The Washington Post News Articles
Don't Call on the Guard
1989
The National Guard is entering what the Pentagon has
euphemistically termed "the nationwide crusade against drugs," which is hardly going to cause either the billionaire kings of crack
or the minor moguls of the open-air markets to lose much sleep.
The new secretary of defense and the new drug czar, who
between them have exactly zero military or law enforcement
experience, are now implementing a supplemental appropriation passed
last year by a Congress that was acting more in frustration than
through strategic logic. And soon National Guard members will be
conducting secondary activities such as aerial photography,
assistance in searches and transportation, and training of law
enforcement personnel. The National Guard, it is stressed, will not
be involved in direct participation in such matters as arrest and
seizure.
Which means that there will be dozens of photo
opportunities, a few widely publicized successes and no real
movement toward a resolution of this "crusade." There still has been
no enunciation of a clear strategy in the war against drugs. We have
seen important but nonetheless symbolic gestures, such as the ban on
importing assault rifles. We have seen administration appointments
to amorphously defined positions such as deputies for "supply
reduction" and "demand reduction." We have been told, in the best
tradition of former California governor Jerry Brown, to lower our
expectations, that we are never going to fully solve the problem. We
are being treated to quasi-capitalistic logic: that the best we can
hope for is the elevation of the street price of illegal drugs by
reducing their volume and purity.
What we haven't been told is how we're going to fight and
win a war that is killing off young people, depriving others of
their potential, creating serious birth defects in newborns and
pouring billions of dollars every year into the pockets of
criminals. In fact, we are experiencing a guerrilla war whose stakes
are dollars, power and the misery of the people they subdue.
National Guardsmen flying over the desert or providing photo opportunities by riding shotgun in police cars are not going to defeat the guerrillas in this war. Nor are deputies for "demand reduction and supply reduction." If this nation is serious about ridding itself of its most debilitating pestilence, I would suggest the following approach.
|
|
Build a very large, very primitive federal prison in a
remote area of Alaska. Next to it build a very large, very primitive
juvenile detention center. Pass a law stating that the sale of
drugs in any amount constitutes a federal offense, punishable by a
mandatory prison sentence in Alaska. Such a law would "delocalize" a
massive federal and international problem. Vigorously enforce this
law until the prospect of selling drugs literally sends chills down
the spine of anyone who considers it.
Those who believe this approach is draconian and won't work
should consider that Japan had 200,000 hard-core and 'latent' heroin
addicts in 1960, before passing similar provisions in the 1963
Narcotics Substance Control Act. Today heroin addiction in Japan is
as rare as smallpox. In the process, the Japanese also dramatically
cut back property crimes, which in large part are the province of
drug offenders.
- Police the battlefield. Now focus on mere drug use,
and attempt to eliminate it. Educate the children, treat the
victims. Activate your deputies for "supply reduction" and
"demand reduction" go out and make speeches about the evils of
drugs so that future generations of young Americans will
comprehend the miseries that their predecessors endured. And you
won't need National Guardsmen peering out uneasily from police
cars, wondering why they've been pulled away from their jobs and
families to become targets of abuse in neighborhoods that
desperately need something more than symbols from their
government.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS