ECONOMIST PUSHES FOR LEGALIZATION OF NARCOTICS

Any $50-a-day crackhead can tell you why politicians of both major parties
so blindly support America's War on (some) Drugs.

What is more perplexing/discouraging/frightening is why - in a purportedly
free society - there is so little debate in our mainstream media about how
and why our drug war is being fought after three decades of obvious failure.

It's a shame, not to mention a national disgrace, that no important
American magazine - or newspaper, or TV channel, or cable channel talking
head - has found the brains and the guts to do what Britain's Economist
does on its cover this week - straightforwardly push for the legalization
of drugs.

The venerable newsweekly, which counts nearly 500,000 subscribers to its
American edition, has long been a brave, tireless and principled advocate
of legalizing drugs such as marijuana, heroin and cocaine. As it
demonstrates in its 15-page survey of the "drugs trade," the growing,
selling, consuming and outlawing of illegal drugs around the world is a
complex mix of economics, politics and world culture.

The Economist is not kidding itself about the down sides of illegal drugs
or the bad people who traffic in them. It knows that if they are made
legal, they'll become even cheaper and more available, and probably will be
used and abused by more people, including kids.

It also knows drugs such as heroin and cocaine can hurt individuals and
society and understands why they arouse the "moral fury" of segments of
society, the way divorce and drinking alcohol still can.

But the Economist's argument for legalization rests equally on principle
and practicality. As the magazine points out, basing a national drug policy
on "moral outrage" - as America has done - is a terribly impractical idea.

Proof of that is America's War on (some) Drugs. It not only costs taxpayers
about $40 billion a year, "it has eroded civil liberties, locked up
unprecedented numbers of young blacks and Hispanics and corroded foreign
policy." It has proved "a dismal rerun" of Prohibition, America's 13-year
war against alcohol.

As for principle, the magazine refers all martini-drinking,
nicotine-addicted anti-drug warriors to John Stuart Mill, the great British
19th century liberal.

Unlike today's morally meddlesome and selectively puritanical liberals and
conservatives, Mill truly believed that free adult individuals should be in
charge of their own minds and bodies and not the state - even if they are
doing themselves harm by smoking reefer or bungee-jumping.

Despite such radical talk and its obvious biases, the Economist's package -
as always - is reasoned, readable and rich with information. It doesn't
pretend to have all the answers. And it's journalistically fair, whether
it's tracking the steadily falling street price of a kilo of heroin
($290,000), explaining the more humane approach of Switzerland's heroin
maintenance programs or urging America's politicians to move toward a
policy that treats drug addiction as a health problem, not a criminal one.

The Economist's arguments against the idiocies and inequities of the drug
war aren't new. Neither is its case for legalization or its call for
maximum individual sovereignty.

Sadly, its package is especially valuable mainly because America's failed
drug policy is so rarely debated.