Election 2020

Joe Biden and Drug Control: A More Complete Picture (Part 3—the Late ’80s)

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Sarah Brady Siff, a visiting assistant professor at the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University, in affiliation with the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center (DEPC). She continues the series on Joe Biden’s drug policy she started last month.

Now that Joe Biden has been duly elected president, I want to continue exploring his drug control activities where I left off last month. Although it takes me further and further from my chronological comfort zone as a historian, I have really appreciated the opportunity that writing for Points has presented me to learn some basic stuff about the “decade of greed.” To that end, I watched The Last Narc, an Amazon series about the kidnapping, torture, and murder of Mexican-American DEA Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in February 1985. I know very little about this incident, but I had seen so many references to it in primary and secondary sources that I figured it had to be a defining event in the history of the drug wars. 

The new documentary went something like this (spoiler alert … ?). Part 1: The traffickers involved were selfish, brutal, and strung out; but Mexican officials at the highest level also were complicit in the wildly profitable and violent drug trade. Part 2: Cartel commanders definitely beat Camarena to death slowly while he begged for his life. Part 3: Wait, CIA agent Félix Rodríguez also beat and questioned Camarena, who probably knew too much about the U.S.-run Contra training camp in Central America secretly funded by Mexican cartels running South American cocaine into the United States. Part 4: An unidentified DEA agent also assisted in planning the abduction; looks like Camarena was betrayed by his own government. 

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Drug Reform in a Biden Administration?

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Brooks Hudson, a PhD student in history at Southern Illinois University.

In August, the DNC Convention depicted Joe Biden as “Uncle Joe,” an empathetic figure who faced adversity, experienced personal tragedy and is generally kind of a goofball, an elderly gentleman telling rambling stories about how movie popcorn tasted better in the 1950s. In late September—in another moment of empathy—the only part of the presidential debate that received positive press coverage came when the former Vice President defended his son and said, “My son, like a lot of people at home, had a drug problem. He’s overtaking it. He’s fixed it. He’s working on it. And I’m proud of him; I’m proud of my son.” Jonathan Reiss, writing for Rolling Stone, was one among many in the press who thought this moment might potentially signal a sea change for drug policy:

“Having the son of the president represent the recovery community is a new paradigm. This wouldn’t be the president’s distant kin quietly slipping into a million-dollar rehab for 28 days. This would be the president’s son acknowledging that he is in recovery, that he has smoked crack and come out the other end of that indelibly narrow glass tunnel. Merely acknowledging the problem is profoundly meaningful — the first of the twelve steps.

“Addiction is a realm where reform often comes from those who have been through it. If Hunter continues to wear the label of ‘addict’ without shame, lending his experience and the experience of others in recovery to pertinent policy discussions, this could be a ray of optimism during bleak times for those in recovery. Especially now, when so many people are confronting one of the bleakest times in modern history.”

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Joe Biden and Drug Control: A More Complete Picture (Part 2—the 1980s)

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Sarah Brady Siff, a visiting assistant professor at the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University, in affiliation with the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center (DEPC). She continues the series on Joe Biden’s drug policy she started last week.

It was an election year—1980—but Senator Joe Biden was not up for reelection. His interest and expertise in drug policy were sharper than ever, and his membership on the Foreign Relations and  Judiciary committees (where he chaired subcommittees on European affairs and criminal justice) enabled him to pursue the drugs issue from both the international/supply side and the domestic/demand side. 

Biden had been immersed in international Cold War politics while working on agreements with the Soviet Union and others to curb the nuclear arms race (the SALT treaties). At the same time, he accepted the duty of oversight of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) starting in 1978, as the first experimental decade of massive federal funding for law enforcement was drawing to a close. Though setbacks would occur, the early 1980s presented Biden with a unique opportunity to create more robust federal drug control. 

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Joe Biden and Drug Control: A More Complete Picture (Part 1—the 1970s)

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Sarah Brady Siff, a visiting assistant professor at the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University, in affiliation with the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center (DEPC). As we prepare for the election next month, her examination of Joe Biden’s historical views on drug policy will continue next week.

Okay, here’s the deal: Joe Biden is a right-leaning moderate on drug control. Always has been. No surprise there.

However, examples of Biden’s past interest and instrumentality in drug policy are surprisingly copious. Spanning a half-century, these facts somehow seem both historical and ongoing. Progressives and libertarians must face the improbability of true policy reform from someone who has waged so much war on drugs for so very long. 

Biden consistently held three broad positions during the 1970s: (1) the harms of recreational drug use were severe and urgent, especially because drugs caused crime; (2) the United States should spend money on drug control, but wisely; and (3) cannabis was really not so bad. The first decade of Biden’s career in national politics showed him that drug control was popular with voters, but difficult to manage.

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Points Election Update

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Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from contributing editor Bob Beach. Beach is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Albany, SUNY. 

It almost seems, given the existence of much more pressing matters, that a Points election preview is not even worth our time. As a personal matter, I’ll take that stance explicitly at the end of all of this. But as a drug historian, writing to folks interested in drug policies, such matters are always worth some of our time. Let’s take a quick break from Trump’s COVID diagnosis, two recent debates and a cancelled third, and ongoing conflict over Trump’s SCOTUS nomination, and review some of the key drug policy issues that will figure into the 2020 election season.

Trump’s criminal justice, like much of his policy strategies, center on public relations and marketing

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