ENDLESS WAR: MIDDLE GROUND BETWEEN DRUG LEGALIZATION AND PRISON

The recent movie Traffic was total fiction, but its themes were rooted in
reality: The endless war on drugs takes a tremendous toll on American lives
and treasure, not to mention the tragedy taking place in Latin America, and
compassion and treatment often are more soothing balms for those in the
throes of addiction than prosecution and imprisonment.

President Bush acknowledged as much in a speech last week in the White
House Rose Garden, saying that the best way to reduce the supply of drugs
in the United States was to reduce this country's demand for those drugs.
He announced that his administration would seek to direct more money to
drug treatment, prevention and education.

At the same time, however, the president appointed John Walters to head the
White House office of drug control policy. Walters, a veteran of the
anti-drug effort in the first Bush White House, is a staunch advocate of
jail time for drug users and calls harsh sentences for drug users an "urban
myth."

The disjunction between President Bush's announced policies and the views
of his appointee will not long survive. Either Walters will work to put the
president's stated ideas into effect, or Bush will learn to see things
Walters' way.

Whatever policies the administration pursues, they should not be blind to
these inarguable truths:

If the United States cannot keep drugs out of its prisons, it has little
hope of keeping drugs from crossing its porous borders.

The dangerous drugs growing most swiftly in popularity -- Ecstasy and
amphetamines -- are produced domestically.

Polls indicate that U.S. drug use dropped during the administration of
Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, but actual, enumerated violent
crimes associated with drugs -- armed robberies, muggings and homicides --
grew during that period and plunged during the Clinton years, when federal
resources and treatment were focused upon hard-core addicts. A reasonable
conclusion is that the societal plagues of drug addiction and crime obey
cycles of their own and do not respond readily to changes in White House
policy.

Even before the first screening of Traffic, many jurists, social workers,
doctors and other Americans had reached the conclusion that there must be
better ways to combat drug addiction, and that a useful middle ground must
exist between legalization and zero tolerance.

Both President Bush and his newly appointed drug czar say they have faith
in the ability of religious organizations to treat society's ailments. In
at least one sense the war on drugs resembles the church's war on sin:

Final victory can never be won, but the aim of the exercise is to redeem
the sinners, not to destroy their lives.