INEFFECTIVE WAR ON DRUGS DRAINS U.S. RESOURCES

POLICY: Aggressive action fuels underground market, ignores freedom of
choice.

During the 1920s, the "progressive" movement in America successfully
established a prohibition on all forms of alcohol, saying it would create a
better society. It failed miserably.

Sound familiar? It should. For the past 20 years, and most intensely for the
past 10, policy makers in Washington have waged the so-called "war on
drugs," which was supposed to cripple the black market drug trade by 1995.
To say this plan was sidetracked would be a grand understatement.

A simple lesson in Economics 101 tells us that the entire strategy of the
drug war has been flawed from the beginning. Any degree of government
intervention will inevitably cause a black market to develop to fill the
demand of consumers. With an estimated 40 million addicts and casual drug
users in this country, that demand is much higher than drug warriors would
like to admit.

Given the degree to which the drug trade has been attacked, it is easy to
see how this very powerful black market has expanded out of control, even
beyond the ability of the almighty Drug Enforcement Agency to handle it. The
multi-billion dollar domestic effort has led to hugely over-inflated market
value for narcotics, particularly coca leaf and marijuana plants.

In fact, L. Jacobo Rodriguez of the Cato Institute estimates that as much as
90 percent of the value of the average narcotic in the U.S. is added after
it enters the country.

You guessed it -- the United States' harsh anti-drug efforts have actually
increased the profitability of the demonized drug cartels, and thus their
ability to expand and assert themselves as powerful political entities, not
to mention increase security measures for their products. Sounds like a
successful war on drugs. Well, not really.

Given these powerful security measures used by the cartels, officials
directly involved in the war on drugs have even admitted the failure of
anti-drug efforts.

According to former DEA agent Michael Levine, "enforcing criminal laws
against dealers has about as much chance of making any impact on the drug
problem as a Honda Civic has of breaking the sound barrier." Unless Honda
has begun a top-secret jet engine program, we won't see an end to the drug
trade anytime soon.

So where exactly do the many billions of drug war dollars go every year?
Apparently, nowhere. According to New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the drug war
is an "absolute failure," given the vast amount of resources that have been
expended. But please, governor, do tell us how you really feel.

In fact, in the first 10 years of the drug war, the amount of coca leaf
output in Peru, for example, grew by a factor of 10. Sigh.

If the frivolous misuse of valuable funds represents the fundamental failure
of the drug war, then the huge increases in crime due to drug-related
offenses represents a severe threat to the safety and stability of our
society. In 1997, the Geopolitical Drug Watch backed this opinion by saying
that anti-drug legislation has "greatly contributed to a rise in violence
and to the criminalization of vast sectors (especially the African American
population) of an increasingly fractured society."

In other words, even if the drug war were to eventually succeed, it would be
the quintessential Pyrrhic victory, destroying society in the process.

Ask yourself, is the policy really worth the occurrence of what David B.
Kopel of the Independence Institute identifies as "unnecessary shootings and
killings?" I think not.

Furthermore, since the drug-related crime rate has been steadily increasing,
yet the overall crime rate has been declining, it represents a very alarming
trend. The war on drugs has actually created a huge amount of crime. Enough
joking, it is time to end this war.

Perhaps the most tragic outgrowth of the drug war has been the use of
mandatory minimums: an excessively harsh and, not to mention,
unconstitutional form of sentencing applied specifically to drug offenders.

It works like this: a conviction for possession of the smallest amount of
marijuana, which, given certain circumstances, is much less dangerous than a
financially equivalent amount of alcohol, can land an offender in prison for
five to 10 years. Either that, or he is sentenced with the mandatory
minimums intended to safeguard against drug sales even if intent of such a
sale is not proven. Regardless, rights are violated.

So, what we have here is hypocrisy -- the government decides that a person
has acted in a manner detrimental to him or herself, and proposes to punish
that decision by ruining his or her life with five years of prison.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the United States hasn't also dragged
other countries into this mess. Even the threat of de-certification as an
ally in the war, as determined by the almighty United States, can mean
disaster for burgeoning democracies, particularly in Latin America.

Focusing on Mexico, the possibility of de-certification over the past few
years has caused the inherently corrupt police force to employ military
style weapons and tactics to fight the drug trade (not that any progress was
made, either -- Mexico is no stronger a drug ally than Columbia). And at
least before Vicente Fox became president, any additional power granted to
the Mexican police was a formula for disaster.

According to Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute, "the United States
is asking Latin American governments to do the impossible: wage war on a
drug trade that now represents a vital part of their economies and around
which have arisen powerful political constituencies." Good luck, America.

Whenever a strategy to solve a certain problem has failed, we inevitably
find ourselves in the unwanted position of finding a solution. One of the
more popular answers to the drug problem is crop substitution, which the
United States and other governments will utilize to compensate narcotics
growers as they switch over to a legal product.

Let's be honest, this strategy has been tried and has failed. Anti-drug
policies have created inflated black-market premiums for narcotics, which
represent far greater profits than sugar, for example. In addition,
coca-leaf plants typically are ready to be harvested 18 months after the
initial planting of the field, whereas most other crops take several years.
Econ 101, my friends, Econ 101.

With that out of the way, let's handle the more politically charged issue --
legalization of all narcotics. I will make this brief and relatively
painless. If someone wants to abuse drugs, let them. The choice to use
narcotics should be an individual one, not a government one. If we ever hope
to achieve a point in our society where people are encouraged to think for
themselves, our government must stop doing the thinking for us.

Most importantly, this must include the ability to make mistakes and learn
from them, but not in prison, for lessons are rarely learned there; but
rather, from the harsh reality of a life ruined by drugs. After all, the
only way for individuals to improve themselves is to let them be individuals
in the first place.