ANOTHER LOOK AT DRUG ABUSE

According to the Centers for Disease Control, around 14,000 Americans die of illegal drug-related causes annually. About 81,000 people die alcohol-related deaths. Cigarette smoking accounts for 430,000 deaths a year.

It's possible to do some elementary math with these numbers and conclude:

. Almost six times as many people die from alcohol-related causes as from illegal drug-related causes.

. About 30 times as many people die from smoking cigarettes as from illegal drug-related causes.

. If you add all of this death by substance abuse together and do some division you find that less than 3 percent of it is due to illegal substances; 97 percent of these deaths are due to good ole, reliable, over-the-counter alcohol and tobacco.

Before anybody out there gets the idea that these numbers are like this because we're winning the war on drugs - forget it. The numbers look pretty similar year-over-year, decade-after-decade since at least the late '60s

The figures support the conclusion that is general in drug literature outside of the Drug Enforcement Agency - that the most dangerous drugs in America, in order, are: cigarettes, alcohol and everything illegal.

While these facts of life have remained constant, something else has been changing. The number of people locked up in jails and prisons in the United States has gone up from about 360,000 in 1972 to over 2 million this year.

That's about a fivefold increase.

A Scientific American study says, "The rise in the population behind bars happened while the rate of property crime victimization was falling steeply and while the rate of violent crime victimization was generally trending down."

In fact, the largest percentage of these jail and prison sentences is for - you guessed it, drug possession.

Why is it I get the impression that we keep throwing the wrong people in jail?

Why aren't people getting a couple of years for possession of a carton of Marlboros? Six months for a quart of Chevas? Why aren't those people at the local HappyMart getting arrested for selling these things? Why don't we have Nicky the cigarette dog, and Wino the alcohol dog riding around with the rest of our fine and expensive K-9 corps?

Why are we flying black helicopters around spraying defoliants on the fields of Colombia but not on the fields of Carolina, or Kentucky, or the rest of the tobacco states?

Why don't we haul the executives of Seagram's and Anheuser Busch off in chains?

And why isn't it a capital offense to own shares of, say, Philip Morris or American Tobacco? We are, after all, talking about something only a little short of mass murder here.

Forget for a minute that our drug policies are pathetic in their attempts to prevent people from using drugs. Ignore the fact that these policies are all but useless in recovering people who are already using drugs. Just concentrate on the fact that we are not even targeting the most dangerous drugs of all.

I think there's a big, ugly side of us that we don't want to see. We're hypocrites. Our substance abuse policies and laws haven't been developed on the basis of the dangers these various substances represent. More than anything else the laws reflect the relative political and economic power of the industries engaged in the production and distribution of these substances.

The reality driving our drug laws is that most transparent of all realities, political reality. Nobody in their right mind thinks we're going to try out another Prohibition. And only a few industries have the kind of power (and money) that tobacco has in Washington. So we try to ignore the facts and believe we are doing something fine and good by keeping drugs out of the hands of our kids.

Meanwhile a lot of people die, a lot of other people get locked up, some people get very, very rich without even having to do anything illegal, and nothing, but nothing, else changes.