AMERICA SEEMS ADDICTED TO ITS DESTRUCTIVE WAR ON DRUGS

"Insofar as the government has information not generally available
about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities
we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free
to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives."

- -- Milton Friedman, Free To Choose.

Yes, this comes from that Milton Friedman, the conservative economist.
I found out about his views on our drug war while listening to a
speaker from LEAP -- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. I was
invited because I've written previous columns questioning the sanity
of the drug war; a war that is over 30 years old, has cost billions of
dollars and has been, by the kindest of estimates, a total failure.
Drugs are still available to anyone wanting them. Prices are
reasonable. And now even elementary school students have access to
them.

My problem with the war on drugs, aside from its cost and abject
failure, is this: As long as the drug policy in this country is not
debatable in any civilized, reasonable fashion, we will continue down
an unending path that destroys more than just the people and
ecosystems of places like Colombia and Afghanistan. Or did you think
those poisons we spray from planes on opium and pot plants somehow
know to touch only the plants and not the people, animals and
watersheds that surround the fields?

Every dollar we spend putting a drug user in jail, or declaring drug
use a criminal problem instead of a medical one, or hiring more
probation officers, narcotics cops and corrections officials, is money
that could have been spent healing instead of punishing.

I can already hear people screaming about how I'm soft on drugs and
druggies. Well, here's reality. Given a chance, I'd take all children
away from every family that abuses any substance, be it alcohol or
drugs, and adopt them into homes with the patience, love and coherence
to raise them. But since society still refuses to make me queen,
that's not likely to happen.

So I'm stuck with the fact that parents who abuse substances are going
to continue to have children, and those children are going to continue
to need aid and intervention if they are to have any chance at a
decent life. And those parents are going to continue to avoid
treatment because they not only don't want to sober up, but also
because using drugs is a crime and they don't want to go to jail. So
even if they decide one day that sobriety might be a fun way to raise
their kids, they aren't as likely to seek help.

Spending money on building more jails simply means that we will
continue to incarcerate our citizens at rates unheard of in most
supposedly civilized nations. We actually lead some of the more
repressive regimes in the world today in the percentage of our
citizens in jail. Yet drugs are still easily available in our cities
and towns, whether in Anchorage or in the smallest Bush village.
Families are torn apart because of substance abuse, yet we have little
to no money for treatment but plenty for prisons.

There are a lot of people in jail today who chose to use drugs, used
them, got caught, and are now living off our tax dollars for no other
reason than that. They did not involve kids or family, weren't
violent, didn't break any law except using the drug. Funding their
room and board while I search for money and programs to help parents
try to regain their children is simply ludicrous.

Our war on drugs has failed. For every pound of pot seized, 20 times
more makes it to the streets. Every time we vote to build more jails
and spray more fields with poison rather than accepting this failure,
we delay real progress in dealing with addictions.

Most people don't sober up the first time they're treated. Most
smokers don't quit the first time they try. That's the nature of
addiction. Treating one as a medical condition and the other as a
crime simply makes no sense.

It's time to take our heads out of the sand, drop the puritanical
pretense, and face this problem head on. Addicts need treatment, not
jail.

Elise Patkotak is a writer who lives in Anchorage. Read her blog at
www.elisepatkotak.com.