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The Obama Administration's Drug Control Policy on Auto-Pilot

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The Obama Administration's Drug Control Policy on Auto-Pilot IDPC Briefing Paper The Obama Administration’s drug control policy on auto-pilot Coletta A. Youngers1 April 2011 The International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC) is a global network of NGOs and professional networks that specialise in issues related to illicit drug production and use. The Consortium aims to promote objective and open debate on the effectiveness, direction and content of drug policies at national and international level, and supports evidence-based policies that are effective in reducing drug-related harm. It produces occasional briefing papers, disseminates the reports of its member organisations about particular drug-related matters, and offers expert consultancy services to policy makers and officials around the world. n a widely watched You Tube video, and international drug policies. But has the IU.S. President Barack Obama is asked welcome change in tone been matched by a whether or not the drug war may in fact be change in policies? The track record to date counterproductive. Instead of the resounding is disappointing, with far more continuity than NO that would have come from any of his recent change. The Obama administration, apparently predecessors, Obama responded: “I think less fearful of being criticized as “soft on drugs,” this is an entirely legitimate topic for debate.” has ratcheted down the rhetoric and has placed He then qualified his remarks by adding, “I greater emphasis on the problem of demand am not in favor of legalization.”1 Nonetheless, and problematic drug use. Some necessary even acknowledging the legitimacy of debate but modest changes have also taken place with on U.S. drug policy is a significant shift from respect to domestic drug policy. Yet broader the past, when successive administrations drug policy reforms at the domestic level remain stifled discussion and routinely labeled anyone elusive and in the international sphere the U.S. promoting alternative approaches to the so- “war on drugs” continues apace. called U.S. “war on drugs” as dangerous and surreptitiously promoting massive drug use and Shortly after being named to the post, Obama’s poisoning America’s youth. chief drug policy official, R. Gil Kerlikowske, head of the Office of National Drug Control With over two years in office, the Obama Policy (ONDCP), announced that he would administration has had time to begin to make not refer to the “drug war,” as you cannot its mark on the government’s domestic wage war on your own people. Kerlikowske, formerly a police official, regularly emphasizes the need to treat drug consumption as a 1 Coletta A. Youngers is an IDPC Associate and Senior Fellow at the public health problem and, for the first time, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). The author thanks the following individuals for their input: John Walsh (WOLA), Ethan recognized experts on treating problematic Nadelmann and Bill Piper (Drug Policy Alliance), Allan Clear and Daniel Raymond (Harm Reduction Coalition), and Sanho Tree (Institute drug use have been on the ONDCP’s senior for Policy Studies). 1 staff. Finally, far more emphasis is being obtained a great deal of autonomy from the placed on reducing demand for illicit drugs. broader official policy making community and As Obama said, “On drugs, I think that a lot they continue to operate with little interference of times we have been so focused on arrests, from other parts of the government bureaucracy, incarceration and interdiction, that we don’t particularly at the international level. spend as much time thinking about how we shrink demand.”2 The administration has Second, only high-level and committed also tread more carefully overseas, at times leadership could begin to bring change to the showing a more collaborative approach in UN existing federal drug war bureaucracy; yet that debates and showing restraint in reacting to is not coming from this administration – and all progressive reforms undertaken by some Latin indications are that drug policy reform is not American governments. In short, the Obama likely to become a priority any time soon. Apart administration has adopted a somewhat more from the media attention around the vote on diplomatic approach to drug policy. Proposition 19 in California in November 2010, drug policy is typically crowded off the political Despite the change in discourse and diplomacy, agenda. Internationally, only drug policy-related however, international drug control policies issues in Mexico and Afghanistan receive remain largely intact – though Afghanistan sustained attention. The Obama administration provides an important exception – and the is engaged in enormous debates on a range administration now appears poised to replicate of salient issues. It confronts an extremely what it views as the successful Plan Colombia complicated domestic situation, compounded in Central America. This continuity in policy is by the slow economic recovery and the results reflected in the federal drug control budget. of the November 2010 Congressional elections, Despite very modest increases in spending in which the Republican Party took control of on treatment and education, approximately the House of Representatives and gained three-fifths of federal drug control spending seats in the Senate. Internationally, the wars in continues to go to supply-side programs Iraq and Afghanistan – and now Libya – have (including domestic law enforcement) and only monopolized the administration’s attention. The two-fifths to demand-related programs.3 dramatic changes unfolding in the Middle East ensure that sustained attention to international Two key factors help explain continuity in what drug policy is not going to be on President is increasingly recognized as a failed policy. Obama’s agenda. In short, drug policy continues First, the drug war bureaucracy is large, well- to be a “third rail” issue and most existing drug entrenched and extremely resistant to change. policies continue on auto-pilot. For example, apart from Kerlikowske and new people he has brought in to work on domestic and demand-related policies at ONDCP, those working on international drug control Modest changes in domestic drug policy remain largely the same and most are policy steeped in a drug warrior mentality; many have spent their careers implementing the On the campaign trail, Obama promised U.S. “war on drugs.” This is true of the U.S. to undertake three initiatives related to Department of State’s Bureau of International drug policy: seek to remove the disparity in Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), sentencing for crack and powder cocaine; the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reverse the federal government’s tough stand and other federal agencies with drug control on state medical marijuana laws; and end the responsibilities. Over the years, the U.S. ban on federal funding for needle exchange.4 government’s drug control agencies have He has met those promises to varying degrees. 2 The crack-cocaine disparity was adopted that have adopted laws legalizing marijuana by Congress in the 1980s, near the peak of for medical purposes. However, the task of hysteria over crack consumption. According to raiding medical marijuana facilities in states the 1986 law, anyone convicted in federal court where they operate legally is carried out by of possession of five grams of crack received the DEA, which immediately and publicly a mandatory sentence of five years, and 10 expressed disagreement with the policy shift. grams resulted in 10 years. The threshold Despite the directives from Washington, the amounts for those mandatory sentences were DEA has continued to carry out raids on such 100 times as high as those for powder cocaine. facilities, though far less than before. Given that approximately 80 percent of those convicted on crack charges in recent years are Obama fulfilled his third promise at the end African-American, the sentencing disparity was of 2010, when he signed a law ending the for years widely denounced as unjustified and prohibition on federal funding for sterile needle racist, at least in effect if not in intent. After and syringe exchange programs (NSPs), which Obama’s inauguration, the Justice Department have long proven effective in reducing HIV worked with members of the U.S. Congress transmission. Compromise language adopted by to eliminate the sentencing disparity, resulting the U.S. Congress allows for the use of federal in the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduces funds for NSPs, except in locations deemed the crack/powder ratio to 18 to one – not “inappropriate” by local health department or law the one to one ratio that proponents wanted, enforcement officials. The federal Department but the ultimate compromise necessary of Health and Human Services issued interim for congressional approval. The Act also guidance in July 2010 on the use of federal funds eliminates the five-year mandatory minimum for state and local health departments receiving sentence for simple possession. federal HIV prevention funds and for a subset of federally-funded substance abuse treatment According to Marc Mauer of the Sentencing programs. The U.S. State Department followed Project, the legislation marks a “watershed suit, issuing revised guidelines allowing use of event in the long campaign for a more rational funds from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan approach to drug policy” and “is expected to for AIDS Relief (commonly known as PEPFAR) benefit about 3,000 defendants a year, with an for NSPs in global HIV programs6. NSPs were average sentence reduction of twenty-seven also endorsed as an evidence-based intervention months.”5 To date, however, the Fair Sentencing in the first National HIV/AIDS Strategy, and Act does not apply to those convicted prior to referenced in the 2010 National Drug Control it being signed into law in August 2010. It is Strategy. Due to the on-going budget crisis, now up to the U.S. Sentencing Commission implementation of the new policy has been to determine whether to apply the guidelines slow, with relatively modest impact to date: retroactively.
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