Ending the War on Drugs

President Nixon coined the term “war on drugs” in 1969, and began fighting the problem of drug use with arrests and prison time. Since then every administration has more or less done the same. In what may be a major shift, though, the Obama administration’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, says he wants to get rid of the term “war on drugs” altogether, and focus more on treatment instead. To discuss the implications of this possible policy shift is Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon.com and he just wrote a Cato Institute-funded study, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies, published last month.