Tuesday, September 15, 2020

 

Please read my very short academic essay!

 


This summer, I wrote an essay that pretty much sums up how I feel about narcotics policy. It's titled "What We Got Wrong in the War on Drugs," and you can download and read it here. I really hope you will-- and maybe put a comment in the section below if it leaves you with, you know, thoughts. Or not. But please just read it. Click on the link and then on the button at the top that says "download."

Here is the abstract:

The War on Drugs is effectively over. Drugs won. This essay addresses some of the mistakes we made in that futile effort. Allowing racism to motivate action and impede reform was a primary error. So was failing to understand that narcotics crime is simply different than other types of criminalized behavior in several fundamental ways. In whole, we largely addressed the narcotics trade as a moral failing rather than a market—and never got around to recognizing the size and shape of that market or to using market forces to control it. Ronald Reagan compared the War on Drugs to the Battle of Verdun, and he was right: fortunes were spent, many lives were lost, and nothing really changed.


# posted by Mark Osler @ 1:00 AM
Comments:
Mark
You have thankfully remained focused on the injustices in our "war on drugs" for some time, not an easy task. This essay explains why.
# posted by Blogger John Osler : 8:53 AM
 
This does leave me with lots of thoughts (and good information to support those thoughts). Thanks for posting!
# posted by Blogger Desiree : 2:06 PM
 
I've never read that John Ehrlichmann quote, for me the most stark and shocking thing in your article. It's the equivalent of Trump on tape saying he knew exactly how bad the pandemic was but chose not to tell the country. Ehrlichmann's statement lays the bedrock for everything that comes after. I couldn't stop going back to that as I read your argument. Your point about narcotics crime being different because both parties enter it willingly is so obvious once you explain it, but something I hadn't thought of because of how thoroughly we've had the "war" analogy marketed to us.
# posted by Anonymous Amy Garrou : 10:44 PM
 
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