LOCING ENDLESS WAR ON DRUGS

Decades of effort yield few results

In this campaign season, critics often hammer Sen. John McCain for his
comment that he could see U.S. troops in Iraq for another 100 years.
Although the senator meant the U.S. role in Iraq would be similar to
our role in Germany and South Korea, not actively fight-ing
insurgents, as the critics would have voters believe, the criticism
scores points because the average American doesn't have much inter-est
in fighting a seemingly endless war. Yet this country and others have
been fighting a war for four decades with limited or no success, and
there is no end in sight.

No less deadly than uniformed troops trading volleys with one another,
the war on drugs has cost this country more than a trillion dollars so
far, according to the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Web site,
and that figure increases more than $65 billion each year. (LEAP is an
organization of former and current law enforcement officers who have
recognized the futility of the drug war.) And the government's attempt
to curtail human nature is costing more than money. Every year,
innocent people are killed, wounded or trauma-tized because of the war
on drugs.

The problem is drug prohibition, not drugs.Those who support the drug
war seem to fall into two main camps: those who believe drugs are bad
(no argument here) and must be banned, and those who support the war
simply because drugs are illegal. The latter concern can be solved by
removing prohibition. Then drugs wouldn't be illegal. The former must
be addressed with an appeal to freedom, if not economics.

Although in many people's minds the jury is still out on long-term
harmful effects of marijuana, most people and the scientific evidence
agree that hard drugs such as methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine do a
lot of damage to human bodies. But so does alcohol, and the nation
learned decades ago that banning it didn't keep people from buying it;
they simply changed suppliers, from the corner liquor store to Al
Capone's organization. Government's proper role is to protect its
citizens from each other, not the harmful effects of their own poor
choices.

Bans do little to change people's desire for a substance, but bans do
create black markets to meet that desire. Because of the risks
involved in black markets, prices are higher to cover the overhead,
such as increased security necessary to protect the operation and
specialized equipment needed to smuggle contraband across borders. The
prices result in higher profits as suppliers rake in the cash to
offset the risks they take. High profits attract criminal elements,
people who like high payoffs for little hard work. The violence that
is part and parcel of the drug trade has little to do with drugs and
everything to do with prohibition. And that's the problem from a
public safety standpoint.

In an effort to curtail drug trafficking and corruption, Mexican
President Felipe Calderon has stepped up efforts south of the border.
More than 36,000 troops have been assigned to drug-war efforts in
recent years. Predictably, that has led to violent clashes as drug
traf-fickers fight to protect their profits.

In Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, drug
violence has killed about 800 people this year. Ciudad Juarez has
about four times the population of Colorado Springs. We've had 19
killings so far this year. At a similar rate, Colorado Springs would
have seen roughly 80 homicides so far this year. It's difficult to
be-lieve that if drug war violence killed 80 of our friends and
neighbors, Springs residents wouldn't be howling for change.

Not that all drug war violence takes place elsewhere. Drug raids in
this country have had disastrous results for many innocent people.
Acting on tips from often anonymous sources, anti-drug police teams
have kicked in the doors of innocent homeowners, sometimes drawing
gunfire from residents who believe their homes are being invaded. Some
police officers and homeowners have been wounded in the ensuing gun
battles. All for a mistake in an address.

The mayor of Berwyn Heights, Md., had a SWAT team kick down his front
door and shoot his two dogs when the team served a war-rant in an
investigation of a drug ring that mailed packages of drugs to
unsuspecting victims, then picked up the packages later. The raid was
last month; he's still waiting for an apology for the way the raid was
carried out.

Some drug prohibitionists argue that to end prohibition would be to
admit defeat, would be throwing up our hands and giving our kids to
the drug lords. Although the second point is simply overwrought, maybe
it is time to admit that the drug war isn't working. After de-cades of
trying to eradicate drugs from our society, they're still here, easier
to buy and more powerful than ever. Prohibition has spawned drug
cartels in other nations, undermining their governments, add-ing to
corruption, and financing terrorism. In the U.S., inner-city gangs
have grown more powerful, to the point where there are some areas
police are hesitant to patrol.

There's likely not a community in this country that doesn't face
problems associated with the drug war. After 40 years of expense and
effort, the drug war has resulted in packed prisons, broken families
and a loss of respect for police agencies. And still, many
high-school-ers can tell you where to go to buy illegal drugs. Have we
made any real headway toward solving the problem? It's time to rethink
the policy of prohibition.