TREATMENT IS BEST ALLY IN DRUG WAR

A Baptist missionary and her baby were the latest casualties of supply-side
drug policies.

The CIA-run program downs planes suspected of running drugs from Columbia
to Peru. No little niceties like jury trials or even trials. Force 'em down
or shoot 'em down, all in the name of the war on drugs.

One bullet tore through Veronica Bowers' heart and her baby's head. While
Jim Bowers fought flames with a fire extinguisher, pilot Kevin Donaldson
landed the missionary float plane on the Amazon River despite his
bullet-mangled leg.

In the name of national sovereignty, Peru wouldn't allow the CIA to shoot
planes over its territory. It was a Peruvian who fired despite directions
of Americans in the surveillance plane. Defending its Air Force, Peru said
no flight plan was filed.

Journalists shot down attempts at damage control while waving the filed
flight plan. The suspected drug plane had large identifying numbers on its
side, not to mention a dove of peace.

According to NBC's Andrea Mitchell, the Clinton administration in 1994
thought this program too risky, our level of involvement too high. The
Pentagon also was concerned.

Our State Department argued for the program. For plausible deniability,
Peruvians, not Americans, would call the control tower to identify possible
drug runners.

This time they didn't. Veronica and Charity Bowers died because their
country gave up the control that could have saved them.

Years ago, Dad flew us in his little Tri-pacer from Ajo, Ariz. to Guaymas,
Mexico, for a family snorkeling vacation. Most American-bound cocaine and
heroin comes through Mexico. Flying private planes in a country that is a
drug source shouldn't be a capital offense, either for Americans or
citizens of another country.

Downing planes reduced the area's coca crop, defenders said. But it is
demand that fuels our drug problem. Despite billions spent on interdiction,
sufficient cocaine and heroin get through that its street price is lower
than 30 years ago. Had it risen, desperate addicts would deal enough to
fellow addicts or steal enough from the rest of us to feed their habit.

We need to seriously consider the damaged caused by our high-control,
low-support drug policies. Civil liberties have been trampled at home and
abroad.

The drug war has helped put up to a third of young black males in the
criminal justice system. Let's face it, we would never accept criminalizing
that percentage of young white males.

We don't have to. Caucasians guilty of the same offenses aren't subjected
to racial profiling. Their families are more likely to have the resources
for a better defense than a court-appointed attorney, and they often
receive better plea bargains and lower penalties from a largely white
criminal justice system.

Since up to half of adults have used illegal drugs, if we were really
industrious, half of us could work to pay the costs of jailing the other
half. Already the drug war has given us the world's highest incarceration
rate, and court-ordered reductions of overcrowded prisons have put violent
offenders back on the streets, making room for new drug offenders.

Instead of funding civil liberties violations we would never allow at home,
Congress should adequately fund drug treatment. Europeans increasingly
treat drugs as a health problem. Americans tend to consider
decriminalization "soft on drugs" and reject high-support programs as
socialist, but it's America that consumes half the world's cocaine.

Bush proposes cuts in child abuse prevention to fund tax cuts for the
wealthy. Instead let's fund effective programs so that fewer abused kids
self-medicate on drugs or try to escape the abuse through dealing.

Let's fund reading classes for poor readers so they can actually understand
their textbooks. Drug dealing is an attractive career choice to few other
than addicts or the desperately unskilled.

Targeting root causes like child abuse and functional illiteracy would
fight drugs more effectively than a war on our own citizens. Instead of
seeking deniability for our programs and being in denial about demand, we
should take responsibility for both.