RUNNERS RACE WRONG DIRECTION IN DRUG WAR

State Sen. George Runner (R-Antelope Valley) and Assemblywoman Sharon
Runner (R-Lancaster, but also representing Hinkley) are looking to
compound the failure of America's drug war by making it even nastier
and more costly to Californians.

The Runners are looking to score with voters by sponsoring the "Safe
Neighborhoods Act," an initiative currently gathering signatures to
try to make the November ballot. The act is a collection of laws
that, among other things, increases penalties for certain drug and
gang-related crimes.

Of note is the initiative's intention to increase penalties for meth
possession and sales to the same level as penalties for cocaine. We
find it amazing that, as the federal government is looking at its
penalties for cocaine and crack cocaine and realizing they may just
be too harsh, they're actually considering increasing penalties for drug use.

The drug war has been a costly, violent, destructive failure. There
has been very little to come out of the drug war to suggest that its
perpetuation will ever result in less drug use, less violence, or
less crime. It has been responsible for the creation of the gang
problem, as surely as alcohol prohibition gave power to the Mafia.

The irony of the Runners' initiative is that it also attempts to
fight gangs by increasing penalties for the recruitment of juveniles.
But the reason the gangs need to recruit new members is because they
need to refill their ranks when they're sent to prison or get killed.
The recruitment of teens into gangs would not be necessary without
the drug war.

We are not naive about the effects of drug use. Some libertarians act
as though the abandonment of the drug war would bring about an end to
crime. We know that's not entirely the case. Violence will decrease,
certainly, and the power of gangs would drop notably. But crimes
caused by drug users will continue - identity theft, robbery,
burglary - because addicts can't hold down jobs to earn the money to
pay for the drugs. The price of drugs, though would likely drop as
well, making crime a little less necessary (well, until the
government starts taxing it, of course).

But laws against drugs simply don't discourage drug use. In order for
laws to be effective, a potential criminal actually has to care about
what happens to him or her. The criminal has to actually ponder the
consequences of his or her behavior. Drug addicts (any addicts,
really) simply don't care about the consequences the same way a
rational, sober person would, or else they wouldn't be using drugs in
the first place.