Pubdate: Sat, 06 Jan 2001
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
Copyright: 2001 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Contact:  900 North Tucker Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri 63101
Website: http://www.postnet.com/
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Author: Bill Boll
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1935/a06.html

WAR ISN'T THE RIGHT APPROACH TO STEMMING DRUG USE

M. W. Guzy is disdainful of the notion that we have lost the "War on
Drugs" (Dec. 28 column), warning that war is a misleading metaphor for
our national effort. He forgets that the War on Drugs originated as a
rhetorical tool of the Republicans to justify the appointment of a
drug czar, a zero tolerance policy and a host of Draconian measures to
back it up.

Back then, we were encouraged to think of our national drug policy as
a war and to believe that it was winnable -- if only the penalties
were harsh enough. This policy shift did not result in a decrease in
illegal drug use, as intended. It did, however, balloon our prison
population to over 2 million inmates, roughly one-quarter of whom are
incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses. The U.S. imprisonment rate
is between six and 12 times higher than that of any other Western
nation and continues to grow even as the overall crime rate declines.

The Drug War has also spurred the growth of the most powerful,
ruthless and well-organized crime syndicates in history. Domestically,
it has eroded civil liberties in ways unthinkable 30 years ago, now
ubiquitous in the form of workplace drug tests and police roadblocks.
Children are encouraged to turn in their parents. Overbroad RICO
statutes, hastily enacted by legislators not wanting to appear "soft
on drugs," have been extended to confiscate the homes and vehicles of
abortion protesters.

Despite these severe measures, illegal drug use remains a cyclical
phenomenon that cannot be correlated with national policy. Even those
few who do argue for legalization do not do so, as Guzy says, because
they believe drug use will occur regardless. Instead, cogent arguments
for drug legalization typically include the proposition that the
social cost of legalized drugs would be lower than the social cost of
continuing to prohibit them. Guzy states, "Getting criminals out of
the drug trade is like trying to get the spots out of Dalmatians." And
yet, the repeal of alcohol prohibition succeeded in getting criminals
out of the alcohol trade, did it not?

The lawmakers who repealed prohibition, for example, were in a better
position to weigh the pros and cons of legal booze than those who
banned alcohol. Second, the circumstances under which heroin and
cocaine were legal are vastly different from those of today. At the
turn of the century, those substances were hawked as miraculous
elixirs to a public unfamiliar with the concept of addiction and its
effects. In an era before consumerism and the FDA, one could purchase
a heroin kit -- complete with hypodermic needles -- from the Sears
catalog. Today, the use of legalized drugs would certainly be
moderated by public knowledge of their effects, just as smoking in
this country has declined dramatically as its health risks have become
known.

Finally, the lawmakers who banned all currently illegal drugs did not
do so with the severe penalties we have today. If we impart to those
lawmakers the wisdom to have made the correct choice, then shouldn't
we also impart to them the wisdom to have fashioned appropriate
deterrent laws -- ones that were proportionate to the social ills they
addressed?

Like most Americans, I'm fearful that my children will one day be
tempted to use drugs. But even more distressing is the prospect that
if they do, they will be subject to long-term incarceration with
violent offenders, while my car is confiscated and my home searched.
If there really isn't a "War on Drugs," why are we living under the
equivalent of marshal law?
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