| Chapter 3
Reporting
on Drug Law Enforcement
and Controlled Substances
By
Bill
Wallace
Introduction
The so-called "war on drugs" in the United States began
nearly 34 years ago with a declaration by then-President Richard
Nixon that eventually led to enactment of the federal Controlled
Substances Act of 1973. Some federal drug control programs already
had been in operation for decades, but the new Nixon-era package
formalized and institutionalized earlier efforts, merged disparate
federal antidrug agencies into a new Drug Enforcement Administration,
and gave the entire effort a much higher profile. Nixon grandiosely
designated it as a "war."
The increased emphasis on controlling dangerous drugs could be
attributed to two factors, one objective and the other quite subjective.
The objective factor was a marked increase in U.S. users of controlled
substances during the 1960s and 1970s, peaking in 1979 at 25.4 million,
or 14.1 percent of the population.
The subjective factor was the apparent spread of a youth-oriented
drug culture that seemed to challenge traditional values and pose
a threat to the prevailing national culture. Drugs were popularly
portrayed in popular fiction, motion pictures and television programs
as closely related to counter-cultural political attitudes, rock
music, left-of-center political radicalism and the movement for
greater personal sexual freedom – all of which were anathema
to political conservatives and targets for strident political rhetoric.
Widespread drug abuse is accompanied by an increased need for medical
services (including emergency room visits for overdoses), premature
deaths, workdays lost due to drug related disabilities and a variety
of social welfare related costs. The National Institute on Drug
Abuse estimates that the annual costs associated with drug usage
climbed from $35 billion in 1975 to $46 billion in 1977 –
more than 31 percent. They continued to soar until they peaked at
$102 billion in 1980, and then tapered off until 1985. But by 1992,
they had once more started to climb, reaching nearly $98 billion.
The most recent federal study, prepared in September 2001 by the
Office of National Drug Control Policy, the total had reached $143.4
billion.
In recent decades, drug enforcement – stemming the supply
of illicit substances and also treating and educating drug abusers
– became an increasingly important and expensive responsibility
of state, local and federal agencies. Measures aimed at controlling
the supply side of the drug business had powerful allies among lawmakers
and the huge complex of law-enforcement bureaucracies. Reflecting
the public's concern over crime, these political forces were able
to ensure that police and paramilitary programs became the primary
weapon in the war against drugs.
Congress and state legislatures adopted increasingly aggressive
programs to block the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.
It started in the late 1960s with Operation Intercept, which was
designed to cut the flow of drugs from Mexico, and included local
and national marijuana eradication programs, proliferating U.S.
Coast Guard and Customs Service interdiction efforts, and federal
grants to state attorneys general and local police departments for
drug suppression programs.
The movement reached its peak in the last decades of the 20th century,
with the militarization of interdiction efforts in the Caribbean
and parts of South America and the direct involvement of U.S. armed
forces units such as the Army Southern Command's Joint Task Force
Bravo in Honduras, which participates in drug suppression operations.
On the domestic front, state, local and federal task forces combined
forces for marijuana eradication programs and formed local Organized
Crime Drug Task Forces for a unified approach to prosecuting major
drug dealers. The federal government also awarded millions of dollars
in law enforcement assistance grants to state attorneys general
and local police departments for drug suppression projects.
Governments at all levels passed increasingly stringent laws against
the sales, possession and use of dangerous drugs, and federal sentencing
guidelines were written to penalize drug users and sellers more
harshly.
The Drug
War's Rising Costs
The war on drugs is one of the few governmental programs that have
not become the subject of cost-cutting measures. The White House
Office of National Drug Control Policy says that the federal government
is expected to spend more than $19 billion on drug control in fiscal
2003, up from $17 billion in fiscal 1999. State spending on drug
suppression efforts has increased correspondingly.
The increase in penalties for many offenses has helped fuel the
biggest prison construction boom in the country's history. And a
host of government agencies that played no role in the war on drugs
during the Nixon era have been drawn into the battle.
With the shifts in laws and the increasing attention to drug crimes
by law enforcement bureaucracies, drug arrests in the U.S. increased
134 percent in the 1980s. Many jurisdictions sent a growing number
of non-violent inmates to jail and prison for controlled substance
offenses.
In an effort to speed case handling and avoid sending some defendants
to prison, many areas began to experiment with drug courts that
refer suspects to community based treatment programs, where they
can clean up and get counseling for drug dependencies. In some cases,
the courts utilize a form of pre-trial diversion that allows the
defendant to avoid trial – and a criminal record – by
satisfactorily completing detoxification and rehabilitation.
Drug courts proliferated during the 1990s, spreading to more than
42 states and several federal districts. Some law enforcement officials
and judges doubt their effectiveness, while many reformers believe
they prevent too many drug abusers from receiving treatment. In
several states, the reformers have succeeded in passing laws that
send first offenders directly to treatment programs rather than
to drug courts, where they could eventually be sentenced to jail
or prison terms. This approach has gained some popularity, because
opinion polls have shown that the general public is losing its enthusiasm
for the paramilitary approach toward drug control that has been
stressed since the 1970s.
Voters in states such as Arizona and California have passed new
laws that decriminalize many drug offenses and replace incarceration
with treatment programs as the primary focus of anti-drug efforts.
In 2002, the movement seemed to lose some of its steam. It succeeded
in passing a drug treatment ballot measure in Washington, D.C. [later
challenged in court], but lost a similar campaign in Ohio and backed
marijuana decriminalization measures that failed in Nevada, South
Dakota and Arizona, the first state to embrace a decriminalization
approach to drug arrests.
As anti-drug efforts have expanded and become more complicated,
media coverage of them has changed accordingly. Journalists assigned
to stories about controlled substances these days are advised to
have a knowledge of the legal system, finances and business, social
policy, the political process and even international relations.
For a reporter to cover drug law enforcement operations adequately,
a fundamental knowledge of some of the basic terms used in the field
is required.
Continue to the next
page in "Chapter 3: Reporting on Drug Law Enforcement"
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