Chautauqua Drug Discussion Material

The following facts and statistics convincingly demonstrate that prohibitionist drug policies are not only extremely costly and highly unsuccessful, but they also inhibit medical treatment, incarcerate or harass vast numbers of non-violent citizens, subsidize black markets, trample basic human and constitutional rights, break up families, and generally do a lot more harm to society than the behavior they are intended to suppress.

• Legal Statistic: 642,000 people were arrested in the United States in 1996 for marijuana. (Courtesy, NORML).
• Latest Federal Government Survey: 70 million Americans have tried marijuana in their lifetime; 20 million have smoked in the last year; 10 million have smoked in the last month. (Courtesy, NORML).
• Number of Americans legally receiving doctor-prescribed marijuana from the Federal Government: 8.
• 1999 Federal Budget for the War on Drugs: $17.1 billion, an increase of $1.1 billion from 1998 expenditures. (Courtesy, Office of National Drug Control Policy).
• Tobacco-related illness in the United States causes more than 400,000 deaths per year.
• Arrests for drug law violations in 1998 are expected to exceed the 1.47 million arrests of 1996. (Courtesy, DrugSense).
• Ticking Clock: In the United States, one person is arrested every 20 seconds for drugs. In 1998, the Federal Government is spending $508 per second on the War on Drugs. (Courtesy, DrugSense).
• Approximately 42,786 people are expected to be incarcerated for drug law violations in 1998. About 117 are imprisoned every day. (Courtesy, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics).
• Preventable HIV Infections this Year: Over 7,000 new HIV infections can be prevented before the year 2000 if the federal ban on needle exchange funding is lifted this year. About 10 new cases could be prevented every day. (Courtesy, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, University of California, San Francisco).
• Current Federal Prison Population exceeds 100,000 people; it is projected to exceed 130,000 by the end of the decade. Only 3% of federal inmates are violent criminals. Over 60% are drug offenders. (Courtesy, "Human Rights and the Drug War").
• Since Mandatory Minimums were enacted, the number of women inmates has tripled. The majority of them are first time, nonviolent, low-level drug offenders. (Courtesy, "Human Rights and the Drug War").
• Over 80% of the female prisoners in the United States are mothers; 70% are single parents. (Courtesy, "Human Rights and the Drug War").
• An African-American male is seven times more likely to be incarcerated than the average American citizen. (Courtesy, "Human Rights and the Drug War").
• Legalized drugs and The Netherlands: There were 2.4 drug-related deaths per million inhabitants in the Netherlands in 1995. In France this figure was 9.5, in Germany 20, in Sweden 23.5 and in Spain 27.1. (Courtesy, 1995 Report of the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction).
• Drug Policy in the Netherlands: "The main aim of the drugs policy in the Netherlands is to protect the health of individual users, the people around them, and society as a whole. Priority is given to vulnerable groups, and to young people in particular. Policy also aims to restrict both the demand and supply of drugs. Active policies on care and prevention are being pursued to reduce the demand for drugs, while a war is being waged on organised crime in an attempt to curb supplies. A third aim of policy is to tackle drug-related nuisance and to maintain public order. The Netherlands now has twenty years' experience of working with these policies on drugs." (Courtesy, Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, The Netherlands, April 1997).
• "In order to appreciate the Dutch approach to the drugs problem, certain characteristics of Dutch society must be kept in mind. The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated, urbanised countries in the world. It has a population of 15.5 million, occupying an area of no more than 41,526 square kilometres." (Courtesy, Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, The Netherlands, April 1997).
• European average of AIDS victims who were intravenous drug users: 32.9%. Percentage in The Netherlands: 10.5%. The number of addicts in the Netherlands has been stable - at 25,000 - for many years. (Courtesy, Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, The Netherlands, April 1997).
• "There are very few young heroin addicts in the Netherlands, largely thanks to the policy of separating the users markets for hard drugs and soft drugs. The average age of heroin addicts is now 36." (Courtesy, Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, The Netherlands, April 1997).
• "Woe to you, my princess, when I come. I will kiss you quite red and feed you until you are plump. And, if you willfully resist, you shall see who is the stronger, a gentle little girl who doesnít eat enough or a big, wild man with cocaine in his veins." -- Sigmund Freud, 1884, letter to fiancee.
• In the November 1998 elections, four more states (Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada) passed initiatives for medical marijuana.
• "The money paid for drugs is not based on the real value of the drugs themselves, but on the risk of delivery, which in turn is the result only of the law. This presents us with an economic crisis of enormous impact, wherein a person with no skills, experience, or education can have an income (tax-exempt) greater than the highest paid individual in the entire industrial world. Such a situation destroys the mutually agreed upon basis of modern society, which is the assumption that a person is rewarded, or remunerated in direct relation to their contribution to the economic whole." -- Owsley Stanley, 1998, "Win the war with no more casualties."
• "Heroin may be safe-- maybe. But if you're gonna buy it on the street, chances are it's gonna be cut with aspirin, or powdered milk, or rat poison, or speed, or Comet-- and all that s#$@ is so bad for you." -- "Dave," age 27, San Francisco, California; as quoted from "The Haight Street Flyer," July, 1998.

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