Pubdate: Fri, 6 Mar 2009
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: John P. Walters
Note: Mr. Walters is executive vice president of the Hudson Institute 
and was director of the White House Office of National Drug Control 
Policy under President George W. Bush.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?159 (Drug Courts)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/walters.htm (Walters, John)

DRUG LEGALIZATION ISN'T THE ANSWER

Countries That Have Experimented With a Permissive Approach Have
Always Turned Back.

Since 2001 the number of young people using illegal drugs has dropped
by 900,000 to about 2.7 million. This drop is an important development
for all the obvious reasons, plus one. Substance abuse is a disease.
Until recently, we failed to grasp the nature of this disease and how
to reduce the suffering it causes.

For decades, we did not want to believe that alcohol or drugs could
have the power to take over our lives, despite the evidence we
witnessed when our loved ones grappled with drug addiction. We did not
understand how this disease could alter personality and steal
individual freedom. We have paid a high price for this confusion.

We will not quickly change the powerful forces that have for decades
presented drug use as thrilling and fun. For most drug addicts, the
first foray into drug use begins when they are young and have no
expectation of becoming addicted. Nonetheless, they do become addicted
and their denial increases as dependency worsens.

We can prevent and successfully treat this disease, however. There are
millions of Americans in recovery who are staying clean and sober each
day. The rate of drug use among high-school seniors has been cut
nearly in half since its peak years of 1978 and 1979, to 22.3% in
2008. Prevention and treatment have been producing steady results.

The criminal justice system has been transformed over the past 15
years. Adult and juvenile drug courts are now common in most states.
Nationwide there are more than 2,000 drug courts pushing low-level
offenders to get treatment when drug use brings them into the criminal
justice system. Child welfare and family courts also push drug
treatment -- many endangerment and neglect cases involve an adult with
a substance abuse problem. The criminal justice system has become the
most powerful force in the country supporting addiction treatment,
exactly the opposite of the critics' depiction.

Intervention is spreading in the health-care system with the prospect
that screening for substance abuse will become as common as checking
blood pressure for hypertension. In addition, we have legally and
successfully instituted random drug screening programs in schools that
are as promising as systems in place in the military and many
workplaces. The rate of positive tests in the workplace are lower
today than they have been since comprehensive national reporting began
- -- 3.8% of workers tested positive for drugs in 2007, down from 13.6%
in 1988.

What is the alternative to the progress we are making? We have made
the kind of compromises with alcohol that some suggest making with
illegal drugs. Nonetheless, roughly one in 10 of the more than 100
million Americans who drink each month suffer from alcoholism. Illegal
drug use touches roughly 19 million Americans each month with more
than one-third of those suffering from abuse or addiction. Will these
people be better off if drugs are legalized?

Those who propose abandoning control efforts never face up to the
consequences of an America where upwards of 50 million or more people
use drugs regularly. Nor do they consider the consequences to Latin
America if such a vast number of people in the U.S. use drugs.

Alternative regulatory schemes give little attention to how a free
society will function when it sells known disease-causing poisons that
are more powerful than alcohol and that profoundly attack the user's
capacity for free action.

The policies that drive down drug use attack both demand and supply.
Controlling supply reduces consumption as it chokes off access to all
types of drugs. No nation that has tried to avoid controlling supply
has been able to stand by its permissive approach. Sweden, the
Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have all experimented with being
more accepting of drugs, only to backtrack later when the resulting
destruction was clear. The U.S. has also been more permissive in the
past than it is today, only to pay a huge price for the mistake. The
predictable costs in addiction and disease are unsustainable.

We have seen dramatic proof that institutions of law and democracy can
prevail over narco-terrorists. Colombia has attacked drug production
and the violent groups that profited from it. In the process, it
transformed its national security and made its streets safer. What
nation in South America -- or anywhere -- has reduced violence and
human rights abuses more than Colombia since 2002? Could President
Alvaro Uribe have done this by surrendering to the drug trade?

Today there is terrible violence in Mexico. Those who carry out
attacks do so with the intention of making us stop resisting them. But
what narco-terrorists want is power, not control of the drug trade.
These terrorists are growing more violent because over the past three
to four years the money that criminal organizations get from
trafficking meth and cocaine has dropped sharply -- perhaps by 50% or
more. To bankroll their activities, they are now kidnapping, extorting
and grabbing power. The drug trade is a tool, not the cause of these
violent criminal groups.

Making it easier to produce and traffic drugs will strengthen, not
weaken, these terrorists. Mexican President Felipe Calderon knows
this, which is why he and a large majority of his people are fighting
for their democracy and are reaching out for our help.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake