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. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth