept.

Of course, Trump has expressed a strange affinity for Putin and also for Duterte, the president of the Philippines. Duterte has called for the slaughter of the Philippines estimated 3 million addicts. The death toll from extrajudicial killings that he seems to have sparked has already reached into the thousands. The response from the United States? Trump praised Duterte for doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem and invited him to the White House.

Yet Trumps initial budget plan involved proposing nearly complete defunding of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which was founded by congressional legislation in 1988. How does that square?

The Obama administration deployed that office to restore balance to U.S. drug-control efforts, increasing emphasis on treatment, prevention and diversion programs, and fostering a move toward a health-based strategy. The expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and requirements that insurers support mental-health and addiction treatment undergirded this effort, supporting the emergence of programs designed to divert low-level drug offenders out of the criminal-justice system and into treatment. This has made for the very promising beginnings of a health-based approach to drug control.

The Trump administration has painted a bulls eye on this new policy strategy and is firing away. While the White House has backed off defunding the Office of National Drug Control Policy, it continues to pursue the reversal of the Medicaid expansion. The administration appears to think narcotics control can be achieved entirely through the tools of criminal justice.

But we tried that in the 1980s, the decade of Miami Vice, the era when the Los Angeles police chief, Daryl Gates, could testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee that casual drug users ought to be taken out and shot. We know where that story ends: with increased incarceration, further degradation of urban neighborhoods, no durable change in rates of drug use and a failure to address addiction.

So, yes, Trump has a vision, and hes moving steadily toward it, wrongheaded though it is, dragging us along with him, as if into a wall.

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Trump's weird adherence to this 1980s concept explains his whole presidency - Washington Post

Sacramento Bee (blog)

California must resist Jeff Sessions, war on drugs | The Sacramento ... Sacramento Bee (blog) U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to drag the country back into a war on opioids, which would be bad for California. and more »

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California must resist Jeff Sessions, war on drugs | The Sacramento ... - Sacramento Bee (blog)

The following editorial was published in the Hackensack (N.J.) Record.

Instead of pressing forward on sensible drug policy that places a premium on addiction treatment and lighter sentencing rules involving low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is looking to take the nation two steps back to the days of failed policy under the War on Drugs. In effect, Sessions announcement last week on toughening rules for prosecutors considering drug crimes will serve only to return the nation to that dismal, costly trend of mass incarceration, primarily of young black men.

Sessions call for change in prosecuting guidelines, which would include a more robust approach to mandatory minimum sentences, comes at a time when Democrats and Republicans together have proposed alternative sentencing for low-level drug offenders. Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, has embraced a greater emphasis on treatment, and has been a long-term supporter of drug courts.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., one of the authors of bipartisan legislation that would seek more lenient sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, wrote an op-ed for CNN this week in which he reiterated his support for Obama-era policies put in place by former Attorney General Eric Holder. Among those were guidelines issued to U.S. attorneys that they refrain from seeking longer sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

And make no mistake, wrote Paul, the lives of many drug offenders are ruined the day they receive that long sentence the attorney general wants them to have.

Another longtime believer in moving away from strict sentencing guidelines for low-level drug crimes is Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat who served nearly two terms as mayor of Newark and saw firsthand the devastation mandatory sentencing can have on young black men and their families. Resetting this policy back to the old lock em up mentality last encouraged under the leadership of Attorney General John Ashcroft in the early 2000s would be felt heavily on the streets of Paterson, Newark and Camden.

Piling on mandatory minimum sentences and three strikes, youre out laws on nonviolent offenders did little to stop the illegal drug trade in recent decades, Booker said after reading Sessions rules changes. Instead, it decimated entire communities, most often poor communities and communities of color; resulted in an uneven application of the law; and undermined public trust in the justice system.

As both Paul and Booker point out, mandatory sentencing laws handcuff prosecutors and judges as they approach individual cases, and often send young people to prison for long stretches of time for relatively minor offenses. These arrests, convictions and sentences disproportionately affect African-Americans and their families, and can serve to set the course of their entire lives.

Equal justice advocates are hopeful the energy created by the Sessions announcement will spur members of Congress to move aggressively to address criminal justice reform, including the rollback of mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug crimes. Christie, who has long been on the common-sense side of addiction treatment and has raised the profile of the use of drug courts, could be an important voice on this issue. We encourage him to wholeheartedly join the pushback against this failed tough love approach to drug criminalization the attorney general is pursuing.

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Other view: Wrong direction in 'War on Drugs' | Columns | chippewa ... - Chippewa Herald

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZLEZ: We begin todays show looking at the Philippines, where Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte has been overseeing a bloody war on drugs. Since last June, more than 7,000 people have been extrajudicially killed by police or vigilantes. Duterte has also suggested he might impose martial law across the country, after first declaring it this week in his native island of Mindanao. While human rights groups have condemned Duterte, he has received backing from President Trump, who recently invited him to visit the White House. Human Rights Watch slammed the invitation, saying, quote, "By effectively endorsing Dutertes murderous 'war on drugs,' Trump has made himself morally complicit in future killings."

Well, earlier this week, a transcript of the call of Trump inviting Duterte to the White House was leaked and published by The Intercept. According to the leaked transcript, Trump said, quote, "I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that."

Duterte responded, quote, "Thank you, Mr. President. This is the scourge of my nation now, and I have to do something to preserve the Filipino nation."

Trump then responded, quote, "I understand that and fully understand that, and I think we had a previous president who did not understand that, but I understand that, and we have spoken about this before."

On May 1, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was asked about Trumps decision to invite Duterte to the White House.

JOHN ROBERTS: Chris Coons said that the president is giving his stamp of approval to human rights abuses. Governor John Sununu, on the other hand, said this is part of the unpleasant things that presidents have to do. Whats the White Houses perspective on Duterte and him coming here?

PRESS SECRETARY SEAN SPICER: I think it is an opportunity for us to work with countries in that region that can help play a role in diplomatically and economically isolating North Korea. And frankly, the national interests of the United States, the safety of our people and the safety of people in the region are the number one priorities of the president.

AMY GOODMAN: The leaked transcript of the Trump-Duterte call does confirm North Korea came up, but only after Trump praised the Filipino president on waging his war on drugs. During the call, Trump said, quote, "We have a lot of firepower over there. We have two submarinesthe best in the worldwe have two nuclear submarinesnot that we want to use them at all." Trump went on to say, "Ive never seen anything like they are, but we dont have to use this, but he could be crazy, so we will see what happens," unquote.

Well, to talk more about Presidents Trump and Duterte, were joined by Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of The Intercept, host of the new weekly podcast, Intercepted. Jeremy recently co-wrote a three-part article on the leaked call for The Intercept.

Jeremy, its great to have you with us here at the SkyDome, where the Blue Jays play, in Toronto, Canada, where we all participated in a forum on journalism last night. But talk about this really explosive expos that you did for The Intercept around Trumps phone call with Duterte.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, first of all, just to, you know, establish what this is that we published, this was a transcript from a phone call that took place on April 29th between Trump and Duterte. And Trump initiated the call. What we published was a Philippine government document, a classified Philippine government document. So this was the transcript that Dutertes people made of his call with Trump.

The reason I emphasize that is because after we published this, Matt Drudge put it at the top of Drudge Report, and so we had an enormous surge in traffic from many people who are supporters of Donald Trump. And we got bombarded, and Drudge got bombarded with a boycott campaign from Trump supporters, who were saying, "Whoever leaked this should be prosecuted for treason. And the journalists who published this should be put in prison," which echoes what we know Trump has sort of suggested in meetings, most recently to James Comey right before he fired him, the idea that journalists should be arrested. This was not a U.S. government document. Also, people were saying, "Oh, this is proof that Obama left the White House bugged." You know, its like they dont understand the basic fact of when two foreign leaders are speaking, you know, theres two sides of this conversation. So there we have it. We have the phone conversation between these two. So

AMY GOODMAN: How did you get it?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, were not going to talk about sources or methods, as the U.S. government likes to talk about. All well say is that we obtained it, and both the White House and the Philippines governmentwell, the Philippines government validated that it is a legitimate document. The White House said that the transcript was accurate.

Now, what does that leave us with? Well, it leaves us with the fact that Donald Trump begins a phone call with Rodrigo Duterte, who is one of the most unrepentant, murderous heads of state in the world today, openly brags about how hell give a pardon or immunity to people who extrajudicially kill anyone involved with the drug war. And the dominant perception and the way that this is portrayed by Dutertes people is that theyre just going after narcotraffickers. In reality, many drug users have been assassinated as part of this campaign. Duterte actually enjoys a pretty wide base of support in the Philippines, and he kind of mixes in anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist rhetoric with these very harsh policies. He also is one of the few heads of state in the world who willyou know, he regularly swears. I mean, he called Barack Obama things that I cant even say on this program, "the son of a"and then referenced hisas though Obamas mother had been a sex worker. I mean, hes, you know, calling the president of the United States and saying, "Im going to divorce the United States and orient myself toward China and Russia." And he said that under Obama because Obamas administration criticized the tactics that Duterte was using, the kind of paramilitary gangster tactics that they were using.

And, you know, I think the mostnot astonishing, but the most relevant part of this is that Trump knows all of that and, in fact, views that as a positive thing. So he calls Duterte and says to him, you know, "Rodrigo, I just want to congratulate you for the amazing job that youre doing." And the reason that we know its not just kind of generic platitudes is because Trump himself references in this call the fact that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had said the obvious, which is, you know, this is not right, the way that this is being handled. And, you know, the Obama administration had a very hypocritical record on human rights, but, as Allan Nairn has pointed out before, hypocrisy has some virtue, in the sense that at least theyyoure able to call them out on it, because they say one thing but mean another. So the bottom line is, Trump calls Duterte and says, "Great job. Amazing job. Obama didntyou know, he didnt get it. I get it. You have our full support. Youre a good man."

JUAN GONZLEZ: Jeremy, I wanted to ask youalmost as shocking as the call and the congratulations from Trump was the other part of the discussion about North Korea and Trump revealing to Duterte and, obviously, to lots of folks in the Philippine government about nuclear submarines of the U.S. that are off the coast of North Korea.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, well, first of all, we know that, you know, Trump still continues to use an insecure cellphone, that he tweets from, and has brought that cellphone to the table on classified discussions about North Korea. He did it when Shinzo Abe was at Mar-a-Lago with him, the Japanese leader. There were photos of Trumps cellphone. His specific phone that he uses has beenalready, that phone, for years, its been known to have been compromised by Chinese hackers. So Trump is bringing this insecure phone to meetings about North Korea. Then hes on the phone with Duterte last month, and he says, "You know, weve got these two nuclear subs near North Korea." And hes saying this to Duterte, who was most certainly under surveillance by both the North Koreans and the Chinese. So anyone who says, "Oh, well, you guys revealed this information," the most damaging revelation of classified information happened when Donald Trump told Duterte this. And Duterte also is a clever operator when it comes to China. And he has called Vladimir Putin his hero.

But the most newsworthy aspect of that is thatand I felt bad for you, Amy, having to read those quotes from Trump, because when you actually read his words and youre not Trump, it sounds like the garbled mess that it actually is, because you dont have the inflection, and youre not, you know, sniffling and all these things. But Trump tells Duterte about these submarines off the coast, and he says, you know, "Weve got so much more firepower than North Korea. At least 20 times more." Twenty times? The United States is known to have more than 6,000 nuclear warheads. North Korea is believed to have around 10. So Trumps math was way off in that equation.

And some people were saying, "Oh, well, Trump keeps saying, 'We don't want to use it. We dont want to use it." Thats not whats significant. Whats significant is that Trump says, "This is a madman. We dont know what hes going to do. Wed prefer not to go to war. But who knows?" Thats really frightening to hear from someone who is in command of the most lethal and powerful military in the world. He alsoand this is sort of sad, on one level, but also frighteninghe says, "Rodrigo, lets talk about Kim Jong-un. Is he stable or unstable?" Huh? I mean, why is the president of the United States asking Duterte about if Kim Jong-un is unstable?

JUAN GONZLEZ: A man whose own stability is in question, Duterte.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right, right, of course. I mean, this is three madmen that are in this equation: Trump, Duterte and Kim Jong-un. And I really dont know which of these three people is the sort of greater threat to civilization. I mean, its probably Trump, but itsyou know, tough call.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, lets go to some of the clips of Duterte in his own words. Last September, the Philippines president likened himself to Hitler.

PRESIDENT RODRIGO DUTERTE: Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now, there is 3 millionwhat is it? Three million drug addicts, there are. Id be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have [me]. You know, my victims, I would like to be all criminals.

AMY GOODMAN: Last fall, Duterte called then-President Obama "son of a whore" and warned him not to ask about his so-called drug war.

PRESIDENT RODRIGO DUTERTE: I am a president of a sovereign state, and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody. You must be respectful. Do not just throw away questions and statements. [translated] Son of a whore, I will swear at you in that forum.

AMY GOODMAN: Before he was elected, Duterte admitted he was linked to a death squad in Davao. He spoke on a local TV show in a mix of English and Visayan.

MAYOR RODRIGO DUTERTE: [translated] Me. They are saying Im part of a death squad.

HOST: So, how do you react to that?

MAYOR RODRIGO DUTERTE: [translated] True. Thats true. You know, when I become president, I warn youI dont covet the position, but if I become president, the 1,000 will become 50,000. [in English] I will kill all of you who make the lives of Filipinos miserable. [translated] I will really kill you. I won because of the breakdown in law and order.

JUAN GONZLEZ: Meanwhile, in December, Duterte boasted about having personally killed criminal suspects when he was mayor of Davao City. The Manila Times reported he told a group of business leaders in the Philippines capital, quote, "In Davao, I used to do it personallyjust to show to the guys that if I can do it, why cant you? And Id go around in Davao with a motorcycle, with a big bike around, and I would just patrol the streets, looking for trouble also. I was really looking for a confrontation, so I could kill." Jeremy

JEREMY SCAHILL: I mean

JUAN GONZLEZ: These comments from a president of the Philippines.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. Well, I mean, you know, those, of course, are of a more serious nature than the kinds of things that come out of Donald Trumps mouth, but they do have that in common, where, you know, theyll just sort of say what theyre thinking. And in a way, its refreshing, I guess, because most world leaders try to cover up the uncouth actions that theyre taking in their countries.

What I think is really significant for people to understand is that in the Hitler quote, where Duterte is saying Germany had Hitler, and, you know, he underestimates the number of people that Hitler killedyou know, he says 3 millionbut he doesnt say, "We have 3 million narcotraffickers that I want to kill." He says, "We have 3 million addicts." And that isthats the point here, is that they are not going after the kind of, you know, "Chapo" of the Philippines. Many of the people that have been killed are rank-and-file victims of a drug culture. And thats whos paying the heaviest price for all of this.

JUAN GONZLEZ: I wanted to ask you about something else in those transcripts: the short discussion between Trump and Duterte toward the end about China and Xi Jinping, the president of China, that Trump said, "Oh, I met with him at Mar-a-Lago. Hes a really good guy."

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah.

JUAN GONZLEZ: You know, this is after months and months of Trumps China bashing here during the political campaign. All of a sudden he seems to indicate that he needs to rely on China, China is the critical country in being able to keep North Korea at bay.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, and, you know, that has sort ofyou know, under Obama, they called the policy on North Korea "strategic patience." And I think that all serious observers of Korea politics and the history of Korea know that the North Korean regime is largely dependent on China for basically its survival, in many ways, in addition to the smuggling and organized crime that the North Korean regime is involved with. But on a tactical level, Trump spends, you know, a couple of days with Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, and then hes saying to Duterte, "Oh, weve got to get the Chinese to solve the problem." And Dutertes like, "Oh, yeah, Ill give him a call." It really shows how out of his depth Trump is, as though he just heard, oh, maybe China could do something about this. I mean, its frightening when youre talking about the presence of nuclear weapons. China plays the United States like a fiddle all the time in international relations.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds before we go to break, and then well also be joined by Glenn Greenwald, butso, Duterte is coming to the White House? Is that clear?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Donald Trump says to him, you know, "Anytime youre in Washington, come by. I would love to have you in the White House." After we published this, Senator Lindsey Graham said that he may join with Democrats who are calling for Trump to postpone that trip, so that they can discuss these issues.

And, I mean, I do think that whats interesting, he just declared martial law in the south of the country, Duterte did, and hes doing it in the name of fighting terrorism. That part of what Duterte is doing has long been aided by the United States, the Joint Special Operations Command, the CIA, military intelligence. The U.S. has poured resources into the Philippines in the name of fighting Islamist rebels. Duterte is now adopting that rhetoric, just like Bush and Trumpyou know, Obama had different terms for itare talking about this fight. In a way, it seems as though Duterte is outsmarting Trump in terms of how this is all playing.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill is going to stay with us, co-founder of The Intercept, host of the new weekly podcast, Intercepted. His most recent piece, well link to, "Trump Called Rodrigo Duterte to Congratulate Him on His Murderous Drug War: 'You Are Doing an Amazing Job.'" Jeremys books include Blackwater: The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army, more recently, The Assassination Complex: Inside the Governments Secret Drone Warfare Program. This is Democracy Now! Back with Jeremy and Glenn Greenwald in a moment.

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Jeremy Scahill on Trump's Embrace of Duterte's Deadly War on Drugs in the Philippines - Democracy Now!

More and more conservatives and liberals, from the halls of Congress to people in communities across the country, are agreeing that the so-called war on drugs needs serious rethinking.

First, we should define our terms. The war on drugs that was started by Richard Nixon in 1971 and persists to this day, refers to illegal street drugs cocaine, heroin, marijuana and variations thereof. It is not used to mean a war on legal pharmaceuticals, whose excessive and often inappropriate prescribing takes over 100,000 lives a year in our country. Ironically, prescription opioids alone took 35,000 lives last year about equal to traffic fatalities.

The argument to criminalize street drugs, and severely punish their sellers and users, is largely based on the assumption that a tough on crime approach will reduce addiction and abuse of these dangerous substances. Criminalizing drug use consistently fails to address the health problems of addiction, and drives the drug trade underground where crime, violence and death flourish.

Our country learned this hard lesson firsthand when it prohibited the production and sale of alcoholic beverages in 1920 through the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. That led to an underworld of organized crime and illegal undercover stills making moonshine, whose victims could hardly go for medical treatment. Considered a failure, the amendment was repealed in 1933 with the 21st Amendment.

This national experiment with prohibition verified the wise observation of the famous dean of the Harvard Law School, Roscoe Pound, who said that there were certain human behaviors that are beyond the effective limits of legal action. In short, the law couldnt stop the addicting alcohol business; it could only drive it underground.

Legalizing the sale and possession of alcohol allowed people suffering from alcoholism to come out of the shadows and find support through thousands of successful chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous and other treatment options. Alcoholism is still a problem in our country, but it is out in the open where a rational society can address it.

Nicotine from tobacco products is one of the most addictive drugs that people can ingest. Lawmakers since the days of the Virginia tobacco growers in the 17th century have not prohibited the smoking of tobacco. For generations, smoking cigarettes and cigars was not considered harmful; it was said to help concentrate your mind on your tasks. The mass media perpetuated such false statements through ads that claimed doctors preferred Lucky Strikes because they were less irritating.

Then the historic and widely reported US Surgeon Generals Report of 1964 concluded that cigarette smoking is a cause of lung cancer and laryngeal cancer in men, a probable cause of lung cancer in women and the most important cause of chronic bronchitis. Over time, accumulating scientific knowledge connecting smoking to lung cancer and a host of other diseases began changing habits.

In 1964 about 44 percent of American adults smoked regularly; now it is down to 17 percent. Now smokers cannot indulge on airplanes, buses, trains or in schools, waiting rooms and most office buildings. Had we driven tobacco use underground, organized crime would have claimed the tobacco market and smokers and low-level dealers would have been jailed. If alcohol prohibition taught us the limitations of drug criminalization, efforts to reduce tobacco use have shown what is possible when dangerous products are taxed and regulated and consumers are educated.

So, what about street drugs? The drug trade is tearing Mexico apart. Just in the past few years, over 50,000 people have been slain by the fights between drug cartels and against police, judges, reporters and innocents who just happen to be in the way of the machine guns. Fear, anxiety, outright terror and political corruption grips large regions of our southern neighbor as the cartels violently work to meet the black market demand in the US and elsewhere.

Drug dealers in the US fight each other, producing violent crimes and terrorized neighborhoods.

To suppress this drug trade the US is spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars a year. Drug cases are clogging our court dockets and crowding out important cases involving corporate crimes and negligence. Low-level drug offenders continue to receive mandatory minimum sentences; filling our prisons and leading to the expansion of the private prison industry whose lobbyists prefer a status quo that commodifies the ruined lives who sustain their profitable inventory.

For decades, conservatives like William F. Buckley and progressives like the then Mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke, have called for decriminalization, or legalization and regulation, of illegal drugs. We dont jail alcoholics for being alcoholics, or incarcerate people for smoking highly addictive cigarettes. Their addictions are treated openly as afflictions to be treated individually and more broadly through sound public policies.

Despite the many calls for reform, the arch-reactionary Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has recently ordered 5,000 federal assistant US attorneys to charge defendants peddling street drugs, many of whom are addicts themselves, with the most serious crimes and impose the toughest penalties possible.

Not so fast, say a growing group of liberal and conservative members of Congress. From Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to liberal Patrick Leahy (D-VT), lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are joining together to sponsor a bill to end mandatory minimum sentences. Senator Paul said such sentences disproportionately affect minorities and low-income communities and will worsen the existing injustice in the criminal justice system, while Senator Leahy declared that as an outgrowth of the failed war on drugs, mandatory sentencing strips criminal public-safety resources away from law-enforcement strategies that actually make our communities safer.

The bipartisan bill, S.1127, is already supported by 37 Senators and 79 members of the House. Both the NAACP and the Koch brothers support this legislation!

We need more open debates about the impact of the war on drugs. As Justice Louis Brandeis said years ago sunlight is the best disinfectant.

To learn more about the need for drug policy reform, and the history of the failed war on drugs, watch this informative video from the Drug Policy Alliance.

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The Left/Right Challenge To The Failed 'War On Drugs' - HuffPost