In 1980 the Federal government spent $4 billion on the drug war. This year we are spending over four times that much, and the saddest part is that most of that money goes not to help people stop using drugs or get help for their addictions, but simply to throw them in prison. Drug arrests have now pushed the U.S. jail and prison population to over 1.8 million people, almost the highest in the world, of whom an estimated 1.2 million are alcohol or drug abusers. In addition 2.3 million are on probation and parole. Few of these people are violent, high-level dealers. In fact, more than 90% of all drug arrests are of nonviolent offenders guilty only of possession or of dealing small quantities to support their own habits.

Consider this – the annual cost to incarcerate one addict in prison is about $25,900. The annual cost to provide long-term residential treatment for one addict is about $6,800. The cost to decrease cocaine consumption 1 percent by eradicating the sources of supply is about $783 million. The cost to decrease cocaine consumption 1 percent by increasing drug treatment is about $34 million. Even someone as bad in math as I can instantly see how foolishly we are wasting our precious financial resources that could be eradicating illiteracy and providing parenting classes to reduce child abuse and family violence instead of this misguided “war.”

LET’S DECLARE A TRUCE IN THE WAR ON DRUGS Second in a series

When Californians voted for Proposition 215, now The Compassionate Use Act of 1996, we clearly intended that marijuana be legal for use by patients who suffered from AIDS, Cancer and other serious illnesses to relieve their suffering. It was an appropriate expression of the command in Jewish tradition to be “rahamim b’nai rahamim,” “compassionate children of a compassionate society,” yet our own Federal government has stepped in time and again to blindly punish those who have used marijuana even on the advice of their physicians to relieve lives of pain and suffering.

In December of 1997, the DEA seized his computer containing his latest book which was critical of the war on drugs, and subsequently arrested him for growing an illegal drug under Federal law which still classifies marijuana as an illegal substance. In a move that further defies the most basic expectations of justice and compassion, Federal Judge George King ruled that he is forbidden to inform the jury of his medical condition, the medical uses of marijuana or California Proposition 215 which allowed the personal use of marijuana for medical purposes thereby making any defense at all impossible.

In the meantime, as if that ruling weren’t inhumane enough, McWilliams is being denied access to the very drug which relieves his pain and suffering. “I am needlessly dying in the prime of my career,” he recently wrote. I believe that our “war on drugs” has become instead, a war on our own private citizens, flying in the face of reason and science, denying them compassion and justice and further undermining our government’s credibility and integrity. Perhaps it’s time we have the courage to call for a reassessment of this misguided and morally bankrupt war.