INTERMINABLE DRUG WAR CLAIMS ANOTHER OFFICER

Edward M. Toatley, an undercover Maryland state trooper, was killed Monday
night trying to help win the "war on drugs." Our community has lost yet
another dedicated police officer as well as a loving family man. And
because Toatley enjoyed his work and believed he was doing a public
service, few will question whether he died in vain.

"If anybody out there dealing drugs thinks this will stop our resolve, they
are sadly mistaken," Col. David B. Mitchell, head of the Maryland State
Police, declared at a news conference yesterday.

But I wonder: How many more law enforcement officers will have to be
killed, how many more civilians must die, how many more arrests must be
made and new prisons built before we say enough of this drug war madness?

"Eighty-six years after Congress passed the 1914 Harrison Act that
criminalized drugs, America's drug consumption thrives," Jerry Oliver,
Richmond's chief of police, wrote in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Oct.
22. "Our nation's premier drug-war strategy of more police, more
interdiction, and more incarceration is failing and the trajectory
continues downward."

Toatley, 37, was a trooper for 16 years. Mitchell described him as a
seasoned police officer who had made "dozens and dozens and dozens" of
so-called "hand-to-hand" undercover drug buys. And yet, despite Toatley's
courage and apparent successes, you have to wonder why he was repeatedly
subjected to this kind of unreasonable danger.

From Colombia, South America, cocaine flows into this country by the
mega-tonnage--a raging powdered river, profitable beyond belief and so
corrosive it threatens to topple national governments. Here, in the
District of Columbia, a police officer gives his life making a low-level
buy, an act that might have resulted in a "conspiracy to distribute" charge
somewhere down the line but would have done little, if anything, to get the
drugs off the streets.

In the aftermath of the largest drug haul in history--20 tons of cocaine
and $10 million seized in Los Angeles a few years ago--the price of street
cocaine actually dropped to its lowest levels ever. It was just another
sign that we are flooded with drugs.

The only thing police are doing, in effect, is keeping the prison industry
in business--mostly with a steady supply of poor blacks snagged off the
streets of urban America.

This is immoral, to say nothing of ineffective.

"Former Secretary of State George Shultz said recently that any real and
lasting change that occurs in a democratic society is done through
education and persuasion and not through coercion and force," Oliver wrote
in the Times-Dispatch. "Perhaps it's time to heed this sage advice and
search for alternative approaches to our current drug-control strategies
that will be more effective, fair and humane in reducing drug usage and
drug dependency; that will emphasize treatment, prevention, and education;
and that will rely on our social and health systems more than on our
criminal justice systems."

Proponents of the war on drugs, such as William J. Bennett, drug czar under
President George Bush, cite statistics that show a 60 percent drop in drug
abuse during the last 20 years and credit the decline to "no-nonsense"
police actions.

However, the FBI, in a 1997 report that raised serious questions about the
effectiveness of the national war on drugs, found that drug arrests had
jumped 35 percent between 1990 and 1995--with the nearly 1.5 million people
arrested on drug charges in 1995 being the largest number ever recorded.

"Trends for overall drug arrests indicate that this social ill shows no
signs of abating," the FBI report said.

Toatley, most importantly, was a husband and was the father of an
18-year-old son, a 5-year-old son and an 18-month-old daughter. Charming,
hardworking and intelligent, he also served as president of the Coalition
of Black Maryland State Troopers.

He had value to our community that greatly outweighed the risk of
disappearing into the dirty, double-dealing shadow world of undercover
street dope buys, where a suspect apparently shot him in the head.

Arguably, he could have done more to stop drug abuse by simply being seen,
in daylight, in uniform, in schools, in neighborhoods, on patrol.

And, without this dubious war on drugs, he might still be alive.