Pubdate: Mon, 12 Mar 2001
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2001 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  202-832-8285
Website: http://www.washtimes.com/
Author: A.M. Rosenthal
Note: A.M.  Rosenthal, the former executive editor of the New York Times, 
is a nationally syndicated columnist.

UNDERMINING THE WAR AGAINST ILLEGAL DRUGS

The president in the new film has appointed a new drug czar - a judge of 
the Ohio Supreme Court.  Before the judge takes office, he goes to Mexico, 
and the American border.  He sees the hideous brutality by Mexican 
officers, themselves part of drug gangs.  He sees American anti-drug agents 
risk their lives and often lose them.

As the president prepares his first press conference speech at the White 
House, he finds out his daughter Caroline, a wholesome looking teen-ager, 
is a junkie.  She is so captured by narcotics that she prostitutes herself 
for them.

At his first White House press conference, the president begins to read his 
prepared speech, about the importance of the war on drugs to save the 68 
million American children who have been targeted by the narcotic kings. He 
cannot go on. He puts down his speech, turns to leave the room and his 
career and says: "I can't do this.  If there is a war on drugs, then our 
own families have become the enemy.  How can you make war on your own family?"

That's it - that's the message the film "Traffic" delivers toward the end, 
where messages are put to be remembered.  It is also a message peddled by 
Americans who have created a national network of organizations devoted to 
fighting the drug war and making more narcotics more available to more 
Americans, without legal penalty. They use nicey-nicey phrases like drug 
reform or harm reduction because they know the public would reject any 
honest move toward their goal - outright legalization.

But supporters of the drug war, like myself, did not think any such 
destructive movement would become accepted among people who consider 
themselves informed and intelligent, including journalists - wrong. With 
propaganda funds from a few truly rich Americans, they have persuaded more 
and more columnists and editorial writers.  They have won state plebiscites 
that use tricky, concealing language to make more narcotics available for 
"medicinal" purposes. Particularly generous are the financier George Soros, 
Ohio insurance executive Peter Lewis and the founder of the for-profit 
University of Phoenix, John Sperling.

They and their organizations hack away at the very foundation of the 
struggle against drugs: the combination of law enforcement, interdiction 
and therapy. The money they put into their hatred for the drug war, out of 
whatever cradle trauma, could make help to addicts impossible by destroying 
the law enforcement essential to therapy.

I went back to anti-drug experts I have trusted and learned from for years. 
All of them have contributed more to therapy for addicts in any week than 
the money bags of the war against the drug war and their propagandists have 
in their combined lifetimes.

I asked them - am I missing something, behind the times, about the 
importance of the union of therapy, law enforcement and interdiction?

Dr.  Mitchell Rosenthal is probably the most important therapist in the 
country, the creator of Phoenix House, the national group of therapeutic 
communities where addicts often have to work a year or more ridding their 
minds, bodies and behavior of drugs.  He said: "Ninety percent of the 
people who need treatment do not seek it out themselves.  They have to be 
coerced, by a wife, an employer, probation officer, a court, the police. 
Very few addicts wake up in the morning and say, 'I am destroying my life. 
I am out of control.  I need help.' "

Dr.  Herbert Kleber of Columbia University,who is considered by supporters 
and enemies of the anti-drug struggle as one of the country's top experts, 
said: "The opposition to interdiction does not include me.  It is part of 
the essential three.  It would be wrong to fight and fight against drugs 
and leave the sources of drugs untouched even if they cannot be controlled 
fully."

Is addition a disease or a matter of behavior?  Dr.  Kleber said, "It is a 
disease that erodes but does not erase ability to make choices, as diabetes 
gives the patient the choice between eating chocolate bars and refusing them."

According to Sue Rusche, director of National Families in Action, both of 
which add up to a university of knowledge on narcotics and an army fighting 
them: "Addicts rarely enter treatment voluntarily.  . . . We must not 
repeat the mistake made when we deinstitutionalized mental health hospitals 
. . . and produced a homeless population of untreated mentally ill people."

Richard A.  Brown, Queens district attorney, said: "The major reason in the 
drop of crime around the city, including murders, is the breakup of gangs 
and putting away of criminals, who created the open-air markets and public 
housing drug bazaars, for a long time."

Those are their messages, for Hollywood families to think about, and 
President Bush when he gets around to his delayed duty of appointing a 
strong drug czar, maybe.

A.M.  Rosenthal, the former executive editor of the New York Times, is a 
nationally syndicated columnist.
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