BATTLE FATIGUE IN WAR ON DRUGS

For years the USA has taken an ultra-hard line on narcotics
and offenders. But now there are signs that the public mood is
changing.

With President-elect George W Bush about to take office, there is no
doubt that America's war on drugs will continue - at least in the
short term. But US drug policy is facing a new battle, not in Mexico
or Colombia, but within its own borders.

The American people, including some prominent figures, are
increasingly losing their stomach for the country's hard-line drug
policy. The federal government spends $ 19 billion (L13bn) a year,
three times as much as was spent a dozen years ago.

Signs that more Americans are questioning the drug war are everywhere,
from Hollywood to Capitol Hill. Reaction to the actor Robert Downey
Jr's most recent arrest for drugs, despite his previous time in jail
and in rehab programmes for addicts, has drawn as much sympathy as
criticism.

The critically-acclaimed film Traffic, released in the United States
on Friday and based on the Channel 4 mini-series Traffik, takes a
scorching look at drug policy in the USA - and declares it a failure.
Even US customs and drug enforcement agents previewing the film, set
on the US-Mexican border, lauded it for showing their jobs as violent
and difficult.

Twenty-seven states have now passed laws allowing sick people to use
marijuana for pain management and public support for legalization has
doubled since 1990 - one-third of the population now backs it. While
the world was riveted to the disputed presidential vote, Californians
voted by a two-to-one ratio to give many drug offenders treatment
instead of jail terms.

The law, which backers say will save $ 200 million-a -year, comes
despite opposition from nearly every top policeman and politician in
the nation's largest state. The measure was backed by 7% more
Californian voters than was Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore
and 18% more than Bush. As Washington-based Republican activist
Arianna Huffington, the one-time London socialite Arianna
Stassinopolous, wrote: "Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is a mandate."

New York's Republican governor George Pataki, on Wednesday called for
an easing of his state's punitive anti-drug laws, enacted in the 1970s
and the model for a generation of laws nationwide. "However
well-intentioned, key aspects of those laws are out of step with both
modern times and the complexities of drug addiction," he said.

New York's laws are so tough that they have been attacked by White
House drug adviser Barry McCaffrey, who stepped down on Friday and
whose term has seen the government voting to pour another $ 1.3bn into
Colombia to combat cocaine traffickers. A New Yorker caught selling
four or more ounces of a controlled substance can be sentenced to 15
years to life in prison, the same penalty as for second-degree murder,
while a third of the state's prisoners have been convicted of
drug-related crimes.

According to those favouring looser policies, corruption among public
officials grows as the street price of drugs increases and the job of
police and prosecutors becomes more difficult because of violent
traffickers. Present during Pataki's statement, in the state capital
Albany, was famed NYPD detective Frank Serpico, whose exposure of drug
corruption among cops was made into the Al Pacino movie, Serpico.

A police officer caught stealing drugs also ripped open the Rampart
scandal in Los Angeles, which has led to the more than 100 cases being
overturned and which may cost the city as much money as it receives
from vast tobacco lawsuits.

"Americans are tired of wasting billions of dollars on a drug war that
is not working, especially when clear pragmatic alternatives exist,"
said Ethan Nadelmann of the Lindesmith Centre, a programme run by
philanthropist George Soros, who vehemently supports drug law reform.

Contributing to the mood change is that as many as 40% of American
adults are thought to have used drugs at some point. Many are
baby-boomers, such as Clinton and Gore, or younger adults who use
nightclub drugs such as ecstasy, which have become far more popular in
recent years.

Other well-known reform advocates on the national stage include Walter
Cronkite, a retired newscaster, Milton Friedman, the Nobel economist
and former presidential adviser, and former secretary of state George
Shultz, the first to take then-Texas governor Bush aside and suggest
he run for president.

Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, the flamboyant former wrestler,
favours legalisation of marijuana, as does New Mexico's maverick
governor Gary Johnson, who convened a panel in May to review the
state's drugs policy.

"New Mexico should begin immediately to decrease its reliance on
supply-reduction strategies for combating drug and alcohol abuse and
focus instead on demand-reduction strategies such as prevention and
treatment," concludes the report, that was issued on Thursday.

In Washington, Senator Arlen Specter, a former prosecutor, was one of
a number of prominent legislators who last summer unsuccessfully
opposed the vote to increase America's anti-drug military intervention
in Colombia by $ 1.3bn, a policy that Bush has said he may embrace and
develop.

Opposition, including that from Britain and other European countries,
is largely that Colombia's record on human rights is being ignored.
Neighbouring Latin American countries have expressed fears that more
anti-drugs money in the region could lead to political
instability.

And several weeks ago, Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox, made news
by publicly calling on the USA to acknowledge drug trafficking is
financed by the American public and is not just a Mexican export.

The issue is highly sensitive. Latin American commentators say the USA
demonises their countries and can ignore their sovereignty in the
process of fighting drugs.

It is on the US-Mexican border that the drug war seems to have a life
of its own - and yet can seem most futile. An estimated 70% of
America's imported drugs still arrive via the border. As much as two
million pounds in weight of drugs are intercepted annually, although
the crackdown means that more drugs are now being imported via the
Caribbean and Canada. Officials estimate that they find only 10-15% of
the traffic entering the USA.

On Tuesday US agents on the Arizona border seized 92 pounds of heroin
with a street value of $ 3.3m, L2.1m. It may sound a lot, but it is a
drop in the ocean that floods America.