I used to enjoy watching a television show about the war on drugs, the war between law enforcement and the drug gangs, and wars fought by the gangs against one another. There was routine maiming and murder, there were car chases with bullets flying, and drug lords engaging in a swaggering flouting of the law – until killed or caught. It was known as one of the most violent programs on television, so much so that the National Association for Better Radio and Television said it was “not fit for the television screen.” The Untouchables was everything an eight-year-old boy wanted to see.

Drug War I ended when the country regained its common sense and saw the folly, futility and tragedy of having outlawed an old, popular, and widely-used recreational drug: alcohol. Drug War II, now in its forty-fourth year, shows us to be either poor students of our own history or something worse.

I am mindful of the many years during which article after article appeared in this city’s newspapers about the lives lost to the violence of the drug trade, and those ruined by the criminal justice system. Every so often, a new list of names would appear in the press, distinguished-sounding English surnames which read like the names of the partners of some prestigious law or lobbying firm but were, instead, the names of the latest group of young black men charged as co-conspirators. These young men, whose entrepreneurial spirit would be applauded and championed under other circumstances, were regularly demonized, indicted, convicted and imprisoned. Yes, it is true that some of these men contributed to this city’s once-held title as the murder capital of America. Most did not, and fewer would have were it not for the criminalization of all recreational drugs. What’s worse, the criminalization carried racial overtones, leading to unconscionable disparities in sentencing and contributing to the disproportionate disruption of communities of color.      

The country’s current struggle against the trade in the illegal-drugs-of-the-moment is a study in asymmetrical warfare. This “war” has been, in essence, just a prolonged assault on the populace. We, the people, have no one to blame but ourselves. As a result of guilt, fear or apathy, we have allowed our elected leaders to enact draconian laws, we have silently watched the re-emergence of violent gangs, and we have given the drug warriors of law enforcement a task once meant only for Sisyphus; it has made some prone to exceed their authority, and others susceptible to criminality.

Imagine the state of things if the war were being fought with equal energy by both parties, if the American drug barons and baronesses took the fight to the authorities in the way their counterparts in Columbia and Mexico have been known to do. The regular killing of American judges, jurors, prosecutors and police by American drug gangs is not something with which we’re familiar. Its advent, no doubt, would begin a new conversation about the war and its efficacy, but there’s no reason to think those battle tactics would be adopted here. No. We, the people, seem content to continue down the path of least resistance, furthering the decimation of communities through mass incarceration.

The exceptions to this business-as-usual approach are the people who have thrown down the gauntlet American-style. They are the voters in the states of Colorado and Washington who – choosing ballots over bullets or the status quo – decided they had enough of the nonsense that is the nation’s drug policy. They walked into those voting booths as practicing law-breakers and emerged having changed the law in their favor: they decriminalized marijuana.

What has been the federal response to this exercise of states’ rights? The nation’s chief law enforcement officer tells us to wait and see. Three weeks ago, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Attorney General testified that the Justice Department is “considering what the federal response to those initiatives will be.”  The best he could come up with was “We will have the ability to announce what our policy will be relatively soon.” If he’s going to fight, “soon” had better mean before August, which is when the state of Washington intends to start issuing licenses. Let’s hope he has the strength to not fight, that he pays no attention to the collective wisdom of the eight former heads of the Drug Enforcement Administration who urged him to file suit, or to the International Narcotics Control Board, the United Nations agency that wants him to comply with drug control treaties. Let’s hope he paid close attention to the escape route offered by Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who cited sequestration as the reason he “would suggest there are more serious things than minor possession of marijuana.”

Here in 2013, the 80th anniversary of the end of Drug War I, one of those aforementioned former DEA heads thinks “It is outrageous that a lawsuit hasn’t been filed in federal court yet.” Reportedly, he lives near Chicago, the setting for The Untouchables. Despite a news report today touting a 42 percent drop in its murder rate, that city retains its current title as America’s deadliest. Have we learned nothing?