WAR ON DRUGS REPEATS MISTAKES OF PROHIBITION

Over the past few years, a good portion of our national treasury has gone up
the noses of social malcontents and into the pockets of the South American
drug lords.

President Clinton apparently believes that’s not enough.

Reporting in the New York Post on Clinton’s summer trip to Colombia, Sidney
Zion writes, “Worse than drug addiction is the addiction of our politicians
to the War on Drugs. Undeterred, Bill Clinton this week arrived in Colombia
with a billion in hard cash and a promise to exhale the Cali cartel that
‘subverts Colombian democracy and poisons American children.’”

Clinton is not alone in his quest to tilt at this particular windmill. Mel
Carnahan and John Ashcroft busily blame one another for Missouri being the
so-called “Meth Capital,” each eager to cast an “aye” vote when Congress
next decides to pour more money down this particular rat hole.

Do any of these people remember Prohibition, the experiment that turned half
the nation into scofflaws and established organized crime as a major force
in American society?

Prohibition didn’t work, but we didn’t learn. We decided to name it the “war
on drugs” and try again.

Wait. Maybe we did learn something. We no longer punish alcohol possession,
minors excepted. We punish alcohol-induced misbehavior and view chronic
misuse as a disease.

Why don’t we treat other chemical addictions and abuse in the same manner?

People seek drugs to cope with spiritual, emotional or physical problems.
That makes drug abuse a problem for a pastor, a counselor or a physician. If
a drug abuser refuses to ask for help, we should care only about their
behavior during their voyage to personal destruction.

We have nothing to show for the war on drugs but more addiction than ever, a
legal system clogged with drug-related cases, and graft and corruption that
eat away at our moral foundation. We have politicians who take our tax
dollars and send our legal system on a mad pursuit where private property
can be confiscated without due process and courts intervene to forbid the
medicinal use of marijuana.

My idea is hardly original. Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke first spoke
out years ago. Since then, William F. Buckley Jr. and George Bushnell,
former president of the American Bar Association, among others, have
suggested some sort of decriminalization process.

Drug abuse, alcohol or otherwise, is best left to physicians and other
medical professionals. Prohibition taught us that. The War on Drugs repeats
the lesson.