[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9292-9293]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE WAR ON DRUGS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Tennessee (Mr. Cohen) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. COHEN. This past Friday, the United States would have observed--
``celebrated'' would be entirely the wrong word--the 40th anniversary 
of the war on drugs. The war on drugs was initiated by President 
Richard Nixon. He said we can have a war on drugs 40 years ago.
  The fact is, 40 years later, we've spent nearly a trillion dollars on 
the war on drugs. We have just as much drug use in this country as ever 
before. We've incarcerated millions and millions of people for 
victimless crimes. And when we get people who sell drugs, which we need 
to do, all that happens is like sharks teeth--they're replaced by the 
next in line; somebody else wanting to make money from a program that 
the public endorses and supports. So the war on drugs has been a 
terrible mistake.
  Now, don't get the wrong impression. I'm not suggesting that drug 
abuse and drug addiction is not a great problem that we must deal with. 
But our approach in treating it as a law enforcement matter and not as 
a health matter, a health care issue, has led to prison populations 
increasing, racial disparities of the greatest source in this Nation in 
the arrest process, and a lost generation of people with no education 
and no job prospects because those arrests haunt them for the rest of 
their lives.
  Think about how many law enforcement resources have been wasted on 
drug arrests--nonviolent drug arrests--when policemen could be spending

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their time working against violent crime and crimes that are dangerous 
to people--robberies and murders and assaults and other offenses that 
are truly important to the American public. It has been estimated that 
the total criminal justice cost of marijuana arrests for State and 
local governments is as much as $7.6 billion a year. That averages out 
to about $10,000 per arrest. Think of all the serious criminals that 
could have been arrested instead.
  I was shocked recently to read that the New York City Police 
Department arrested 50,000 people for low-level marijuana offenses last 
year. New York City, 50,000 arrests for low-level marijuana offenses. 
This was more than during a 19-year period between 1978 and 1996 
combined. Marijuana use has not skyrocketed in the last year, but 
arrests have ramped up. They use arrests as a basis to get people, 
particularly people of color, where it's seven times more likely you'll 
be arrested if you're African American and four times more likely 
you'll be arrested if you're Latino, and more likely if you're African 
American or Latino that you'll spend the night in jail than if you're 
Caucasian, as a way to take people and arrest them and deprive them of 
what should be their basic civil rights to go around the city.
  Our local budgets are straining like never before. And yet we see 
more arrests. It's time that we question this policy, this war, knowing 
that insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and 
expecting a different result. This is insane. For 40 years we've had 
this war on drugs. We've had a war on our own citizens. We've wasted 
moneys that can be used for better things. And we've treated what is a 
health problem and a societal problem as a law enforcement problem. It 
is a mistake. We need to change our approach.
  Drug courts have been a successful way to deal with this problem. We 
have drug courts in my community that have been successful in getting 
people to see a different approach to life--not a jail, but a different 
approach. Racial disparities that I mentioned have been tremendous. It 
is seven times more likely if you're African American, four times more 
like if you're a Latino, to be arrested. These inequities run 
throughout our drug policy program and need to directed. We corrected a 
discrepancy between powder cocaine and crack last year. It was 100-to-1 
before we changed the law. It's now 18-to-1 in quantity. Still, it 
should be equal. And it results in racial disparities once again.

                              {time}  1010

  I have introduced legislation, the Justice Integrity Act, which would 
study those disparities and a Byrne Program Accountability Act which 
would require States to do studies on their racial disparities. The 
fact is law enforcement makes arrests for these crimes sometimes to 
justify getting Byrne funds and getting funds from the Federal 
Government for the purpose of getting money into their programs and not 
providing justice.
  We need to have expungement laws so that people who have had 
nonviolent drug offenses can have their records expunged and go on to 
get employment and have a successful life in America. I have introduced 
the Fresh Start Act that says if you have a nonviolent Federal offense 
and you've spent 7 years and had a clean life, you can get your record 
expunged. This needs to become the law and give people a second chance. 
Otherwise, they can't get jobs and they resort to crime.
  Medical marijuana is an issue that's come up in this country and most 
States that have had the opportunity to deal with it have passed it, 
mostly by percentages of over 60 percent. I had a good friend named 
Oral James Mitchell. Oral James Mitchell was a Navy SEAL and one of the 
strongest, toughest, best friends I ever had. When O.J. was 54, he got 
pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer destroys a person, just whittles 
them away. And a guy who was 210 pounds, who could do all those things 
the SEALs do, the hand-to-hand and the paratroops, he used medical 
marijuana, and his mother said, Thank God for the marijuana. It allowed 
Oral to have a sense of humor and to eat. It worked.
  I yield back the balance of my time and urge us to solve the war on 
drugs by getting out of it. It is a war. It is a crime.

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