NATION'S DRUG WAR POLICY PROMOTES WHAT IT AIMS TO DESTROY

The latest bull to be released in the china shop is Plan Colombia, more than
a billion dollars to be spent to embroil us in a civil war and to destroy
peasants, crops and rain forest alike. The justification revolves around
illegal drugs, in this case, the claim that we can "save our children" and
somehow reduce the flow of illegal drugs by pushing growth into some other
country, following a well-established pattern of failure as old as alcohol
Prohibition.

No one seems perturbed that we are violating the most basic tenet of a free
market: Supply will always adjust to meet demand.

The more society tries to disrupt the supply of drugs to the major consumers
[the 20% of adult users who use about 75% of the drugs] the more this
interdiction will provoke surplus production and increase the availability
of those drugs to children. As an opponent of alcohol Prohibition once
said, "You can vote to repeal the law of gravity, but if you jump off the
capitol to celebrate, we'll still have to scrape you up with a shovel."

In the specific case of the U.S., the world's largest drug consumer, efforts
to stop supply also move the source of supply to within our borders, a
process which has already occurred with marijuana, and with cocaine
substitutes such as the amphetamines. In essence, stills and bathtub gin
are back in fashion.

Our success in stopping supply is easily measured by the price of the drugs
and the annual reports of teens about drug availability. Both measures
testify to our failure: prices have plunged over 70% in 30 years and
unparalleled availability to children are clear testaments to our failure.
The Catch 22 nature of the drug war also means that "success" will drive up
prices which will then create more crime to pay for the drugs and more
innocent victims than the drugs themselves claim.

The availability of specific drugs to children could be limited if adult
users needed a license to buy those drugs. Access by children would be even
more limited if the quantities sold to adults were controlled by strictly
regulated prescription.

Even with an illegal market, access by children could be sharply reduced by
creating a wide differential in punishment between sale to adults and sale
to children. Harsh punishment for sales to adults makes sellers less
inclined to avoid sales to children and it provides an incentive for dealers
to employ children. A system of fines for sales to adults would also
generate revenue rather then drain resources to pay for more prisons.

There is an inexhaustible supply of drugs and the minor players who sell
them. They are pawns that the illegal market can instantly replace as
easily as your super market can replace a stolen box of corn flakes or the
clerk at the check out counter. Any "success" will be a two-edged sword
that drives up the value of the jackpot being sought. We won't make
progress in the real world by making problematic behavior more profitable.
The real dilemma produced by the removal of low level dealers is that their
replacements are often teens; a system that creates job openings for the
young in crime's most profitable shadow economy is doomed to make the
problem worse.

Again: Supply will always adjust to meet demand. This means that to reduce
supply we must reduce demand. Nothing else matters. Reduced demand is
partly a function of making multiple methods of treatment available, but
more important is to replace propaganda with honest, trustworthy, education
free of hypocrisy. The real key lies in the type of prevention that deals
directly with helping children develop the personal responsibility and the
positive orientation toward life that makes drug dependency repugnant.

If we genuinely want to help our children deal with drugs, we must stop the
wasteful diversion of our money and energy into the supply side of the
problem. A first step would be to steadily cut the funds for interdiction
and incarceration and channel them into prevention.

Raising a curious or rebellious teen in a system that has harsher punishment
for adult drug use is an open invitation to experimentation while still
young. Yet we know statistically that youthful drug use delayed is adult
drug abuse avoided. Ultimately, we must work to find the most palatable
alternatives to prohibition and eliminate the illegal market. This is the
road to the least harm to society and the most effective protection for our
children.