DRUG PREVENTION BEATS IMPRISONMENT

The Bush administration, as usual, wants to cut money that helps prevent
drug use and turn instead to punishing folks after they have used drugs.
This time, the victims of that strategy are residents of federal housing
projects.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's proposed budget
would cut out a $309 million fund called the Public Housing Drug
Elimination Program. In the Atlanta area, grants from the drug elimination
fund have been used to hire off-duty police officers to patrol housing
projects, as well as to provide after-school programs for children that
keep them off the streets and teach them alternatives to using drugs. Crime
has dropped dramatically in many housing projects where the money has been
used.

But President Bush says the drug elimination program has had "limited
impact," and that "regulatory tools such as eviction are more effective at
reducing drug activity in public housing." HUD spokespeople say strict law
enforcement would be more effective than after-school programs.

Prisons are already bursting with the results of this kind of thinking.
Residents of public housing and the officials who run housing projects here
and elsewhere say the Bush approach is short-sighted. They say the projects
are safer and the kids are better taken care of since the program went into
effect in 1989.

Helping public housing residents avoid drug use and get jobs is much more
effective than throwing them out on the street.

Even the Bush White House should be able to understand that.