QUAKERS OPPOSE U.S. DRUG 'WAR'

America needs to end its war on people who use illegal drugs and, instead,
invest in substance-abuse treatment, research and education, local Quakers
say.

Quakers in Trenton, Princeton, Mount Holly and Yardley, Pa., were part of a
regional group that approved a statement opposing the country's drug policy
during a March gathering in Philadelphia.

On Aug. 1, the statement -- called a "minute" -- was read during the Shadow
Convention in Philadelphia, a five-day alternative to the Republican
National Convention.

George Willoughby, a Deptford resident and a member of the Central
Philadelphia Friends Meeting, said he and others conceived the Minute on
Drug Concerns as a way of encouraging Quakers throughout the region to work
to change U.S. drug policy.

Now, he said, Philadelphia Quakers will visit their peers in Mount Holly and
other communities to make a further call for action on the issue.

"We have set out to educate and arouse and awaken the Quakers in this area
to the whole problem so that they will look at it in light of the Quaker
(principles) of peace, equality and relating to people as human beings, in
love rather than punishment," Willoughby said.

According to the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, one of the
organizers of the Shadow Conventions held in Philadelphia and, last week, in
Los Angeles, the federal and state governments will spend close to $40
billion this year fighting the drug war, which now has nearly 500,000
Americans behind bars.

Despite the government's efforts, illicit drugs are cheap, available and
potent, and 57 percent of the Americans who need drug treatment don't
receive it, the center said.

An analyst for the Office of National Drug Control Policy disagreed with
some of those numbers, saying drug-use punishment and prevention costs will
total about $30 billion this year, and that 300,000 people are imprisoned
for drug-related offenses. He agreed that drugs have become cheaper and
purer but said that is because demand for the substances has dropped.

According to the analyst, the government no longer describes its fight
against drug use as a war but as a means of solving a public health problem.

But in their minute, the Quakers say the government's tactics "bear all the
hallmarks of war: displaced populations, disrupted economies, terrorism,
abandonment of hope by those the war is supposedly being fought to help, the
use of military force, the curtailment of civil liberties and the demonizing
of the `enemies.' "

Victimized the most are "people of color, the poor and other less powerful
persons," the Quakers said.

That claim was echoed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson during the Shadow
conventions, which also focused on poverty and a call for campaign-finance
reform.

"When the poor, the black, the brown are caught with drugs, it's called
crime," the civil rights leader told a crowd of more than 500 people in
Philadelphia. "When you're rich and inherit power, it's called youthful
indiscretion. We demand one set of rules."

In the minute, local Quakers call on their peers to seek ways to divert
government money toward treatment, research and education on the dangers of
drug use. They also ask Friends to "be mindful of ways in which our behavior
and our speech support this war and the misuse of drugs."

Friends in Mount Holly may take up that call. They have invited a member of
the Central Philadelphia Meeting to speak to them next month about drug
concerns, member Ed Dreby said.

The Mount Holly Meeting decided to learn more about national drug policy
after a member voiced concern about it during worship recently, Dreby said.
In the past, Dreby said, another member had complained about "the perversity
of our drug laws in driving criminal behavior and promoting violence."

Dreby said he agrees that America's drug policy is hurting people.

"The increasing criminalization of large proportions of our population, and
the extent to which suburban whites get off but lower-income blacks get
incarcerated -- that's just sick," he said. "The justice system, with regard
to drug use, is at its most unjust."