Enforcement/Justice Page 1

You will undoubtedly notice that this is one of the shortest sections in our entire examination of methamphetamine. Frankly, it could be the longest, because we have mountains of information proving the utter futility of addressing addiction with strategies that place the bulk of emphasis and fund allocation on interdiction, supply reduction and enforcement. If you really want to see all that evidence, we would be more than happy to send it to you.

However, there a few things we would like to convey briefly, first about enforcement and then about justice issues involving methamphetamine and other illicit drugs.

Perhaps the place to start is with the cost of trying to fight a "war on drugs" with the methods currently employed. The live "as they happen" figures below are just for the U.S., but every country that places more emphasis on supply reduction than demand reduction has a similar drain with money going down it.

People who work on the front lines of drug interdiction, enforcement, jails and prison systems are doing a job they signed up to do, and in many cases, swore an oath to do faithfully. It's often a very dangerous job, it's almost always a thankless job, and to be perfectly honest, in the case of enforcement, it's a job that we ourselves wouldn't have the guts to do.

And while most people in these fields realize that they're not really winning any "war on drugs," they didn't sign up under the illusion they'd be winning the war, they signed up to fight in the battles they were asked to fight in. That's their job, that's what puts food on their table and we're not about to criticize, or run them down.

They are the soldiers in the "war on drugs," and if criticism should be directed at anyone, it's the "Generals" who are the architects of this hopeless strategy that after decades of implementation and billions of dollars spent, simply hasn't worked. From June, 1971, when then President Richard Nixon officially declared a "war on drugs," and identified drug abuse as "public enemy No. 1," it has turned into a war on the poor, the under-insured, the under-educated and the disenfranchised.

But we don't even need to criticize the architects of the "enforcement first" strategy, because public opinion is changing. People are becoming aware that you can't just keep locking people up because it looks good and momentarily gives us that nice "warm bath feeling." At the risk of repetition, you have to address addiction as you would treat a sickly looking plant. You can keep cutting off dead leaves and flowers to make it look better temporarily, but until you treat the root issues, the plant will still be sick.

And such is the way we've approached illicit drug use. So we don't want to whine about ending the "war" on drugs, we want to simply suggest that we fight a "smarter" war on drugs. And we'd like to suggest that if we did begin to fight a smarter war on drugs, so many resources would be freed up as a result of it, the theoretical concept of "community policing" wouldn't be the stuff of history, nor would it be a theory - it would be a reality. And once it became a reality, it would mean living in safer communities, and in general, realizing a better quality of life at all levels.

If we changed our approach to drug use and drug abuse, the effects would be immediate and in many cases, dramatic. In most communities, a massive percentage of crime would drop. Many feel that street crimes like car theft and bicycle theft would drop by 90%. Home break-ins, purse snatchings, plus a host of other crimes directly related to addicts getting money for drugs would drop, and drop in a big way. And that would free up years of "man hours" for police to do what police were designed to do - oversee and maintain a safe, civil and orderly society. But that's not what they're doing now, and virtually all enforcement people who have talked to us say they face almost a hopeless uphill battle, unable to even keep up with the volume of crime and resulting paperwork.

However, as we mentioned earlier, public opinion is changing on this issue and it's changing right around the world. So if you would like to hear at least one viewpoint from actual ex-law enforcement officers who feel it's time for a "re-think" on how we approach the substance abuse issue, watch the video below. These people have no agenda, they have no ulterior motive. They've simply been on the "front lines," they've seen that it doesn't work, they've seen the harm that it's causing and they're advocating change. Note: If you don't see the video, it's streaming from YouTube and they're probably temporarily down.

Almost four years ago, when we first started monitoring the methamphetamine issue, we thought it would take decades for the "treatment versus incarceration" trend to really gain popularity but thankfully, were we wrong. Drug courts, family-drug courts, etc. are being implemented from one end of North America to the other, and on several other continents as well. People in and out of the judicial system are finally beginning to see that placing non-violent drug offenders in jail and prison is simply no longer feasible from both a fiscal and physical space perspective. And by a "physical perspective," we mean that in some regions of North America, they have literally run out of space to incarcerate people.

And while it's going to take some time, slowly society is beginning to see that releasing drug offenders from prison who are under-skilled, under-educated and have received no life skills education or drug treatment is a disaster waiting to happen. Most of us today can't imagine how we'd cope with life today without our cell phone, or our Blackberry, or email address. So imagine having to cope today when you can't read or write at anything above a grade three level. Clearly, you become a living illustration for the term "disenfranchised."

So again, we have tons of information on the topic, but we see no point in regurgitating it here because it's pretty much become common knowledge that the "lock'em up and throw away the key" approach doesn't work. And as we said, in many regions, they're simply running out of places to "lock'em up."

In the next section - "The Real Cost Of Meth," we look at the "price of doing it wrong," versus the "cost of doing it right."