A journalist remarked to me at a conference conducted by the Drug
Policy Foundation that he believed that at some point the gap between
what the Drug Warriors were promising and what they were achieving
would become so apparent that the U.S. citizenry would be forced to
seriously consider decriminalization. Unfortunately, I do not share his
optimism.

The gap between what the prison system has promised and what it
has achieved has been apparent for over a century, but few people (in
this country at least) are calling for the abolition of prisons. On the
contrary, the administration is building more and more prisons and a
large segment of the public seems to support this extravagant, useless,
and destructive expense.

The logic behind continued prison construction and the continuation
of the War on Drugs seems to be something like this: Prisons have been
a failure, so more prisons will be a success; punishment has been a
failure, so more punishment will be a success; criminalization and en-
forcement have been a failure, so more criminalization and enforcement
will be a success. It's not the kind of logic that appeals to every intellect,
but it is apparently sufficient for many.

In fact, the political climate of the past decade has produced an in-
creasing willingness to mobilize repressive strategies to deal with many
social problems, especially those that most affect the poor and margin-
alized. The zeal for repression seems to be absent in, for example, sent-
encing guidelines for corporate criminals and the prosecution of S&L
racketeers and subverters of the Constitution. We seem a very long way

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