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PART II: INTERPOSITION

STRATEGY FOR DRUG/CRIME CONTROL

As used here, the termstrategymeans a general plan for goal attainment, and tacticsare instrumental to strategy. Properly, a strategy is based upon a strategic reconnoiter (such as the one described in Part I of this booklet), the practical value of which is to be found in the resulting etiology. The latter in turn provides the conceptual framework for the design of strategic remedies.

As used in official U.S. drug policy circles, strategyis an essentially rhetorical term referring to nothing more than the set of policy measures in use at a given time. There is no etiological basis for such strategy, and selected policy measures typically are maladapted to the declared objective of drug control. There is no rational basis for the chosen mix of policy measures (White House, 1992).

Interposition, ormarket interposition, orpublic health interpositionis a comprehensive, etiologically based strategy for control of the drug/crime epidemic. It is also the unique product of the strategic planning process described below. The term comprehensiveis included in the definition of interposition to indicate that the strategy embraces all public policy interests in the drug/crime epidemic.

Interposition is named for its central strategic concept--that the drug/crime epidemic can only be controlled by interrupting the black market sale of illegal drugs and terminating the mutual stimulation between the demand and supply sides of the drug market.

In this strategy, the thing interposed is a public health authority called the Agency for Drug Market Interposition (ADMI).¹The interposed parties (that is, the parties that are to be separated by interposition) are the sellers of drugs and the buyers of drugs. Interposition takes place in the retail drug market, which is to say, wherever drugs are bought and sold. For any individual drug user, interposition is in effect at the instant when he or she ceases doing business with the retail merchants of the criminal syndicates to become a client of the ADMI. Interposition is fully in effect when all drug users will have made that choice, and the black market suppliers are out of business.

At the time of writing, some evidence suggests that the functions described here could be carried on by an ADMI created at private initiative. The prescription here of a governmentally created ADMI is tentatively held. Considerations effecting the public vs. private question are visited later in Parts II and III.

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