TOO MANY CASUALTIES IN A FAILED DRUG WAR

Another tragedy dramatizes once again how senseless, destructive and
counterproductive our so-called drug war is and has been for the past 30
years. An innocent American woman and her baby daughter were shot down in
April by a Peruvian fighter plane that mistook a missionary flight for a
drug operation. An American surveillance plane monitoring the operation
reportedly tried to call off the attack, but it was too late.

Our damaging drug war now costs taxpayers nearly $20 billion a year. Yet
drugs continue to be readily available everywhere in this country and lives
continue to be lost or damaged. Many are devastated by needless long
imprisonment for trivial, non-violent offenses.

Crowded Prisons

Today, some 40,000 prison inmates languish behind bars for offenses
involving marijuana, a relatively harmless drug that has not caused the
number of deaths attributed to tobacco or alcohol, if it has caused any.
Yet marijuana can be readily obtained by children or any one else in
virtually any community.

Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, Ecstasy and the other illegal drugs are an
ominous health problem, but it is clear after 30 years that attempting to
control them by criminalizing them has been unsuccessful and enormously
harmful.

By criminalizing drugs, thus making them available only from criminals, we
have created and financed a rich, powerful underworld here and abroad. It
is so strong we combat it with bullets and fighter planes.

Here in Delaware, the effects of this ill-conceived policy include random
street shootings and an enormous expansion of our prison population. In the
past four years we have squandered $180 million on new prison facilities.
But that is not enough and another $250 million will be required in the
first part of this century to incarcerate drug war prisoners. Many of them
probably would not be jailed if the money had been spent on treatment and
prevention rather than persecution.

Is it not time to stop and reconsider? If we decriminalized marijuana, for
example, and treated it like tobacco with limitations on advertising, label
warnings, prohibitions against sale to minors and taxes, it probably would
not be more available than it is today. Lives would be saved from killings,
imprisonment for trivial offenses would be curbed and further prison
construction would become unnecessary, providing relief to taxpayers.

Is it not wiser to let addicts assume the risks of their voluntary behavior
than to kill an innocent woman and child?