DRUG WAR FAILS WHILE HYPOCRISY RULES

Tuesday, May 15, 2001 - A child is summarily executed by high-tech weapons
of war. Peasants and workers nearly shut down Bolivia's capital city. And a
federal judge says it's becoming harder for cops to investigate real crime.

Welcome to America's war on drugs. It has been, says one judge, "a colossal
failure." But our politicians still want to pour billions of tax dollars
down this black hole. And they will keep doing so until Americans of all
political stripes say publicly and loudly, "This is crazy. We've got to
come up with something more effective, and more humane. Let's at least
start a national dialogue about alternatives."

Recent events underscore why it's so important.

One episode was widely reported. In April, a Peruvian Air Force jet gunned
down a small plane carrying American missionaries, slaughtering a
7-month-old infant and her mother. As usual, the feckless twits in our
federal government ducked responsibility and instead blamed the Peruvians.
But the Peruvians fly drug-interdiction missions only because Uncle Sam
demands it (and provides the money, aircraft and bullets to carry it out).

In Vietnam, top generals issued orders, wholly contrary to international
law, that declared some areas to be "free-fire zones" in which civilians
could be shot on sight. U.S. drug war policies essentially have made Latin
America's skies a new kind of free-fire zone. At the missionary plane
wreckage, someone should erect a sign: Your U.S. tax dollars at work.

But the second event wasn't even reported in mainstream American media. In
early May, Bolivian protesters stopped traffic, shut down factories and
took to the streets, PENELOPEPURDYrevolting against their government's
kowtowing to U.S. drug war demands. The Bolivians don't want their food
crops sprayed with lethal chemicals or their people subjected to military
repression, all to stop Americans from buying drugs. Bolivians say their
country really doesn't have a drug problem; it's the United States that
does. America has less than 5 percent of the global population but consumes
50 percent of the world's cocaine.

Yet, U.S. news services apparently didn't think a popular revolt triggered
by American drug war policies was worth reporting. They did, however,
blindly accept President Bush's recent claim that Bolivia is an example of
where U.S. drug policies have been successful. Some success.

Meantime, John Kane, a senior federal district judge on the bench in
Colorado, addressed the University of Denver's faculty. In the metro area
and across America, he noted, police departments have pulled officers away
from investigating crimes like burglaries and put them on drug details. The
war on drugs thus leaves fewer cops to catch the crooks who most citizens
really want captured.

Kane, in fact, systematically eviscerated the entire drug war. For more
than a generation, our country has poured hundreds of billions of dollars
into the war on drugs and sacrificed its civil liberties. Yet there is no
objective evidence - none - that the policy has worked.

In March, a report from the highly respected National Academy of Science
found that our ability to evaluate the nation's drug policies is no better
today than it was 20 years ago. The chair of the committee that wrote the
report, economics professor Charles F. Manski at Chicago's Northwestern
University, said, "It is unconscionable for this country to continue to
carry out a public policy of this magnitude and cost without any way of
knowing whether, and to what extent, it is having the desired result."

Instead, Kane argues, the drug war makes things worse. Kids sent to prison
for drug crimes come out using harder drugs. Local, state and federal
governments spend more than $9 billion a year to imprison drug offenders.
Every year since 1989, more people have been sent to jail for drug crimes
than for violent crimes.

Meantime, we've transformed Latin America's skies and hillsides into war
zones and mocked our own professed devotion to human rights. But we've not
only failed to stop drug smuggling, we've given drug lords more profit
incentive to keep churning the stuff out: A 1992 U.S. House Judiciary
Subcommittee found that interdiction actually increased cocaine production
and supply.

On the campaign trail, George W. Bush mouthed platitudes about the
importance and effectiveness of education and treatment programs. But his
budget proposes to squander $100 on interdiction for every $1 spent on
treatment.

The drug war has failed, but still hypocrisy rules.