Liberalism's Brain on Drugs

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/29112/

 

 

 

If we live in a fundamentally free society, how does confining a drug

offender to 17 years in prison jive with America's values of equality

and liberty?

 

 

 

Liberalism's Brain on Drugs

 

By Ryan Grim, In These Times. Posted December 6, 2005.

 

 

 

At some point, everyone ought to throw his or her political theory --

whatever it is -- up against the wall of reality to see if it sticks.

 

I ran smack into that wall when the state shackled Mark, one of my

best friends, and hauled him off to a dank, violent, maximum-security

prison for a 17-year stay. His crime: possession of a spoonful of

cocaine, some of which they said he intended to distribute. The judge

had recommended he be sent to a prison that focuses largely on drug

treatment, but it is hopelessly overcrowded. So there Mark sits in

Hagerstown, Md., his letters reflecting a mind slowly losing its

tether as violence and mayhem swirl around him.

 

I've always believed that we live in a fundamentally liberal society

that can trace its way back to enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson,

Madison, Locke, Mill and Rousseau. Sure, the past 24 years of the

Reagan, Bush and even Clinton regimes haven't been kind, but one

bedrock principle still seemed intact: If not equality and fraternity,

we'll always have liberty.

 

And so, as guards frogmarched my friend out of the courtroom shackled

hands to feet, I wondered how confining that man for 17 years jives

with my understanding of our nation's values. Is imprisoning hundreds

of thousands of people an acceptable policy result of a liberal,

pluralistic democratic society? Or, is the drug war proving

libertarians correct about the potential for abuse of government power?

 

The principal disagreement between libertarians and liberals regarding

the expansion and protection of liberty goes something like this.

Libertarians argue that the state, broadly understood to include both

state and federal governments, is the greatest threat to individual

freedom. Therefore the best way to guard liberty is to restrict the

power of the state to the greatest extent possible, leaving it only to

protect two " freedom froms " -- the freedom from force and the freedom

from fraud. The rest, they say, will work itself out.

 

Liberals counterclaim that the libertarian critique ignores the

reality of other organized forms of power -- such as corporations,

private militias and intractably racist state governments -- that can

infringe on an individual's freedom. They argue that freedom can only

exist fully against the backdrop of some measure of equality and

opportunity. Liberalism therefore calls for the expansion of state

power based on the belief that such power should be used to create

space for and protect individual rights and freedoms. In other words,

liberals expect their elected government to provide freedom from

oppressive nongovernmental forces and to help guarantee equal access

to real opportunity.

 

But what if the government itself becomes the oppressor?

 

Eric Sterling, a Reagan-era-drug-warrior-turned-reformer who now heads

up the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, refers to what he calls the

" drug war exception to the Bill of Rights. " Unlawful searches and

seizures are not permitted -- unless cops are searching for drugs,

which are not legal property and therefore not protected. No

self-incrimination -- unless it's a drug test. No cruel and unusual

punishment -- unless you were caught with cocaine. And so our two

greatest bulwarks against tyranny, checks and balances and the Bill of

Rights, are out the drug war window.

 

Today, one of every eight black men between the ages of 25 and 29 --

the cohort Mark falls into -- is behind bars. The U.S. incarceration

rate not only ranks number one in the world, but also some eight times

higher than Western European nations.

 

In " An Analytical Assessment of U.S. Drug Policy, " Peter Reuter, a

conservative critic of the drug war and the director of the University

of Maryland's Center on the Economics of Crime and Justice Policy, and

David Boyum, a health policy consultant, have come to some radical

conclusions.

 

" As currently implemented, American drug policies are unconvincing, "

Reuter and Boyum write. " They are intrusive … divisive … and

expensive, with an approximate $35 billion annual expenditure on drug

control … yet they leave the nation with a massive drug problem,

greater than that of any other Western nation. " Reuter and Boyum call

for, among other proposals, eliminating criminal penalties associated

with marijuana and drastically increasing emphasis on drug treatment

instead of incarceration.

 

In an April essay in the Washington Monthly, William Galston, a

leading philosopher of liberalism, challenged liberal thinkers to

question how their conception of freedom might shape a liberal

political view:

 

Edmund Burke famously observed that Americans " sniff the approach

of tyranny in every tainted breeze. " Even today, the extraordinary

value Americans place on individual liberty is what most distinguishes

our culture, and the political party seen by voters as the most

willing to defend and expand liberty is the one that usually wins

elections. Conservatives have learned this lesson; too many liberals

have forgotten it. And as long as liberals fool themselves into

believing that appeals to income distribution tables can take the

place of policies that promote freedom, they will lose.

 

The questions before us are, what is the meaning of freedom in the

21st century, and what are the means needed to make it effective in

our lives? Those of us who oppose the conservative answer cannot

succeed by changing the question. We can only succeed by giving a

better answer.

 

At some point, that better answer must take into account the scope of

the state's authority to incarcerate its citizens. Imprisonment is the

antithesis of individual freedom. With more than 2 million citizens

locked up in American prisons and jails, the time for a better answer

is long past due. I asked Galston: Is this state of affairs an

acceptable result of a pluralistic liberal system, or is there

something fundamentally illiberal about American politics today?

 

" You could reasonably take the position that the current policies are

badly flawed in principle and also leading to very negative

consequences, " he says. " Certainly it's the case that the more

seriously you take liberty as the bedrock of a liberal society the

more seriously you have to take the deprivation of liberty. "

 

He blamed the lack of drug war dissension on " the political traumas

inflicted on liberal Democrats in the '70s and '80s in the debate over

drugs and crime, when the party and liberals were tarred with a brush

-- soft on crime, soft on drugs, maybe even encouraging a drug

culture. " But he suggests that these wounds may be healing, and that

the public may be ready for a serious debate on drug and incarceration

policy.

 

And none too soon. Silence from liberals in this debate is, in effect,

an endorsement for the status quo. It is time to stand up in defense

of liberty -- not just equality and fraternity.

 

Ryan Grim is an editorial intern at the Washington City Paper.