GUEST COLUMN: WAR ON DRUGS A BATTLE NATION CAN'T AFFORD TO WIN

TULIA - In his April 11 guest column, "Ignoring statistics is a
crime," Alton McQueen opines that we cannot win the war on drugs
because of perfectionist notions of law enforcement.

But we are losing the war on drugs for the same reason the war on
booze was lost early in the past century.

We are losing the war on drugs for the same reason that a war against
prostitution can never be finally won. Where there's a demand for a
product or service, a supply will be found.

The worst thing about the war on drugs is not that we are losing it
but what it's doing to our country.

In the name of the war on drugs, Jim Crow is being resuscitated. In
the name of the war on drugs, the United States is becoming a police
state.

In the name of the war on drugs, the United States supports right-wing
military governments in South America in their wars against their own
people. As I write this, the news is fresh: A Peruvian Air Force plane
shot down a civilian plane suspected of running drugs. But it turned
out the civilian plane was a missionary plane, and a young mother and
her infant daughter were killed in the attack.

Mr. McQueen implies that I have ignored statistics in the war on
drugs. After citing the statistic that 79 percent of those in prison
for drug offenses are of ethnic minorities, he says that if I studied
the crime statistics, I could answer my question: "How can you rip
such a large percentage of the black population out of this town and
say it was not racially motivated?"

Well, I have studied the statistics.

The very statistics that Mr. McQueen cites lend evidence that the war
on drugs nationally, not just in Tulia, is racist in its impact if not
its intent.

Blacks make up about 12 percent of the population. Yet 79 percent of
those imprisoned for drug offenses are ethnic minorities, according to
the statistics Mr. McQueen cites. Ethnic minorities include Hispanics
and minorities other than blacks.

The FBI statistics cited do not tell us what portion of this
79-percent figure is black. Justice Department figures show that in
1996, 53 percent of those convicted in state courts were black.

Whichever set of statistics we use, blacks are in prison for drug use
far disproportionately to their numbers in the population as a whole.

So, blacks must be more prone to drug use, right?

Wrong!

Statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
reveal that white high school seniors are seven times more likely than
blacks to have used cocaine, eight times more likely to have smoked
crack, and seven times more likely to have used heroin. And from the
Centers for Disease Control we hear that between the ages of 12 and
17, whites are more likely to sell drugs than blacks.

Police stop-and-search tactics on the New Jersey Turnpike lend
credence to these statistics. Police stopped a higher percentage of
black motorists but found drugs in a higher percentage of white
motorist stops than of black.

Statistics absolve neither the war on drugs at large, nor the Tulia
drug sting, of the charge of racism. Rather, they suggest that the war
on drugs nationally, and in Tulia, targets those easiest to catch and
easiest to convict. That means poor people, and disproportionately,
that means black people.

But at least as disturbing as the systemic racism of the war on drugs
is its attack on constitutional liberties.

When, in the name of the war on drugs, schoolchildren are subjected to
random and suspicionless drug testing, the Fourth Amendment rights of
these children are violated.

The Sixth Amendment is under attack when, in the name of the war on
drugs, the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness is deemed
sufficient to deny a person's liberty, even when the credibility of
that witness is questionable at best.

Apparently the pace of the destruction of our civil liberties is too
slow for Mr. McQueen. He seems to decry the time-honored tenet that a
defendant is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt. With what should we replace that tenet?

Should the accusation of a crime become tantamount to
guilt?

The war on drugs is too expensive - too expensive in terms of human
life, human liberties and constitutional principles.

The Rev. Charles Kiker of Tulia is a retired clergyman.