Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
This is the best analysis of what we’re currently doing about drug abuse and what we could do about drug abuse. Boyum and Reuter are relentless in distinguishing between the good intentions behind policies and their actual results: for example, we are putting a lot of people in prison and telling a lot of lies.
Now you’ve chosen to talk about the Boyum and Reuter analysis of the US drug policy.
This is the best analysis of what we’re currently doing about drug abuse and what we could do about drug abuse. This is not in the Boyum and Reuter book, but I personally think that what we are doing is mostly we are putting a lot of people in prison and telling a lot of lies. Drug-prevention education is not notorious for its factual content.
Because it overstates or understates the dangers?
It overstates the dangers and minimises the distinctions between drugs, and overemphasises the distinction between illegal and legal drugs. What we should do is to have law-enforcement that is designed to minimise the damage done by drug dealing, as opposed to trying to minimise drug supply. We should make people who are heavy drug users and active criminals stop using when they are on probation or on parole.
In terms of minimising the dangers done by drug dealing, do you mean, a kind of human security thing of protecting the people who aren’t involved? Or do you mean arresting the dealers rather than the users?
I mean protecting the neighbourhood from the impact of drug dealing, which means focusing on the dealers who are the most violent. Not all dealers are equally violent and the current enforcement system actually creates advantages for the more violent over the less violent.
How?
Witnesses are afraid to testify against people who are reputedly scary. It’s easier to make people testify against the dealers that nobody is scared of.
Is anyone taking any notice of this document?
Well, it was certainly very well received and a lot of the things mentioned are now going on, but it definitely wasn’t a bestseller. It deserved to be.
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Mark Kleiman is Professor of Public Policy at the UCLA School of Public Affairs. He teaches courses on methods of policy analysis and on drug abuse and crime control policy. He edits the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Kleiman has worked for the US Department of Justice as Director of Policy and Management Analysis for the Criminal Division. He blogs at The Reality-Based Community [www.samefacts.org] and is the author of When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment.
