Pubdate: Thu, 23 Aug 2001
Source: Post-Standard, The (NY)
Copyright: 2001, Syracuse Post-Standard
Contact:  http://www.syracuse.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/686
Author: Nicolas Eyle, executive director of ReconsiDer: Forum on Drug 
Policy in Syracuse

AMERICA HEADED DOWN LONELY ROAD IN ITS DRUG CRUSADE

Canada's recent decision to permit the sick access to medical 
marijuana is just the latest in a long series of refutations by other 
countries of America's drug policies. It comes on the heels of 
Portugal's decriminalizing the personal possession of small 
quantities of all drugs.

It follows Mexican President Vicente Fox's call for drug legalization 
as the way to break the black market.

The Conservative Party in Great Britain is arguing heatedly about 
whether marijuana should be decriminalized, removing penalties for 
its use, or legalized, which would permit a legal distribution system 
to be set up, ending the contact marijuana users now have with 
sellers of harder drugs.

All over the world, countries are looking at the disastrous results 
of America's "War on Drugs" and shifting their drug policies to avoid 
making the same mistakes.

In fact, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany and nearly every other 
country in Western Europe have some form of decriminalization of 
personal possession of drugs in place, and the results are certainly 
encouraging others to move in this direction.

In the Netherlands, marijuana is sold in hundreds of "coffee shops" 
over-the-counter, and their teen-age marijuana use is half of what it 
is in the United States. In Switzerland, a program to supply 
hard-core heroin addicts with heroin has been so successful at 
lowering health-care costs and reducing the crime associated with 
that drug's use that its biggest and most vocal supporters are the 
police and the insurance companies.

Recently even the Ukraine, long one of Europe's toughest drug 
warriors, announced that it was going to release some 35,000 drug 
offenders from prison in September and make drug use "a 
non-arrestable offense."

In the United States, nine states have approved medical marijuana 
use. A recent conference of U.S./Mexico border-state governors 
organized by New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson agreed that the drug 
problem should be a public health issue more than a law-enforcement 
one. Individual counties have gone even farther.

Mendocino County in California made marijuana offenses the lowest 
priority possible for law enforcement. If you are a police officer 
looking into a possible marijuana crime and a little old lady calls 
because her cat is stuck in a tree, you have to forget the marijuana 
and help the cat.

America is in an increasingly difficult position internationally 
because of the drug war. We purport to be the leader of the free 
world, yet with five percent of the world's population, we have 25 
percent of the world's prisoners, more than half serving sentences 
for drug-related offenses.

Our troops, arms and money fuel civil wars in Latin American 
countries like Colombia in the name of ridding the world of drugs.

Many of our cities are in turmoil, and minorities are targeted for 
drug offenses in painfully obvious, unjust proportions. And with all 
this, America's kids have better access to illegal drugs than to beer.

So who are our allies in our naive quest for a drug-free America 
through prohibition? Iran, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, China 
and a handful of other notoriously repressive nations.

These countries execute drug users regularly, and have for years.

These countries still have large and growing drug problems because, 
like America, they refuse to accept the fact that prohibition does 
not work.

If America is serious about protecting its children from the problems 
associated with drugs, then we had better start looking around us. 
Look at what other countries are doing and see what works and what 
doesn't. With adolescent drug use up and drugs purer, cheaper and 
more available than ever before, it should be obvious to us, as it 
seems to be to most of the rest of the world, that prohibition is not 
the way to solve the problem.

America has gone down the wrong road many times in its history.

There was a time when women were not allowed to vote, when it was 
quite permissible for white people to own black people, for 
segregation to exist.

A time when Americans were forbidden to drink alcohol.

Fortunately, we came to our senses about these things, changed our 
laws and became a stronger, better country for it.

Sociologist Thomas Sowell once said that the difference between a 
policy and a crusade is that a policy is judged by its results, but a 
crusade is judged by how good it makes the crusaders feel. It's 
becoming hard to refer to what we do with regard to drugs in America 
as a policy.

What we have is clearly a Jihad - a holy war with no basis in logic or sense.

No interest in results or costs.

No concern that the medicine may be far worse than the disease.

Why is it so hard for us to see this and reconsider how we handle 
these drugs in America?

Nicolas Eyle is executive director of ReconsiDer: Forum on Drug 
Policy in Syracuse.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Josh