A new version of the war on drugs won’t work – Orange County Register

Pomona Police seized several drugs during an investigation on Thursday, July 5. (Courtesy of Pomona Police Department)

Last week, Governor Gavin Newsom indicated that he both understands and does not understand the problem of America’s long-running war on drugs.

On Wednesday, Newsom criticized the decision of U.S. Assembly Public Safety Committee Chairman Kevin McCarty to stop Senate Bill 1502. The bill, introduced by Senator Angelique Ashby, would classify the commonly used veterinary sedative xylazine as a Schedule III substance and make it subject to criminal prosecution.

Xylazine is increasingly used as an adulterant in fentanyl, which is used as an adulterant and substitute for heroin. As Reason Magazine’s Jacob Sullum explained, this is “a well-known consequence of prohibition, creating a black market where the drug’s composition is highly variable and unpredictable.”

In response to SB 1502, the Drug Policy Alliance warned, “Including xylazine in the CSA will result in disproportionate prosecution and conviction of people struggling with substance use, including people who may not know that their drug supply contains xylazine.” In addition, the DPA states, “Historical evidence shows that banning substances does not reduce overdose rates. Instead, it creates a dangerous cycle that exposes drug users to new and potentially more dangerous alternatives from unknown sources.”

In fact, according to Jeffrey Singer of the Cato Institute, even riskier substances are on the way to replacing xylazine if the latter becomes more difficult to access. “As is usually the case in the war on drugs, politicians are fighting the last battle while drug trafficking organizations are opening new fronts,” he wrote in a comment on the Cato Institute’s blog.

Accordingly, SB 1502 was held up. But Newsom, conscious of the need to look like a future president, complained about the bill’s derailment. “I think it was a big mistake that a member of the legislature vetoed the tranquilizer bill, the xylazine bill,” Newsom said. “That was a big mistake. That’s why I’m very active on that front.”

No, it was not a “mistake” to pass a law that simply duplicates the drug war failures of the last half century. It is perfectly reasonable to take a more moderate and considered approach.

Newsom wants to be seen as a tough drug politician, but at the same time he doesn’t seem to be too tough. At a press conference in Oakland, he criticized Bill 36, which, among other things, provides that certain cases of drug possession can be charged as crimes.

“I’m very concerned about this drug policy reform that enforces possession and makes it a crime,” Newsom said. “And it will increase our prison population by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, over the next decade at a tremendous cost to taxpayers. And I don’t think that’s an improvement in public safety.”

While this editorial board has not yet taken a position on Proposition 36, we share the governor’s concerns about any proposal that could be used to jail or incarcerate more people for simple drug possession – or, for that matter, increase the stigma and collateral consequences of a drug possession conviction alone.

Drug addiction and drug overdoses are undoubtedly serious problems. But neither problem could ever be solved with the sledgehammer of the criminal justice system. If anything, both problems have been exacerbated by the notion that we can arrest our way out of these problems. We cannot.

This does not mean that we cannot or should not hold drug addicts accountable when they violate the rights and welfare of others. We should.

The problems we face today are similar to those of alcohol prohibition a century ago and of the various drug prohibitions of the past half century. Like the naive student who believes that communism can work but hasn’t really been tried yet, the drug prohibitionists among us mistakenly believe that if we just try harder, prohibition can work. It won’t.