While
the Nixon administration was operating on the public
front to inject fear-provoking stereotypes of incurable
addicts into primetime television, to disseminate authoritative-sounding
statistics suggesting that there was an uncontrollable
heroin epidemic sweeping the nation-,-and to inform
journalists about the $18-billion crime wave being conducted
in America by new hordes of addicts, on the private
front it was receiving information from its own agencies
which did not fit the picture of imminent national peril,
and this information was kept private. As early as December,
1970, an interagency committee on narcotics and drug
abuse composed of representatives from the Department
of Defense, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs,
the Department of Labor, the Department of Housing and
Urban Development, the Office of Economic Opportunity,
the Veterans Administration. and the National Institute
of Mental Health reported to the Domestic Council that
"in terms of the size of the problem. for example
compared to the problems of alcoholism, mental illness.
automobile injuries and fatalities, the problem of drug
abuse is relatively small." It further cautioned:
Hasty and ill-considered policies
may not only be ineffective, but they may generate different
types of casualties and adverse consequences of the
medical, social, and legal nature, such as loss of respect
for the law, extensive arrest records [for youthful
violations] ... and accidental death and levels of dependence
hitherto unknown as a result, of leaks in widely dispersed
or poorly conceived methadone maintenance programs.
Since there were then more
than 9 million alcoholics compared to fewer than 100,000
known narcotics addicts, the White House strategists
agreed that the problem could not be presented simply
in terms of a menace to public health. A Domestic Council
staff report on national drug programs was prepared
in December, 1970, with the assistance of the National
Institute of Mental Health and other government agencies
involved in drug-abuse evaluation. It noted:
Alcoholism, though a much greater
public health and safety problem than other forms of
drug abuse, is not perceived in the public and political
minds as a great social and moral evil.... If the misuse
of all drugs-illicit drugs as well as alcohol and tobacco-was
discussed in only medical and public health terms, the
problem of drug abuse would not take on inflated importance
requiring an undeserved federal response for political
purposes.
This report further observed,
"If the misuse of drugs is viewed with proper perspective,
it is not in actuality a paramount national problem....
However, because of the political significance of the
Problem, visible, hard-hitting programs must be highlighted
to preclude irrational criticism." In this private
report the agencies of government dealing with drug
abuse admitted not only that narcotics was not a paramount
national problem but also that "the dimension of
the drug-using population is not known with any degree
of accuracy; we don't even know how many users are being
treated. . . ." In the spring of 197 1, the Domestic
Council found that there were no "hard" estimates
in any agency of the government of the number of addicts,
the amount they spent on narcotics each year, the amount
of theft they committed, or the effectiveness of law
enforcement on reducing addiction or theft. According
to Egli Krogh's recollection, the president himself
closely questioned John Ingersoll, asking him such questions
as "Are there less narcotics on the street [now]?
... Are there fewer addicts? Is there less crime related
to the use of narcotics? Can you show me that the problem
itself is being corrected by these operational indices
of success? Ingersoll bluntly told the President that
that the government had not yet approached answering
these questions, and the president, according to Krogh,
"just shook his head in disbelief."
Since the data of other government
agencies were equally elusive when it came to answering
these central questions about addiction posed by the
president, Krogh ordered the Office of Science and Technology,
in August, 1971, immediately to commission a complete
analysis of all available data on narcotics addiction
and crime. He subsequently explained to me that because
of the president's "sense of discomfort over ...
the statistical work" of the government agencies
directly engaged in drug programs, "we wanted an
independent unit under the Office of Science and Technology
who were professionals at data collection and analysis
to tell us whether or not the assumptions on which our
programs have been based were in fact sound." The
Office of Science and Technology (which is a part of
the executive office of the president) contracted out
the special presidential assignment to the Institute
for Defense Analysis (IDA), a think tank established
by the Joint Chiefs of' Stall' to analyze, independently,
military strategies and problems. IDA was given complete
access to all the data on drug abuse that the government
possessed.
Unlike previous groups that
had studied the problems of drug abuse in America, IDA
had no bureaucratic or financial interest in the outcome
of its study. The systems analysts at IDA began examining
the assumption that addicts steal billions of dollars'
worth of property to pay for their habit. They quickly
found that "expenditures for heroin and the value
of addict property crime is not known to within a factor
of four or five," which meant, in effect, that
the government estimates had no claim to being even
a rough measure of reality. The IDA analysts then went
on to test the truism, accepted for more than half a
century by government agencies and private treatment
centers, that addiction was a major cause of crime in
America. Even though it was generally known that a "majority
of heroin addicts have a history of criminality preceding
their abuse of the drug," as John Ingersoll noted
in a November 3, 1970, memorandum to Egli Krogh, and
therefore were not innocent persons compelled to commit
crimes, it was assumed that the cost of maintaining
their heroin habit forced them to commit more crimes
than they otherwise would have undertaken. To determine
whether this time-worn assumption was valid, the IDA
team focused on the summer of 1972, when a shipping
strike temporarily interrupted the supply of heroin
in Eastern cities and quintupled the street price of
the drug when it was available at all. If heroin addicts
had to finance their habit through theft, and psychologically
and physiologically had no choice over the amount of
the drug required to avoid physical illness and mental
pain (which was the definition of "addiction"),
then there should have been either a sharp increase
in crime in these Eastern cities or an increase in the
number of addicts enrolling in methadone-treatment programs
(where they would receive a free substitute for heroin).
The analysts found, however, that this elegant hypothesis
was, as Lord Keynes put it on another occasion, "murdered
by a gang of brutal facts." The crime rates did
not go up, even though prices increased, and addicts
did not enter treatment programs. The IDA report was
thus forced to conclude:
The little evidence available
suggests that during a time of severe heroin shortage,
addicts may not be willing or able to increase their
crime commensurately with the price increase, and therefore
they compensate by reducing their heroin consumption
and/or substituting other drugs. Also the data do not
suggest that entering treatment is the preferred option
[italics in the original].
This conclusion undermined
the entire theory of the heroin addict as it was developed
by Captain Hobson and his successors in American politics:
if heroin addicts could substitute other drugs, such
as barbiturates and amphetamines-which were manufactured
domestically and inexpensively-for heroin when it was
unavailable, or even "mature out" of using
it entirely in these periods of time, then they were
not actually addicted to heroin but had simply chosen
it when they could afford it. In this case, those addicts
who committed crimes could not be considered to be physically
compelled by their habit to commit crimes, but rather
they purchased heroin as a consumer good with the proceeds
from criminal endeavors.
By examining the records of
the jails in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1972,
IDA analysts found cogent evidence that criminal addicts
could indeed switch from heroin to amphetamines and
barbiturates when heroin became more expensive. All
arrestees in the Washington jails were subject that
year to urinalysis, which would show if they were using
opiates (heroin or methadone), amphetamines, or barbiturates.
During the East Coast dock strike that summer, IDA researchers
found that heroin use in the Washington jails dropped
from nearly 20 percent to 0, and commensurately that
the use of barbiturates and amphetamines among the arrestees
rose from 3 or 4 percent to nearly 20 percent. In other
words, most criminal addicts simply replaced heroin
with these other drugs without showing any discernible
signs of withdrawal or physical discomfort. During this
period in Washington, D.C., applicants for the methadone-treatment
program actually decreased even though there were no
waiting lists or other barriers to obtaining free methadone.
(Apparently, illicit drugs, which could be taken intravenously,
still had great appeal because of the "rush,"
or euphoric pleasure, they could provide.) Just as a
cigarette smoker is not addicted to a single brand,
but can switch to other brands if his preferred choice
is unavailable, the data suggested that the criminal
addict had great flexibility as to what drug, if any,
he would buy at a given time and could adjust consumption
to fit his current income. One evaluator of the IDA
report commented, "There seems to be very definitely
a significant number of addicts who have a choice of
which drug they will use or not use, and if they have
a choice about it, most of the projections we have been
making about heroin epidemics and crime don't really
work."
The IDA findings also provided
at least some explanation for vexing data coming in
from methadone-treatment centers in different cities.
This data showed that even when addicts were given a
free supply- of the heroin substitute methadone, they
did not reduce their theft activity, at least as it
was measured by criminal charges filed against them.
For example, 416 addicts enrolled in a New York methadone
program sponsored by the Addiction and Research Treatment
Corporation (ARTC) were evaluated by the Center for
Criminal Justice at Harvard University. Among the addicts
younger than thirty-one years of age. the only reductions
in criminal arraignments one year after they had begun
methadone treatment (compared with their records one
year prior to treatment) occurred in three categories:
drug offenses-by far the largest component of the total
reduction; forgery-, and prostitution. In all other
categories the rate of criminal charges filed against
these addicts actually increased, even though they were
receiving daily dosages of free methadone. Robbery charges
quadrupled; assault charges were up by almost 50 percent;
and even burglary and property-theft charges- increased
after one year of methadone treatment. If the full period
of a patient's addiction was taken as a measure, rather
than merely his peak year, the level of criminal charges
was actually higher after he used methadone for one
year than it was during an average year on heroin. Since
these addicts did not need to steal to finance their
habit (which the government financed for them), heroin
addiction could not be held to be the motivating force
behind their continued (and even criminal
behavior. Instead this evidence
strongly suggested that heroin use as well as the consumption
of other illicit products was merely a byproduct of
a life of crime.
Finally, the data systematically
collected by the Department of Defense in Vietnam in
1972 shattered what remained of the theory that most
heroin users were inexorably dependent on heroin. In
evaluating the effects of heroin on soldiers, the Department
of Defense provided the sort of laboratory conditions
that did not exist in civilian life: all soldiers were
compelled to submit to urinalysis to determine whether
or not they were using heroin or opiates. It turned
out, it will be recalled, that several hundred thousand
soldiers stationed in Vietnam used heroin between 1970
and 1972, and about 14 percent of these users were classified
as addicts, since they met the standard criteria of
both continuous heroin use and withdrawal symptoms should
they stop using heroin. Yet, when faced with the threat
of Army discipline (of not being allowed to leave Vietnam),
93 percent of those classified as addicts (and virtually
all the rest of the users) managed to stop using heroin
during their remaining months in the Army, where they
were subjected to daily urinalysis tests; and when tested
one year after their discharge, they were still abstaining
from heroin. Dr. Richard Wilbur concluded from this
data that "addiction is not a meaningful concept
in the vast majority of the cases; most soldiers used
heroin because of psychological and peer group pressures,
and because it was readily available.... When it was
no longer available, or when they faced detection or
penalty, they were able to simply give it up."
From Vietnam the government was finally able to obtain
massive data about the behavior of hundreds of thousands
of heroin users, and virtually none of the findings
supported the hoary myth of the "drug slave,"
or the addict who physiologically had no other choice
than to do what was necessary to obtain a daily supply
of heroin.
Despite the IDA report
(which was never made public) and the other evidence
that emerged from treatment centers the United States
and Vietnam, the Nixon administration continued to define
heroin as "the root cause of crime in America,"
as Myles Ambrose stated in speeches on drug abuse in
1972. After It became Unmistakably clear to the White
House strategists that reducing the supply of heroin
in the United States would not diminish crime (since,
as the IDA report suggested, criminal addicts would
simply move on to another drug), President Nixon continued
to demand extraordinary powers to reorganize the investigative
agencies of the government so that they could continue
the crusade against crime and drugs. Between 1968 and
1974, the federal budget for enforcing narcotics laws
rose from $3 million to more than $224 million-a seventyfold
increase. And this in turn gave the president an opportunity
to create a series of highly unorthodox federal offices.
The production of threatening images of the vampire-addict
which accompanied these executive actions, and created
the atmosphere of fear in which Congress passed without
consideration the necessary legislation and appropriations,
could not be undercut by the private knowledge that
was emerging in the reports and studies commissioned
by the White House: far more was at stake.
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