Anyone who cares about the safety of New Hampshire families and communities has a stake in helping to solve the problem of illicit drugs. The question is how best to get that done. Law enforcement, along with education and treatment, are the right tools to get at the drug epidemic we face.
Earlier this month, the New Hampshire Legislature passed HB 1000, also known as Granite Hammer, to help law enforcement combat the scourge of illicit drugs in our communities.
This measure creates a $1.5 million grant program in support of the state forensic science laboratory and overtime costs for law enforcement. The hope is that various agencies from around the state will submit grant applications and, using overtime for law enforcement officers, increase patrols in high-crime areas.
Law enforcement is focused on interdiction, preventing dealers from bringing drugs into our communities and selling them. Education is best early on, when kids are vulnerable, so that we can teach them to be the first level of defense and say no to drugs.
We also need to educate those in the medical field and patients to be careful about how and when prescribed opiates are used. Treatment is an effective tool to reduce demand for drugs. Education and treatment can cut off the demand for drugs that would have the added benefit of drying up the supply. Criminal drug dealers can’t operate an effective drug business without any customers.
Law enforcement is doing an admirable job as the “hammer” in the Granite Hammer program. However, there is a problem: When you are a hammer, everything – everyone – begins to look like a nail.
Recent statistics from the Manchester Granite Hammer program show that close to 50 percent of the arrests were for possession. Only 27 percent of arrests were for intent to sell and the remaining arrests were non-drug related. These statistics are telling. The goal is interdiction, but that is not what we are seeing when close to 50 percent of arrests are for possession, not an intent to sell drugs. Given evidence that heroin seems to be widely available in New Hampshire prison systems, wouldn’t these individuals – and the safety of our communities – be better served through treatment rather than incarceration?
During the debate on HB 1000, an amendment was introduced to try to change the narrative on this topic. No one discounts the admirable efforts of our law enforcement. But, when we box them into the role of “hammer,” have we not lost the broader objective of “protect and serve”?
The bipartisan amendment that I helped craft and sponsor would have left the $1.5 million of funding with law enforcement.
However, rather than simply play the role of hammer, it would have engaged them in their protect and serve role. Instead of directing drug dependent individuals to prison, where they will have access to drugs and will make additional drug and criminal contacts that can be accessed once they are out, those individuals would be directed toward treatment, cutting off the demand.
If individuals are not using drugs, criminal drug enterprises will fail under their own economic weight.
Unfortunately, this amendment was ruled non-germane and not permitted to be introduced.
Milton Friedman spoke about this topic in his forward to After Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century. In that forward he states: “Not since the collapse of the attempt to prohibit the ingestion of alcohol has our liberty been in such danger from the misnamed ‘war on drugs.’ . . . The high financial stakes enhance the danger to our liberty. They produce widespread corruption, which requires the use of ever more resources to monitor the monitors, and enable drug dealers to finance armies and arms not obviously inferior to the armies and arms of the drug warriors (police).”
As a country, we have spent over $1 trillion on the war on drugs since its inception. After the implementation of mandatory minimum sentences in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the New Hampshire prison population increased 10-fold.
Incarcerating drug dependent individuals does not reduce drug crime but amplifies the problem.
Let’s cut off the demand side of this scourge so that we can reduce crime and increase the safety of our communities.
Let’s work on laws that end the ever-escalating conflict against our own citizens. It is time to let law enforcement fulfill its role of protect and serve.
(Rep. Frank Edelblut of Wilton is an entrepreneur, job creator and a candidate for New Hampshire governor.)