AN UNWINNABLE WAR ON DRUGS

What has the war on drugs done for Darryl Strawberry and Robert Downey
Jr.? Are they better off or worse off? Are they the targets or the
victims? Should they be thankful or regretful?

The war on drugs is really a war on people - on anyone who uses or
grows or makes or sells a forbidden drug. It essentially consists of
two elements: the predominant role of criminalization of all things
having to do with marijuana, cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy and other
prohibited drugs and the presumption that abstinence - coerced if
necessary - is the only permissible relationship with these drugs.
It's that combination that ultimately makes this war unwinnable.

The previous drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, wanted to do away with the
rhetoric of the war on drugs while retaining its two core elements.
Now the new attorney general, John Ashcroft, wants to intensify the
drug war efforts. The implications are ominous.

The success or failure of drug policies is usually measured by those
annual surveys that tell us how many Americans, particularly
teenagers, confessed to a pollster that they had used one drug or
another. Drug warriors often point to the 1980's as a time when the
drug war really worked because the number of illicit drug users
reportedly fell more than 50 percent in the decade.

But consider that in 1980 no one had ever heard of the cheap, smokable
form of cocaine called crack or of drug-related H.I.V. infection. By
the 1990's, both had reached epidemic proportions in American cities.
Is this success?

Or consider that in 1980, the federal budget for drug control was
about $1 billion, and state and local budgets perhaps two or three
times that. Now the federal drug control budget has ballooned to
roughly $20 billion, two-thirds of it for law enforcement, and state
and local governments spend even more. On any day in 1980,
approximately 50,000 people were behind bars for violating drug laws.
Now the number is approaching 500,000. Is this success?

What's needed is a new way of evaluating drug policies by looking at
how they reduce crime and suffering. Arresting and punishing citizens
who smoke marijuana ó the vast majority of illicit drug users - should
be one of our lowest priorities. We should focus instead on reducing
overdose deaths, curbing new H.I.V. infections through needle-exchange
programs, cutting the numbers of nonviolent drug offenders behind
bars, and wasting less taxpayer money on ineffective criminal policies.

Darryl Strawberry and Robert Downey Jr. qualify as both targets and
victims of the war on drugs - targeted for consuming a forbidden drug,
victimized by policies that must "treat" not just addiction but
criminality. Millions more are victimized when their loved ones are
put behind bars on drug charges or when they lose family members to
drug-related AIDS, overdoses or prohibition-related violence. We
should base our drug policies on scientific evidence and public health
precepts. That's the most sensible and compassionate way to reduce
drug abuse.

Ethan A. Nadelmann