The End of ‘The Wire’, Not The Drug War
The Wire's big message was that the drug war has failed. However, this rational but flawed belief doesn't take away from the show's brilliance, writes Jack Dunphy.
Spoiler alert: If you recorded Sunday’s final episode of HBO’s The Wire and have yet to watch it, be advised that the show’s conclusion will be discussed below. There, don’t say you weren’t warned.
What will Mrs. Dunphy and I do with our Sunday evenings from now on? It’s as though all the people we hung out with on Sunday nights just upped and left town. They’ll be missed.
The Wire is no more, having finished its five-year run on HBO with a 90-minute finale on March 9. And what an ending it was, with interconnected networks of self-interest trumping honesty and integrity at nearly every turn. One can imagine the show’s writers conjuring up the perfect conclusion for the series, sitting around the office and asking one another, “How can we push the cynicism meter into the red?”
Back in January, I wrote about The Wire for National Review Online, and I cautioned viewers not to “look for any neatly tied ends to the series when the final episode is aired in March.” Indeed, as the credits rolled on Sunday, we had seen enough to make even the most jaded cynic weep. To wit:
This season’s main bad guy, the ruthless dope dealer Marlo Stanfield, was a free – and very rich – man.
Detectives Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freamon, who had conducted an illegal wiretap to make a case on Stanfield, were allowed to retire quietly from the police department.
Baltimore Mayor Tommy Carcetti, who learned of the police corruption but kept it out of the news so as to further his political ambitions, was elected governor of Maryland.
Police Commissioner William Rawls was rewarded for his silence on the corruption with an appointment as head of the Maryland State Police.
Scott Templeton, the newspaper reporter who fabricated stories for the Baltimore Sun, received a Pulitzer Prize.
Duquan Weems, the bright, mild teenager whose heart wasn’t sufficiently cold for the dope trade, became a heroin addict.
And the list goes on and on, with avarice, venality, and outright thuggishness paying dividends for many, and with the honorable characters coming away with nothing or even a smack-down for their troubles. A notable and welcome exception was the character known only as Bubbles, played masterfully through all five seasons by Andre Royo.
Bubbles was a heroin addict, one who endured all manner of heartbreak and disappointment in his long struggle to clean up. This season found him off drugs and living in his sister’s basement in conditions that were spare enough but still an improvement on his earlier life on the streets of West Baltimore. His sister allowed him to remain in the basement only while she was at home, and even then the door remained locked. When she left the house, he had to also, having earned her distrust by stealing kitchen items for dope money.
But as Sunday’s final episode neared its end, a short montage revealed the denouement for many of the characters, and there amid the many disappointments was Bubbles climbing the basement stairs to an open door, then emerging in the kitchen to sit down for a meal with his sister and niece. It was one of the few hopeful notes in the episode, and indeed in the entire series.
And what to make of The Wire now that its over? For those not keen on pondering that question, some of the show’s writers made their case plainly enough last week for Time magazine. Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and series creator David Simon (who made a Hitchcockian cameo appearance in the finale) argue that the drug war has been a failure and should be abandoned. “[T]his war grinds on,” they write, “flooding our prisons, devouring resources, turning city neighborhoods into free-fire zones. To what end? State and federal prisons are packed with victims of the drug conflict. A new report by the Pew Center shows that 1 of every 100 adults in the U.S. – and 1 in 15 black men over 18 – is currently incarcerated. That’s the world’s highest rate of imprisonment.”
To the writers’ great credit, The Wire was not an unambiguous argument for drug legalization. In its third season, for example, an innovative police commander launched a program in which drugs were unofficially legalized within a neighborhood of mostly abandoned row houses. The dealers were allowed to ply their trade and the buyers went unmolested as long as they stayed within the prescribed boundaries. The violent crime that had been associated with the drug business declined and, outside the drug zone, people were free to walk the streets that had previously been controlled by dealers.
But even here Simon and his writers took care to portray drug abuse, particularly the use of heroin, as a poor and often deadly choice. Still, in the Time piece they espouse jury nullification as a way for the public to rein in the drug war’s excesses. Simon and the others write:
“If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren’t fictional.”
It’s interesting to note that the writers grouped Bubbles together with two young men, Bodie and Wallace, who were murdered for their involvement in the drug trade, as though the degree of moral culpability for all three was somehow equal. Like Bubbles, Bodie and Wallace were well-drawn characters who could arouse sympathy in viewers, but while Bubbles was an addict who to some arguable extent was powerless over his habit, the others were drug dealers with blood on their own hands. Some addicts can and do clean up, but will legalization make honest citizens out of drug dealers willing to kill over control of a street corner?
The argument for drug legalization is a rational one, but it is not one that I, after more than twenty years as a cop in Los Angeles, can endorse. Watching Bubbles struggle with his demons over these last five years, I was often reminded of a heroin addict I arrested years ago. As I was about to close the cell door on him, I asked him if he thought heroin should be legalized.
“No way,” he said.
I asked him why not.
“If you legalize it,” he said, “pretty soon everybody will be like me.”
“Jack Dunphy” is the pseudonym of an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.
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13 Comments
1. evilned:I didn’t watch the wire, and after reading this post I can see why. It’s not my cup of tea.
However, I do think that the “War on Drugs” is pretty much of a bust. My solution is rather harsh. For people who overdose, you had better have good insurance because the state/fed govt isn’t going to pick up the tab.
If you are rolled in OD’ing, and don’t have insurance or the cash to pay for treatment, they can just roll you out of the way. No support, nothing. If you live, fine. If not, oh well.
On the flip side, I think that if there is any medicinal use for any of these drugs, (Heroin is used in other countries as a pain killer for certain patients I believe). then it should be studied and doctors should be able to prescribe it.
The treatment of pain in this country has suffered because of the War on Drugs. People who are under the care of doctors and are suffering horrible pain can’t get the treatments they need because of this nonesense.
I recall one incident when a doctor specializing in pain mitigation lost his ability to prescribe narcotics because of the stupidity of the DEA. He wasn’t a “Dr. Feelgood” and his patients were in real agony.
One man who was suffering and couldn’t get treatment left a video tape laying the blame for his death on the DEA. Then he killed himself.
The doctor was never charged with any crime, although he has to go through some really stupid process in order to prescribe.
The War on Drugs has killed a lot of innocent people.
Legalize drugs for recreational use? No. However, if people are dumb enough to use drugs that way, then they shouldn’t be surprised if they lose their jobs, homes, or lives.
Do I have the answer? Who knows? I don’t.
Mar 12, 2008 - 4:19 am 2. Phineas Worthington:Didn’t see the show. Don’t watch much boob tube.
However, something is wrong with our punishment priorities when non-violent drug users spend more time in jail than child molesters and rapists.
With the increased prohibitions on the use of the legal drugs tobacco and alcohol, the drug war looks more like a ‘foolish consistency’ than a sound policy.
Prohibition didn’t work then and it isn’t working now. Many of the same problems with the alcohol underground economy of gangs and violence now exist with the underground drug economy.
The organization LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, has offered a policy compromise. Though theirs is a socialist solution.
Mar 12, 2008 - 7:06 am 3. dclydew:The War on Drugs has several problems… we can look at it from a ‘State’s Rights’ perspective, and ask what the hell the federal government thinks its doing. We can examine it from a bureaucratic perspective, and ask why non addictive, non-lethal drugs are equated with highly addictive and deadly drugs. We can look at the international aspects and see yet more waste and failures there.
On top of all of that, we get to see cancer patients handcuffed to beds, for using a pain killer. Sadly, this BS has been equally perpetrated by both the Left and the Right, with the Gipper himself as culpable for a heck of a lot of the mess. In nations where drug use is legal, the numbers aren’t worse than they are here. In some cases, they’re far less.
I don’t think prohibition is the solution. I live in a medium sized town in the Midwest and I could get my hands on pretty much any illicit substance I wanted within a couple hours, for a pretty decent price. That fact alone means that the Drug War is a bust… decades into it and access to drugs is now as easy if not perhaps even more simple than it was in the 80’s. So more Government Waste, more Government Controls and more Personal Restrictions (all for naught)… and most of the support is actually among the Right Wing, rather than the socialist left.
Sometimes, I think I’m taking crazy pills….
Mar 12, 2008 - 8:00 am 4. Troll King:I respect those police officers who continue to fight the drug war, and think there are strong arguments pro and con for legalization.
One solution, which I offer half-kidding, is somewhat of a compromise: Give away drugs free in the prisons. That way, instead of sending out police to catch people doing drugs and put them in prison, you simply attract drug users to the prison.
Heck, you probably wouldn’t even need to close the front gate.
Mar 12, 2008 - 9:15 am 5. Ubu Roi:I, too, am a huge fan of the show, and, like Jack, have a huge hole in my week; it was the finest show ever put on television, in my opinion, and I truly cared about those characters–so much so, that if I ran into Lester or Bunk here in LA, I’d have to restrain myself from not gushing to them how much I loved their work (and I never speak to celebs unless they initiate a conversation).
Really, folks, the show was that good: complex, thoughtful, and brutally honest. And the political position of the show, contrary to the leftist grandstanding of David Simon outside of the show, was often hard to get any kind of read on, and I am always on the lookout for cheap , lefty boilerplate; the writers were too smart and too worldly to try and sell the usual lazy fare like to see on LA Law or West Wing. What David Simon and his excellent writers created was a work of art, unflinching, humane, moral, and, at times, genuinely tragic.
If, at the end, you did not feel the emotional nobility of McNulty’s symbolic wake, as the cops all sang “I’m a free born man of the USA,” then you should probably find another world that will have you. My wife and I danced around the house with a bottle of Jamesons toasting entirely imaginary people. I’m a better man for watching “The Wire.”
Mar 12, 2008 - 1:18 pm 6. Cal Ulmann:I see no way of saying that Wallace had blood on his hands.
Mar 12, 2008 - 2:27 pm 7. Pat:Officer Dunphy, the heroin addict you arrested was wrong. I’m sure he would like to believe that everyone else is as foolish and lacking in self-control as he is — that would relieve him of any personal responsibility for his own bad choices. But the truth is that he chose, of his own free will, to inject heroin into his veins. Most of us would never do that. We are not like him.
The “drug war” is based on the same faulty reasoning that was used to justify Prohibition, and it has failed in exactly the same way, for exactly the same reasons.
Mar 13, 2008 - 6:01 am 8. incongruities:“pretty soon everybody will be like me.”
Except for one thing: There is no evidence to suggest that if Heroine were to be legalized that everyone would be like your jailed perp. I mean, why would they be?
A daily Heroine user might not make the best employee, but if the Heroine is readily available and inexpensive I doubt the addict would be locked up in jail for anything. Heroine use doesn’t turn normal people dangerous; having to do whatever it takes to get more Heroine is what turns addicts into dangerous people. Same for crack. Just as it would be if caffeine were criminalized.
The War on Drugs is just as responsible for the Heroine addict’s problems as is the Heroine. Without the War on Drugs a severe Heroine addict is just another welfare case that can be managed. With the War on Drugs a Heroine addict is a criminal that has to be caught and incarcerated at the public expense which is more costly than welfare.
Mar 13, 2008 - 10:54 am 9. WhoKnew:There is no reason in the world for marijuana being illegal. Legalize it.
Mar 14, 2008 - 12:14 pm 10. Michael T:Don’t expect any change in the tactics of the anti-drug enforcers. It is a major US government industry that employs many people. Pay no mind that it is very ineffectual, remember those who benefit from its existence. Remember prohibition? Its concept was ridiculous, its cost enormous, its efficiency was little more than a joke, and the consequences totally opposite to what it was to control. People suffered, the mafia prospered and the reputation of the US declined.Why are the same mistakes being made?
Mar 15, 2008 - 10:37 pm 11. EdinTally:“Jack”
Time to do some homework. The only question that remains is when will drugs be decriminalized not if. I’m sympathetic to those officers who will eventually lose their jobs when Prohibition is over, but for the health of the nation it must come.
It has turned into a system of Us against You. You can’t win even though you are 800,000 strong. Why would you want to win? What’s the prize? 4 million people in jail. 5 million people in jail. When does it end?
The most tragic part is that it looks as if the last straw will be the failing state budgets which are incapable of housing that many citizens behind bars. For 30+ years logic and common sense have failed. It is sad that in the end it will probably come down to budgetary issues. For the People, a win is still a win I suppose.
Mar 17, 2008 - 5:32 pm 12. markwilliams:I cannot make sense of Jack Dunphy’s arguments against decriminalization of drugs. We have been hearing these same irrational arguments for years. Why would an addict buy from a violent dealer if herion was made legal? If people born violent will transfer to another occupation, what possible difference does that make? Any experienced DEA agent will tell you that the most effective way to reduce drug addiction is treatment. This is not theory, this is fact. The War on Drugs misallocates our resources and promotes violent behaviour; another indisputable fact ignored by Mr. Dunphy. This article is based upon false assertions that have been around for years.
Mar 17, 2008 - 8:41 pm 13. ArtD0dger:The War on Drugs has failed. The sooner we deal with that reality the sooner we can find solutions that really work.
The problem with the war on drugs is that it’s a gateway prohibition. Once the government becomes addicted to violating individual freedoms, it starts trampling on harder constitutional rights by instituting things like warrantless searches and wiretaps, no-knock raids, extrajudicial asset seizure, and travel checkpoints.
Mar 18, 2008 - 12:43 pm