THE PORTUGUESE LESSON

13 Jan. 2019

Dear Friends and Patriots,

Glenn Beck dedicated his radio show last Wednesday morning to a spectrum of inputs and evaluations of President Trump’s Tuesday night border policy speech and the Democrats’ response by House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

One of Beck’s last guests was Matt Kibbe of Free the People, a not-for-profit organization that promotes libertarian concepts. Kibbe opened his commentary by declaring he was going to recommend something a lot of listeners might get angry about. After making a few salient observations about the President’s speech and the Democrat responses he focused on one aspect of border security. He explained why the US government should abandon all laws that declare personal drug use illegal.

Kibbe’s commentary reminded me of something I read a long time ago.   Many of you are familiar with Gen. Barry McCaffrey.   Gen. McCaffrey was our government’s first Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, our so-called “Drug Czar,” charged with waging the Clinton administration’s War on Drugs. What I recalled was the letter Gen. McCaffrey wrote to President Clinton after only one year in that job. His letter detailed McCaffrey’s realizations that his job as Drug Czar was one doomed to failure. He wrote that he’d learned enough after one year to understand the War on Drugs could not be won, then went on to describe the factors of supply and demand that were material to the sustenance of the entire illegal drug trade. McCaffrey stated that as long as America’s society continued to use and demand more illegal drugs there would be someone from somewhere who would take the risk to supply that demand. The huge profits of the illegal drug trade made that a certainty. Threats of death or imprisonment were inconsequential factors that did nothing to mitigate the drug trade. Gen. McCaffrey’s letter was released and printed in the Washington Post. He was summoned to the White House to discuss it with the President. The letter was never mentioned in public again and Gen. McCaffrey returned to his job and continued to valiantly wage what he’d accurately described as a losing effort.

Kibbe’s commentary did not reference Gen. McCaffrey, the letter Gen. McCaffrey wrote to President Clinton, or the position of Drug Czar. What he did talk about was … Portugal. Portugal? Yes, Portugal. He was suggesting that the US should look to Portugal for answers to our own crisis of drug use and drug-related deaths.

During the 1990’s Portugal was truly the “sick man” of Europe, with rampant drug crime, the continent’s highest rate of HIV infections, hard drug addiction rates through the roof, and people literally dying in the streets. For over 20 years Portugal had followed a policy of imposing ever-more harsh anti-drug laws. By the late 1990’s half of Portugal’s prison population was incarcerated for one or more drug crimes. Nothing seemed to work, so in 2001 Portugal took the dramatic step of completely decriminalizing the consumption of all drugs. The results of that experiment have been dramatic. The nation’s drug death rate has gone from the highest in Europe to five times lower than the European Union’s average. The HIV infection rate plummeted from greater than 104 cases per million in 2000 to just over 4 per million in 2015. While it’s true that overall drug use has not seen much of a decrease, the original objectives of reducing drug-related crimes, reducing deaths from overdoses, and reducing the HIV infection rate from the use of dirty needles has proven successful. Recent surveys have shown reduced addiction rates among young people and a low incidence of drug-use related infections.  

While not perfect, Portugal’s new approach has several things going for it. It has destigmatized the whole topic of drug use by focusing on three things: prevention, intervention, and treatment. Most of the budget that had been dedicated to law enforcement was channeled into those non-punitive efforts and the demand for funding has been decreasing incrementally as programs mature and succeed. Law enforcement, judicial costs, and the costs of incarcerations have also declined remarkably as vastly fewer drug-related cases come to trial.

Kibbe suggests the way out of America’s current drug crisis is to look across “the pond” and study Portugal. He suggests the way to societal health regarding drugs is to completely legalize all personal use of drugs, regardless of the class or kind. This is not a new suggestion, but it’s proposed in a new context. Remember, the subject was President Trump’s border wall policy, where criminal drug activity is a major security consideration.

This is the point where I will make my own declaration. I arrived at Kibbe’s conclusion back when I read Gen. McCaffrey’s letter to President Clinton in the Washington Post, in 1997. McCaffrey is a very smart man. He realized the complete futility of his job within a year, then spoke out. It’s true he was told to clam up and go do the job the President hired him for, but his one brief foray into total and open honesty was alarmingly refreshing. You won’t get such from more than a handful in Washington today. When I read his letter I understood the message in its totality. He declared all our drug laws useless. He declared all the vast expenditures on drug interdiction a waste of resources. He declared our entire judicial system to be impotent to help resolve any aspect of the drug trade and addictions. I got it!

Kibbe resurrects that old issue and McCaffrey’s position. Because I’ve understood it well for almost 25 years I think I’m as qualified as any to articulate it. Our government and society will come out way ahead if it rescinds all laws that pertain to personal drug possession and use. That goes for all drugs. Once those laws are gone the budgets that went into interdiction, enforcement, and incarceration can be channeled into three funding streams: child education programs, user maintenance, and intervention and treatment.  

Child education programs are obvious. Children need to understand everything about drugs and they have to be taught in ways that will discourage all but the most curious and foolhardy among them.

Maintenance could be accomplished through drug clinics, possibly through the methadone clinics that already operate all over the nation. Those clinics could supply “clean” drugs and paraphernalia to users who are on the lower economic end of that trade, with the proviso that clients attend sponsored treatment programs. If the states follow suit and rescind all their own drug laws there would soon be a commercial marketplace that would cater to drug users who can afford to pay. That alone would spell the death knell of the cocaine cartels of Columbia and the marijuana, heroin, methamphetamine, and fentanyl trade of the Mexican cartels. It would force our inner city street gangs to go into a different line of work. It would reduce the burden on our law enforcement and judicial system by as much as 60%. It would dramatically reduce all categories of violent crime in our country and, as in Portugal, the rate of HIV infections.   In other words, in Dollar terms, abandoning our decades-long War on Drugs could end up being a huge cost savings to our federal and state governments.

Intervention and treatment programs could be as simple as financing the expansion of the best of those programs already in operation. Some programs do produce better results than others. Let them compete for federal grants based on their success metrics.   I don’t recommend gold-plating them; that’s totally unnecessary and wasteful. But, I do recommend ensuring they have what they need to serve the demands of their local client populations.  

The federal government should be a central funding agent to all anti-drug programs and nothing more. The programs should be overseen at state and local levels, with as many non-governmental organization (NGO) partners as necessary to accomplish state-established goals.

Like all “new” ideas we need to be realistic in our expectations. We have to understand what factors motivate the drug trade in the first place to see dramatic reductions in the use of any category of drugs. But, before getting into that, let’s be honest about one thing – many people use drugs now, and probably just as many will use drugs if they are legalized. Nothing about the world of drug use tells me the incidence of use will decline much, if at all. That’s what those motivating factors lead me to believe. That’s also what Portugal’s own experience has demonstrated. Certain types of drug use will wane. Deaths from drug overdoses could become rare. Dangerous infections from the use of dirty needles could all but be eliminated. These are proven phenomena. But, as for eliminating drug use altogether, we all have to get real. It’s not going to happen.

People use drugs for all kinds of reasons. Those who use for the first time are motivated by different factors than those who use on a regular basis. Casual and recreational users are motivated by different factors than those who are addicted. It’s a diverse community to try to comprehend and help.

First time users are often those who are just too curious. They hear from others about the effects of various drugs and their curiosity gets the better of them. It’s a sign of immaturity. There are others who are misled by the company they keep; bad company. Their so-called friends hook them up, telling them they’ll have a good time if they just take a little of this or a little of that. Falling for that kind of peer pressure is also a sign of immaturity. Then there are those who think one or another drug is actually going to make them faster, stronger, smarter, more energetic, funnier or in some other way better than their natural self. They take a drug thinking they’ll achieve at least short-term self-improvement. That’s not only immature, it’s downright delusional.

Casual and recreational drug users are those who’ve lived through their first drug experience without getting addicted and thought something about it was positive. They go on and become after-hours or weekend users of one or another drug. They aren’t as addiction-prone as others and will tell you right to your face that they “can handle it.” You can find casual and recreational users of almost any drug, including heroin, crack, and meth. We usually think of heroin, crack and meth users as the most addicted of all, but there are people who actually do manage to use those drugs on an occasional basis. They may form psychological dependencies to one extent or another, but don’t seem to manifest the symptoms of physical addiction. As to motivation, the casual and recreational drug users are predominately the same people who believes their basic self is improved when they do drugs.   Casual and recreational users don’t pose much of a criminal problem. Look around you. You’d be surprised at how many such people live and work near you.

When discussing addicts there’s only one point to be clear on – addicts are not like those of us who don’t do drugs. An addict has altered metabolism, altered brain patterns, and may have damaged genes. Addicts are driven by both psychological and physiological needs. They’ve developed a real hunger for their drugs; a hunger that screams to be fed. Addicts do not think, act, or reason like the non-addicted. Their need for more drugs compels them to do things no “normal” person would think of.   If they lack money to buy their drugs they will steal. They’ll steal from anyone who has money. They will commit all manner of crimes up to and including murder in their quest for the next hit of their magic elixir.   They are altered beings. Most can be helped, but whether or not they can be repaired depends on their own character and willpower.

Drug rehabilitation specialists will tell you that simply keeping an addicted person away from drugs does not cure them. If it was that simple our current law enforcement mechanisms would work. Our police could simply arrest and toss them in jail for whatever duration they’d need to get cleaned up. Then they could be released to resume their lives as if they’d never done drugs before. But, it doesn’t work that way. It never works that way. Just keeping people away from drugs doesn’t touch the reason they used in the first place. It doesn’t make them more mature. It doesn’t repair their altered metabolism, altered brain patterns, or any damaged genes. All it actually does is provide a respite, while concentrating their exposure to the very elements of our society that may have led them to use drugs in the first place. The truth is our jails and prisons are full of druggies who are using the entire time they’re incarcerated. So, why does anyone think a stint in “the slammer” will help them become productive citizens again? It doesn’t.   It can’t.

If you contemplate the financial and social cost of the War on Drugs you have to be staggered at the enormity of the losses to our nation. Since President Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971 our federal government has expended an estimated $1 trillion. In aggregate the states have actually spent more than $1 trillion. In 2015 the federal government spent $3.3B just on incarceration of drug offenders. During that same year state governments spend an additional $10B.   Also in 2015 there were 1.3 million people arrested for drug possession and over 200 thousand arrested for selling.   One fifth of all our prison population, over 450,000, are drug offenders, while another 1.15 million are out of lockups and on probation.   Think of all the wasted capital and human potential. The numbers should alarm you.

There’s another aspect of incarceration that should be pointed out. It has to do with drug-related deaths. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) numbers indicate a recently released drug offender is 13 times more likely to die of a drug overdose within two weeks of release from prison than a non-drug offender. Compared to the probability of the general population a recently released drug offender has a 129% greater risk of dying from a drug overdose. Why is that? Because in too many instances the drug offenders serve their time, are released into a community, and one of the first things they do is look up their old and bad friends and do exactly the things that got them put in jail in the first place. But, because their post-release tolerance levels to their drugs of choice are dramatically lower they have an increased potential of overdosing.

If you think about all this for a moment you surely must ask, “What the heck is going on? How can we be doing the right thing if law enforcement, the judicial system, and our prisons have such a small effect on drug use, drug-related crime, and drug-related deaths? Isn’t there a better way? That answer is “YES!” But, we are conditioned to think in certain ways about the entire issue of drugs, and the better way isn’t one that is easy for us “law and order” types to accept.   We need to be far more open about the potential for better outcomes and far more honest about the miserable failure our current system has been. We also need to be more honest about the purpose of many of our laws. Politicians will talk of laws in terms of prevention, but that’s just nonsense. Criminalizing an act does not prevent it. It only subjects the one committing the act to arrest, prosecution, and incarceration.   If laws prevented crime we’d have no crime at all. We seem to have a law against almost everything except inhaling and exhaling, so the truth of the value of such laws should be readily evident.  

There are fundamental libertarian principles at play in this discussion.   No libertarian can comprehend the point of criminalizing victimless behavior.   No libertarian supports the notion that self-destructive behavior should be considered criminal.   Each person owns their body. It’s theirs to improve or destroy. All laws intended to alter human nature are doomed to failure.   Laws cannot compensate for fundamental human flaws.   There is only one exception to the general principles involved.   When a pregnant woman is involved there is another human being’s rights to consider; an entirely separate issue that does need consideration under law. But, that’s a discussion of its own.  

Allow me to completely shift my orientation on this subject and discuss one of the factors in drug use that gets far too little attention. That factor involves good and involved parenting. It’s a very simple discussion. As with all things involving human behavior it’s possible to give some blame or credit to parents for how each of us turns out in life. Those with concerned and involved parents who continually model good behavior and morals through their words and deeds are more likely to turn out okay. Those who lack that kind of family stability and good modeling are less so. Everyone knows the truth of this. Any family psychologist will tell you it’s true. And yet our society allows governments to intervene in family life and foster behaviors and ethics that do almost nothing to support good outcomes in children. In the past century we slowly evolved from a family-centric society to one that’s government-centric. The children pay the price for the rest of us allowing our federal government to evolve into an interventionist nanny state. All children start out with the same potential and hope for their future, but it’s not hard to comprehend the truth that those who have the greatest exposure to “help” from our federal government are the ones most at risk. The farther removed our children are from the reach of government the better chance they have of turning out to be good and productive citizens.  

There are always exceptions to rules. The last paragraph was a generalization to emphasize a point. The exceptions are children who are raised in good homes, yet end up with bad outcomes. There are other exceptions where children are raised within the all-encompassing arms of government and still manage to turn out as great and thriving adults. It does little good to emphasize the exceptions though. Not when we are in the throes of a national epidemic of drug use. We have to concentrate on getting the generalities right and push for some actual common sense from our government.  

I hope you understand all this as a recommended path to address a problem, not as an endorsement of the problem itself. I neither use nor advocate the use of any drug for any purpose except medicinal. I don’t believe taking any drug can make me a better human in any respect. But, I also understand human nature and the weaknesses many suffer from. Our nation’s drug dilemma cannot be resolved by more laws, more and better law enforcement, more trials, longer sentences, harsher prison experiences, or closer post-prison supervision.

Someone in Portugal woke up back about 20 years ago and convinced their national government to take a different road. Portugal is a far better place today than it was for many years. It’s more like the Portugal of old. We should look at their experience and understand that drug users have always and will always be among us, but their issues don’t have to drag our entire society down. The truth is in how we react to the problem. The truth is we should react much like Portugal now does. The truth is also that the reaction we need is to reconstitute the same type of American society we had before 1900; before the advent of progressivism in our national consciousness; before we began adopting the notion that more government was the answer to any social problem.   The truth is, that’s all Portugal did.

In Liberty,
Steve