Pubdate: Thu, 13 Dec 2001
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2001 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Steve Chapman

THE DRUG WAR VS. THE WAR ON TERROR

On Oct. 25, six weeks after the worst terrorist atrocities in our history, 
the United States was bombing Afghanistan, Colin Powell was discussing a 
post-Taliban government, investigators were grappling with anthrax in the 
mail, and federal agents were . . . well, they were going after pot smokers 
in California. If John Ashcroft had been around during the Chicago fire, he 
would have been handcuffing jaywalkers.

During his campaign, President Bush took the position that access to 
medical marijuana was a matter for the states to address without 
interference from meddlesome Washington bureaucrats. "I believe each state 
can choose that decision as they so choose," he declared in his peerless 
rhetorical style. Californians agreed. In 1996, they had approved a ballot 
initiative sanctioning the therapeutic use of marijuana.

But even with the war on terror demanding so much of the government's 
attention, the administration was not too busy--or too respectful of state 
prerogatives--to raid the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center. Drug 
Enforcement Administration officers seized computers, 400 marijuana plants 
and medical records for hundreds of patients. Those sick people suddenly 
found themselves cut off from the drug recommended by their physicians for 
such problems as chemotherapy-induced nausea.

For the last two decades, our leaders have treated the enforcement of drug 
laws as the moral equivalent of war. On Sept. 11, it became blindingly 
clear that there really is no moral equivalent of war.

War, we were reminded, is when foreign enemies are trying to kill as many 
of us as they can. Cokeheads and dope smokers, whatever their shortcomings, 
don't have that mission. The Al Qaeda terrorists do.

But until the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, police and 
prosecutors were more likely to worry about busting potheads than rooting 
out Islamic zealots with dreams of mass murder. A Boston TV station 
reported that a few years ago, the FBI squeezed one local Al Qaeda member 
for information about heroin smuggling, but showed a conspicuous lack of 
interest in what he told them about Arab terrorists.

Discrepancies like that raise questions about why we are--or were--so 
obsessed with preventing people from ingesting recreational substances that 
may not be optimal for their health. We don't send cops out to arrest 
alcoholics because they abuse liquor, or imprison smokers because they have 
a tobacco habit. Why, then, is the use of marijuana or cocaine a law 
enforcement matter?

The federal government employs some 30,000 drug enforcement personnel, and 
drug offenders make up 60 percent of federal prison inmates. Police arrest 
600,000 people every year for possession of marijuana.

But that preoccupation can no longer be indulged. In the years to come, 
drugs are bound to get much less attention. The new head of the U.S. 
Customs Service says terrorism has displaced drugs as his central concern. 
"Terrorism is our highest priority, bar none," Robert Bonner declared in 
October. "Ninety-eight percent of my attention as commissioner of customs 
has been devoted to that one issue."

The FBI has made the same turnabout. It's planning an overhaul that will 
greatly de-emphasize drug trafficking--which now consumes nearly a fourth 
of its budget. DEA agents have even been shifted to the terrorism battle. 
Even Atty. Gen. Ashcroft has said, "We cannot do everything we once did, 
because lives now depend on us doing a few things very well."

State and municipal police also have turned their attention toward homeland 
security and away from drugs. If prosecutors have to spend more of their 
time going after terrorists, they will have to spend less time on something 
else. It's not murders and bank robberies that are going to be 
abandoned--it's drug cases. Why? For the simple reason, which we could 
ignore before, that they have little effect on public safety.

Drug enforcement has not just stolen resources from anti-terrorism 
efforts--it has actually helped the terrorists. The opium trade furnished 
one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban during the time it 
ruled Afghanistan. The main reason the drug business was so profitable for 
the Taliban is that it's illegal: Prices are always higher in black markets 
than in legal ones. Every time we helped eradicate poppy fields in Mexico 
or Colombia, we enriched the criminal regime in Kabul.

Nowadays, we may see our true priorities more clearly. The days when drugs 
topped the list of public concerns now seem like the time before Adam and 
Eve got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. The drug war was the luxury of a 
society with few really terrible problems. Three months ago, it became an 
unaffordable extravagance.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom