A Winnable War

In 1992, I wrote a short book called "The Winnable War: A Community Guide to Eradicating Street Drug Markets." This was the first manual even written for citizen activists working to push street drug markets out of residential neighborhoods. It was self-published by a small nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C.

Much to my suprise, New York Times editorial writer A.M. Rosenthal read the little book and wrote an op-ed that said it was "strongly recommended reading for every police chief, city council person, mayor and community activist that wants to get drugs out of their communities."

Washington-Post-LA Times syndicated columnist Neal Pierce also wrote an op-ed, calling it "the best manual ever for citizens trying to rid their neighborhoods of increasingly violent open-air drug markets."

Mark Kleiman, at Harvard's JFK School of Government, also praised it, as did Bill Ide, Chair of the American Bar Association.

I was rather stunned, but quite pleased when orders began to come in. At first there were just a few, but then we began to receive bulk orders for 100 copies and even 1,000 copies at a time as Mayors and City Councils bought bulk copies of the book and distributed them to every community association in their cities. I do not know how many copies of this book eventually sold, but I do know it made over $300,000 in profit for that small nonprofit that first year -- a stunning level of sales in the public policy arena, and achieved without any distribution mechanism at all.

I wrote a magazine-length summary of the book for The Brooking Review, the house organ of The Brookings Institution, and I was later asked to write the piece below by the ABA Journal, which focuses a bit more on alcohol abuse.

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American Bar Association Journal, May, 1993

The Drug Debate: Drug Policy for Results


The goal of U.S. drug policy should be to minimize the harm to society from drug abuse: lost human capital, workplace accidents, spousal and child abuse, family dissolution, increased medical costs and drug-propelled crime.

In order to reduce these harms, we need to focus on what really works in combating drug use and dependency: realistic drug education, linkages between enforcement and treatment, and eliminating street drug markets.

The best way to reduce the number of future addicts is to reduce the number of current users. Today this is being done with the help of drug education programs which neither glamorize drugs nor demonize them: They simply tell the truth.

One of the bright lights on this front has been the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. With backing from Madison Avenue, and hundreds of millions of dollars of free TV time, PDFA ads have burned their way into the national consciousness. Together with the twin pillars of tougher laws and tougher law enforcement, Partnership ads have helped stigmatize illegal drug use. What was once sexy and sophisticated has been branded pathetic and degrading. The result: a 50 percent decline in illegal drug use in just 10 years' time.

But while we have been vocal about illegal drugs, we have been nearly silent about alcohol despite the fact that half of all rapes, murders and assaults are alcohol-related. The sad truth is that what Cheech and Chong were to kids in the 1970s, Norm Peterson and Cliff Claven are to our children today.

A good first step for the Clinton administration would be to index alcohol taxes to the 1952 rate (adopting and adjusting the 1952 tax rate to inflation), and direct a portion of the revenue to pay for Partnership-style anti-intoxication ads whose message would be more than don't drive drunk: it would be, don't get drunk.

Of the millions of Americans who have overcome drug or alcohol addiction, only a small percentage have ever received in-patient treatment -- most simply walk in to free Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.

In fact, one of the few common denominators to people who have overcome drug and alcohol problems is that most "felt the heat" just before they "saw the light." This heat may have come from family and friends, as it did with Betty Ford, or it may have come from law enforcement, as it did with Roger Clinton. Either way, intervention is a common part of many recovery stories.

A visit to a few AA or NA meetings will underscore the critical point: a lot of therapeutic intervention has come at the hands of law enforcement. What is needed is not an abandonment of law enforcement, but a modest remodeling of the criminal justice system so it can be a more effective bridge to abstinence.

For drug users with families, jobs, friends and structure in their lives, the wake-up call may be relatively modest: an inquiry letter mailed to a person seen cruising in a drug-market area, self-funded treatment as a condition of parole, court-mandated AA or NA, driver's license forfeiture, or a car seizure. For those with a higher pain threshold, the needed intervention may be court-mandated urinalysis, electronic home detention or real property seizure.

Warning letters and wrist slaps won't work with everyone, however, especially drug abusers who have burned their bridges to family and friends. But as Attorney General Janet Reno's Miami drug court has shown, when judges, parole officers and social service providers work together with a common plan, drug users can often be cajoled, prodded and scared into toeing the line. For the system to work, however, the threat of incarceration cannot be an empty one.

What about those whose lives are so out of control they cannot discipline themselves to attend AA or NA meetings? Much of this population cycles through the prison system. Sadly, they are almost never provided drug treatment during the one period of their lives that has structure. For little more than what we have spent on radar balloons along the Texas border (they have yet to catch a single plane) we could provide drug treatment to everyone in state and federal jails and prisons. A better redirection of resources is hard to imagine.

With the arrival of crack cocaine in the mid-1980s, a new way of selling drugs sprang from our inner cities: street drug markets. Today, these markets are pervasive, unstable and violent.

Fortunately, street drug markets are also vulnerable. Experience has shown that if police, communities and local government officials focus on breaking up markets instead of maximizing arrests, rapid progress can be made. Neighborhood clean-ups, citizen patrols and improved lighting make dealers uncomfortable. Car seizures and other actions aimed at drug buyers can dry up street sales. Evictions, real property seizures and enforcement of liquor laws can deprive dealers of access to marketing space.

Have no illusion: The goal of such efforts is not to get rid of all drug sales, but to force buyers and dealers to move from public street markets back into the private referral markets that dominated in the 1970s. It can be done: In Tampa, an aggressive anti-drug market program got rid of 90 percent of street drug sales in just two years.

Just as a patch must fit a hole, so too must drug policy be crafted to address the myriad harms caused by drug abuse. There can be little question that current policy is often a poor fit. The goal is not to kick down the old barn, however, but to craft a better one. Those who try will find it a daunting task.