JUST SAY NO

It's hard to imagine a worse choice for national drug czar than John P.
Walters. He promises to employ strategies that have already wasted billions
of dollars and thousands of lives -- among them an American missionary and
her infant daughter, killed last month when their plane was shot down over
Peru.

Now is the time to rethink our approach to illegal drugs. Instead, like a
general preparing to refight past battles, President George W. Bush has
turned to a vocal champion of already discredited tactics.

In 1980, the federal anti-drug budget was about $1 billion. Last year,
federal and state governments spent $50 billion. During that time, our "get
tough" approach to drugs has swollen the nation's prison population to
nearly 2 million. About 5 million more Americans are on probation or
parole. Government has been granted powers undreamed of by the Founding
Fathers, including the right to seize property from people suspected -- but
not convicted -- of involvement with drugs. But, according to the
government's own statistics, illegal drugs are cheaper, purer and more
readily available than ever. The percentage of high school seniors who have
used illegal drugs went from 55 percent in 1975 to 54 percent in 1998. It
may be possible to argue that those are the hallmarks of success, but not
with a straight face.

Liberals and conservatives alike have begun urging a reassessment of
national drug policy. New York is in the process of revising its drug laws,
arguably the nation's toughest. Other states like California and Arizona
now mandate treatment instead of prison for first-time, non-violent drug
offenders.

That's an approach the president seemed to have endorsed. When he announced
Mr. Walters' appointment, President Bush promised to pay "unprecedented
attention" to helping addicted Americans get treatment. Yet Mr. Walters has
testified that increased emphasis on drug treatment is "ineffectual
policy." Instead, he argues for stepped-up interdiction efforts. And he
says the way to win the War on Drugs is to get tough with offenders. That
view is contradicted by a National Institute of Justice study on the crack
cocaine epidemic, which concluded that mandatory prison sentences and
hundreds of thousands of arrests "appeared to have no major deterrent
effect" on drug abuse. Crack use declined just as rapidly in cities like
Washington, where budget cuts caused the number of cops and arrests to
drop, as it did in places like New York, where police aggressively arrested
drug dealers and users.

A rational approach to drug control means rejecting failed policies, not
nominating their chief apologist as the nation's drug czar.