SAGAN: WAGING DRUG WAR IS DE FACTO TERRORISM POLICY

Our country's "drug czar," retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, announced he
is resigning as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in
January.

Already there are strongly worded recommendations from across the country
that his successor be either a doctor or a public health professional; that
we avoid appointing another military mind to a position that isn't winning
whatever war it thinks it's fighting.

Personally, I am gratified by these suggestions.

We have at least two issues here. The first one is the problem of Americans
demanding drugs. The second is how society, as fronted by the governmental
edifice we elect our politicians to present to the world, deals with the
problem of Americans demanding drugs.

That Americans demand drugs in the quantities they do might be many things
- - a social blight, a political embarrassment, a shame, a loss - but it is
foremost a market. I have read estimates that Americans consume 60 percent
of the world's production of illegal drugs. Our legal drug industry
measures its revenues in the billions of dollars.

Demand at such levels commands its own supply. Making war against this
contraband does nothing more than drive up the price, an inflationary move
when you consider nothing is being added to the final product except more
expense.

So on to the next issue - what to do about it. In our case, it means war.

Now "war" has different meanings to different people. To typical Americans
without military experience, war is glorious, war is honorable, war is
decisive. They can always tell who the good guys are in any war we're part
of, too: Whoever is on our side is a good guy.

The realities of military thinking, behavior and philosophy tend to go
unconsidered by those who glorify war and warriors. If we "go to war" over
something, we mean business.

But the military approaches war with martial law tactics, with
unquestioning obedience, with attitudes like "do whatever it takes to
accomplish the mission," with monumental mendacity and the quiet forfeiture
of certain personal liberties (like the right to not incriminate oneself).
Military people who accept these as necessary conditions for winning wars
in general must wreck the Constitution to even wage the war on drugs.

This kind of shallow thinking without consideration for the military's
translation of "war" is what leads to society's punitive, righteous,
prejudicial attempt to deal with the issue of America's demand for drugs by
locking up people.

If that doesn't work, folks, the only thing left to the state is execution,
because that is what a war would demand and that is what a warrior will
attempt to do.

Something to consider now if you think Junior might get caught with a joint
next week.

It is time our society somehow commands the courage to acknowledge that
this ridiculous notion we have acquired - that we can capture the "hearts
and minds" of a civil population by winning a war against it - is not just
ineffective, not just expensive, not just a violation of the spirit of our
legal tradition, not just a provocation for rebellion, not just unjust, but
also ignoble of us.

Once we do this we might give ourselves a chance to wonder just why it is
we are declaring a civil war. It is a serious thing to go to war with
anyone for any reason, but to go to war with one's own people requires
superior justification.

This country's problems with drug use and abuse don't qualify for maximum
ferocity. Since most of the people who use drugs are not violent or
predatory, making war on them is an act of aggression by the government
against its own people.

Continuing such a war against such a foe is a de facto policy of terrorism.
This might be great strategy against an aggressor nation, but it seriously
limits what can be done against Americans for their drug demands, and it
invites equal resistance.

There was a time even two years ago that I would have been the first to
sign up for half-measures. Allowing medical use of marijuana and leaving
the rest of Schedule I alone would have suited me fine if I could still
have a beer and a cigar in my own back yard. But a war on drugs, when
declared by our own government, commits the country to an extreme, and by
definition to be opposed to the official policy is to favor the opposite
extreme. If our choices as a society are to win the war on drugs or to
allow complete legalization, I favor legalization.

So let us thank Mr. McCaffrey for waging the war he was commissioned to
wage as best he knew how. And let's not make the same mistake again.

Greg Sagan can be contacted in care of the Amarillo Globe-Times, P.O. Box
2091, Amarillo, Texas 79166, or letters@amarillonet.com.