BUSH TEAM'S PROHIBITION DRUG POLICY IS A BUST

John Walters, White House director of the National Office for Drug Control
Policy, visited Portland this month "to learn about the challenges that local
leaders face and successes this city has achieved," according to his Aug. 13
opinion piece, "Fight against drug abuse will be won at local level," in The
Oregonian. Unfortunately the drug czar has not yet learned the central lesson
that prohibition doesn't work.

Yes, the fight must be fought and can be won at the local level. What Walters
and his superiors fail to acknowledge is that countries and communities that
attack drug abuse as a medical problem are far more successful at minimizing it
than those pursuing his prohibitionist approach.

Walters says "66 percent of the men arrested in Portland last year tested
positive for drugs." He also says law enforcement is critical, "since citizen
involvement works best . . . where laws are upheld and people are discouraged
from bringing drugs into the neighborhood in the first place." Sadly, as when
alcohol was illegal, the war on drugs drives prices and profits up, luring the
desperate and unscrupulous to get into a lucrative black market. Nobody pushed
marijuana in schools before it was banned.

Walters is right to say that "there is no single route to success" and that
"lasting progress against drugs requires a balanced strategy of community drug
prevention, treatment and law enforcement." Disappointingly, his
administration's approach relies too heavily on locking up users and skimps on
prevention and treatment.

The drug czar is also right that local communities must tackle the problem and
help deliver change. Several states and localities have done just that by
legalizing medical marijuana use, but he and the administration are doing their
best to harass patients, doctors and legal providers. As with federal
interference in 100-percent-legal assisted suicide in Oregon, this policy
tramples state and individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the
highest law of our land.

Walters concludes that "by confronting this issue openly and honestly, we can
achieve real results." Lacking the intellectual honesty to admit that the
alleged cure is worse than the disease, drug warriors' results are rising abuse
rates, loss of Americans' freedoms, and the largest per-capita prison
population in the world.

Prohibition precludes rational regulation and other peaceful controls. Isn't it
time to let states and communities tackle the problem in ways that really work?