IS OUR DRUG POLICY FAILING? DON'T ASK

Culture: The Drug Czar Has Time For A Speech, But No Time For
Crucial Questions About The Nation's Failed War On Drugs.

Recently, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, our nation's "drug czar," was invited
to Orange County for a debate about drug policy.

He said all he had time to do was give a speech and take a few
questions. My question was: Many people here in California feel that
the federal government is closed-minded, even arrogant, in dealing
with medical marijuana. Since Proposition 215, which allowed sick
people to use marijuana as medicine if it was recommended to them by a
doctor, passed by a large margin in this state, and similar measures
have passed in four other states plus the District of Columbia, will
you now do what you can to cause the federal government to allow the
will of the voters in these states to prevail?

McCaffrey's answer was, in essence, that since in his mind marijuana
was not a medicine, the voters in all of these states could pound sand.
Our drug czar has now gone back to Washington. But there remain many
other critical questions I want to ask him about our nation's failed
war on drugs:

* Have you considered that the enormous problems in countries like
Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Afghanistan are really not caused by drugs
as such but by drug prohibition? That is to say, the problems come
directly from the money obtained from the sale of these drugs.

So couldn't we use our intellect, strength and ingenuity to come up
with some way of deprofitizing these drugs? This will probably not
have any adverse effect upon the availability of these dangerous
drugs, even to our children or even to people in prison, because under
the present policy the drugs are already fully available.

But if we could take the money out of the equation, we wouldn't have
to consider sending our nations' troops and treasure down to these
countries to fight these unwinnable wars.

* Have you considered that since all neutral studies have shown
overwhelmingly that programs of needle exchange for drug-addicted
people, which allow a dirty needle and syringe to be exchanged for
a clean one with no money changing hands and no questions asked, do
not increase drug usage but do greatly reduce the transmission of
the AIDS virus, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and other serious diseases
both to the drug users as well as to their sexual partners and to the
newborns of female drug users?

Since these programs have been endorsed by organizations like the
American Medical Assn., the Centers for Disease Control, the National
Commission on AIDS and the General Accounting Office, as well as by
the secretary of Health and Human Services, will the federal
government now finally change laws that make these programs illegal?

* Do you know what other countries around the world are doing about
these problems? For example, are you aware that Switzerland, in an
effort to reduce the harm caused by these dangerous drugs, has
implemented pilot programs for drug maintenance in 15 of its cities?

These programs allow addicted drug users to have access to low-cost
pharmaceutical morphine, heroin and methadone, which can be injected
under strict medical supervision in licensed medical clinics.

The programs have been so successful in reducing crime in the
neighborhoods surrounding the clinics and increasing the health and
employment of the clients that more than 70% of the Swiss voters
opposed an initiative that would have abolished them. Since reducing
crime and increasing general health and employability of our people
are good things, why have we not established similar pilot programs in
our country?

* Don't you realize that our war on drugs is not working,
and that our prohibitionist policies are significantly adding to our
problems here in Southern California, as well as around the country
and the world?

Don't you realize that just because some of us talk about changing our
policy does not mean that we condone the use or abuse of these
dangerous drugs?

* Finally, since you control a federal budget that has just been
increased from $17.8 billion last year to $19.2 billion this year, is
asking people like you if we should continue with our nation's current
drug policy like a person asking a barber if one needs a haircut? These
are some of the questions I would have asked our country's spokesperson
for the status quo, if only he had had the time.

James P. Gray Is a Judge of the Superior Court in Orange County