opinion

An opportunity to do
something different
by Eric Jackson

"Yes, we can!" Where have I heard that campaign slogan before? Oh, yes --- back in 2004 at PRD rallies.

When things are in a bad way for a country, the candidate of the party out of power can run on meaningless slogans --- "we can" do what? steal a million dollars? solve the country's most pressing problems? --- and appeal to generalized hopes for change. That way, every voter with this or that disenchantment with the way that things are can make himself or herself believe that the opposition candidate will make the changes that he or she wants.

This tendency shows itself with respect to Barack Obama as well. Are we dealing with a corporate lawyer with a good rap? Is he the shining black prince finally come to liberate us so many years after the last one was gunned down in Harlem? Is he the smartest politician to get within reach of the White House in a very long time? Is he just another Chicago machine man?

Obama is anything but rash. He's got a good set of establishment credentials, but he isn't of them and he hasn't had decades of steeping in their dogmas. He's in a position to question some fundamental assumptions, but except in those situations in which he feels both an urgent need and a realistic ability to do so, don't count on him to do much to change things very dramatically.

On that score I take the fact that he has never been to Latin America as a reason for hope, because he hasn't been given the rap by and made commitments to all the creepy oligarchs. But that his foreign policy advisors include such PRD-aligned figures as Gregory Craig gives reason for apprehension that we are in for more of the same.

One thing about US policy that's totally messed up and naturally lends itself to review by someone with a fresh policy slate to write upon is the centrality of the "War on Drugs" in US policies toward the region.

Yes, a bunch of the leftist FARC guerrillas' most prominent hostages have been freed, and a bunch of the rightist AUC paramilitaries' top leaders have been extradited to the United States. Yes, drug seizures are up. But so is cocaine use in US high schools. The president of Colombia is still a drug lord's son with close paramilitary ties. The area under cultivation for drug crops in South America is up. The latest big Colombian cartels may have been broken up, but they have been supplanted by even more powerful Mexican gangs.

Obama has already shown a tendency to look askance at stereotypes that send rich coke freaks to rehabilitation and poor ones to prison. Might the brilliant Harvard lawyer go the next step and question the demonstrably false notion that the drug trade corrupts people in Latin American governments but not the men and women who work for Uncle Sam? Might the candidate who seeks to restore some modicum of mutual respect in US relations with other countries notice how degrading it is for the United States, the world's biggest market for the consumption of illegal drugs, to hand out report cards about which countries do or do not cooperate in the "War on Drugs" and which states "pass" and which "fail" some sort of inscrutable Washington test?

Let's face it: there is no drug policy that is going to command a consensus of public support among the socially, culturally and politically fragmented US population. I know what I have advocated for many years, and I know it still lacks the public support to be enacted into law.

But I know, and everyone else who has studied the problem with an honest and open mind knows --- whatever their preferred set of solutions might be --- what has not worked. Mass incarceration, scare propaganda based upon dubious science, drug interdiction and drug crop eradication have not worked. They have been tried for decades and they have been expensive and miserable failures.

There are, however, a few common-sense changes upon which I think most Americans would be able to agree.

First, when substance abuse has squeezed a person to the point of intolerable misery and that person seeks help, the question of what health insurance she or he has should never be asked and there should never be a waiting list for treatment. Yes, a policy like that would cost money, but it would be a tiny fraction on what is now being spent on the "War on Drugs." No other single anti-drug measure would be more effective than instant and universal access to help for those who request it.

(Here I am not talking about judges sentencing people to rehabilitation or requiring them to enroll in such programs to avoid a conviction and sentence, as was done in the drug case of possible first lady Cindy McCain. It's a waste of money and an insult to people in 12-step groups and other addiction treatment programs to send in people who are not there of their own volition.)

Second, "going into rehab" should not be a standard diversion from taking responsibility every time a rich or prominent person gets caught in some perverse or otherwise criminal act. To the extent that seeking help is a genuine response to a situation that has gotten out of hand, publicizing it is an unethical invasion of medical privacy and self-publicizing it is a degrading act that falls well short of newsworthiness. To the courts chronic intoxication might occasionally be a partial defense as to intent, in the form of diminished capacity, but it's never an excuse.

Third, there is a certain limited but very real value in reminding people, especially the young, that addiction is a form of slavery. Obama himself has written about his own experience of wasting too much time getting high when he was younger and some folks have, without much political success, asserted that admission as an indication of his unsuitability for high office. However, most of us recognize it as a bit of frank and sage advice from one who has been there and done that. That sort of candor, sadly missing in the Bush and Clinton administrations, has its own curative social value that should not be lightly dismissed.

Also in this section:
Editorial:  No tax hike for the Cinta Costera

Bernal, A just and democratic city
Leis, On the Petaquilla Minerals blacklist
Libertarian Party, Iran shouldn't be the new Iraq
Nader, Response to Obama
Sweeney, Why the AFL-CIO endorses Obama
McCain, Address to the National Sheriffs' Association
Jackson, An opportunity to turn the page on a failed War on Drugs
Avnery, Satan's counsel
Sakr, A message to American Arabs and Muslims
Pilgrim, Caribbean agriculture
Greenpeace, Celebrating Chile's new whale sanctuary
Bushby, MERCOSUR divided
Reavey, Double standards in US policy toward Latin America
Partido Alternativa Popular, Extradite Posada Carriles to Panama
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