LEGALIZATION WILL NOT STOP PROBLEMS ADDICTION CAUSE

It seems that after the heyday of the anti-drug Reagan and Bush
administrations, America is starting to rebel against the War on Drugs.

The change, if real, has been influenced in no small part by our own "free
love, free pot" president, who, when asked by an MTV audience member in
1992, "If you had to do it over again, would you inhale?" replied
boastfully, "Sure, if I could. I tried before." ("Choose or Lose Special,"
MTV, June 16, 1992). This supposed discontent is summed up by one pundit's
sound bite, "We're not in a war against drugs, we're in a war against our
own people!"

Unfortunately, as is the case with most revisionist thought, such an idea
is a gross simplification.

The main objection to our current drug laws is the large amount of
"non-violent" prisoners who clog our court and penal system. One statistic
bandied about is that one out of every three black men in America is
currently in some stage of the correctional system -- the presumption being
that "unjust" drug laws put most of them there. True or not, details of the
crimes that place "one out of three" in the penal system are never
presented in this argument.

Apparently, everyone has forgotten just why drug offenders are in prison --
and moreover, why we as a society choose to make drugs illegal. Look behind
most serious, violent offenses, and guess what cause turns up time and
again, like the proverbial bad penny? Yes, those pesky, "non-violent" drugs
seem to be the cause for many a stabbing, shooting, robbery and child abuse
case. But why let that sort of realization cloud your indignation of
America's "war on its people?" Ponder the issue a while and you'll realize
that we have gone to war against drug users because drugs have gone to war
on our people.

In all likelihood, our justice system does send minorities to prison for
drug offenses more often and for longer terms. It's inequality at its
worst. But here's the solution: Don't use drugs. Yes, it's as simple as
that! The Man won't have any cause to lock you up.

But perhaps that's too simple for "community activists" ? they'd rather
spend time tilting at windmills, trying to legalize drugs and pursuing
other hare-brained schemes. If a community feels it is being targeted by
drug laws, the one sure way to avoid being mistreated by our "unjust"
criminal system is to obey the law.

Drug laws don't require you to do anything. They simply require that you
not do something. Tough-on-crime laws would no longer be a problem if
minority communities chose to avoid drugs and the violence that comes with
them. But that's a difficult idea for activists, because it requires
thinking of people as independent beings, capable of avoiding what a higher
power has deemed illegal.

There is an especially damaging counterpoint to this simplification: many
people who are in prison for drug offenses are in fact innocent. The police

corruption which leads to such undeserved imprisonment is the real "war on
our people."

There is no punishment too harsh for corrupt police officers. But if being
shot in the leg and stripped naked was considered appropriate punishment
for Sierra Leone rebel leader Johnny Paul Koroma, then it's a good start
for officers who abuse their privilege. Not only have allegedly corrupt
officers in Los Angeles tainted themselves, their city and civilized
society with their actions, but their actions have given every social
critic license to question the very foundations of our society. Perhaps
it's social utopianism to imagine honest police forces, but trustworthy
cops seem much more plausible than winning the war on poverty or creating
total social equity.

Moreover, a drug-free society will by nature create greater social equity
than any other change within our means. But the question still remains: Why
do we as a society choose to fight drugs?

We do so not only because they are so often the cause of violent crime, but
because their effect on all humans, not just users, is documented in
voluminous detail. Drugs really do have serious mental and physical
effects. No, we're not talking about marijuana here -- we're talking about
speed, coke and heroin.

These are not harmless substances that provide a temporary high; they are a
debilitating force on users and the user's community alike. One rhetorical
question posed about drugs is that high-fat foods contribute to more deaths
than all drugs combined, yet we don't outlaw high-fat foods. It is a
tantalizing question, tailored to those who don't think.

The crucial difference between drugs and fatty foods is that fatty foods
only affect the consumer of Twinkies and Ho-Hos. But can you say with a
straight face that crack cocaine is a "personal lifestyle choice" that
affects nobody else? We've seen the images of pestilent inner-city
apartments holding neglected children abandoned by their drug-addled
mothers (or, less often, their parents). The effects are felt nationwide,
in all social classes -- the crank epidemic currently devastating Native
American reservations is just one example.

Such cases are not wild aberrations; they are textbook examples of just how
quickly and completely drugs destroy any semblance of normal life, and how
they eat away at the foundations of a community. A good deal of drug use,
mostly marijuana, does occur in private, with no real effects on anyone
else. But our law enforcement for the most part turns a blind eye to such
innocuous consumption. Most police officers, off the record, will
acknowledge that when they discover a small baggie of pot in a car, they
will simply dump it out and give its owner a stern lecture. When was the
last time you heard of someone being sentenced to hard time for marijuana
possession?

Even if a person does have the hard luck to be given a prison sentence for
simple possession, sympathy for them is misplaced. We as a society have
been warned, and those who choose to disobey must stand ready to face the
consequences, unlikely as they may be.

In truth, marijuana enjoys this special status in law enforcement because
it is generally acknowledged to be benign. Smoke it long enough and you'll
become an idiot, as well as experience the same negative consequences that
tobacco users do, only quicker and in greater force. But on balance,
marijuana will only decrease your quality of life, instead of taking it
altogether.

The logistics of a drug-legalized America are mind-boggling. Only the
Netherlands currently runs such a system, and those who know acknowledge
that the system there is deeply flawed.

Visualizing just how hard drugs would be distributed to Americans is rather
creepy. It's bizarre enough to see tobacco companies grudgingly running
anti-youth-smoking commercials. But the reality of this "legalized
paradise" is a neighborhood pharmacist dispensing a vial of cocaine to a
beaming 21-year-old. Drugs are a problem, no doubt, but pie-in-the-sky
legalization is not the answer.