Making Claims Against the War on Drugs in the United States

Making Claims Against
the War on Drugs in the United States

A Look at the Emergence of Internet Sites
Gina Lynne Carson

Dr. John Lynxwiler
SYO 6515
Social Disorganization Issues
Summer 1999

ABSTRACT

The social constructionist approach views social problems as the outcome of claims making within public arenas. This study examines how groups against the War on Drugs in the United States act as primary claims-makers. They argue that the War on Drugs is more problematic to our society than the use of drugs. The mutual focus of these groups is to educate society about the injustices of the United State’s Criminal Justice System.

They claim that current drug policies have failed resulting in the overall breakdown of individual civil liberties, leading the United States to incarcerate more of its own citizens for non-violent consensual offenses than any other country on the planet.

The United States government and our mass media have maintained for years that illicit drug use is a major social problem in this country. For the past thirty years, the United States government has proclaimed a “war” on illicit drugs. In 1968, President Nixon began the crusade. Then during the 1980’s, President Reagan ordered our military forces be used in the fight, and his wife advised the country to “Just Say No!” These efforts were to end illicit drug use, which in reality is far less popular than legal substances like alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs.

Anti-Drug War groups believe the Drug War has little to do with actually stopping drug use. They argue the undesirable consequences of the policies enacted have created many new problems which are far more severe than the original situation. These new problems are widespread, yet there is little mention in the mass media about the problems.

They maintain the Drug War continues because there is money to be made from prison contracts, property seizure and criminal market profits. History has taught us that Prohibition did not work with alcohol, and it will not work with any other substances either. Abraham Lincoln said in 1840 that, “Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”

Alcohol and nicotine use are finally being viewed as medical problems, only because billions of tax dollars are spent each year treating health problems caused by their use. The United States views drug use as a criminal problem, spending billions each year to build prisons to warehouse non-violent, first-time offenders instead of offering treatment to end their addiction. Americans incarcerated for drug-related offenses are referred to as Prisoners of the Drug War (POWs) by opponent groups of current drug policies. Anti-Drug War claims-makers maintain drug offenders are political prisoners in the war waged upon them by our government.

Social Constructionist Perspective

Social Constructionism views social problems not as conditions in society, but as activities by members of society. There is no concern for the actual condition instead the focus is on claims-making activities. Spector and Kitsuse (1987) maintain that the activity of making claims, complaints, or demands for change is always in the form of interaction that one party makes upon another. They propose a four-stage model for the study of social problems.

• Stage one begins the formation of an issue where groups attempt to define, publicize and create a public issue (1987:143).
• Stage two occurs once governmental or other official agencies recognize and respond to group claims (1987:148).
• Stage three claims are generated when the groups from stage one are dissatisfied with the response of the groups from stage two in dealing with the original issue (1987:152).
• Stage four occurs once groups decide they can develop better solutions to original problem than the “system” has established (1987:153). For the purposes of my examination, the focus will be on stage three.

 

Ibarra and Kitsuse’s rhetorical idioms will also be discussed in analyzing commonalties between groups’ claims. Rhetorical idioms elicit a cluster of images, and more specifically, “the rhetoric of unreason evokes images of manipulation and conspiracy” (1993:30). Ibarra and Kitsuse maintain that persons who may be, “trusting, naïve, innocent, uneducated, uninformed, desperate and so forth can be ‘taken advantage of’ as easy prey, vulnerable to being manipulated by persons or institutions of greater power and authority” (1993:36). Lynxwiler and DeCorte’s interpretation of the rhetoric of unreason states the “Innocent or unaware group [is] manipulated by [a] self seeking group or problematic segment of [the] system” (1995:19).

Data

Hundreds of websites with Anti-Drug War messages were found during my extensive search of the Internet during the summer of 1999. For this analysis, I focused solely on websites created by groups in the United States, specifically thirteen websites were analyzed as primary-claimsmakers. All websites maintained by individuals were excluded because they are considered secondary-claimsmakers.

Analysis

The organizations and people making Anti-Drug War claims come from all walks of life, and the number of people speaking out about the injustices and corruption of the Drug War continues to grow. Most people do not realize liberals and conservatives alike are calling for drug policy reform.

Scientists, Sociologists, Psychologists, Federal Judges, Doctors, Mayors, Governors, Economists, Law Professors, current Attorney General Janet Reno, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, William F. Buckley Jr., Walter Cronkite, Hugh Downs, and many Professors, like Dr. Julian Heiklen, self-proclaimed freedom fighter at Penn State University. The Drug War is no longer solely affecting the poor, lower-class of our cities’ ghettos, more and more innocent-seeming, everyday suburbanites are affected creating cause for growing concern.

Claims making against the War on Drugs began when the “war” did, more than thirty years ago, with the formation of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) which was founded in 1970. However, with technological advances like the Internet, grass-root efforts have flourished at a remarkable rate.

Groups are now able to exchange up to the minute information instantly, to one another and to members, using their websites and E-mailing lists. As the number of drug offenders incarcerated has grown since the 1980’s, so has the Anti-Drug War message. There is an obvious trend in the 1990’s of new Anti-Drug War groups beginning and this correlates closely with the large increase in prison productions and ever-growing incarceration rates.

• In 1986, the Drug Policy Foundation (DPF) was founded and currently has 23,000 members.
• Also in 1986 the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) was founded and currently has 1800 members.
• Five years later in 1991, Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) was founded and currently has 15,000 members.
• In 1992, Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (FEAR) was founded as a spin-off of the Libertarian Party.
• In 1993, the Drug Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet) was founded and currently has 11,000 members.
• In 1994, the Libertarian Party website was founded with a section dedicated to “Ending the War on Drugs”.
• In 1995, Common Sense for Drug Policy (CSDP) was founded,
• as was Human Rights and the Drug War, a traveling exhibit presenting the Drug War’s violations of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the American Bill of Rights.
• Also in 1995, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) was founded as the only full-time organized federal lobbying group.

 

Other organized, non-profit groups at the frontlines of the campaign to end the War on Drugs include the Harm Reduction Coalition, The Lindesmith Center, National Alliance of Methadone Advocates, North American Syringe Exchange Network, The November Coalition, and ReconsiDer: Forum on Drug Policy, amongst other state and city groups. These groups and others like them, all maintain the same principle arguments against present drug control policies.

These primary claims-makers argue three main claims against the War on Drugs. The first claim argues that there is a discriminatory impact caused by the Drug War. The second claim argues that the Drug War violates individual civil liberties. The third claim argues that the excessive funds spent on the Drug War could be better spent elsewhere in American society, like on treatment instead of incarceration and interdiction.

In evaluating the first claim that the War on Drugs discriminates, it has been found that minorities and women are disproportionately affected by drug control policies. The November Coalition states eighty percent (80%) of America’s 1.7 million prisoners are incarcerated for some involvement with drug law violations, with women (especially minority women) being the fastest growing number of that population, leaving 2.5 million “orphans” of the Drug War. From the Common Sense for Drug Policy website the following racial biases were noted:

• Nationwide, only eleven percent (11%) of the nation’s drug users are black, however blacks constitute almost thirty-seven percent (37%) of those arrested for drug violations, over forty-two percent (42%) of those in federal prisons for drug violations, and almost sixty percent (60%) of those in state prisons for drug felonies.
• One in three black men between the ages of twenty (20) and twenty-nine (29) years old is under correctional supervision or control.
• At current levels of incarceration, newborn black males in this country have a greater than one in four chance of going to prison during their lifetimes, while Latin-American males have a one in six chance, and white males have a one in twenty-three chance of serving time.
• Fifty-four percent (54%) of blacks convicted of drug offenses get sentenced to prison versus thirty-four percent (34%) of whites convicted of the same offenses. Forty-four percent (44%) of blacks get prison sentences for possession versus twenty-nine percent (29%) of whites; sixty percent (60%) of blacks are sentenced to prison for trafficking while thirty-seven percent (37%) of whites are sentenced to prison for the same crime.
• In 1986, before mandatory minimums for crack offenses became effective, the average federal drug offense sentence for blacks was eleven percent (11%) higher than for whites. Four years later following the implementation of harsher drug sentencing laws, the average federal drug offense sentence was forty-nine percent (49%) higher for blacks.
• Regardless of similar or equal levels of illicit drug use during pregnancy, black women are ten (10) times more likely than white women to be reported to child welfare agencies for prenatal drug use are.

 

Another book notes that the majority of women in federal prisons are there for drug violations and seventy percent (70%) are first time offenders (Norris, Conrad and Resner 1998:43).

In 1995, the combined incarceration rate for white and Latin-American women was sixty-eight per 100,000 and for African-American women, the rate was 456 per 100,000 (1998:39).

Haney and Zombardo (1998) found that at the start of the 1990s, the U.S. had more Black men (between the ages of 20 and 29) under the control of the nation’s criminal justice system than the total number in college, from which they concluded, “crime control policies are a major contributor to the disruption of the family, the prevalence of single parent families, and children raised without a father in the ghetto, and the inability of people to get the jobs still available”.

This brings up another fact that 1.46 million black men out of a total voting population of 10.4 million have lost their right to vote due to felony convictions (Thomas 1997). The Drug War resulted in a war on the poor, people of color, the homeless, the unemployed and the disenfranchised (Mosher and Yanagisko 1991).

In evaluating the second claim that the War on Drugs impedes on United States citizens’ civil liberties, it is found that asset forfeiture laws and mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines specifically violate individual civil liberties. The following is a chart on mandatory minimums for first-time drug offenders.

“The average sentence for a first time, non-violent drug offender is longer than the average sentence for rape, child molestation, bank robbery or manslaughter. As our prisons rapidly fill to bursting, rapists and murderers are being given early release to make room for “no parole” drug offenders. While law enforcement continues to go after relatively easy drug violation arrests, every major city in this country has a record number of unsolved homicides.”

And “Because drug crimes are consensual, with no citizens filing charges, the Government has had to get very creative to motivate suspects to testify against each other in trial. Known criminals are routinely paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, and offered virtual immunity, luxurious perks, and drastically reduced sentences for their information and testimony. Bartered for perjury is rampant. Our prisons are full to bursting with innocent victims. More and more, Federal prosecutors are acquiring almost unlimited powers in the courtroom. They set sentences; they dictate trial protocol; they have turned purchased betrayal of family and friends into a high art form. Judges in Federal trials are fast becoming mere automations.”

And “The drug “kingpins” and professional criminals continually plea-bargain their way to freedom, or leave the country with all their wealth, while the low level offenders and innocent patsies, with no information to trade for leniency, and no resources for an adequate defense, are sentenced to insanely long terms. We are warring on the afflicted and the vulnerable.”

From the Common Sense for Drug Policy website, the following statistics were noted civil asset forfeiture laws:

• During a ten (10) month national survey, it was discovered that eighty percent (80%) of people who had property forfeited were never charged with a crime.
• Innocent ownership is not a constitutional defense to forfeiture. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that property may be taken from an owner who had no knowledge of its illegal use.
• Forfeiture can be used even when there is insufficient evidence to make a criminal case against a defendant. The government need only seize the assets and it is then up to the owner to challenge the seizure in a costly and unpromising hearing.
• There is no constitutional requirement that the property owner be prosecuted for the underlying criminal activity prior to action against the property. Forfeiture may occur even if the owner is acquitted of the crime.

According to a 1998 article by Blumenson and Nilson published in the University of Chicago Law Review, “[F]orfeiture laws have not simply enhanced the ability of law enforcement to do its job, but rather have changed the nature of the job itself.” Both crime prevention and due process goals of our criminal justice system are compromised when salaries, continued tenure, equipment, modernization, and budgets depend on how much money can be generated by forfeitures.

They continue on to argue that the ability of law enforcement agencies to financially benefit from forfeited assets, and the provision of large block grants from Congress to fight the drug trade “have distorted governmental policy making and law enforcement.” Blumenson and Nilson believe that “the law enforcement agenda that targets assets rather than crime, the 80 percent of seizures that are unaccompanied by any criminal prosecution, the plea bargains that favor drug kingpins and penalize the ‘mules’ without assets to trade, the reverse stings that target drug buyers rather than drug sellers, the overkill in agencies involved in even minor arrests, the massive shift in resources towards federal jurisdiction over local law enforcement – is largely the unplanned by-product of this economic incentive structure.”

The third claim regarding the excess tax dollars spent on the Drug War cannot be disputed. In 1998, some sixty-six percent (66%) of the Drug War budget was spent on supply reduction (enforcement and interdiction) and thirty-four percent (34%) was spent on demand reduction (education and treatment) (Norris, Conrad and Resner 1998:94).

To achieve a one percent reduction in U.S. cocaine consumption, the United States could spend an additional $34 million on drug treatment programs, or 20 times more, $783 million, on efforts to eradicate the supply at the source (Rydell and Everingham 1994).

According to Human Rights 95 website, almost sixty-percent (60%) of federal prisoners, about 55,624 people, are drug offenders while only three percent (3%) are violent offenders, and whereas violent offenders serve an average of fifty-four (54%) of their prison term, drug offenders are legally required to serve at least eighty-five (85%) of their prison term.

The Families Against Mandatory Minimums website states the average cost of incarcerating a federal inmate is $23,000 per year. So to feed, clothe, house and guard these 55,624 prisoners costs taxpayers $3.5 million per day, or $1.27 billion annually.

As nationwide state funding for prison construction has increased by $926 million, funding for higher education construction has decreased by a similar amount; California, Florida, Texas and New York budgets showed more spending on prison systems than public education over the past decade (Norris, Conrad and Resner 1998:99).

For the annual price of incarcerating one drug offender, the state could educate ten community college or five state university students. In California, prison guards earn $10,000 more per year than public school teachers, and an average prison guard with a high school equivalency diploma now earns more than a tenured associate professor with a Ph.D. (Norris, Conrad and Resner 1998:100).

Incarceration rates have tripled since 1980 because the War on Drugs provides political currency for conservative politicians, control of the “dangerous” ghetto underclass, and work for police departments, lawyers and the ever-growing crime control industry (Chambliss 1995).

President Clinton signed the Higher Education Act of 1998 into effect in October 7, 1998. In the bill is a provision denying or delaying federal financial aid to students who have previously been convicted of any drug offense.

As educational opportunity is held hostage by politics, more people have become victims of the Drug War. Two websites are specifically dedicated to this plight and were spun off from DRCNet. U-Net is a site designed with the intention of “uniting college activists to further drug policy reform”. At RaiseYourVoice.com, a petition letter against the Higher Education Act can be sent to your congressperson. There are six major claims against the Higher Education Act of 1998. At both sites the provision is claimed to be flawed because:

1. blocking access to education is counter-productive,
2. working families will be hurt hardest,
3. there will be a discriminatory impact,
4. funding is not increased for drug abuse treatment programs,
5. the provision is unnecessary and arbitrary, and
6. it will not solve the United States drug problem.

Conclusions

This paper has demonstrated how Anti-Drug War rhetoric expresses dissatisfaction with the established procedures of the War on Drugs. It can also be concluded that the rhetoric of unreason is implemented in Anti-Drug War claims. From Lynxwiler and DeCortes (1995:19) “an innocent or unaware group” (minorities and women) are “manipulated by [a] self seeking group” (crime control industry) “or problematic segment of [the] system” (Criminal Justice System). Anti-Drug War groups and their claims were clearly developed in response to, and as a solution to the War on Drugs. This also follows along the lines of the rhetoric of unreason whereby education of the citizens is used to help solve the social problem at hand. With the sharp increase in prison populations, and as individual civil liberties are stripped away, Anti-Drug War groups have increased in number. The continuing increase in Anti-Drug War rhetoric by groups and individuals perpetuates the idea that education is the key to increasing attention to the situation at hand.

References

• Blumenson, E. and E. Nilsen. 1998. “Policing for Profit: The Drug War’s Hidden Economic Agenda.” University of Chicago Law Review. Vol. 65, p.35-114.
• Chambliss, William J. 1995. “Another Lost War: The Costs and Consequences of Drug Prohibition”. Social Justice 22:101-124.
• Common Sense for Drug Policy (www.csdp.org)
• Drug Policy Foundation (www.dpf.org)
• Drug Reform Coordination Network (www.drcnet.org)
• Families Against Mandatory Minimums (www.famm.org)
• Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (www.fear.org)
• Haney, Craig and Philip Zimbardo. “The Past and Future of U.S. Prison Policy: Twenty-five Years After the Stanford Prison Experiment.” American Psychologist, Vol. 53, No. 7, p. 716.
• Harm Reduction Coalition (www.harmreduction.org)
• Libertarian Party (www.lp.org)
• Lindesmith Center (www.lindesmith.org)
• Lynxwiler, John and Catherine DeCortes. 1995. “Claims-making and the Moral Discourse of Hard core Rap Music.” Perspectives of Social Problems. Vol. 7, p. 3-27.
• Marijuana Policy Project (www.mpp.org)
• Mosher, James F. and Karen L. Yanagisako. 1991. “Public Health, Not Social Warfare: A Public Health Approach to Illegal Drug Policy”. Journal of Public Health Policy 12:278-323.
• National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (www.norml.org)
• Norris, Mikki, Chris Conrad and Virginia Resner. Shattered Lives: Portraits from America’s Drug War. El Cerrito, California: Creative Expressions.
• November Coalition (www.november.org)
• RaiseYourVoice.com (www.raiseyourvoice.com)
• Rydell & Everingham. 1994. Controlling Cocaine. Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation.

 

• Schneider, A. and M.P. Flaherty. 1991. “Presumed Guilty: The Law’s Victims in the War on Drugs.” The Pittsburgh Press, (August 11).

 

• Spector, Malcolm and John I. Kitsuse. 1987. Constructing Social Problems. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.

 

• Thomas, P. 1997. “Study Suggests Black Male Prison Rate Impinges on Political Process.” The Washington Post (January 30), p. A3.

 

• U-Net (www.u-net.org)

Listing of Websites with Anti-Drug War Rhetoric

• American Civil Liberties Union (www.aclu.org)
• Common Sense for Drug Policy (www.csdp.org)
• Dr. Julian Heiklan (http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/p/jph13/)
• Drug Peace (www.drugpeace.org)
• Drug Policy Foundation (www.dpf.org)
• Drug Reform Coordination Network (www.drcnet.org)
• Families Against Mandatory Minimums (www.famm.org)
• Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (www.fear.org)
• Harm Reduction Coalition (www.harmreduction.org)
• Human Rights and the Drug War (http://www.hr95.org/)
• Libertarian Party (www.lp.org)
• Lindesmith Center (www.lindesmith.org)
• Lycaeum: Arm Yourself Against the “War on Drugs” (http://www.lycaeum.org/drugwar/)
• Marijuana Policy Project (www.mpp.org)
• Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (www.maps.org)
• National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (www.norml.org)
• North American Syringe Exchange Network (www.nasen.org)
• November Coalition (www.november.org)
• RaiseYourVoice.com (www.raiseyourvoice.com)
• ReconsiDer: Forum on Drug Policy (www.reconsiDer.org)
• U-Net (www.u-net.org)