A path forward in the war on drugs

The documentary Meth Storm follows an impoverished family of meth addicts in rural Arkansas who are struggling to manage their addiction and stay out of prison. The son, Teddy, has found religion during his sixth stint in prison in the past ten years, and he promises the mother of his children that he will get sober and get his life back on track. Teddy’s mother said this commitment to sobriety was unlikely to last. She says her son has merely found “jailhouse religion” and will be back on meth shortly after he gets out. Disappointingly, Teddy’s mother is right. A few months later Teddy is arrested again for possession and finds himself in prison for a seventh time.

On the other side of the drug war, DEA agent Johnny Sowell acknowledges that every time they arrest a drug dealer, a replacement springs up shortly thereafter. Still, he hopes that this latest round of arrests of low-level drug dealers, dubbed Operation Ice Storm, will lead to the source of the super-potent meth coming in from Mexico. Johnny busts as many low-level dealers as he can, for selling as little as a gram of meth. He pumps them for information until he finally catches a direct connection to the cartel in a dangerous high speed chase. The connection refuses to snitch. If he does, the connection’s entire family in Mexico will be killed. Another dead end in the drug war.

Teddy and Johnny have something in common besides their decaying town. They both keep doing the same things they have always done, in futile hope of a better result. Teddy keeps trying to turn his life around, but always goes back to drugs. Johnny keeps arresting people like Teddy to stop the flow of drugs, but he never gets any closer to the source. Like characters in a modern Greek tragedy, it is impossible for anybody in this community to avoid the cruelty of their own fate. The war on drugs rages on, regardless of the participants efforts to resist.

So what is to be done for communities ravaged by drugs like the one in Meth Storm and their urban counterparts? What is needed is compassion in the law for addicts and drug users, one that recognizes their humanity and decouples it from race or income level.

But what does this compassion look like in policy terms? To start, we must create avenues for drug users to course correct before they are trapped in the cycle of addiction and incarceration. For example, drug courts which emphasize treatment instead of just punishment have shown promising drops in rates of recidivism among drug users. Well maintained and funded pretrial diversion programs are also effective in preventing users from being rearrested.

We also need to reform how we treat drug users who find themselves incarcerated. A study from 2002 indicated that over half of all prisoners in the US met the criteria for a diagnosis of drug abuse or dependence, but only 15 to 20 percent of those who would benefit from treatment received it. Part of the reason is that the current criminal justice system focuses on punishment, rather than treating addiction as a disease. When prisons spend their resources in accordance with this assumption, the inevitable result is that many of the incarcerated do not get the help they need. Every addict who goes to prison should receive treatment for their addiction, otherwise it is only a matter of time before many will return.

Another reform that has been gaining traction is ending mandatory minimums that were a result of the tough-on-crime stances of the 1980s and 1990s. Although the end of the racially tinged 100:1 ratio in sentencing for crack cocaine versus cocaine was a welcome reform, this was a band-aid policy for a specific drug and not a permanent solution. The law still maintains a grossly unfair 18:1 sentencing ratio between crack cocaine and cocaine, and the vast majority of mandatory minimums have not been addressed. For example, the mandatory federal minimum sentence for distribution of five grams of methamphetamine is five years, even though that amount could be as little as a week’s supply to a heavy user.

In addition to ending mandatory minimums, we must go further to ensure that there is something worth returning home to after former dealers and users have served their sentences. We need to invest in job training for prisoners and provide opportunities for these returning individuals to work in their communities and become contributing members of society.

Another consideration is that sentences for using or selling even a small amount of drugs can last much longer than the period of incarceration or parole, because hiring managers discriminate against those with drug convictions. We must destigmatize non-violent drug convictions in hiring and allow rehabilitated drug offenders to have their slate wiped clean. Without these reforms, the reality is that in an area with no jobs like Faulkner County, Arkansas in Meth Storm, the only way the formerly incarcerated can make money is in the drug trade, which will further ingratiate themselves into the cycle of addition and incarceration.

So how do we obtain the political capital to get these policy outcomes in place? We need to humanize drug users and, yes, even low-level drug dealers. The first step is to encourage the positive trends of humanizing opioid users. For people of color whose communities have been criminalized for decades as a result of the war on drugs, it may be difficult for many to square the injustice of only granting compassion to wealthier and whiter opioid users. However, the reality is that many Americans continue to otherize drug users, by saying drug use is something that only poor whites, Latinos, or Black folks do.

In order to help build a broader coalition of support, we need the public to believe that addiction can affect their own family and friends, so any humanizing narratives about drug use and addiction are helpful. For example, when rockstar and drug addict Tom Petty died of an accidental overdose, there was an outpouring of support and much credit given to his family for making his cause of death public. However, when a poor addict like Teddy dies in rural Arkansas, its doubtful that there will be similarly affectionate support. It will just be another sad statistic in the war on drugs. With greater recognition that drug use is not attributable to someone’s characteristics of being poor or a racial minority, we can enact policies that will change the fates of people like Johnny and Teddy in Meth Storm.