NCJ Number
170949
Date Published
1998
Length
0 pages
Annotation
This video documentary examines America's drug policies and their effects, with attention to differences between the public health and criminal justice models of drug policy.
Abstract
The video solicits the opinions of citizens and politicians in Arizona in the context of a referendum on a bill that would permit incarceration only for violent drug offenders and mandate drug treatment for nonviolent drug users. The bill was supported by an alliance that represented a cross-section of the political spectrum. The video critiques the effectiveness of the dominant national drug policy, which gives priority to the use of criminal sanctions and law enforcement efforts to diminish the supply and demand of drugs. The narrator concludes that the supply of and demand for drugs continues even after years of an intensive use of coercive and punitive attacks on drug suppliers and users. Interviews with those who support a stronger emphasis on treatment programs and prevention programs focus on the effectiveness and costs of treatment compared to the use of incarceration. The discriminatory aspects of the current drug policy are also noted; poor, minority drug users end up in jails and prisons, and wealthy drug users end up in drug treatment programs that they pay for themselves. The video also compares and contrasts national policy toward alcohol and tobacco marketing and use compared with the policy toward illicit drugs. For other videos in the series, see NCJ-170948 and 170950-52.