DRUG LAWS CREATE INCURABLE DISEASE

The story of Clementus Williams' life is the sort of tale that helps
explain the war on drugs.

Williams is the 15-year-old accused of murdering church deacon Alonzo
Witherspoon on a Denver street two weeks ago. Denver Rocky Mountain
News reporter Sarah Huntley's description of the boy's life, presented
in two fine stories in Sunday's paper, provides readers with a
depressingly familiar litany of domestic violence and chaotic home
conditions, all fueled by the legal consequences of crack cocaine
addiction.

Williams' biological parents, Cletus Williams and Pamela Jones, are
both in prison. Each was sentenced to jail for crimes committed in the
course of supporting their cocaine habits; each was subsequently
released on probation, and then once again imprisoned after failing
drug tests.

Clementus Williams' life story, in other words, seems to be another
monument to the damage drugs cause in our society. Except it isn't.

Drugs do no damage in our society. Blaming drugs for the crimes
committed by the minority of drug users in this nation who commit
(other) criminal acts is like blaming cotton for slavery or the German
language for Mein Kampf.

Mind-altering substances can be abused. In this regard they are no
different than words, which can be used to tell lies and foment hatred.
In and of themselves, drugs, like words, are neither good nor bad. For
example, a significant portion of the audience attending last week's
Neil Young concerts at Red Rocks smoked marijuana. Yet from what I
could see, whatever obnoxious behavior took place seemed to be fueled
exclusively by the abuse of a legal drug - alcohol - that was sold to
patrons throughout the show.

Drug abuse is a serious problem in our society, not drugs or drug use.
This isn't merely a verbal distinction. In the course of history, there
have been many societies in which mind-altering drugs were readily
available, but which had much less serious drug problems than America
does today. One such society was the United States: Cocaine and
marijuana use was far from unknown early in the 20th century, yet
neither drug was illegal.

Conversely, there is no doubt that the consequences of alcohol abuse
were far worse during the years when the sale of the substance was a
federal crime than at any time before or since.

The lesson of America's experience with Prohibition cannot be repeated
often enough: To a large extent, our drug laws create the disease they
are supposed to cure. The consequences of drug abuse are made far worse
by the criminalizing of that abuse. Most important, we must not lose
sight of the fact that the central strategy of the drug war - to
eliminate drug abuse by cutting off access to drugs - is quite simply
insane.

Insanity is a strong word, but it is the only appropriate term for a
public policy that no one believes can work, and yet which we continue
to commit tens of billions of dollars toward pursuing. What other word
can describe Bill Clinton's decision to sign a bill that will provide
the Columbian army with $1.3 billion for the express purpose of
interdicting the Columbian cocaine trade?

Think of it: The United States is getting into the middle of a South
American civil war, to the extent of waiving the human-rights
requirements that normally attach to the provision of military aid, in
order to pursue a policy we know can't work. In other words, we are
explicitly promising to look the other way when the Columbian army
massacres civilians and rapes young girls (activities to which that
particular institution is prone) just so that we can feel like we are
"doing something" about cocaine abuse, even though we realize what we
are doing is worse than useless.

That is quite a bit more pathetic and immoral than the average drug
crime.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado.