As Senate Democrats used the extended Congressional session to pass executive nominations, the body, without fanfare on Monday, approved of legislation to expand the War on Drugs.
But opponents are hoping the bill will die as quietly as it was passed. The measure has not been taken up by the House, and runs counter to the spirit of recently passed laws that relax federal restrictions on drug use.
The Transnational Drug Trafficking Act of 2013, a bill co-authored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), passed by unanimous consent. Two key provisions of the bill would grant the Justice Department with additional authority to target foreign persons exporting drugs to the US through a third country and people in the US importing a chemical “intending or knowing that it will be used to manufacture a controlled substance.”
Feinstein and Grassley, co-chairs of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, issued statements saying the proposed law would reduce the supply of drugs in the US. Critics of the War on Drugs, however, claim that the proposal, if passed, would amount to the latest foolish maneuver in a game of law enforcement Whack-a-Mole.
“The drug trade is too large of an enterprise. There are too many ways to transport and manufacture drugs,” said David Borden, executive director of a pro-legalization group called StoptheDrugWar.Org. “The laws may, for example, make things harder for a given criminal trafficking organization in Mexico, and maybe you’ll have less Mexican meth, but that would result in more meth labs here.”
He said his group, unsurprisingly, is “not so impressed with the main pieces of the legislation.”
“We think they’d do better focusing their efforts on positive public health efforts that help people,” he added. “Someone is going to get the drugs to people when there’s money in it.”
Michael Collins, the Washington-based policy director for Drug Policy Alliance, described the legislation as being akin to something one might see after being “put in a time machine and taken back to the 1980’s.”
“Most Americans realize the drug war has failed, and this prohibitionist model cannot succeed and has not succeed,” Collins said. He called Grassley and Feinstein “very out of touch with what most Americans now believe, and out of touch with the dialogue going on in Latin America.”
Citing evidence of increasingly permissive attitudes in the US, Collins pointed to last week’s “Cromnibus” budget passage. One provision will prevent US taxpayer money from funding the prosecution of patients who legally use medicinal marijuana in accordance with state laws. Another, while restricting appropriations for the measure, refuses to outright ban the legalization of cannabis in the District of Columbia after a referendum on the issue in the nation’s capital passed by a landslide.
In further evidence that the tide is turning, the Justice Department also said last week that it would grant Native American tribes permission to legalize marijuana.
The entire hemisphere is undergoing something of a transformation, Collins said. The liberalization of drug laws in Uruguay and Colombia, for example, show that the US could encounter some difficulty in attempting to ramp up global enforcement of its War on Drugs.
Congress might even see the writing on the wall, despite the Senate’s move on Monday.
“The legislation isn’t going anywhere. The House hasn’t even had a hearing on it,” Collins said. “This is a messaging thing for Sens. Feinstein and Grassley, who are on the wrong side of history when it comes to the Drug War.”
