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1969 Dangerous Substances Act
That is the situation in 1969 when we have a new drug law, the first one in this
country's history that does not follow the formula. It is the 1969 Dangerous Substances
Act. For he first time in this country's history, we have a perception of an increase in
drug use during the Sixties, but instead of raising the penalties, we lower them. And,
further, in the Dangerous Substances Act of 1969, for the first time we finally abandon
the so-called "taxing" mythology.
In the 1969 Act, what the Federal law does is, it takes all the drugs we know -- if you
can't fill in this next blank, you are in trouble -- except two -- which two? Which two
are never going to be mentioned? Nicotine and alcohol. But, other than nicotine and
alcohol -- every other drug.
By the way, I tried this with the FBI for twenty years and they wouldn't listen, and
you won't listen either but, I am going to try. If you are going to go out and talk about
drugs and whatever you are going to do with drugs, will you please discard the entirely
antiquated and erroneous word "narcotics." Narcotics are drugs that put people
to sleep. Almost all of the drugs that we are interested in today don't do that.
So, in 1969, the Dangerous Substances Act gave up the effort to define what are
narcotic drugs. What the 1969 act did, and what most state laws still do, is to classify
all drugs except nicotine and alcohol by two criteria. What is the drug's medical use?
And, what is the drug's potential for abuse?
We put all the drugs, by those two criteria, in schedules, and then we tie the
penalties for possession, possession with intent to sell, sale, and sale to a minor to the
schedule of the drug in question. Now, again, I am no good at this anymore, I have not
kept up with the drug laws, I don't know who is in what schedule, and many states have
abandoned the schedule but, to give you a flavor of it: The first schedule, Schedule One
Drugs were drugs that had little or no medical use and a high potential for abuse. What's
going to go in there? LSD, marijuana, hashish, they are all in Schedule One -- little or
no medical use and a high potential for abuse.
Then you get some medical use, high potential for abuse -- what do you want there?
Barbiturates, amphetamines,.
Then we are going to get what? High medical use and high potential for abuse. Morphine,
codeine. Codeine is the best one because codeine is in almost every single prescription
cough medicine and it is addictive as can be.
Then you go on down and get the antibiotics -- high medical use, almost no potential
for abuse, and there you are.
Once you schedule your drugs, you then tie the penalties for the drugs to the schedule
and then, because in 1969 they wanted to reduce the marijuana penalties they had to deal
with marijuana separately and did so.
But the 1969 act important for two reasons again: One, we abandoned the taxing
mythology and; two, it was the first law in this country's history that, instead of
raising the penalties in every offense category, lowered them.
Well, then you know what happened. We get the War on Drugs. You know how it all went
down. We got perceptions in the 80s that there was an increase in drug use, a great
dramatic decision to declare war on drugs and, predominantly, war on drug users.
What I want to say to you is this, and this is where I think some of you are going to
be a little surprised. You know as much about that process as I do. You watched it. You
saw how we had one law after another, raising the penalties so that as late as 1990,
thirty percent of the minority group population of the City of Baltimore who are male and
between 20 and 29 are under court supervision for drugs. Thirty percent, that's the number
you are looking for.
The War on Drugs, a very interesting war, because why? It was cheap to fight. It was
cheap to fight at first -- why? You heard me in the "Recent Decisions" talk.
What was last year's big moment, and the year before? The change in cheap and easy
forfeiture. Criminal forfeiture was used to make this a costless war. That is, easy
forfeiture from those who were caught allowed us to pay for the war in that way. I think
we are going to have some real questions about whether people want to pay for the war on
drugs through their taxes because now the Court has made forfeiture much, much more
difficult in their overall concern for property rights.
But here is what I think may surprise some of you. You guys know as much about the War
on Drugs as I do. I didn't come hear to talk, or to harangue, or to give you any opinions
on that point. I think it speaks for itself. It is a failure and I think it will be judged
as a failure. What I wanted to bring you instead was, instead of talking about that that
everybody is talking about -- and you guys will ultimately resolve it and you guys are the
ones who are seeing all the drug cases, day in and day out, and always will, until this
changes. But, what I thought I could bring you was the part of the story you hadn't heard
-- how we got to where we were when the War on Drugs was declared.
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