Pubdate: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 Source: Waco Tribune-Herald (TX) Copyright: 2001 Waco-Tribune Herald Contact: http://accesswaco.com/ Forum: http://www.accesswaco.com/cgi-bin/pforum/show?ROOT=7 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/gardner.htm (Losing the War on Drugs) SHIFT GEARS ON DRUGS In six more days George W. Bush will become the 43rd president of the United States. He immediately will inherit a three-decade-old drug policy plus a dangerous $1.3 billion anti-drug intervention in Colombia's civil war. Bush should take advantage of the change in administrations to adopt a new drug policy that concentrates on prevention, rehabilitation and education. The "lock-'em-up-and-throw-away-the-key" policy has been an absolute failure since President Richard Nixon first launched the war on drugs in 1972. Every new administration since Nixon's has feared to admit the obvious -- the war on drugs keeps locking up growing numbers of American citizens without decreasing the supply of drugs or the cost of illegal drugs. Outgoing White House drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey used all his knowledge and expertise gained from an outstanding military career to continue the war on drugs. It didn't work. As long as Americans have an appetite for illegal drugs and money to buy them, drugs find a way from the suppliers, such as those in Colombia, to U.S. drug users. Bush should be the first president since the supply-side policy began to have the courage to admit that increasingly harsh drug laws and escalating interdiction efforts have failed to stop or slow drug use. This approach has filled U.S. prisons and jails at an incalculable cost of human potential, not to mention the billions of dollars it costs taxpayers annually to house citizens unproductively locked behind bars. The effort to combat drug use with harsher laws, tougher enforcement and long mandated prison sentences is a proven failure. Not only does it defy common sense to perpetuate failure, it borders on stupidity to try to fix failure by doing more of the same. It's time for politicians to have the courage to form a new drug policy that curbs drug use by turning off the demand for drugs. Programs should be developed to educate young people about drugs in a way that makes drugs undesirable. The new administration and Congress need to abolish mandatory sentencing for non-violent drug crimes. Mandatory sentencing has filled prisons to overflowing with drug offenders. Judges need to be given the authority to administer justice based on judicial judgment. Drug policies need to focus on keeping citizens out of prison. The United States has 2 million citizens in prison, by far the highest proportion of the adult population of any nation on earth. Most of these prisoners are behind bars due in some form to drug use. Bush and the 107th Congress should shift course on the effort to combat drug use with policies that emphasize prevention, education and rehabilitation. - --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager