DRUG WAR NEEDS NEW STRATEGY

Anyone looking back over the past 30 years of the war on drugs at the local
level will find little to be proud of. Local narcs have established a
dismal record rife with human rights violations, faulty investigations and
just plain ineptitude; and they have little to show for their efforts in
terms of reduced production, sales or use of illegal drugs.

My immediate concern in writing this is the immeasurably tragic Alberto
Sepulveda case, but that awful event can be seen as a kind of culmination
of misguided police work, sadly consistent with the overall record of
bungling and poor judgment.

Our community is not unique, of course, as is made abundantly clear by
Steven Soderbergh's powerful and insightful film "Traffic," which indicates
that the same stupidities that characterize the war on drugs locally are in
play everywhere else as well, up to and including the highest levels of
government.

Clearly we are not winning this war and we are not waging it intelligently,
however reassuring it may be to learn that methamphetamine labs are being
discovered and demolished with unprecedented efficiency.

We may commend the police for these successful actions, but, as usual where
law enforcement takes on the drug problem, such successes only deal with
the supply end. Without reduced demand, new supplies are sure to appear.
Momentarily effective police work doesn't assure long-range success.

From the start, Modesto's war on drugs has given us more spectacle than
enduring results. I witnessed one example of conspicuous police
aggressiveness when a team of local narcs rounded up several alleged
dealers at Beyer High a number of years ago.

Armed officers suddenly appeared in the vicinity of my classroom, one of
their prey having been located in a nearby room. With awesome efficiency
they cuffed and hauled away the suspect as we looked on in amazement. The
event was obviously scripted as a display of living theater. The message so
dramatically conveyed was that drugs would not be tolerated in our town,
and that the problem was being nipped in the bud.

But now it seems fairly clear that for every bud nipped, another sprouts in
its place. Statistics indicate that teen drug use is as widespread today as
ever. Whenever there is slight progress, a new drug like ecstasy appears
and we're back to square one. Police frustration, accumulating for several
decades, tends to discourage common-sense solutions and encourage
recklessness -- as we saw vividly demonstrated in the horrifying Sepulveda
action.

The real nature of the problem should have been clear 30 years ago.
Something new was out of Pandora's box, and an unprecedented merging of
youth, drug and rock cultures had resulted. A new sensibility was in the
air, captivating a generation.

What resulted was beyond the controlling resources of law enforcement, as
usual. Parallels to the notable failure of Prohibition were often pointed
out -- and casually dismissed. Police everywhere, angered by a
counterculture they couldn't understand, saw an unwinnable war as their
only option. Our present dilemmas are the result of that folly.

Some say the solution is legalization. I'll leave it to my Libertarian
colleagues to argue that point, but it is obvious that we need to shift our
emphasis away from the futile cycle of crime and punishment in order to
deal compassionately and nonjudgmentally with the true victims: those who
have stumbled into the black hole of drug addiction.