[Currents header graphic]

May 10, 1999

Reinarman honored for lifetime achievement in scholarship on drug policy

By Jennifer McNulty

Drug policy in the United States is the most repressive and ineffective in the industrialized world, says UCSC sociologist Craig Reinarman, who is receiving a lifetime achievement award from the Drug Policy Foundation.

Craig Reinarman
Photo: Jennifer McNulty

A vocal critic of U.S. drug policy, Reinarman has spent 25 years studying various aspects of drugs and drug policy, including use and abuse patterns, addiction and incarceration rates, treatment options, health risks, and the relationship between drugs and violent crime. His cross-cultural work has compared the effectiveness of prohibition in the United States to more liberal policies in countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia.

On May 15, Reinarman, a professor of sociology, will receive the 1999 Alfred R. Lindesmith Award for Achievement in the Field of Scholarship from the Washington, D.C.-based Drug Policy Foundation. The foundation is an independent nonprofit organization with more than 20,000 members that publicizes alternatives to the "war on drugs." The award recognizes scholars who "question the conventional assumptions regarding drugs and drug policy and who report these findings even though they are at odds with current dogma."

"The ranks of those who are critical of prevailing drug policy in America are growing," said Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union and president of the Drug Policy Foundation. "What makes Reinarman special is his dispassionate scholarship, his fidelity to facts, and his analytic skewering of false claims and official disinformation."

The author of two books on cocaine, Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice and Cocaine Changes: The Experience of Using and Quitting, Reinarman has written more than 25 scholarly articles about drugs and drug policy and has presented dozens of papers at professional meetings.

"It is extremely valuable to have the kind of scholarly work that Craig Reinarman has produced," said Joseph McNamara, the former police chief of the city of San Jose and a current member of the Drug Policy Foundation's executive committee. "His work refutes many of the hysterical statements the federal government has made in the propaganda war on drugs. That doesn't mean we're in favor of drug use; we're saying that the government's approach has failed, and it's time to explore alternatives."

Reinarman began researching drug use as part of his alternative service when he was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.

"I've spent a lot of my career debunking the lies perpetrated by drug warriors and bureaucrats in this country, and I have consistently pushed for a more humane, effective way of dealing with the problem of drug abuse," said Reinarman. "We have a very long history of vilification and demonization of these substances, but the truth is that drug laws have always been used to control undesirable or threatening groups, usually minorities, and especially blacks and Latinos."

Reinarman notes that U.S. drug policy makes almost no distinctions between drugs. There were more than 600,000 arrests last year for marijuana, despite research that overwhelmingly shows it isn't addicting and is one of the least harmful psychoactive substances compared to alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drugs.

"Our drug policy isn't about safety or public health," said Reinarman. "It's about whose morality is going to be dominant. One hundred years from now, people will look back at our drug policies the way we look at witch burning now."

Reinarman has found the government's distortion or disregard of scientific evidence particularly galling. "Growing up, I was taught that what made the United States different from the repressive government of the Soviet Union was that our government was based on truth rather than propaganda," said Reinarman. "That was before events like Watergate showed us that the government lied to us about all manner of things."

As a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, Reinarman worked at the Institute for Scientific Analysis in San Francisco and interviewed the former director of a morphine maintenance clinic that had operated in Shreveport, Louisiana, in the 1920s. "Contrary to the mythology put out by the federal government, many of those clinics did not fail," said Reinarman. "The clients in Shreveport weren't leading lives of crime. In fact, many of them were employed and able to go about their lives."

Reinarman is hopeful that the drug reform movement is gaining momentum. More than ten major organizations are pushing for alternative drug policies, and voters in eight states have passed medicinal marijuana initiatives.

Reinarman and McNamara, who is also a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, were among 500 prominent scholars, political and public health leaders, and Nobel Laureates from around the world who signed an open letter to the secretary general of the United Nations last June, saying they believed the global war on drugs was causing more harm than drug abuse itself. Other signatories to the letter, which was published in the New York Times, included former Secretary of State George Schultz, economist Milton Friedman, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, and journalist Walter Cronkite.


To the Currents home page

To UCSC's home page