If you want to know what kind of progress we’re making in closing, or at least rewriting, the book on our generation-old War on Drugs, look no further than New Jersey. Here in the Garden State, Gov. James E. McGreevey has proposed legalizing the possession of hypodermic needles, finally allowing needle exchange programs in a state with one of the nation’s highest rates of HIV, Hepatitis C and HIV infection due to the use of intravenous drugs.

So far, so good.

Until you consider that McGreevey announced his resignation in August after divulging a gay affair with an Israeli citizen he’d placed on the state payroll, and that New Jersey’s prison system has become a virtual drug gulag over the last two decades.

The needle exchange law is part of the legacy McGreevey says he wants to leave before departing the governor’s mansion on November 15. The fact the governor rendered himself the political equivalent of toxic waste before he felt free to advance a modest “harm reduction” measure tells you all you need to know about the horrendously slow way in which this nation’s drug policies are changing.

And, McGreevey’s proposal is by no means a sure thing. There is strong opposition from Republicans and, ironically, from some African-American Democrats. Both argue that needle exchange programs encourage and reward addiction.

If anything, the effort to make needles available without a prescription in New Jersey—one of only six states that still bans them—is proof positive that despite small victories here and there, America is still far from coming to grips with the colossal failure of its drug policies and their hideous human, economic, social, racial and legal implications.

A generation since the War on Drugs was launched with the passage of the Rockefeller Drug Laws in New York in 1973, the toll continues to mount. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year flow to cops, courts and prisons. Millions of Americans of all ages and from every walk of life are incarcerated in brutal prison systems. Nearly 80 percent of all the money spent to fight drugs still goes to enforcement, with just 20 percent spent on treatment and prevention.

The drug enforcement axe has fallen with particular force in minority communities where frightening numbers of people are arrested daily and acquire criminal records. These Scarlet Letters of the 21^st Century prevent them from getting decent jobs, borrowing money or being able to cast a vote again in their lives. While the motivations behind this system may not be racist, its effects have turned out to be profoundly racist.

The War on Drugs has had a corrosive effect on virtually ever facet of American life. It has criminalized the behavior of a generation of otherwise law abiding average Americans. It has eroded civil liberties by making things like urine tests for drugs an everyday fact of life for everyone from school children to job seekers. It has pitted prison budgets against education, childcare, healthcare and other programs that would improve neighborhoods where the quality of life is unarguably violated by street level drug dealing. In an era of global terrorism, it diverts police resources that could otherwise be used to fight terror.

Most ominously, the War on Drugs has fueled the development of a Prison-Industrial complex—an agglomeration of businesses, labor unions, government bureaucracies and local and county governments—whose very existence depends on the continued incarceration of hundreds of thousands of Americans for violating drug laws. These powerful interest groups stand ready in Washington and the fifty state capitals to block meaningful drug policy reforms in the same way interest groups mangle attempts to reform campaign finance or fix our health care system.

Which brings us back to New Jersey.

The Garden State ranks Number One among the fifty states in terms of the proportion of new prisoners who are drug offenders. It spends $28,000 a year per prisoner to incarcerate them versus a cost of $5,000 a year for drug treatment. (According to some studies, for every dollar spent on drug treatment, taxpayers save seven dollars in other services, through reduced crime rates, savings in medical care, and increased productivity).

Young African-American men, the largest numbers from cities like Newark and Camden, make up the majority of offenders caught up in New Jersey’s War on Drugs. African-Americans, who constitute 15 percent of New Jersey’s population, account for 81 percent of prison admissions for drug offenses. Nearly one in five New Jersey African-American men are now barred from voting because they are on parole or probation.

Across the Hudson River, meanwhile, the New York State prison system is home to more than 19,000 drug offenders, roughly one-third of the state prison population. The majority have no history of violence and have been convicted of low-level drug offenses under laws requiring a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison for selling more than two ounces or possessing more than four ounces of a narcotic substance. African-Americans and Latinos make up 93 percent of those locked up for drug offenses. While there is debate about overturning the Rockefeller Laws, there is still no progress.

Against that sort of background, it is small wonder that pushing a modest harm reduction agenda falls to the political walking dead.

Yet, Harm Reduction makes eminent sense in New Jersey and across the nation as the antidote to decades of failed drug enforcement policies. In Europe, the Harm Reduction model—which concedes that there is no way to “solve” the drug problem with laws and policing—has been embraced for more than a generation. According to this school of thought, substance abuse will be with us as long as people use alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs to alter their minds, moods and perceptions of their surroundings. At best, society can try to reduce the damage done by drug use.

If you can’t stop junkies from shooting heroin, the theory goes, you can, at least, give them clean needles so they stop spreading HIV and hepatitis. (You can also decriminalize “soft” drugs like marijuana and hashish).

What would a shift away from incarcerating tens of thousands of people for drug offenses and dedicating those resources to harm reduction measures like drug treatment do in a state like New Jersey?

At a minimum, it would allow huge numbers of people to access drug treatment and stand a chance of overcoming addiction (and, of course, its legal twin sister, alcoholism). Half of the adults and two-thirds of the adolescents who want treatment in New Jersey currently can’t get it because of a lack of treatment slots or financial obstacles. The prison system, which holds more than 28,000 people, has barely 1,000 treatment beds.

In the end, such reforms would save hundreds of millions of dollars that could be spent on a long list of other needs.

In New Jersey and other states, the kind of intellectual and moral evolution that would allow a ceasefire in the War on Drugs, the closure of prisons and opening of more drug treatment centers will likely require another generation or two. Even simple measures, like making clean needles available in order to address one of the nation’s worst HIV and Hepatitis C crises, could prove to be a tough sell.

For decades, drug warriors have come from both parties and both ends of the ideological spectrum. Only a handful of politicians, notably former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke in the 1980s and, more recently, New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson have had the political cojones to call for an end to the War on Drugs and for drug legalization.

Nelson Rockefeller, who epitomized noblesse oblige Republican Liberalism, likely never envisioned the awful legacy of his drug laws. But the deeply negative outcomes of those laws and all the others enacted since then cut to the core of our values as a society.

If we do not begin to hold our political leaders accountable for the laws they pass and their results, we truly have no one to blame but ourselves.

Author’s Note: I am a veteran of the War on Drugs and a recovering addict. As I reporter, I wrote about drug policy until I became too close to the subject and stopped. (Writing about drugs, not doing them). For several years, I have been writing non-fiction pieces about my various experiences when I used drugs and became addicted to heroin. This is my first piece in a long time about drug policy and the criminal justice system. As an addict who paid a high price for my own use of drugs, I strongly dislike them. But, I also firmly believe that each of us has a God-given right to do what we choose with our own bodies. While there are dire personal consequences for some of us in making these choices—and while drug use is not the victimless crime that some would argue—the law should not be one of the consequences of using drugs. I do not believe in wholesale drug legalization, but I believe in decriminalization of soft drugs in sparing no expense in making treatment widely available to those who are willing to try stopping. Having observed the drug policy debate for decades, however, I am not entirely confident we will come to our senses in my lifetime.

Robert Guskind has been writing for a long time. An award-winning Washington-based journalist and contributor to major national magazines and newspapers, he now lives very close to Manhattan, where he continues to write, shoot photographs and work on a book based on his travels and experiences as a reporter and formerly disreputable dope fiend. He is all better now and is a regular contributor to Cherrybleeds.