We have every reason to be concerned about the dangers of drug dependency for individuals and society; we have no reason to persist in trying to overcome drug dependency with the costly and ineffectual methods we’ve used these past three decades. Illegal narcotics are a bad thing; the methods of the war on drugs haven’t been able to overcome that bad thing.
On the contrary, after every celebrated raid, every declared major blow or great accomplishment, one finds that drug addiction remains intractable even in small, rural communities much like Whitewater, Wisconsin. (Efforts to describe each and every drug arrest as a major blow are met with scorn and ridicule in every newspaper that allows comments in reply to official statements. It’s not because the commenters are starry-eyed permissives; many of the most critical commenters are manifestly conservative. It’s because those commenters know the ineffectual and the overblown when they see it. It’s also one of the reasons that stodgy newspapers, carrying water for incumbents and bureaucrats, will not allow online comments. If they did, there’d be a quick, online reply to grandiose press statements masquerading as news stories.)
At the Wisconsin State Journal, there’s a story entitled, A Known Killer in Cities, Heroin is Spreading to Wisconsin’s Rural Areas. It’s a story of tragedy and loss; there’s absolutely nothing good that comes from heroin use. What’s particularly tragic is that efforts to stop the drug have been futile. Methods of enforcement, investigation, and prosecution have not kept us safer; they’ve not stopped the spread of dependency.
One sometimes hears that drug use is prevalent among the poor, the downtrodden, the outcast. That proves to be false — law enforcement leaders know that the demand for heroin comes from people very much like others in their communities:
Based on their experiences, police say white men between 18 and 25 are most likely to fall into the web of heroin use and trafficking. The drug doesn’t discriminate by income.
“We thought heroin was a drug used by inner-city folks,” Ozaukee County Sheriff Maurice Straub said when his department realized heroin was a problem in the exclusive lakeside county north of Milwaukee. “Ozaukee County is the wealthiest county in the state of Wisconsin. We have basically no poor people.”
After decades and billions, we’ve not stopped this demand. It’s not demand from some faraway place — it’s demand from within our own communities. If we care more about overcoming dependency than stubborn pride, we will adopt a new strategy to replace the current, ineffectual one. Recognizing that demand is a social problem from within a community, focusing on the truly big and important threats, and emphasizing treatment and counseling. We’ve militarized this effort all we or anyone ever could, and we’re still not making headway.
Headlines haven’t, and won’t, solve these problems.