The Drug War in Texas
Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Issues Chair
As recent events in Texas illustrate, crime, punishment and corruption are integral to the drug war. According to the Dallas Morning News the murder rate in Dallas for 2004 was a horrifying 20 per 100,000 population. A Legislative Budget Board report has predicted that Texas will have to build five new prisons in the next six years to keep incarcerating at the current rate. Dallas agreed to settle four of nine federal civil rights lawsuits stemming from the fake drug scandal.
Almost all the murder victims in Dallas were minority young men involved in the illegal drug trade. In 1900, anyone could walk into a drug store and buy cannabis, cocaine and morphine. Even children commonly used these drugs as medicine. The national murder rate was 1.2 per 100,000 population. Murder rates soared to 9.7/100,000 when alcohol was an illegal drug. The rate dropped to less than half that during the 1950s but soared again after Richard Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Agency and declared the drug war that we're fighting today.
Texans are imprisoned at rates that are unprecedented in the free world, more than 700 per 100,000, six times the rates of Maine and North Dakota, seven times the European rate. The Texas prison system is at 97.5% of capacity. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is asking legislators for an emergency appropriation of $62 million. The University of Texas Medical Branch is asking for an additional $32 million fearing it will face lawsuits if it cuts prison medical care further.
Nearly half the 77,000 inmates who entered Texas prisons in fiscal 2004 were not incarcerated because they committed new crimes, but because of parole or probation violations. "The huge issue is revoking probationers," according to Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston). “We have got to break this trend toward expanding our prison system when it's being led by nonviolent offenders." Parolees often miss required meetings and are returned to prison because they know they will fail a drug test--sometimes, simply because they do not have money for the required drug test and supervision fees. In a January 26th editorial, The Houston Chronicle said, “The system should work to make communities safer. Instead, it sets up arbitrary obstacles that block petty criminals' re-entry into productive society….”
Follow up on last year’s article (“Free Speech on Drugs,” Dallas VOTER, April, 2004)—In June, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ruled that the Istook Amendment, which cut off federal funds from transit authorities if they accepted ads promoting drug policy reform, was unconstitutional. In January, Solicitor General Paul Clement announced that he will not appeal saying, “The government does not have a viable argument.”