Escalating the war on drugs: causes and unintended consequences.

• Author: Benson, Bruce L.
• Position: Symposium: Drug Laws: Policy and Reform

1. INTRODUCTION

   Involvement in markets for some types of drugs has been illegal for over a century in the United States, and marijuana was added to the illicit drug category over seven decades ago. Police efforts to control drug production, sales, and consumption have never been as intensive as they are now, however, as the last two-plus decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion in the level of criminal justice resources allocated to drug enforcement efforts. Figure 1 illustrates this, using estimated total drug arrests in the United States as an indicator. Total drug arrests fell in the early 1980s (and late 1970s), (1) but the overall trend since the mid-1980s clearly is upward. Total drug arrests in 1989 reached a level almost two and a half times the total eight years earlier. While drug arrests fell for two years after 1989, arrests begin rising rapidly again in 1992, surpassing the 1989 peak in 1995. Drug arrests fluctuated some from year to year through 2002 before yet another rapid increase set in again in 2003, an escalation that continued through 2006 (the latest data available). Drug arrests in 2006 were 3.25 times what they were in 1980.

   The following presentation addresses two questions about the roughly two and a half decades of virtually continuous escalation in drug enforcement: (1) what caused the escalation to start in the 1980s and why has it continued, and (2) what are the consequences of this escalation on the level of non-drug crime? The answer to question (1) above is explained and supported in Part II. The escalation in the drug war resulted from incentives created for police to increase drug enforcement so they can seize and retain assets that are alleged to be used in or result from drug market activities. These incentives expanded dramatically as a result of a 1984 federal statute, and they have become stronger through subsequent federal and state legislation. These statutory changes allow policing agencies to keep the proceeds from civil asset seizures made in the course of drug investigations.

   Question (2) is answered in Part Ill. There are many undesirable, and perhaps unintended, consequences of the escalating drug war, including serious threats to civil liberties, as well as the devastating levels of violence and corruption in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. One consequence has attracted little attention outside of economics, however: escalating drug enforcement leads to higher rates of property and violent crime. The third column in Table 1, which shows the increasing number of drug arrests as a portion of total arrests (the second column lists the total arrest numbers that underlie Figure 1), suggests the reason for this result. Criminal justice resources like police (and prison space) are scarce. Increasing drug enforcement requires more resources, which can be obtained by transferring from other law enforcement activities, or by increasing law enforcement budgets, either through increased taxation or reduced spending on other government activities. Since the drug-arrest/total-arrest ratio from Table 1 for 2006 is 2.36 times what it was in 1980, the rapid escalation in drug arrests has been achieved, at least in part, by a reallocation of policing resources away from alternative uses. (2) This means that as scarce criminal justice resources are shifted into drug-law enforcement, fewer resources are available for the control of non-drug crimes, and these crimes are less effectively deterred. Empirical studies using data from Florida, New York, and Portugal, as well as multi-state and multi-national data, consistently show that as drug enforcement has escalated, both property and violent crime rates have increased relative to what they would have been. Drug enforcement causes property and violent crimes.

   The answers to these questions are not new, at least for economists engaged in drug policy research. The fact is that while these answers were first proposed in the economics literature over a decade and a half ago, the answer to the first question is generally dismissed by drug-war advocates and policy makers, while the answer to the second is not even recognized. (3) Yet, a large and growing empirical literature supports both answers. Therefore, the following presentation attempts to place these two interdependent answers into the policy arena. The level of empirical support that exists is stressed in order to at least try to force drug-warriors to acknowledge their potential relevance.

   [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] (4)

2. EXPLAINING THE ESCALATION IN DRUG ENFORCEMENT (6)

   President Reagan sounded a new battle cry in the war on drugs in October 1982] The federal criminal justice apparatus quickly responded to this call, but the bulk of such an offensive has to be waged by state and local "troops," and the fact is that U.S. state and local law enforcement agencies generally did not begin increasing their efforts against drugs until late 1984 or early 1985. (8) There are a number of alleged explanations for the state and local upsurge in drug enforcement that ultimately did occur. Many law enforcement personnel point to the introduction of crack cocaine and its consequences as the factor that motivated their increased efforts against drugs, for instance. However, according to Johnson, crack cocaine was not introduced into the U.S. until October or November of 1985, and then only in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles. (9) As an alternative explanation, perhaps many local elected officials, representing median voter preferences across the nation, simultaneously demanded that their police departments escalate the War on Drugs. There are strong indications that this explanation does not hold, however. For example, in 1985, "public opinion" surveys suggested that drug use was not considered to be an especially significant problem. In fact, there actually is some evidence that changes in public opinion about the seriousness of the "drug problem" follow changes in enforcement efforts rather than leading to changes in enforcement. (10) In this context, for example, former head of the New York office of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Robert Stutmann, explains how he manipulated the media to create the impression that there was a crack crisis (shortly after crack began to appear in New York), (11) beginning with media campaign in late November, 1985. (12) The first media publication resulting from this campaign was a New York Times article on November 29, 1985, and by August 1986, Stutmann had a 199-page bound volume containing New York-area newspaper articles about crack (the national media also picked up the story, with a Newsweek article in June, 1986).

   Yet another explanation is that powerful interest groups demanded the escalation in the drug war. It would, in fact, be surprising if this were not the case, since as Rhodes points out, "as far as crime policy and legislation are concerned, public opinion and attitudes are generally irrelevant. The same is not true, however, of specifically interested criminal justice publics." (13) Additional research implies similar conclusions, but also makes it clear that one of the most important "specifically interested criminal justice publics" consists of law enforcement bureaucracies and their employees. (14) As explained below, law enforcement groups are the source of demands for the legislation creating incentives for the significant reallocation of policing resources suggested by the third column in Table 1. The key piece of legislation in this regard is a section of the Comprehensive Crime Act of 1984, which requires the Justice Department to share federal drug-related property seizures with state and local agencies participating in the investigations. (15)

   1. Asset Seizure Allocations and Police Behavior

      Government seizure of property used in criminal activity is actually a longstanding practice. It was one stimulus for the King's involvement in law enforcement, perhaps as early as the ninth century, (16) for instance, and was first used in the United States to combat smugglers avoiding import duties in the early 19th century. More recently, federal policing agencies are using property seizures as a tool for combating drug market activity. The federal government confiscated over $100 million in 1983, for instance. This figure is small relative to federal seizures since 1984. Federal forfeitures reached $285 million in 1989, fluctuated between $281 million and $597 million from 1990 to 2005, and then jumped to over $703 million in 2006. (17)

      The 1984 Comprehensive Crime Act change in the federal asset forfeiture law relating to drug investigations was a bureaucratically-demanded legislative action allegedly "justified" as a means to expand inter-bureau cooperation. As an indication of this, note that during hearings before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives, held June 23 and October 14, 1983, much of the testimony focused exclusively on the seizure and forfeiture issues. (18) Among the organizations and bureaucracies presenting testimony in support of the forfeitures-sharing arrangement were the U.S. Customs Service, various police departments and sheriffs, the U.S. Attorney's Office from the Southern District of Florida, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. There was no representation of local government oversight authorities (mayors, city councils, or county commissions) who approve police budgets, either supporting or opposing such legislation, nor were there any corrections groups or victim organizations that often have a substantial impact on crime legislation. (19) When the change was first introduced, it appears that most non-law enforcement interests did not anticipate its implications, probably due to the poor "quality" of information selectively released by law enforcement bureaucracies and their congressional supporters. The only group...