HOFFMAN UNDER COVER IS EVIDENCE OF A LOST WAR

When GIs fought their way into Germany 63 years ago, they found
themselves in gun battles with boys who'd barely begun to sprout whiskers.

By then, the architects of the Third Reich's war machine understood
that there wasn't even the slimmest chance of turning the tide. They
were buying time, exploiting impressionable youth to slow the Allied
advance.

I couldn't help but think of that analogy last Sunday as I read the
account of Rachel Hoffman's last hours. Say what you will about her
failure to follow protocol and her obvious poor judgment; there's more
than a shred of truth to those observations, neither of which makes
her slaying any less tragic.

But the fact that Tallahassee police even considered using Hoffman to
make an undercover purchase of drugs and a gun is more clear evidence
that America's war on drugs is misguided, mismanaged and mistaken. The
young woman was simply not up to the task and should never have been
placed in that situation.

I don't presume that TPD had evil intentions; nor am I suggesting by
the comparison that our city police are like the Nazis. Far from it.
But I do think they made questionable decisions in a drug war that's
not of their making and for which they don't deserve the lion's
share of blame.

Sadly, for Hoffman's friends and loved ones, she's just another
casualty in an unwinnable battle that is based less on education and
pragmatism than on whatever psychic comfort many receive from
prohibition.

Likening it to a war makes it more marketable. Just as military
officials used body counts to convince Americans that we were
"winning" in Vietnam, politicians and law-enforcement officials use
major drug seizures and arrests to show that there's light at the end
of this tunnel.

And they selectively present data to make their case. Cocaine seizures
indeed are up. Cocaine use among young teens is down. Marijuana use is
down since 2002, and teens' use of methamphetamine, surely among the
most harmful drugs on the street, is also down, thankfully.

Some drug use is up, though. Cocaine use among 12th-graders, for
example, is 4.8 percent higher than it was in 2001. And despite the
multibillions of dollars we spend every year on drug-related
enforcement, interdiction and foreign aid, there's no evidence that
the major drug cartels are ready to fold their tents. As long as it's
illegal and there's demand, there always will be, " they'll prosper.

Most politicians, even ones who harbor private doubts about the focus
and strategy of the drug war, won't risk being too critical lest they
be painted as "soft on crime," and supportive of drug use.

That's the tragedy of our label-aim-fire society. It's short on
thoughtful analysis, long on gotchas.

This has nothing to do with liberal or conservative politics. I'd
label myself a centrist, but many of my critics say I'm a liberal.
That's fine. On this topic, many of the best conservative minds in the
country share my disgust with the way this incredibly expensive
35-year campaign has been conducted, and agree that it's long past
time for America to rethink its drug strategy.

One of the most thoughtful critiques I've read ran in the National
Review , a standard bearer of conservatism, which broke its long
silence on the topic 12 years ago. While deploring drug use and urging
"the stiffest feasible sentences against anyone convicted of selling a
drug to a minor," the editors said the failed drug war "is diverting
intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of
addiction, wasting our resources, and encouraging civil, judicial and
penal procedures associated with police states."

Although higher percentages of federal drug-war money have gone for
treatment since then, the amount for law enforcement still is
considerably more. So, instead of fundamentally rethinking focus and
strategy, the policy czars have just moved pieces on the chess board.

In 1995, the late conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. addressed
the New York Bar. I can't remember quoting Buckley to support my
position, but on this issue few could say it better.

"I have spared you, even as I spared myself, an arithmetical
consummation of my inquiry, but the data here cited instruct us that
the cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its
manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with
intensive education of nonusers and intensive education designed to
warn those who experiment with drugs.

"We have seen a substantial reduction in the use of tobacco over the
last 30 years, and this is not because tobacco became illegal but
because a sentient community began, in substantial numbers, to
apprehend the high cost of tobacco to human health, even as, we can
assume, a growing number of Americans desist from practicing unsafe
sex and using polluted needles in this age of AIDS. If 80 million
Americans can experiment with drugs and resist addiction using
information publicly available, we can reasonably hope that
approximately the same number would resist the temptation to purchase
such drugs even if they were available at a federal drugstore at the
mere cost of production."

That was 13 years ago. Seems we haven't learned a whole lot since.