John P. Walters is a drug policy expert who served as Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009. He wrote for The Weekly Standard over two decades, contributing extensively on drug policy, marijuana legalization, and the political dynamics surrounding substance abuse issues. His articles consistently argued against drug legalization and examined the consequences of shifting enforcement priorities.
Last week, the White House quietly, and unnoticed by any news organization, released the 2015 heroin production estimate for Mexico—it was another huge spike upward to an historic level. The amount of pure heroin produced in Mexico rose to 70 metric tons in 2015, a 67-percent increase over 2014,…
Nearly 50,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2014, the latest year for which there are statistics, with heroin overdose deaths alone increasing 440 percent over the previous seven years. On March 29, at an Atlanta summit on drug overdose deaths, President Barack Obama acknowledged that more…
No one who laments the passing of First Lady Nancy Reagan will fail to acknowledge what has become perhaps her signature contribution to American life. "Just say no," she famously replied to a young school girl who asked her what to do when presented with drug use.
President Obama's National Drug Control Strategy in 2010 first proclaimed the major policy goals of the administration's approach to the drug problem and the goals were to be met by 2015. Not only have they not been met, in critical instances, the policies have been going in the wrong direction,…
“We … say for first time non-violent drug offenders, no more prison. They are going to mandatory inpatient drug treatment because this is a disease, and the war on drugs has been a failure. . . . And what we need is a country and a President who will stand up and say this is a disease and we need…
After the removal of Ronald Rogers, the long-serving Pardon Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice who failed to please President Obama over issues of clemency, his replacement, Deborah Leff, has begun to operate the new ‘Clemency Project 2014.’ It is an effort to turn felons back on the…
On Monday, President Obama announced the results of his war on unjust sentences and the incarceration of large numbers of low-level, non-violent drug offenders. Now in the seventh year of his presidency, he has added just 46 federal felons to the list of those whose sentences he has commuted.
“The quality of mercy is not straine’d,” implored Shakespeare’s Portia, meaning it should not be difficult or forced. But President Obama’s Clemency Project, an effort to free “a whole bunch of good citizens who committed one little mistake” and ended up with more than 10 years in prison, is…
On Monday, Senator Rand Paul told CBS radio host Dom Giordano that if he were the Republican nominee for president he would attack Hillary Clinton on crime. “I’ll ask Hillary Clinton, what have you done for criminal justice? Your husband passed all the laws that put a generation of black men in…
At a Manhattan fundraiser yesterday (as noted by The Hill), potential presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke of the rioting in Baltimore by invoking a theme of the Obama administration: the need for reform of the criminal justice system.
President Obama this week told an audience in Jamaica that U.S. efforts against illegal drugs were “counterproductive” because they relied too much on incarceration—particularly for “young people who did not engage in violence.”
A poll reported in the Washington Post on September 23 offers positive news for those troubled by the movement to legalize marijuana. It also does not augur well for those pushing more states to follow Colorado and Washington, where legalization is already underway.
President Obama visited Denver this week, was offered marijuana, and laughed. His administration made possible the open marketing and use of marijuana in Colorado and Washington state by directing that federal law not be enforced. The president is joined by Hillary Clinton and Rand Paul in…
When asked during a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour last night whether she used drugs, Hillary Clinton was admirably firm. Had she done marijuana? “Absolutely not,” she replied. “I didn't do it when I was young, I'm not going to start now.” She is, however, more wavering when it comes to…
The legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has spawned reports of increased use, declining perception of risk, increased neonatal risk, drug tourism, diversion of public assistance to fund use, creation of significantly more powerful forms of the drug, and new financial rules to…
With his unique appeal to the young, President Obama has suddenly transformed the “experiments” in Colorado and Washington state into an experiment involving every kid in America.
Several weeks ago in San Francisco, Attorney General Eric Holder told the American Bar Association that our criminal justice system is too harsh, too costly, and gives convicted African-American males sentences 20 percent longer than others for similar crimes.
For anyone who feared that the Obama administration would abandon efforts to control illegal drugs, the president’s first year in office has been on balance reassuring.
In recent months, more Americans have learned what those living on the border have known for several years: the Mexican government is in a deadly fight with extremely violent gangs.
SO MUCH TIME HAS passed since the crack epidemic of the 1980s that some only remember it for "48 Hours on Crack Street" (a June 1986 special in which Dan Rather took to the streets with a thundering herd of 18 camera crews and 25 producers) or the cocaine-induced heart attack three days later that…
THE WAR ON CRIME AND DRUGS is rapidly losing ground to the war on punishment and prisons. Recently, Newsweek featured Robert Downey Jr. on the cover, along with a series of articles and essays on the drug problem with the general theme that law enforcement and incarceration don't work and that we…
IN ONE OF THE MOST COMPELLING TV ADS in the White House's new anti-drug campaign, 13-year-old Oakland native Kevin Scott talks about the daily nightmare he faces walking home from school past open-air drug markets. "The dealers are scared of police, but they aren't scared of me. And they don't take…
HIS YOUNG AUDIENCE KNEW Bill Clinton was talking about marijuana, but imagine for a moment that the soon-to-be president was referring instead to cigarettes in the 1992 forum he conducted with young people on MTV. Asked whether he would "inhale" given the chance to do it "over again," Clinton…