In many areas there is a broad consensus on the goals of social policy, but the means to achieve these goals is always controversial. For ethical and practical reasons it is rarely possible to set up a controlled experiment to test the practical result of a particular policy and so, all too often we impose policies that either make no difference or actually have a negative effect. Since the outcomes of most social policy initiatives are extremely complex and take many years to become evident, they often seem to be a traditional part of our culture and therefore sacrosanct and unchangeable.
There are, however, a few experiments in social policy whose results are available for all to study. Unfortunately, even when the negative and far reaching practical effects of a policy are widely known, there are still many who fight to retain it because for moral or religious reasons they think it should work. The most obvious example is the set of policies surrounding the control of various mind altering substances. The use of mind altering substances is so widespread in all societies that we can assume that there is something very human about such activities. Therefore, the goal of social policy has to be to control the use of such substances to reduce harm to individuals and to society. The most obvious way to do this is to make such substances illegal and to punish those who supply and use them. The United States experiment with this approach for the most common substance to be abused is known as Prohibition or as its promoters referred to it as the Noble Experiment. From 1920 until 1923, the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcohol were banned by the eighteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. Undoubtedly, the framers of this policy thought that it would prevent the many social ills associated with alcohol but instead it nurtured an unparalleled growth in organized crime with all its attendant ills of violence and corruption.
In the same way, the so called “War on Drugs” being waged against other illicit substances has done little to curb the demand for illegal drugs but has created powerful drug based crime organizations that are far more destructive to society than the illegal drugs. In our own region, we can see the effects of this approach in the societies of Central and South America and the Caribbean. The Drug Trade is dangerous and hence extremely lucrative leading to a level of corruption that is undermining our judicial and law enforcement services. Since violence is a natural partner to illegality, the rates of murder and other violent crimes have mushroomed in all our societies. The response has been to increase our efforts at enforcement and interdiction, which take up increasing shares of our budgets, leaving little for other social programmes. Our prisons are overflowing and yet the drug trade continues and grows stronger as the drug bosses fight back against any efforts to reduce their profits.
Is it a coincidence that the latest spike in street violence in Belize came soon after the seizure of containers of methamphetamines being smuggled through the Port? The flooding of our streets with cheap weapons and ammunition has certainly had the effect of diverting the attention of the police from the large scale movement of drugs to the crazy and dangerous actions of a few young delinquents.
Obviously, Belize is not in a position to dictate social policy to our larger and more powerful neighbours, even though the War on Drugs is also wreaking havoc within their own borders. We can, however, urge them to put more of their own efforts into reducing the demand for illegal drugs through mitigation initiatives based on public health harm reduction precepts. Recognizing that issues of gun control are as fraught with political disagreements as other areas of social policy, we can at least encourage the United States to take measures to raise the price of guns and ammunition through taxation.
This is not to suggest that widespread substance abuse is not a serious problem but rather a plea to devise policies that mitigate the damage of substance abuse without creating the conditions for large scale criminal activity. Belize must do all it can to reduce crime and violence within its own borders, but we also need to recognize that we are part of a much larger social policy experiment over which we have very little control. Until those in control of this failed experiment change their tactics, we cannot hope to truly control the epidemic of crime and violence that is destroying the social fabric of all the countries in our region.
