PROHIBITION: SELF-RIGHTEOUS SELF-DESTRUCTION

Here's a maxim for the times: Policies of Prohibition create drive-by
shootings. Whether the perpetrators were tommy-gunwielding minions of
gangsters like Al Capone, or are the Uzi-toting gangbangers of today,
drive-bys mostly are driven by the brutal requisites of the underground
economy.

In other words, much of the violence plaguing too many inner-city
communities is directly connected to the Prohibitionist policies that pump
profits into drug dealing. The anti-alcohol forces of old had overwhelming
public support; they even managed to push through a constitutional
amendment to the Constitution to aid their crusade. But the public soon
realized Prohibition was bad public policy. The social damage caused by
attempts to prohibit booze far exceeded the damage done by drinking alcohol.

Our present war on drugs is bad public policy for the same reason.

However, drug prohibition has had far more destructive consequence than our
foolish adventure in constitutional teetotalism. In addition to empowering
elements of organized and unorganized crime, fueling violence and the
corruption of public officials, the drug war also has justified the
diversion of resources to criminal justice agencies at the expense of other
needs.

For instance, U.S. drug policies have created an incarceration rate that
leads the world, accelerated the environmental ravages caused by crop
eradication programs and triggered military intervention in countries more
in need of economic aid. What's more, the drug war's unconscionable assault
on civil liberties threatens to trash the Constitution's most hallowed
protections.

But unlike during the Roaring '20s, the domestic price of these misguided
policies is disproportionately being paid for by the African-American
community. Last month Human Rights Watch published a report that found
black drug users are imprisoned at many times the rate of white users in
this country (57 times the rate of whites in Illinois).

It was the latest study in a growing library of data revealing wide racial
disparities in the drug war's casualty rate. The racially skewed
enforcement of drug prohibition identifies African-Americans (and to a
lesser extent, Hispanics) as the primary targets of drug warriors. Perhaps
that's why so few politicians publicly question the manifest failures of
our drug policy.

A report issued last week by The Justice Policy Institute found more
failure: one in four prisoners are behind bars because of a non-violent
drug offense. Since 1980, the study notes, the number of violent offenders
entering state prisons has doubled, the number of people imprisoned for
drug offenses has increased 11-fold. According to the study, entitled "Poor
Prescription: The Costs of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United
States," we will pay more than $9 billion to keep 458,131 drug offenders
behind bars this year.

Among the study's most notable facts are that a majority of drug offenders
are imprisoned for simple possession of drugs; the U.S. imprisons 100,000
more people for drug offenses than the entire European Union jails people
for all offenses, even though the EU has 100 million more citizens than the
U.S.; those states with the highest incarceration rate of drug offenders
also have the highest rate of drug use; between 1986 and 1996 the number of
whites imprisoned for drugs doubled, for young blacks it increase six-fold.

"The war on drugs has never been a war on drugs per se," noted Barry
Holman, the report's co-author. "It has always been a war on people and
increasingly become a war against African-Americans."

But the social costs of the suicidal drug war are becoming more apparent
and a growing number of Americans are beginning to balk at paying it. An
initiative on the November ballot in California would substantially reduce
the incarceration rate of drug offenders and fund an additional $120
million in drug treatment. A drug-reform initiative, proposed in New York
by the state's chief judge, would provide treatment rather than
imprisonment for 10,000 addicted offenders.

These are minor alterations to be sure, but they represent important
breakthroughs in the battlefield mentality that is relentlessly promoted by
drug war propaganda.

The biggest change may be taking place in the African-American community,
whose leadership finally is beginning to question the value of drug
prohibition. The issue of drug decriminalization increasingly is listed as
an item for discussion at civil-rights conventions and other activist
gatherings.

The failures of our prohibitionist policies also will be on center stage at
the two "shadow conventions" being held in Philadelphia and Los Angeles as
corrective appendages to the Republican and Democratic conventions in those
respective cities. Although most of our politicians refuse to admit it,
Prohibition's time has passed--again.