While the reports did not tell us what number of those were drug offenders, the 1995 report did report that the bulk of the massive increase in incarceration of African Americans during the preceding 15 years had been due to drug policies. These and other reports reveal the destructive impact of a criminal justice system running out of control. We'd be crazy not to acknowledge there are billions of dollars involved in this, and that the capability to corrupt on both sides of the border is enormous. The question is not whether corruption exists, but what we can do about it. During his 1996 re-election campaign, President Clinton was addressing a group of Maryland high school students when he turned to the subject of drugs.
Drug use is illegal, and therefore it is wrong.
And the error of that statement, while seemingly innocuous, especially given the noble intention of trying to convince young people to stay away from drugs, is nonetheless an important and even a corrupt misinterpretation of the relationship between the law and morality. Diana McCague is founder and director of the Chai Project, a needle exchange program in New Brunswick, New Jersey. At night she drives a cab so that she can afford to continue this work, which she considers a matter of life and death. Through the end of 1996, an estimated 19,100 New Jersey residents, age 13 and older, either had injection-related AIDS or had died from it. Needle exchange programs have been found in study after study to reduce the transmission of the AIDS virus, as well as other blood-borne pathogens such as hepatitis, all without any measurable increase in drug use prevalence.