COST OF OUR FAILED WAR ON DRUGS IS TOO HIGH

Last week, actor Robert Downey Jr. was arrested in a Palm Springs, Calif.,
hotel and charged with possession of cocaine and methamphetamine. On Oct.
30, Maryland State Police Cpl. Edward M. Toatley, working undercover, was
shot to death by a suspected drug dealer.

Yes, the two incidents do have a connection. Both graphically illustrate
the futility and travesty of our "war on drugs," a conflict in which both
Downey and Toatley are only the latest casualties.

Downey was just a few months out of jail - where he had been cooling his
heels as a result of a previous drug charge - and had appeared in a few
episodes of the Fox television series "Ally McBeal," when he was minding
his own business, harming no one but himself, in a hotel room. Cops
received a tip about drugs and guns in the room. They swooped in and
arrested Downey, who should be in drug treatment.

Instead, he was released on bail, free to cop some more coke or meth if
he's able to avoid police.

Toatley, working undercover with a federal task force to break up a drug
ring in Northeast Washington, D.C., made a deal with a suspected drug
dealer the night before Halloween. Toatley handed the man $3,500. The
suspect went away for a few moments, then returned and shot Toatley in the
head.

Police soon released a picture of the suspect: Kofi Apea Orleans-Lindsay.
Orleans-Lindsay was depicted as a heartless, murdering fiend, his picture
spread over print and broadcast media.

A manhunt ensued.

Police missed no opportunity to stop, question and frisk any man even
remotely matching Orleans-Lindsay's description. They cracked down on drug
dealing in Northeast D.C., bringing it to a virtual standstill. The press
and public expressed outrage at the shooting and wept, calling Toatley
exactly what he was: a brave police officer who had made the ultimate
sacrifice.

When Orleans-Lindsay was caught in New York City two weeks after the
shooting, we all cheered, as if his arrest were a major victory in the drug
war.

To the contrary, Orleans-Lindsay's arrest raises several trou-bling
questions, aside from the obvious one of whether or not he's the actual
shooter.

1. That police crackdown on drug dealing in Northeast D.C. after the
shooting: Aren't police supposed to do that all the time? Wouldn't that
have stemmed the tide of drugs and precluded Toatley from going undercover
in the first place?

2. If police aren't tough on street-level drug dealers all the time, why not?

3. Is arresting street-level dealers the best and most effective way to
fight the drug war?

Don't bother to think about the last question.

I'll answer it for you: No, it isn't. The war on drugs has been waged
primarily against street-level drug dealers - most of them young, black and
male - in the nation's inner cities.

Arrest enough young black, male inner-city drug dealers, conventional
wisdom says, and you'll have this drug problem licked.

Of course, the problem isn't licked.

We're not even close.

The flow of drugs to Baltimore's addict population - about 60,000 people -
doesn't diminish when street-level drug dealers are imprisoned. Arresting
street-level drug dealers didn't keep Downey from getting his cocaine and
methamphetamine. Some police and prosecutors - former Baltimore Police
Commissioner Thomas Frazier and current Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia
Jessamy among them - have been honest enough to admit that America can't
arrest its way out of our current drug crisis.

Jessamy, appearing at a forum on criminal justice and zero tolerance at the
Johns Hopkins University a few weeks ago, said the problem is one of drug
treatment: There isn't enough money, not enough hospital beds, to treat all
of Baltimore's drug addicts. Jessamy should not hope for a change.

The same state that can't find the millions to treat some 60,000 addicts
came up with multimillions to build PSINet Stadium for the Baltimore
Ravens. Some of the politicians who expressed outrage, shock and grief at
Toatley's killing are no doubt the same ones who consistently choose to
"wage war" on drugs - putting Toatley and other brave men and women
directly in harm's way - rather than treat drug addiction as the health
crisis it is.

Don't get me wrong.

I like pro football, but I don't like it that much. I certainly don't like
seeing public funds gleefully handed over to build a stadium if that money
can be used for inpatient drug treatment centers.

What I like even less is the police practice - supported by civilian
politicians who risk nothing - of sending an Ed Toatley on undercover
assignments to ferret out the drug dealers in our midst. (You would think,
wouldn't you, that police work is dangerous enough without sending cops
undercover.)

Before another Ed Toatley is killed in the line of duty, sent forth by us
to do what we don't have the guts to do ourselves, I'd rather see drugs -
those "controlled dangerous substances" no one as yet seems able to control
- - legalized.

Toatley received a hero's funeral and burial, which he deserved.

But who could blame his grieving widow and children if they now wish we had
instituted a drug policy that wouldn't have put him in the line of fire at all?