The End of the Beginning

After a British victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein, Churchill famously observed of the war in November 1942 that 

….Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning….

So it is, even locally, with the War on Drugs. Like many others, I don’t smoke and I seldom drink (all the more to savor an occasional drink recipe).  Like millions of others, though, I see that the Drug War has been too expensive, too ineffective, failing to prevent drug abuse while simultaneously abusing civil liberties. 

The problems of addiction are no better; headlines proclaiming supposed victories no longer command belief, these forty years on. 

When proponents of numbers policing chose to describe their efforts as a war, they might have thought more carefully about which war we’d be waging.  For all their good intentions, they gave us not the Second World War, but Vietnam.  

That’s part of the sadness of this effort, too: so many good, frontline people tied to an ineffectual  strategy that’s been unworthy of their participation.    

Close at home, one sees signs of the end of the beginning, from the Janesville Gazette‘s Friday editorial, “As marijuana gains ground, law enforcement faces decisions.” 

The editorial is available only in print or to online subscribers, but it’s telling.  Ever so hesitantly, cautiously, almost begrudgingly the Gazette‘s editorialist inches readers toward the truth of marijuana enforcement: that it’s been an expensive mistake.   

In Rock, Jefferson, and Walworth Counties, there will be furious insistence from the unreconstructed that nothing’s changing, and that nothing ever will. In some towns nearby, and particularly from the bench and Sheriff’s Office in Elkhorn, the last holdouts will rail against change until, finally, the laws they’ve so punitively enforced and sentences they’ve so punitively imposed are no more.  

To those few, who have been inveterate Drug Warriors, seeking punishment but not treatment: you will, not so long from now, see our nation’s rejection of your approach.  The Draconian laws on which you’ve relied will be repealed, your enforcement programs cancelled, and your funding for endless, pricey purchases cut.  

In place of all this, you’ll still have a useful role: as examples of what not to do, of yesterday’s approach, as exemplars of the ill-conceived.

Across America, states are liberalizing their marijuana laws, police officers are declaring against the Drug War, and there’s a growing effort to Regulate Marijuana Like Wine.  A majority nationally now favors decriminalization, and that political trend is only growing.   

We’re not at the end of a failed strategy, but we’re at least at the end of the beginning of that failed strategy. 

When the laws change (and they will), I’ll still not smoke, and I’ll still drink only occasionally.  Yet, on that day, I’ll raise a glass to those who fought for change, for a focus on treatment over punishment, and in memory of those whose lives were ruined through an expensive, decades-long, ineffectual strategy.