LET ADULTS CHOOSE THEIR DRUGS

'War On Drugs' Only Wastes Resources, Harms Users, Funds Criminals

The current issue of the Summer Titan, the student newspaper at Cal
State Fullerton, proclaims that marijuana is "still in vogue." The
Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center confirms in
its 2006 Assessment that marijuana demand continues to hold steady.

But make no mistake - we're still making war on it. And few seem to care.

It's a testimonial to the effectiveness of government spin that
people seem barely troubled by the "war on drugs" despite the fact
that it is by far our quagmire of all quagmires, having raged for
over three decades, with no end in sight. This is an issue crying for
public debate in the 2006 elections, yet no candidate is demanding one.

Republicans should be troubled by government use of substantial
security and law enforcement resources - money, technology, personnel
- - to look for drugs instead of hunting down rapists, murderers,
terrorists or weapons of mass destruction.

Democrats should be further disconcerted by the way the drug war
disproportionately impacts Latinos, African-Americans and young
people, especially college students who lose their loans if they're
caught having chosen one of the banned drugs.

The concept of warring on drugs was invoked by Orange County's own
President Nixon in the early '70s and resulted in a widespread
government attack on its own citizens. In his 1990 memoir, "In the
Arena," Nixon acknowledged that the war on drugs had, in fact, become
"our second civil war" and made no apologies for it.

But we've had a pharmacological revolution since the early 20th
century's infamous Prohibition Era during which Nixon's attitudes
about drugs were shaped. Pharmacological knowledge - the fruits of
which range from birth control to Prozac - has grown exponentially in
the past 50 years. Americans have an amazing array of drugs to choose
from for a host of biochemical needs.

Half of all Americans reportedly are on some kind of drug, and many
of these people take multiple drugs. Drugs from beer to Viagra are
pushed with Orwellian frequency in TV commercials. Sending a young
woman to jail or denying her a student loan because she prefers a
different substance than these seems like cruel and unusual punishment.

In addition, when we insist on outlawing drugs that many of our adult
citizens never stop preferring, we give the criminal underworld
control of a huge market just the way we did with alcohol during
Prohibition. Today the war on drugs, essentially a welfare system for
criminals, nourishes organized crime on a global scale.

By ending drug prohibition and adopting a policy of personal drug
choice with government regulation and taxation - the same sets of
rights and responsibilities we give to alcohol and tobacco users - we
could significantly dry up crime revenue while bolstering the economy
through the creation of legitimate jobs, businesses, and tax revenue.
This could happen here, and it could happen in Afghanistan.

Despite federal attempts to stymie all research into the illegal
drugs, enough is known experientially by the American people to say
that while most of us find most or all of these drugs unappealing, we
know they aren't the wild demonic forces they were once made out to
be. It's even possible that one among them - marijuana - has been
wrongly framed from the start and could in fact be a relatively safe
alternative to alcohol and tobacco, which is one reason it's still in vogue.

Besides, each of us is biochemically unique. Adults should be able to
choose what works best for their systems. Those who find that even
small doses of alcohol and tobacco are too toxic or too laden with
unpleasant side effects should have the right to choose something
they find more chemically congenial.

War should always be a last resort. When it comes to drugs, we
definitely have other options. We need political leaders from all
sides of the political spectrum to step forward and debate the
endless war on drugs in the 2006 elections.