U.S. Drug war denounced as failure

Speakers cite ills of current policy

By Jeff Israely
Staff Writer

STANFORD Two of the nation's most prominent conservatives told a
gathering of California law enforcement officials Thursday that the ongoing
"War on Drugs" has been a dismal failure.

Former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and acclaimed free market
economist Milton Friedman said local leaders must start rethinking a
25year policy of strict drug prohibition that has spread crime, corruption
and disease while doing little to stem the nation's appetite for Illicit
substances.

Friedman, a Nobel Prize laureate whose ideas guided President Ronald
Reagan's economic policies, told a roomful of police chiefs and politicians
that criminalizing drugs is "a fundamentally immoral task."

Though Friedman has been vocal in the past about his opposition to drug
laws on the intellectual grounds of free will, he focused his remarks at
the Hoover Institution forum on the practical effects of an unbending
approach to illegal narcotic enforcement.

Drug policy, he said, has helped increase prison population 600 percent
since 1970, crippled the American Inner city and required extensive use of
informants and illegal police searches.

"We have done things in the name of prohibiting drugs that we never would
do for prohibiting robbery, for example," Friedman said.

The "War on Drugs" launched by President Richard Nixon and embraced by
every president since is essentially an allout effort to end drug use by
stiffening penalties for users and dealers and trying to cut off supplies
from other nations.

Though Shultz does not go so far to support legalization, he has pushed for
a whole new approach to the problems of drugs a stand that has led
former Reagan administration colleagues to denounce him.

Shultz maintains the singleminded policy of enforcement and Interdiction
abroad has caused growing friction not only in American cities but also in
foreign countries.

"If you create a system where profits are immense, you're going to set up
an independent Industry," he said. "And boy have we set up an industry . ..
It's vast and It's ruthless."

Shultz sees some hope as more political leaders are now, at least, willing
to engage in debate about alternative drug strategies.

"It isn't quite as taboo as it once was," he said.

The twoday conference on the campus of Stanford University also attended
by the Los Angeles police chief the director of the American Civil
Liberties Union and the mayors of Baltimore and San Jose was organized
'to search for "pragmatic" solutions to urban drug problems.

One member of the civilian committee that monitors the Berkeley Police
Department attended the conference to study the possible implications for
the enforcement of Proposition 215, the statewide initiative that legalizes
marijuana for medical purposes.

Changes to drug policy have to "start on a grassroots level," said David
Ritchie, a Berkeley attorney who serves on the city's police review
commission.'

Staff writer Vince Beiser contributed to this report.