Strong ideas on drug war

Stanford panel recommends new tactics

By Jennifer Mena
Mercury News Staff Writer

America has lost the war against drugs so new, radical means must be used
to combat a problem devouring its inner cities, prominent panelists at a
Hoover Institution conference urged Thursday.

The panelists, including former Secretary of State George Shultz and Nobel
Prizewinning economist Milton Friedman, told an audience of law
enforcement officers and drug analysts from around the country that
legalization of drugs and treatment for addicts could squash the burgeoning
drug industry.

The conference was conducted by the Hoover Institution, a conservative
Stanford University think tank that began studying the drug problem in 1995
and is considering alternative methods to control illegal substances. The
institution hopes to draw conclusions that could become part of the
national drug policy debate.

Joseph McNamara, a former police chief who is now a scholar at the think
tank, organized the twoday conference that also includes former U.S.
Attorney General Edwin Meese and Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard Parks as
panelists.

Shultz, who was blasted eight years ago for proposing legalizing drugs,
told the audience of 100 that users should be considered people with health
problems, not criminals. He said he ``would throw the book,'' at dealers.
The law should be applied to show that, ``We really mean it.''

Shultz, a Hoover Institution distinguished fellow, said illegal drugs have
become a lucrative industry that makes up eight percent of world trade.
Profit motivates the drug trade, he said.

A key theme in Thursday's discussion centered on how international drug
dealers profit from Americans' addiction.

Americans' drug use cannot be blamed on other countries such as Colombia
and Mexico because dealers in those countries respond to U.S. demand for
illegal substances, said Shultz and Friedman. Shultz said foreign
policymakers see American drug users as the cause of drug trafficking.

Unlike Shultz, who danced around the legalization issue, Friedman flatly
said that drugs should be legalized.

``Legalization is not the dirty word we have been saying,'' Friedman said.
``Everyone knows in this country that the war on drugs has been a failure.''

Drug abusers and dealers are crowding prisons, enforcement policies are
racist and police are often corrupted by dealers, he said. Drug dealing has
destroyed inner cities, where affluent drug customers seek the product from
lowincome youth who chose drug dealing because it is more lucrative than
fastfood jobs, he said.

Further, enforcement hinders treatment, he said: ``An addict must admit he
is a criminal to get treatment. We are helping (drug addicts) become
addicted to drugs and making it difficult to get treatment,'' he said.

Ethan Nadelmann, director of the New Yorkbased drug policy think tank, the
Lindesmith Center, said the United States should consider a
``harmreduction policy,'' to replace eradication and prohibition efforts
that have failed.

Needle exchange, methadone centers and even centers that dispense heroin to
addicts might better serve the country because these programs would reduce
the number of drugrelated deaths.

``We should stop talking about a drugfree society. It sets the hoop too
high,'' said Nadelmann.

Many participants mostly police chiefs, detectives and drug policy
analysts said they believed legalization could destroy areas such as
Oakland.

Jeff Tauber, a former Oakland judge who is president of the National
Association of Drug Court Professionals, said legalization with no
sanctions for drug use ``would sacrifice inner cities . . . and lead to
perpetual drug addiction.''

Hubert Williams, president of the Washington, D.C.based Police Foundation,
said the nation's drug policy does not address widespread use of crack by
white Americans because AfricanAmericans are arrested and convicted at a
higher rate than other racial groups.

Alameda County Sheriff Charles Plummer said he does not object to the
legalization of drugs, but the law should be established so that drugs are
purchased in pharmacies, not in private clubs or back rooms.