WAR ON DRUGS TAKES HEAVY TOLL WITH FEW BENEFITS

I am a mother, a Scout leader and a former Sunday school teacher, and I
care deeply about children and young people. One would think that I would
be thrilled to see politicians attempting to outdo each other in the war
against methamphetamine and other illegal drugs. Let's just say I have
serious reservations.

We call it the war on drugs, but it is not drugs that are arrested,
imprisoned and sometimes shot. It is people. The war we are waging is
against people who use and sell certain substances that are harmful to
their health and well being.

But are all these people society's enemies? Certainly, many violent, greedy
and amoral people are involved in drug trafficking, but this is more a
function of the illegality of the drugs than their pharmacology.

No, most of the enemy casualties in our "war on the users of some drugs,"
as I prefer to call it, are nonviolent users and small-time dealers who are
breaking the law because they are addicts and prefer the uncertain risk of
jail to the certain pain of withdrawal.

The numbers of casualties just boggles the mind. Two million Americans are
in jail and prisons, convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, an eleven-fold
increase since 1980.

Is this war worth the cost, both human and financial? Are there less costly
alternatives that may be just as effective?

The war on drugs, as currently waged, costs the U.S. about $75 billion in
taxpayer dollars and ties up 400,000 policemen, working full time. In
contrast, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, the
federal agency charged with reducing the 40,000-plus highway deaths in the
United States, has a yearly budget of less than half a billion.

Clear-cut rewards of the war on drugs are hard to find. Since a peak in the
1970s, recreational drug use has decreased somewhat, but the number of
hard-core users remains virtually unchanged. The one drug-war tactic that
has been scientifically studied, the DARE program, has been found to make
no significant difference in drug-use rates.

I realize that some will believe that I am in favor of drug abuse, or that
I use illegal drugs myself. Nothing could be further from the truth. I
would just like to encourage Missourians to take a good, hard, common-sense
look at this problem.

This should be a question of what works and what doesn't. Our politicians
ought to have the courage to at least step back and examine a war that
creates more death and destruction than the problem it is supposed to
solve. The future of a young person could be at stake.