DRUG LEGALIZATION ISN'T COST-FREE

Remember the television commercial that showed an egg frying in a pan, with
the announcer's grim narration, "This is your brain on drugs"?

It didn't take a public service announcement to convince me that doing
drugs is a profoundly bad lifestyle choice.

That said, I continue to be amazed at those who suggest that drug
legalization somehow would produce less of a drain on society than the
current war on drugs.

These folks blow my mind - so to speak.

The drug legalization argument breaks down quickly, in my mind, when
proponents suggest that it wouldn't cost the government any more to treat
the issue as a "medical problem" rather than a "law-enforcement problem."

Does easier access to legal drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, create more
drug addicts? How can it not produce such an outcome?

"There can be no doubt that it would increase addiction," said Ron Owens,
an associate professor of psychiatry at the Texas Tech Health Sciences
Center in Amarillo. Owens is a psychologist who has treated "lots of drug
abusers" in his day.

"Legalization would be catastrophic," he said. "It would create a drug
industry that I believe would dwarf the pharmaceutical industry we have
today." Owens believes companies would begin "research into determining how
to make the drugs that give the user the best buzz for the buck."

Does legalization cost less than the current system of incarcerating drug
offenders? I suppose it would - if you didn't spend a nickel caring for
someone who fried his or her brain like the egg in that commercial. Who,
though, is going to allow our civilized society to let someone abuse heroin
or some other hard drug without offering some help in return? Who among us
would condone letting people sleep literally in the street, or in our
public parks? Or who would allow the run-of-the-mill addict to stumble
aimlessly along our streets, panhandling passers-by for a little drug money
so they can purchase their next fix at some community clinic?

The cost is there. And it is huge. It would cost us all to pay for publicly
supported drug counseling and rehabilitation. It also would cost us all to
support those who, for whatever reason, cannot shake themselves of the drug
habit. Those who cannot sustain themselves must rely on others - such as
you and me.

"If you had psychoactive becoming legal," said Owens, "you'd have so many
more drugs coming on that you couldn't keep up" with trying to find
treatments. "It would be a huge drain on the economy to try."

OK, so we don't spend tons of cash on jails under a drug-legalization
scenario. The government, though, is hardly going to be swimming in cash
because it isn't paying police officers to arrest drug dealers down on the
corner. Society is going to "reinvest" those savings in the myriad
drug-treatment programs spawned by a system that makes every drug under the
sun available through legal means.

"Start with health care," said Owens, "and the cost of treating overdoses
and counteracting the other effects of drug abuse. Then you have to deal
with lost productivity, and then you have to deal with the consequences of
behavior, such as car crashes.

"And then you have to deal with what happens to the children" born to women
who would abuse legal drugs, said Owens.

Is the current "war on drugs" working? Not by a long shot. The government
is arresting plenty of drug dealers - and users - only to find plenty more
where they came from.

Educators and parents clearly need to do more to imbue in our young people
that drug use is an inherently dangerous endeavor. Indeed, one cannot have
too much awareness of those dangers.

The antidote to the current system, however, is not legalization. It is
time for the drug-legalization crowd to stop implying that such an endeavor
is cost-free. As Ron Owens said, "We could lose a generation."

John Kanelis is editorial page editor for the Amarillo Globe-News. He can
be contacted at the Globe-News, P.O. Box 2091, Amarillo, Texas 79166, or
via e-mail at jkanelis@amarillonet.com.