NO FIGHT IN THE DRUG WAR?

This country is at war with itself over drugs. On the one hand we have
President Bush, in a tough warrior stance, pledging abundant funds to fight
the scourge of illegal drugs.

And we have a virtually united U.S. Supreme Court, one whose conservative
majority has regularly negated the applicability of acts of Congress to the
states, upholding the federal law classifying marijuana as an illegal drug.
This despite the fact that voters in Arizona, Alaska, California, Colorado,
Maine, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington have approved the medical use of
cannabis, along with Hawaii's legislature, and even though other states are
considering doing the same.

Then there's Detroit, which may cause us to shrug because it's so close,
because some consider it so bad, and because it's been a special case for
so long.

An investigative team of the Detroit News found that neither police nor the
judiciary are particularly gung-ho in winning this drug war. For example,
in 1996, 30 percent of felony drug-case dismissals occurred because police
and other prosecution witnesses missed court. Last year it was 40 percent.
The situation, as it relates to police, is being remedied, but how did it
get so bad?

Still, though the police department has been reorganized to stem a major
drug program in that city, it has brought fewer major felony cases than it
did before.

Jurors seem more tolerant as well. They exonerated one woman, in whose home
police found 11 pounds of cocaine, because they said they weren't sure she
knew she had cocaine sitting out in plain view in her basement. Come again?

A judge rejected another case because police barged in, rather than wait
for someone to come to the door. Though both the Michigan Court of Appeals
and its Supreme Court reversed him, there has been no subsequent prosecution.

Not only are police not showing up in court, but since 1999, more than 60
felony drug cases were tossed after judges ruled police obtained evidence
improperly. You'd think police would have taken the hint after five or 10
such cases.

What's bizarre in this disarray in the justice system is that when cases
are pursued, the state generally wins, mostly via guilty pleas.

Another view of the Detroit situation and the voters and legislators in
nine states who approved medical use of marijuana is that there's a growing
divide in American thought on illegal drugs and the stringent laws which
have so far failed to controlled them.

That ought to encourage Congress to revisit this issue in the near future,
and, if there is any real leadership in its ranks, to evaluate the effect
of current drug policy and dare to make required changes regardless of
whose ox is gored.