WE HAVE LOST DRUG WAR

I don't know whether America is going to win the war in Iraq, but I
do know that we have lost the war against the use of drugs, which we
have pursued for the past 30-plus years. The war on drugs has been a
dismal failure. It is not truly a war against drugs, but a war
against us - our people, our children, ourselves.

President Nixon, when running for president, coined the expression,
"war on drugs," knowing that appearing tough on crime would get him many votes.

After Nixon's election, Congress passed legislation giving massive
funding to police departments throughout the country to fight the war
on drugs. The politicians passed harsh laws for mandatory minimum
sentences and for "three strikes and you're out" sentences. The
mentality that has prevailed is "lock them up, throw the key away,
and the drug problem will go away." We've locked them up, but,
unfortunately, the problem has not gone away.

Worse Than Ever

As a matter of fact, the drug problem has become worse. Whether we
want to admit it or not, we absolutely cannot arrest our way out of
the drug problem. Walter Cronkite recently wrote a letter asking more
than 100,000 people to help end the drug war at home. In explaining
the reasons for doing so, he stated, "It surely hasn't made our
streets safer. Instead, we have locked up literally millions of
people - disproportionately people of color - who have caused little
or no harm to others - wasting resources that could be used for
counter-terrorism, reducing violent crime, or catching white-collar criminals."

Humans for hundreds of years have been using alcohol, coffee,
tobacco, marijuana, opium and other addictive and mood-affecting
drugs. Legal or illegal drugs and crime go hand in hand. Most of the
criminal cases I handled on the bench, such as violence, robbery, and
thievery were intertwined with alcohol and drugs. Interestingly, we
don't arrest people for drinking alcohol, or smoking tobacco, the two
worst drugs known to human beings. In the United States, tobacco
kills 430,000 people every year; alcohol kills another 110,000. All
the illegal drugs combined in the United State kill fewer than 18,000 people.

We have tried to use force, prohibition and incarceration to control
the drug market. We have increased the patrol and inspection of our
nation's borders. We have increased arrests for violation of drug
laws and lengthened sentences. We have poured billions of dollars
into overseas anti-drug paramilitary operations. What are the results?

The reality is that our efforts have led to a more efficient drug
trade and a hugely profitable drug market. Every year, we're spending
about 70 billion to fight this war. Every year we are arresting 1.6
million people - mostly young people - for non-violent drug offenses,
thereby clogging our courts. Our prison system has quadrupled in the
past 20 years, making building prisons in America the fastest growing
industry. There are over 2 million prisoners in the United States,
which means we who make up 5 percent of the total global population,
now have 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Significantly, although
African Americans account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population,
44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are African
Americans. Violent crime is not responsible for the quadrupling of
the incarcerated population since 1980. The single greatest force
behind the growth of the prison population has been the war on drugs.

With all these lives we're destroying every year, and all the money
we're spending, drugs are cheaper, are more potent, and easier to get
than when the war against drugs began. Everything from crack cocaine
to marijuana is just a phone call away. You can buy it on any street,
in any school yard, in any small farm town. As a 2002 drug survey by
the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University revealed, schoolchildren across the country say it is
easier for them to buy marijuana than it is to buy beer and
cigarettes. Is it perhaps because alcohol is controlled by the
government, whereas drug distribution is controlled by organized crime?

I think that it is time to rethink our strategy and to redefine our
goals. We obviously cannot depend on our politicians to extricate us
from this quagmire. We must admit that we're losing the war on drugs.
As parents concerned about protecting our children from drug-related
harm, we must alter our way of thinking and hopefully find ways to
claim victory. We must look for alternatives. One hears many voices
proclaiming that the answer is treatment, education and prevention.
There are also many voices out there that proclaim that in order to
end the war on drugs, and end drug prohibition, the answer is to
legalize and regulate drugs so that we can run the mob out of a
highly profitable business that pay no taxes on their huge profits.
We can then control the drug market, regulate it and tax it.

Public Action

No one likes to admit being a loser. But since the politicians will
not cure this societal ailment, is it feasible to believe that we the
people somehow can organize, mobilize and publicize the disastrous
consequences of a drug war against our children and ourselves and put
an end to it? What do you think?