Failure on All Fronts

IT'S TIME FOR NEW STRATEGY IN THE DRUG WAR

The president's new plan for the Iraq war stems from the lack of
success in bringing security to a sizable number of Iraqis. Seeing
that and recognizing the American people's patience on that front is
wearing thin, the president took a new look at how he was conducting
that war. After decades of an even worse failure in the drug war, it's
time for the government to rethink that war as well.

Recent reports show an increase in the amount of heroin from
Afghanistan flowing into the United States. A Drug Enforcement
Administration analysis showed that in 2003, 8 percent of the heroin
seized in the U.S. came from Afghanistan, but in 2004 that number
jumped to 14 percent.

In addition to more heroin coming into this country from Afghanistan,
the DEA reports that drugs from Colombia and Mexico are flowing across
our southern border.

Although it's difficult to prove interdiction efforts aren't working,
we haven't seen any reports of there being shortages of illegal drugs
in our communities.

Besides failing to keep drugs off the street, the drug war is
detrimental to our national security.

Many officials note that the illicit drug trade finances
terrorism.

That's a fair point, but it's 180 degrees off course.

It blames drug users for all the money in the illegal drug trade, when
prohibition is responsible for the huge amounts of money to be made
selling drugs.

Banning a product doesn't make it go away; it creates a black market
for it, which increases the price. Terrorists take advantage of the
higher price by entering the drug trade to raise money for their
operations. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia has simplified
this; it hires out its members to drug cartels for security.

The way to get terrorists out of the drug trade is to take away the
profit incentive.

The drug trade doesn't finance terrorism, the drug war does. If the
U.S. and other nations stop treating personal choices such as drug use
as crimes, many problems would disappear.

Granted, others would arise in their place, but they likely would be
less burdensome on society and definitely less of a problem for
national security.

We often hear about drug-related crime.

It should more accurately be called drug war-related
crime.

Drug users resort to burglary and robbery to feed their
habits.

This is partly because their drug use makes it difficult to hold down
a job. But it is also related to the price of their drugs.

As noted above, prohibition raises the price of a product. If drugs
were not illegal, the price would not have to cover the costs of
securing routes for illegal drugs to come into the country, security
for drug sellers and the cost of loss due to seizures.

Cheaper drugs would mean less larceny to feed habits, fewer killings
to protect sales turf. We don't see Ford and Chevy dealers engaging in
gun battles to secure sales areas.

They use legal means to settle differences. Drug dealers don't have
that option, so it becomes a case of might makes right.

Many sociologists and government officials argue that revamping or
ending the drug war would result in a huge upswing in drug use because
the threat of legal action would be gone. Although that's undoubtedly
true in some cases, we would point to the example of alcohol use to
counter that argument.

There's no doubt that alcohol use and abuse creates societal and legal
problems.

But the cost of those problems and addressing them, while great, is
far less than the billions spent on the failed drug war each year. And
treatment costs could more properly be borne by those who use or
benefit from drugs, rather than by the general population. We're
certainly no fans of more taxes or government intrusion into people's
private lives, but this is a case of the lesser of two evils.

We believe some sort of sin tax to help offset costs of drug use is
preferable to the wider war of drugs the nation has been waging for
decades.

After four years of war in Iraq, the American people tell pollsters
they're tired of what they see as the same results for the billions
we've spent, so the administration is reconsidering its tactics.

After four decades of a failed drug war, isn't it time to take a fresh
look at what's not working on that front?