Pubdate: Sun, 13 May 2001
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
Copyright: 2001 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Contact:  http://home.post-dispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/418

JUST SAY NO

It's hard to imagine a worse choice for national drug czar than John P. 
Walters. He promises to employ strategies that have already wasted billions 
of dollars and thousands of lives -- among them an American missionary and 
her infant daughter, killed last month when their plane was shot down over 
Peru.

Now is the time to rethink our approach to illegal drugs. Instead, like a 
general preparing to refight past battles, President George W. Bush has 
turned to a vocal champion of already discredited tactics.

In 1980, the federal anti-drug budget was about $1 billion. Last year, 
federal and state governments spent $50 billion. During that time, our "get 
tough" approach to drugs has swollen the nation's prison population to 
nearly 2 million. About 5 million more Americans are on probation or 
parole. Government has been granted powers undreamed of by the Founding 
Fathers, including the right to seize property from people suspected -- but 
not convicted -- of involvement with drugs. But, according to the 
government's own statistics, illegal drugs are cheaper, purer and more 
readily available than ever. The percentage of high school seniors who have 
used illegal drugs went from 55 percent in 1975 to 54 percent in 1998. It 
may be possible to argue that those are the hallmarks of success, but not 
with a straight face.

Liberals and conservatives alike have begun urging a reassessment of 
national drug policy. New York is in the process of revising its drug laws, 
arguably the nation's toughest. Other states like California and Arizona 
now mandate treatment instead of prison for first-time, non-violent drug 
offenders.

That's an approach the president seemed to have endorsed. When he announced 
Mr. Walters' appointment, President Bush promised to pay "unprecedented 
attention" to helping addicted Americans get treatment. Yet Mr. Walters has 
testified that increased emphasis on drug treatment is "ineffectual 
policy." Instead, he argues for stepped-up interdiction efforts. And he 
says the way to win the War on Drugs is to get tough with offenders. That 
view is contradicted by a National Institute of Justice study on the crack 
cocaine epidemic, which concluded that mandatory prison sentences and 
hundreds of thousands of arrests "appeared to have no major deterrent 
effect" on drug abuse. Crack use declined just as rapidly in cities like 
Washington, where budget cuts caused the number of cops and arrests to 
drop, as it did in places like New York, where police aggressively arrested 
drug dealers and users.

A rational approach to drug control means rejecting failed policies, not 
nominating their chief apologist as the nation's drug czar.
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MAP posted-by: Beth