Conrad Black: Drug prohibition is dumb on crime

U.S. prisons are overcrowded due to failed drug laws. Now Canada is set to follow suit.

Conrad Black and Evan Wood, Comment, The National Post:

Stephen Harper’s government has pledged to implement more severe criminal sentences — including for drug crimes — and a more Spartan regime in the country’s correctional institutions. In light of his recent election to a majority government, a re-examination of policy in this area is more urgent than ever.

Here in Canada, this thinking is the basis for proposed federal mandatory minimum sentencing legislation. Unfortunately, like archaic cultures that clung to the belief that the Earth was flat, those who support mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes are willfully ignorant of the near universal consensus that mandatory minimum sentences are both extremely costly and ineffective.

While mandatory minimums and “tough on crime” approaches have traditionally received strong support from U.S. conservatives, the serious negative consequences of mandatory minimum sentencing legislation is now increasingly recognized. In a recent Washington Post editorial titled “Saving Money, Saving Lives,” Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives (and recently announced presidential candidate), and former Republican leader of the California State Assembly Pat Nolan announced their endorsement, along with other prominent U.S. conservatives, of the “Right on Crime” Campaign — a national movement aimed at reducing the nation’s bloated prison system.

Other prominent U.S. conservatives also have joined the debate. Reverend Pat Robertson, a prominent figure in U.S. Christian conservative politics, highlighted the failure of tough drug laws in a December edition of his television show The 700 Club, stating: “Lock ’em up, you know. That’s the way these guys ran, and they got elected. But that wasn’t the answer.” He went on to state: “It’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people.”

In addition to their extreme cost, mandatory sentences also have failed to reduce drug availability. Despite the United States spending an estimated $2.5-trillion on the “War on Drugs” in the last 40 years — and currently spending nearly $100-billion on corrections annually — drug-use surveillance systems funded by the National Institutes of Health have concluded that over the last 30 years marijuana has remained “universally available to American 12th graders,” with greater than 80-90% saying the drug is “very easy” or “fairly easy” to obtain.

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